The five bandit martial artists you dealt with were dead. With a single command to the Ten Thousand Souls Banner, their souls were also drawn inside.
"Let us out! You damned Demonic Cultivator!"
You watched the five faces struggling on the banner's surface and revealed a villainous smile.
"Thanks to these five old bros for the delivery of martial artist souls! I, Red-Hair, graciously accept them! Hahaha!"
The Ten Thousand Souls Banner chimed in at an inopportune moment.
"Didn't you dislike being called 'Red-Hair'?"
"Ahem, no need for you to remind me!"
The world was harsh, with propriety crumbling and morality decaying. Traveling outside, incidents like the one you just encountered weren't your first time.
Although you couldn't utilize the "Daddy" keyword in front of humans, once the Ten Thousand Souls Banner was unleashed, you were still their daddy.
Unless the bandits' cultivation realm was too high, then you'd just have to accept your bad luck.
Presumably, truly powerful experts wouldn't stoop so low for a few hundred Spirit Crystals.
You indeed didn't carry a large pack on you. So where were your Spirit Crystals stored?
The answer was: the Ten Thousand Souls Banner.
This guy doubled as a storage Spirit Artifact and could hold some items inside.
However, it could only store things with relatively stable properties, otherwise they'd be contaminated by the demonic energy within the Ten Thousand Souls Banner.
Spirit Crystals could barely be stored inside, but not for too long.
Every time you left them in for extended periods, you'd discover the accounts with the Ten Thousand Souls Banner never matched up.
"I clearly put in five hundred."
"Nope, it was four hundred and fifty."
"You stole them."
"Ha! How could that be? I am a dignified Immortal Artifact, would I steal your lousy rocks?"
This was your usual back-and-forth.
The twenty-third year, age forty.
You arrived at the Divine Arms County's capital city, Divine Arms City, within Ling Province.
This was a special city.
Legend had it there was originally no city here. Many years ago, an old master skilled in artifact forging settled in this place.
Thus, people came to apprentice under him, while others came to commission the old master or his disciples for artifact forging.
With the constant flow of people, the area prospered, gradually developing into a large city.
Later, the old master's disciples formed a unique martial force, the Divine Arms Pavilion, specializing in the art of Spirit Artifact forging.
The city was subsequently renamed Divine Arms City.
Even the county it was located in was renamed Divine Arms County.
And this Divine Arms Pavilion was now, within the Five Domains, the strongest in its field and one of the eight martial sects known as the Eight Pillars of the Five Domains.
Your Spirit Crystals were limited, so you dared not hope to commission a top-tier forger from the Divine Arms Pavilion to recast the Ten Thousand Souls Banner for you.
But nowadays, Divine Arms City wasn't home to only the Divine Arms Pavilion's forging sect;
there were many second and third-rate minor sects whose fees were much cheaper.
The Hidden Arms Tower was one of them.
Feng Mo, a disciple of the Hidden Arms Tower who didn't look very old, fell into deep thought after examining the Ten Thousand Souls Banner blueprint you handed over.
"This thing of yours, what's it called again?"
"Demon-Subduing Banner!"
"Is that so?"
The more Feng Mo looked at it, the more he felt this thing resembled the Ten Thousand Souls Banner mentioned in ancient texts.
Of course it resembled it, because the blueprint was provided by the Ten Thousand Souls Banner itself.
The Ten Thousand Souls Banner knew you currently lacked the resources to restore its original form and could only make a budget version, so the blueprint it provided wasn't identical to itself.
If it were completely identical, Feng Mo would have immediately concluded you were here to commission an evil artifact.
These proper forgers weren't allowed to create evil artifacts.
The Divine Arms Pavilion, as the world's largest forging sect, also bore the responsibility of supervising forgers across the land.
"What quality are you aiming for?"
"High-Grade would be best, but Mid-Grade is also acceptable."
"Will you provide the materials yourself?"
"Yes."
"Only one set?"
"I only need one made."
"But forging has a chance of failure. If you only have one set of materials and there's a mishap, will you give up then, or purchase materials from us?"
"Uh... if there's a mishap, do I get the forging fee back?"
"Of course not."
"Then wait a moment."
To be safe, you decided to save up more Spirit Crystals before commissioning the forging.
"O middle-aged man yearning for power, lacking Spirit Crystals? Ten *li* outside the city, there's a small grove. Just squat there, and you'll have them!"
The Ten Thousand Souls Banner, a dog that can't change its habit of eating shit, was urging you to rob people.
Actually, robbing wasn't entirely out of the question.
But you were now the somewhat famous Red-Haired Demon Slayer!
You had a bit of an image to maintain now.
Anyway, for you, killing demons was extremely easy, and earning Spirit Crystals with demon race materials wasn't slow either.
"In the blink of an eye, I'm middle-aged again. As for my realm..."
The bigger problem now was that your cultivation realm was stuck at the twelfth layer of Spirit Gathering.
"Breaking through a major realm isn't easy, and Heart Arts are much harder than External or Internal Techniques."
The Soul Tempering realm required cultivating the third of the martial artist's Three Energies—Essence Energy!
The cultivation method used for this was called a Heart Art.
Among the High-Grade cultivation methods brought from the Chixin Sect was a High-Grade Heart Art called the "Azure Flame Heart Art."
You had been studying it for a while now and still hadn't mastered the basics, feeling it was more difficult than the techniques you learned before.
Not sure if it was because the quality was too high, you were considering whether to switch to a lower quality one to practice first.
"O middle-aged man stuck at a realm, do you need my help?"
"You, full of sinister schemes, can help me break through?"
"Soul Tempering, Soul Tempering... don't you think this is my area of expertise?"
"Oh... that makes sense. What's the method?"
"The Ten Thousand Souls Empowerment Array!"
The Ten Thousand Souls Banner explained.
It roughly required the following things.
First, store at least ten thousand soul entities within the Ten Thousand Souls Banner. Here it referred to ordinary human souls. If they were demon souls, you wouldn't need that many;
a few hundred would suffice.
Second, find someone who knows how to set up formations to arrange a Ten Thousand Souls Empowerment Array. If they didn't know what this formation was, the Ten Thousand Souls Banner could provide a complete solution.
Third, a large quantity of Spirit Crystals. Formations couldn't operate without Spirit Crystals, and the Ten Thousand Souls Empowerment Array was especially consumptive.
Fourth, the Ten Thousand Souls Banner's main body needed to be at least a Mid-Grade Spirit Artifact. Currently being just a tattered banner for grave visits definitely wouldn't work.
As long as this formation operated, if you could withstand the impact of a massive number of soul entities entering your body within a short time while inside the array, the gate to the Soul Tempering realm would naturally open for you.
"Mainly because your kid's bone structure is poor, otherwise it wouldn't be so troublesome. But it's also thanks to me being here, or you'd never reach the Soul Tempering realm in this lifetime."
You ignored the Ten Thousand Souls Banner's tactic of putting you down to lift itself up.
"Spirit Crystals and soul entities aren't difficult. Killing demons slowly can accumulate them. Forging a new main body is also a problem solvable with 'money.' So it seems all I need to do is kidnap a Formation Master."
You were suddenly shocked.
Damn it, you've been corrupted by this Ten Thousand Souls Banner kid!
It's "invite," not "kidnap."
So what needed to be done now was still to go kill demons, then use demon race materials to earn Spirit Crystals.
As long as you had enough Spirit Crystals, any problem could be solved.
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