Chapter 118: Refinent
"Don't even... think about it!" Leng Tianfeng rapidly mobilized the power of the Five-Emperor Soul-Refining Furnace. A relentless stream of energy surged out, washing over the essence, qi, and psyche that Yaoguang had inserted into the treasured artifact.
Under the impact of the ghostly blue radiance, the essence, qi, and psyche contained within the blood were swiftly obliterated.
Yaoguang did not hesitate. After swallowing a handful of pills, including supplents like Psyche-Concentrating Pills, he forcibly perford blood sacrifice after blood sacrifice upon the Five-Emperor Soul-Refining Furnace.
The essence, qi, and psyche within every drop of blood rged with the spiritual power of the spirit stones, constantly penetrating the furnace through a specialized thod. During this process, his understanding of the treasured artifact deepened rapidly. Eventually, he began gaining control over key nodes with every attempt.
Leng Tianfeng could clearly feel that the restrictions within the Five-Emperor Soul-Refining Furnace were being seized at an alarming rate. Although the control was not yet complete, as the restrictions began to take effect, they already imposed a sense of binding and suppression on him in his state as the artifact spirit.
This suppression caused Leng Tianfeng’s efforts to block Yaoguang’s blood sacrifice to grow slower and slower. Gradually, a vicious cycle ford.
He watched helplessly as Yaoguang mastered more and more restrictions, and the control exerted over him grew ever stronger. A surge of unprecedented panic and unease flooded his heart once more.
"How is this possible? How...? Not only do you possess staggering accomplishnts in God-Fiend Body Refinent, but you are even so proficient in artifact refinent?!"
Everyone had their own areas of expertise. The sa held for existences from the Lunar Fiend Empire. Leng Tianfeng was incomparably skilled in the arts of soul manipulation and controlling other living beings. He even mastered the evolution paths of fiendish bodies; he could take a re mortal body and use the "Horned Fiend" path to make it evolve rapidly into a complete fiend form comparable to the ninth realm of God-Fiend Body Refinent.
Furthermore, he possessed various psychic-soul secret techniques, cloning, and possession thods. Based on his skill set, he was a highly qualified Soul Manipulator. But when it ca to being an artifact refiner, he had never truly studied it in depth.
Consequently, now he could only stand by and watch as Yaoguang’s control over the restrictions beca more thorough, yet he remained utterly unable to resist. The critical issue was that he had completely rged with this treasured artifact.
Unless soone could break the artifact and prepare another vessel for his weakened, bodiless state in advance, this treasured artifact had already turned into a lethal cage.
Feeling that the power of the restrictions was now entirely under Yaoguang's control, Leng Tianfeng could not help but let out a cry of despair. "Who exactly are you?!"
Unfortunately, Yaoguang did not answer. As he activated the array engraved upon the Five-Emperor Soul-Refining Furnace, which originally asured over a ter in diater, the furnace shrunk rapidly. It eventually beca the size of a palm and was held firmly in his hand.
Only after completely bringing the treasured artifact under his control did Yaoguang breathe a small sigh of relief. He looked down at the Five-Emperor Furnace in his hand. To be precise, he looked at Leng Tianfeng, who had been converted into the artifact spirit within it.
"I rember you once said that you would put
in a box and refine
into one of your 3,600 virtual pets. You wanted
to run to you and wag my tail for rcy the mont I saw you every day. Thinking about it now, virtual pets and artifact spirits are quite similar. I suppose I am using your own intended thods against you, and returning the favor," Yaoguang said.
"W-What do you intend to do?" Leng Tianfeng asked, full of fear.
"Just play your part as an artifact spirit well. If I detect any treacherous intent, do not bla
for directly wiping out your consciousness. Though I would have to nurture a new artifact spirit from scratch, with the foundation you’ve left behind, it shouldn't take
very long to raise a new one." As Yaoguang spoke, he triggered the power of the restrictions within the treasured artifact.
Instantly, Leng Tianfeng felt as if a sharp blade radiating a bone-chilling cold was pointed at his defenseless soul, slowly cutting him. Just a brief sensation of that sharpness told him that Yaoguang’s words were no idle threat.
"I..." The psychic soul fluctuations of this Soul Manipulator from the Expeditionary Army's Sixth Fleet of the Divine City of the Lunar Fiend Empire trembled. It took a long while before he managed to stabilize himself.
He used ntal fluctuations, or rather, psychic thought fluctuations, to transmit a ssage. "Perhaps... We are not enemies..."
"Whether we are enemies or not depends on your performance when the ti cos." Yaoguang turned his gaze toward the few surviving fiends.
When those fiends saw Yaoguang shrink the Five-Emperor Soul-Refining Furnace and hold it in his hand, they realized the tide had turned. Snapping out of their shock, they exploded with speed, desperately fleeing in all directions.
Just as they attempted to scatter, Yaoguang directed his gaze toward the furnace in his palm. Leng Tianfeng remained silent for a mont. The next second, a burst of ghostly blue light spread out from the treasured artifact, instantly seizing the three daemons that were trying to escape.
Amidst their screams, their souls were rapidly dragged into the cauldron and incinerated by intense flas, turning into pure fuel. However, the truly remarkable feature of the Five-Emperor Soul-Refining Furnace was not its ability to kill enemies.
The treasured artifact was a cauldron. An important treasure of the Fiendish Dao. One could even call it an automated pill processing factory. Using souls as fuel, it could refine large quantities of Soul-Nurturing Pills. For a cultivator, consuming these pills allowed for rapid, daily progress in the path of a psyche cultivator.
Of course, a fiendish treasure was like fiendish cultivation itself; while the early stages might proceed smoothly, they were often accompanied by imnse hidden dangers. The Five-Emperor Soul-Refining Furnace was no exception.
The Soul-Nurturing Pills refined by this fiendish artifact through the extraction of souls often contained various fiendish and intrusive thoughts.
Consuming one or two might be fine, but if taken in large quantities, these thoughts would evolve into heart fiends. When attempting to break through major realms, these heart fiends would erupt, turning an already perilous breakthrough from a "one-in-ten survival" situation into a "certain death" scenario.[1]
"Immortal weapons and fiendish artifacts..." Yaoguang murmured.
It was hard to imagine how many people had died over the years to forge this fiendish artifact. Perhaps the Artifact Sect was also fiendish.
At that mont, he seed to sense sothing. Shifting his gaze, his eyes fell upon Xie Yushu, who stood nearby. He discovered that this unified martial paragon from the Snowdragon Empire was looking at him with eyes full of dread.
The fear was directed at him. It was not directed at the Five-Emperor Soul-Refining Furnace, the fiendish artifact in his hand. Yaoguang reflected for a mont and understood the reason for their fear.
He offered no excessive explanation, simply stating, "Alright, tell Kong Fang to bring his n over to pack these things and find a place to rest. To prevent the Crimson Star Empire from doing sothing desperate like a mad launch of nuclear bombs, the Snowdragon Empire should step forward and take control of the Crimson Star Empire..."
He paused there and rephrased his command. "Eliminate the Crimson Star Empire's higher-ups and occupy the Crimson Star Empire!"
"As you command," Xie Yushu replied hurriedly. "The martial paragons, psychic-will martial paragons, and unified martial paragons of the Crimson Star Empire number no more than a hundred in total. Their scale is less than a third of our Snowdragon Empire. Especially after Lord Yaoguang’s successive strikes, their unified martial paragons have been nearly slaughtered to the last man. Occupying the Crimson Star Empire will not be a difficult task."
"Go, then. The sooner the better, lest any variables arise," Yaoguang said.
"As you wish." Xie Yushu saw that Yaoguang had no intention of moving against him and secretly breathed a sigh of relief. He bowed hastily, his attitude appearing impeccable.
Yaoguang did not doubt the strength of the Snowdragon Empire. With his status and position rising continuously during this period, he had already learned of the disparity between the Crimson Star Empire and the Snowdragon Empire.
A century ago, the Crimson Star Empire was perhaps no weaker than the current Snowdragon Empire and even had a heavenly being guarding it. However, as the ti to rotate arrived, the higher-ups of the Crimson Star Empire were forced to withdraw from the Artifact-Nurturing World and return to the Artifact Sect.
Consequently, the power left in this world by the Jiang family of the Crimson Star Empire was significantly weakened. Had it not been for the fear of the power backing the Crimson Star Empire, the Xie family would have uprooted the nation long ago.
After Xie Yushu and the other martial paragons departed, Yaoguang searched the spoils of war left by the group from the Crimson Star Empire. There were many divine weapons. Crucially, Yaoguang also discovered over sixty spirit stones.
In the Artifact-Nurturing World, where the spiritual qi environnt was poor, spirit stones were precious treasures. These sixty-three spirit stones were likely the entirety of the Jiang family’s accumulation over the years. They had carried all these stones with them presumably to instantly trigger the power of the treasured artifact once they gained control of the Five-Emperor Soul-Refining Furnace.
He kept the most valuable items for himself and ignored the rest. Soon, Kong Fang arrived quickly in the woods with his team.
"Speaker..."
"Pack up these spoils," Yaoguang said. Since he had brought n along, he naturally left the task of gathering the spoils to them.
"Yes!" Kong Fang responded with a heavy nod.
He soon turned his gaze toward the corpses. He felt no surprise at the death of Mo Guang, the president of the Rebirth Society. Even when he saw the body of Xie Boen, his expression did not change much. After all, he had encountered Xie Yushu earlier and saw that he was not in a panicked rush, which indicated that their fishing operation against the mastermind of the Rebirth Society had achieved final victory.
However, when he saw the bodies of Jiang Banzi, Zuo Wendao, Jiang Zhenwu, and the others, a look of astonishnt involuntarily appeared in his eyes. "These are..."
"Minor characters who wanted to reap the rewards as a third party," Yaoguang said calmly.
He was stating the truth. Whether to the current him or to Leng Tianfeng, who had possessed Xie Boen’s body and gained the form of a heavenly being, these people from the Crimson Star Empire were not worth ntioning. If they had been content to stay out of the dispute, he wouldn't have bothered with them, but they had been foolish enough to try reap the rewards. Naturally, Leng Tianfeng had swatted them to death in passing.
Lacking the necessary level of power and vision, they simply had not known how powerful Leng Tianfeng and the current Yaoguang truly were.
"By the way, organize a group to follow the Snowdragon people to the Crimson Star Empire. The Snowdragon Empire will attack the Crimson Star Empire, but during this ti, we must still secure what belongs to us, especially the refining technology for nuclear weapons..." Yaoguang instructed, adding a final note at the end, "The Snowdragon people will not dare to stop you."
"Yes," Kong Fang replied with a respectful nod.
"Arrange a vehicle. I am going back to rest." As Yaoguang spoke, he walked toward the edge of the woods.
After getting into the car, he did not even have the ti to interrogate the Soul Manipulator of the Lunar Fiend Empire. Instead, he focused his attention on the ancient tree within his ntal world.
The branch representing high-dinsional cognition was no longer the only one standing out. A second branch was growing robustly at an extrely rapid pace. This branch was the Refiner branch. And judging by its size, it had already reached the ninth tier.
1. heart fiend represents the accumulation of a cultivator's darkest thoughts, desires, fears, or unfulfilled obsessions. It often manifests during critical monts of cultivation or when attempting to break through to a higher level. ??
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