Fortunately, Sect Master Wu Liangyi had not recognized the Porcelain Doll as Shen Yanting. Otherwise, he definitely would have kept staring at the Porcelain Doll, revealing a gaze that annoyed Bo Xuenong just like Guan Caimei’s had. Even now, when Bo Xuenong thought of the way Guan Caimei had looked at Shen Yanting like prey, she still got angry.
Shen Yanting was no one’s prey. On the contrary, she would take Shen Yanting to hunt down everyone who coveted her.
Along the way, Bo Xuenong dealt with the demonic cultivators who blocked their path, leaving those who did not actively attack her for Wu Qingshu, who trailed behind. She arrived at the village end as quickly as possible. She had thought Feng Yingbo could not handle so many people, but when she arrived, she only saw corpses littering the ground. Everyone from the Heavenly Feast Sect was dead.
Their deaths were somewhat strange. Each one had bulging eyes, staring fixedly ahead, their faces pale and lips stretched to the widest, as if they had been scared to death.
Many corpses were surrounded by ordinary people brimming with spiritual power, both old and young among them. Their eyes were all bloodshot, grief-stricken, with low sobs mixing with hoarse shouts endlessly. Bo Xuenong instinctively glanced at Shen Yanting and saw sorrow in the Porcelain Doll’s eyes, which stirred pity in her own.
Feng Yingbo kept a straight face as she led Xiang Yu to Bo Xuenong’s side. Shen Yanting glanced at the unusually serious Feng Yingbo. “Junior Sister Feng, did you kill these people?”
Feng Yingbo shook her head honestly. “No, it was Village Chief Gui.”
“Village Chief Gui?” Bo Xuenong incredulously searched for Gui Nianqin’s figure, but strangely, she did not see her. “Master, have you seen Village Chief Gui?”
Shen Yanting’s eyes also scanned everyone present carefully, but oddly, she had not found Gui Nianqin either. “No.”
Xiang Yu raised her hand and pointed southeast. “Over there. The person standing next to Sect Master Fu is Village Chief Gui.”
Bo Xuenong and Shen Yanting looked where Xiang Yu pointed and immediately saw the grief-stricken Fu Aoqing.
There was indeed someone beside her, but she did not look much like Gui Nianqin. She was not even an elderly woman, but a young one around thirty years old. Her appearance was gentle and refined, her complexion very rosy, in stark contrast to the sorrowful and haggard faces around her.
She and Fu Aoqing stood beside an elderly man who cradled the corpse of an eight-year-old child in his arms.
Feng Yingbo saw through their confusion. “That’s Village Chief Gui. It seems because so many people in the village died suddenly, their spiritual power was not devoured but flowed back into the spirit gathering talisman. Village Chief Gui’s appearance has become much younger, and the spirit talisman seems to have changed too. She suddenly gained the ability to drag people into illusion techniques. Many here died from illusion techniques.”
What did a seventh-grade spirit gathering talisman have to do with illusion techniques?
Bo Xuenong could not figure it out, nor could Shen Yanting, but there was someone among them who could.
The Porcelain Doll opened her mouth. “Wait for Aunt Shu to arrive and ask her.”
Feng Yingbo was curious. “Who is Aunt Shu?”
Shen Yanting said, “The Supreme Elder of the Cloud Smoke Sect, my former Grand Shishu.”
Feng Yingbo exclaimed in admiration. “Isn’t she incredibly powerful then?”
Wu Qingshu was naturally very powerful, but being powerful did not mean she understood person talismans. She had been fast at talisman-making since Dao Seeking and had a frighteningly high success rate. She had no interest in talisman paper with unlimited uses. The talisman paper Wu Qingshu made, even high-grade ones, were mostly one-time consumables since she could always draw another successful one anytime.
In the end, Bo Xuenong and the others got the explanation from Hua Jinshi. Gui Nianqin had probably undergone a mutation upgrade.
A spirit gathering talisman was merely seventh-grade talisman paper whose function was simply to gather spirits. Following the traditional upgrade path, her spirit gathering speed would become faster and greater in quantity later on. However, Gui Nianqin had long shared her spiritual power with the villagers, nourishing their meridians and bodies, maintaining an unbroken connection. Today, too many people in the village had died suddenly. The killers could not possibly take all their spiritual power at once, so when the hosts died, part of the spiritual power dispersed, and part flowed back into the person talisman through the connection between Gui Nianqin and the hosts.
The spiritual power in the hosts’ bodies differed from ordinary spiritual qi. That spiritual power was the essence of constantly compressed and deposited spiritual qi. Suddenly receiving so much extremely pure spiritual power qualified the person talisman’s body for cultivation.
The most numerous type of talisman paper was spiritual qi talismans, with corresponding ones in nearly every grade, and more than one kind per grade.
Gui Nianqin would no longer be limited to seventh-grade talisman paper but would advance along the spiritual qi talisman path, with powers coexisting after grade advancement. This was also the highest form of self-growth for person talismans, generally unrecorded in books. Hua Jinshi had heard it five thousand years ago from a talisman cultivator who had lived nearly ten thousand years.
Since she could now use illusion techniques, Gui Nianqin had undoubtedly upgraded to a grade six illusion spirit talisman.
The current Gui Nianqin possessed both spirit gathering and illusion-from-spirits abilities.
Hua Jinshi grew more smug as he spoke, gradually revealing a hint of madness. “She should thank me. It was me, I who gave her such powerful strength. It was I…”
Before Hua Jinshi could finish, a stone smashed toward his face. It was thrown by the elderly man beside Gui Nianqin. Though aged, the elder had spiritual power supporting him, so his movements were agile and his strength considerable. The stone hit Hua Jinshi right on the lips, the sharp edge splitting his mouth and knocking out two teeth. “It was you! You harmed Nianqin, our entire village, my grandson!”
The elder seemed a respected senior in Mistlongevity Village. With her angry shout, the surviving villagers surged forward. They surrounded Sect Master Wu Liangyi and Hua Jinshi, whom Wu Qingshu had tossed to the ground. Fear and rage filled their eyes as they trembled while swinging fists at Sect Master Wu Liangyi and Hua Jinshi.
The fists shattered all of Hua Jinshi’s smugness and arrogance, and crushed Sect Master Wu Liangyi’s mad inner voice.
Bo Xuenong had originally wanted to personally break every bone in this Otherworld bone cultivator Sect Master Wu Liangyi, but now that the people of Mistlongevity Village were doing it for her, she did not step forward to steal the credit.
The people of Mistlongevity Village had been bullied by them for over seven hundred years. Without Bo Xuenong and the others accompanying Fu Aoqing back to the village this time, they would still be trapped in the Heavenly Feast Sect’s cage, suffering torment. The Original Book had no plot of Fu Aoqing returning to the village; instead, the Heavenly Feast Sect participated in the Scale Eel County Trial, meaning they never faced retribution even by the book’s end.
It seemed the Divine Pavilion’s efficiency was not as high as Bo Xuenong had imagined.
She was relatively steady and reserved, hiding her hatred and disgust inwardly. Si Xianling and Feng Yingbo directly cheered on the Mistlongevity villagers from the side, constantly goading them to hit harder, even harder.
The sounds of cracking bones mixed with cries of pain reached her ears. Bo Xuenong peered through the crowd gaps and saw that Sect Master Wu Liangyi and Hua Jinshi inside had long been beaten into pig heads, their faces with noses and eyes all askew, unrecognizable.
Bo Xuenong spat out a heavy breath of foul air viciously, but Feng Jin unconsciously shrank behind her.
Bo Xuenong frowned but ultimately said nothing.
Hua Jinshi and Sect Master Wu Liangyi gradually stopped crying out, though that ‘Sect Master Wu Liangyi’s’ inner voice cried out loudly.
【What exactly did this body do? Why do these people hate him so much? I can’t use the Soul Searching Technique now, or I’d be discovered. I… I shouldn’t have chosen this body. How could there be a group of ordinary people with such abundant spiritual power? Each one is prime material for spirit cultivation seedlings. If I could refine them into puppets for my command, let alone Shen Yanting, I’d eventually take down Wu Qingshu too.】
Daydreaming.
Bo Xuenong regarded this as the final fantasy before death. She watched coldly as this Otherworld Soul endured the beating alongside Sect Master Wu Liangyi and Hua Jinshi, then silently opened the System Panel.
【Assistant Bo Xuenong killed Peerless Evil Person Qi Bing: +100 System Points】
【Assistant Bo Xuenong killed Peerless Evil Person Sa Houhui: +100 System Points】
…
The screen filled with point gains, pushing her System Points to three thousand. As Bo Xuenong looked at the points panel, she suddenly remembered something very important. That ‘Sect Master Wu Liangyi’ had also mentioned the Soul Searching Technique just now. Since when had a forbidden technique like the Soul Searching Technique become something everyone could use?
Bo Xuenong recalled how she had obtained the forbidden technique Soul Searching Technique and vaguely felt something amiss.
She glanced down at Shen Yanting, saw she was not paying attention, then hurriedly grabbed Feng Jin’s shoulders and sent a sound transmission. “Where did your Soul Searching Technique come from? Where did Guan Caimei’s and theirs come from?”
Feng Jin lacked cultivation to support sound transmission, so Bo Xuenong hinted for her to exchange for the Sound Transmission Technique from the System.
Her points suddenly dropped by five hundred, and Feng Jin’s voice followed. “A new world survival gift package from the System, including ten forbidden techniques like the Soul Searching Technique. The package was issued along with the full Plot.”
Bo Xuenong understood.
The System tasks had been mass-sent, so the gift packages naturally were too.
Those souls lacked the System and could not touch the packages like Feng Jin, but upon waking, their minds would gain the book’s contents plus these gifted forbidden techniques. She could kill Fu Aoqing’s original soul anytime like Guan Caimei had, fully becoming Fu Aoqing.
The disaster this System had caused was greater than Bo Xuenong had imagined.
If they were all like Guan Caimei—powerful experts from another world with thousands of years of cultivation experience, now gifted such potent forbidden techniques… Note that the Soul Searching Technique was just one method in this forbidden technique manual.
Feng Jin lacked a complete life and could not cultivate, but those soul-seizing spirits were different.
If Bo Xuenong were a righteous person, she might now blame Feng Jin’s weakness and inaction—foolishly pinning all hope on others out of cowardice, wasting two hundred years without action and spending points on a ‘ferocious beast’ with bloodline issues. Unfortunately, Bo Xuenong was not righteous.
Her mind turned, and she said only very flatly, “With such means, they’ll probably harm quite a few people.”
Feng Jin said, “Eldest Senior Sister, these forbidden techniques are hard to learn. Not all of them can master it, right?”
Naive.
Bo Xuenong sighed inwardly and continued the sound transmission. “Their past lives were probably powerful cultivators with good aptitude. These forbidden techniques aren’t that difficult for them.”
