Chapter 53: Eternal Cinder
As the mist from the cold pond spread over the ruined stele of the Ancient Battlefield, Lu Qingyang was using an abacus bead to pry a golden tooth from a general's skeleton.
The corroded tooth crown suddenly burst forth with a wisp of faint blue phosphorescence, illuminating a missing stroke in the character 'Lie' (strong) of the stele inscription "Loyal Martyrs' Chronicle," which revealed a fragment of the "Taiyi Spirit Locking Spell."
"Ye Laozei is quite refined, even altering a stele inscription with a Li Fire Seal," he said, flicking the golden tooth away with a finger.
Where the shattered gold landed, three corpse crows carrying human finger bones were startled into flight.
His Shura Vertical Pupil stung as it analyzed the spell inscription; the missing stroke surprisingly corresponded with the "Nine Palace Grid" in the Drunken Immortal Pavilion's cellar.
When a bead of blood from his fingertip seeped into a crack on the stele's surface, the bronze ram of the Taiyi Pavilion Sky Patrol Boat, hundreds of miles away, suddenly changed direction, and the Xuanji position of the "Cosmic Star Array" at the stern of the boat burst with a cracking sound.
Lu Qingyang took the opportunity to escape underground into the general's tomb.
Inside the tomb, the accompanying bronze wine vessels held solidified blood fat, and the Taiyi Pavilion cloud patterns at the bottom of the vessels were stained with rouge marks, like a pair of conjoined twins.
"Dui position, Ze Shi!"
A phantom Dragon scale enveloped him as he sank into the illusion within the vessel, only to see the Drunken Immortal Pavilion's courtesan holding a pot and pouring wine, the coral bells on her wrist jingling crisply.
The moment the wine touched his lips, the seven emotions illusion of the "Mortal World Tribulation" surged forth—that ambrosia was actually "Eternal Cinder," refined over a hundred years; the drinker needed to undergo three thousand Mortal World tribulations to be reborn.
Lu Qingyang flipped the wine vessel over, pressing it against the phantom of a judge's brush.
Cinnabar mixed with blood fat solidified in the Void Realm into a fragmented page of the "Taiyi Sinister Canon," a line of small script recording: "Year Jiazi, Frost Descent, purchased three hundred mermaid children, refined longevity pills."
The sound of swords from the pursuing Cultivators came from outside the tomb.
The abacus beads in his sleeve shot out in a rapid succession, their Pixiu patterns biting onto three Sword Qi.
As he used the force to flip onto a crossbeam, the purple-gold gourd in his arms suddenly trembled.
The nether river water sprayed from the gourd's mouth corroded the pursuers' swords, leaving them with honeycomb-like holes.
A Golden Core Cultivator's jade hair crown shattered, and among his scattered hairs was a unique mandarin duck buckle from the Drunken Immortal Pavilion.
"Xun Wind, rise!"
The Hidden Dragon Concealment Art activated the Yin Qi of the earth veins, causing the forty-nine eternal lamps in the general's tomb to suddenly ignite.
The firelight revealed an anomaly in the "Hundred Battles Map" on the tomb wall—the pupils of the warhorses in a cavalry charge painting were clearly a variation of the Taiyi Pavilion's "Soul Locking Seal."
Lu Qingyang ran his sword-finger across the horse's eye, and the moment the Seal shattered, the entire Ancient Battlefield's resentment condensed into an array of Yin soldiers, surrounding the pursuers.
The tiger tally held by a Yin general's skeleton suddenly cracked, and the inner jade tablet was engraved with a fragment of the Yinfu Seven Arts.
As the pursuers conjured a "Purple Cloud Thunder Talisman," Lu Qingyang was using the edge of the tiger tally to pry out mermaid pearl fragments from the jade tablet's cracks.
"What a waste of heavenly resources!" He dodged the lightning and, taking the opportunity, scattered the fragments towards the pursuers' formation.
The mermaid pearls exploded into a poisonous mist upon contact with spiritual fire, turning all vegetation within three zhang into ashes.
When he escaped to the mass grave on the west side of the Ancient Battlefield, the bronze ring in his arms suddenly grew hot.
The left little finger of a headless corpse was missing half a section, and the bronze ring mark at the break perfectly matched his ring.
The "Record of Rebirth" in the corpse's arms recorded: "Year Guihai, Mao month, ransom price for Miss Hongxiao of Drunken Immortal Pavilion: thirty hu of South Sea mermaid pearls."
The bloodstains on the pages were not yet dry and were of the same origin as the ink on the Taiyi Pavilion's ledger.
At the peak of Yin Qi at midnight, Lu Qingyang squatted on top of a desolate grave, spreading out his day's findings on a broken stele: the missing part of the tiger tally's jade tablet was precisely the "Romance Chapter," the mandarin duck buckle from the Drunken Immortal Pavilion contained fragments of the "Soul Locking Seal," and the lingering warmth of the Eternal Cinder had branded the "Taiyi Pavilion Living Soul Transaction Map" onto the stele's surface.
His Shura Vertical Pupil suddenly reflected a mirage a thousand miles away—it was an illusion of South Sea mermaids weeping pearls, coinciding with the location of the child mermaid procurement recorded in the ledger.
"So it was an eternal banquet that devours people whole."
He crushed the mermaid pearl fragments in his palm, and as the powder dispersed, a desolate mountain seventy li away suddenly collapsed, revealing the Taiyi Pavilion's secret Pill Furnace.
Purple smoke rose from the residue in the cauldron, and the dust condensed into the crying phantom of a mermaid girl, whose cinnabar mole on her forehead was identical to that of the Drunken Immortal Pavilion's courtesan.
As the fifth watch drum sounded, Lu Qingyang leaned against a beam in the Pill Furnace room, watching the pursuers kill each other in the poisonous smoke.
The Yinfu Seven Arts in his arms suddenly flipped to the last chapter, and blood characters appeared on the blank page: "The Dao of Longevity, the Tomb of All Beings."
He threw the book into the Pill Furnace, but what emerged in the firelight was not ashes, but a hellish scene of three hundred young mermaids having their marrow extracted and scales peeled.
When the first ray of dawn penetrated the poisonous mist, the "Blood Transformation Array" on the Pill Furnace room's floor suddenly reversed, teleporting him to the ruins of a fishing village on the coast of the South Sea.
Salty wind, carrying a fishy smell, swept past the broken walls.
A coral wind chimes hanging on a door lintel was precisely an old item from the Drunken Immortal Pavilion courtesan's boudoir.
The two characters "Hongxiao" engraved on the clapper suddenly bled, and the blood drops fell to the ground, transforming into a blue-scaled mermaid child who hugged his boots and called him "Papa."
Lu Qingyang bent down to embrace it, but the illusion dispersed into a sky full of tears, and each tear reflected the sharp blades of the Taiyi Pavilion Cultivators extracting mermaid pearls.