Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
This wasn’t an inheritance at all. A powerful man died unwillingly, so he left his soul in the plaque through an evil method and waited for the chance to seize someone’s body.
No one knew how long he had been waiting there. To his satisfaction, a youngster like Jiang Chen had finally come.
He cheated Jiang Chen into melting the plaque to give himself of the opportunity to get into Jiang Chen’s body.
However, when the ghost’s face was less than an inch away from Jiang Chen, it was pulled away.
The ghost’s face turned into gray air and was sucked into the jade bottle in Jiang Chen’s hand.
Jiang Chen smiled and corked the bottle. He held the jade bottle close to himself and said to it, “Even if you want to cheat others, you should have committed and used treasure as bait. How could you cheat anyone with just a plaque?”
Shrill screams came from the bottle. “Let me out, you little jerk! Otherwise, you’re going to pay.”
It wasn’t easy to seize someone else’s body. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have had to trick Jiang Chen, but Jiang Chen saw through his trick. He had pretended to melt the plaque, but had secretly left a simple restraining order in the jade bottle.
“How dare you be so forceful? If the jade bottle breaks your soul will have nowhere to go and will turn into ash and smoke immediately,” Jiang Chen said coldly.
The soul in the jade bottle calmed down. After a short while, he said coldly, “You have no way out of here!”
“Ridiculous. This is only a small seal formation with as few as fifty tactic pennants. I won’t even need half a month to crack it.” Jiang Chen smiled with disdain. He wasn’t worried about the formation at all.
Of course, he was only bluffing. The time needed to crack it would be much, much longer without a formation disk.
But the soul in the jade bottle wasn’t aware of this. He kept his silence when he saw Jiang Chen being so confident.
“Tell me about yourself,” Jiang Chen said.
The voice sounded proud. “You can call me Azure Cloud the Venerable—”
“Hum?” Jiang Chen’s snort interrupted him.
“Just call me Azure Demon then. That was what my enemies called me,” the soul corrected himself. Then he continued, “I’m from the Realm of Milky. I was chased by enemies and had to escape to the Realm of Nine Heavens. I died here, but I was unwilling to leave the world without getting my revenge. That’s why I’m looking for a body.”
“The Realm of Milky?”
Jiang Chen knew that that was another Planes World. People who had knowledge of the Planes World used the word Realm instead of Continent, because it was more accurate.
The Nine Heavens Continent was the same as the Realm of Nine Heavens.
“How long have you been here?”
“Hundreds of years? Maybe almost a thousand.” This time, the voice sounded almost like it was sighing.
“Then all your enemies must be dead,” Jiang Chen said.
“That’s impossible. Those like Blue Azure the Venerable… the Azure Demon’s enemies can naturally live as long as the sun and the moon. A thousand years isn’t a long time for them.” The soul in the jade bottle became a bit emotional.
Before Jiang Chen could ask, he said, “There were other people who came here, but all of them were in the Reaching Heaven State, making it too difficult for me to seize their bodies. But they still took all of my treasure away.”
“And then?” Jiang Chen asked him to continue.
“There were also youngsters, but their talents were too average for me. I was influential. If I have to start over, I have to find someone… like you.”
“What did you do with those youngsters?” Jiang Chen asked.
“I let them out.”
“Did you?” Jiang Chen was playing with the jade bottle. It could fall at any time.
“Well… they were all trapped here and died. Most of them committed suicide. Their dead bodies are in the forest,” Azure Demon corrected himself again.
“Then you’re worthless to me. Besides, you’re an evil being. I have no reason to keep you alive.”
Then he threw the bottle up into the air.
“No, no! I can help you, I can help you!” Azure Demon screamed worriedly.
Jiang Chen caught the bottle and smiled, “How?”
“I’ve experienced a lot. I’ve eaten more salt than you’ve had meals. I’ll be of great help if you take me with you. Besides, I have many martial arts methods and martial arts techniques, all in my memory so no one is able to take them away from me. Don’t you want to know what they are?” Azure Demon made an irresistible offer.
“What kind of methods?” Jiang Chen asked.
“Have you heard about Riding the Wind? It’s a gorgeous method…”
“It’s the combination of a practicing method and a secret method. People who practice this method can greatly enhance their strength. If the practitioner is in the Gathering Yuan State, his genuine yuan could produce a cyclone. It’s a unique creation made by Wind the Venerable. He combined a sky-level method with a secret method called Flying with the Wind,” Jiang Chen explained for him.
“Hmmm… Although you know its history, do you know its content?” Azure Demon sounded shocked.
“I can even recite Flying with the Wind, let alone Riding the Wind,” Jiang Chen sneered.
Azure Demon thought for a while after seeing Jiang Chen uninterested in his method. Then he said, “I know where many treasures are kept. I can take you to them.”
“Yeah? Not interested.” Jiang Chen didn’t believe him at all. He threw the jade bottle up again.
“Don’t! You won’t regret it if you take me with you!” Azure Demon shouted.
An idea occurred to Jiang Chen. He caught the jade bottle and said, “I’ll give you an opportunity. You can decide whether you want to take it or not.”
“What is it?” Azure Demon asked with caution. He felt lucky, but at the same time, he didn’t dare behave recklessly.
“Have you heard about the eight groups of spiritual beings?” Jiang Chen said.
The soul in the jade bottle didn’t speak for a good while.
Jiang Chen didn’t urge him, but waited patiently.
“Kid, do you mean it?” Azure Demon said seriously after a long while.
“Yes.”
The eight groups of spiritual beings was one of the most valuable Buddhist treasures.
What was intriguing about it was there was more than one. Any eminent Buddhist monk could have it as long as they were lucky.
With eight powerful living creatures kept in spiritual ware to represent the eight groups of beings, it was one of the greatest spiritual powers of Buddhism. These eight living creatures were deva, naga, yaksha, gandharva, asura, garuda, kinnara and mahoraga. They were all Protectors of the Law of Buddhism.
Jiang Chen was going to create his own eight groups of spiritual beings.
It was the soul in the jade bottle that gave him this chance. The soul had been independent of a body for almost a thousand years. No living person could achieve that.
This Azure Demon could be a powerful man in a state even higher than the Reaching Heaven State.
If Azure Demon hadn’t fallen into his hands, with his current state, it would be impossible for Jiang Chen to find such an existence to make one of his eight groups of beings.
Although he hesitated to act as one of Jiang Chen’s eight groups of beings, Azure Demon mostly doubted whether he could achieve that.
“What are you going to use as the spiritual ware for the eight groups of spiritual beings? Average ware can’t hold spiritual energy.”
The eight groups of spiritual beings could be held in small towers, scriptures, or scrolls.
No matter what it was, it shouldn’t be an average thing. It at least had to be class-seven or class-eight spiritual ware.
“I’ll use this.”
Jiang Chen took out a book. It was the book he had taken from the imperial mausoleum. It didn’t look special at all, but in fact, it was.
When Elder Tree had taken the book before, he was burnt into charcoal by the Universal Darkfire Lamp, so that even his spiritual armor was melted, but the book suffered no damage at all. So, Jiang Chen knew immediately it wasn’t made of average paper.
“But it’s written with characters.” Azure Demon noticed there were illustrations and passages regarding the imperial mausoleum in the book.
“Buddha in Buddha, Buddha in mind. The characters are not important.”
“Then you should know the eight groups of spiritual beings are also a spiritual weapon. The spiritual ware is only a shell. The key is the ware pattern. This is a secret that the Buddhism doesn’t want to expose.”
“I have the ware pattern, and I know the contents of it.”
“What about the text of the scripture?” Azure Demon asked.
The eight groups of spiritual beings could only be successfully created if one possessed the spiritual ware used to hold them, the ware pattern that exerted them, the unique scripture text and the energies of the eight groups of beings.
“I know that, too.”
“Is there anything that you don’t know?!” Azure Demon shouted in a loud voice. It couldn’t sit still anymore.