After piecing up Lady Dark Gold Water's memories and comparing them with the shadowy figure's narration in the Scroll of Stealing, Wu Qi's understanding of this world had become deeper and more profound, and he had faintly grasped something that was hiding in this world.
He waited until the feeling of restlessness in his soul was completely calmed, then produced some healing spirit pills to doctor his body which was badly injured by Lady Dark Gold Water's cruel torture. After that, he rose to his feet and left the jade dais, came to a pale-green jade brick on the ground, and gave it a powerful kick. With that, the jade dais moved aside soundlessly, revealing a hole that was about ten feet wide.
Without the slightest hesitation he jumped into the hole, descended for over one hundred feet, and came to a secret room, which measured not more than one hundred feet in both width and length. It had four walls paved with fine jades. Countless patterns of rolling waves were engraved on the walls. There was only a pale-gray hassock placed in the middle of the room, and on top of it was a pile of broken body parts.
Wu Qi carefully walked toward the hassock, stood before it, and offered the pile of broken body parts three deep bows.
"Even though you have ulterior motives, you were, after all, my Master for one day and one night. So, rest assured, I'll avenge you, and I'll spare no survivor in the entire Green City. However, as your corpse contained an immense amount of energy essence and power, it will be a huge waste to just let it be placed here unused."
Piling up on the hassock was Lady Dark Gold Water's fleshly body. She was once a very beautiful lady, but her head was now chopped away from her body, and so were her limbs, and there were seven see-through holes on her chest, with faint dark smoke rising up. Although her visage looked natural as though she was still alive, and the color of her skin looked just like a real living person, but this immortal body had lost all its vitality, and was sending forth an air of death that made one shudder.
After offering three more deep bows to Lady Dark Gold Water, Wu Qi produced the Phoenix Fire Pouch and refined her corpse into blood crystals. The yield was a total of 18,000 pieces of blood crystals that shone with a faint purple gleam, and they contained all the blood and energy essence remaining in her fleshly body. The energy contained in each of these blood crystals was comparable to the cultivation base of an advance-graded Heaven Immortal. If Wu Qi were to consume one now, he would have his fleshly body exploding instantly.
He carefully kept all these blood crystals into the Black Dragon Spirit Ring. Then, after a brief moment of pondering, he offered three bows to the hassock.
"Please don't blame me for doing this. As your soul has vanished from this world, this broken fleshly body is completely useless to you now, and we can't just let the energy essence remaining in it to go to a waste. I hold no bad intention against you. It is your own reckless behavior that destroyed your last hope of being reborn. Please, don't blame me!"
Standing up, Wu Qi extended his hand and performed a grabbing gesture, pulling the hassock over to him. He felt an extreme coldness when the pale-gray hassock came in touch with his palm. When he sent a thread of divine will into it, he immediately felt a vast, enormously powerful counterattack of divine will coming from within the hassock. It destroyed his thread of divine will, causing him to cough out a mouthful of blood as he nearly threw the hassock away.
This hassock was one of the nine precious treasures Lady Dark Gold Water carried with her all the time in those years - the Dark Yin Hassock. It contained a thread of Dark Yin True Water aura, which was able to restrain mental demons, was the bane of Yin flames, poisonous flames, ghost flames, demon flames, and fiend flames. Apart from the Heavenly Flame of Pure Yang, all flames would be restrained by it. When it was placed under a cultivator during meditation, it helped to keep out the harassment from all fiends and evil flames.
In addition to that, this hassock could be used to attack enemies. It could cast a grayish-white tornado of ice and snow that came with a biting coldness, and contained ninety-nine extreme Yin Waters in it, that would attack the enemies. Once an ordinary Immortal was rolled up by it, if he did not have any magical treasure that could keep out the attack, his immortal body and soul would be frozen instantly, and could easily have his soul disintegrated, and the flesh and bones turned into ashes.
Having an exaggerated opinion of his own abilities, Wu Qi tried to subdue the Dark Yin Hassock. He was lucky to have only his divine will shaken by a backlash. As the hassock was a treasure used by a Sixth Tier Gold Immortal, the cultivation base of its item spirit had reached a stage that no ordinary Immortals could have imagined.
The mouthful of blood sprayed onto the Dark Yin Hassock. A great swirling of snowflakes burst out from it, followed by a column of dense Dark Yin water vapor, amidst which, an item spirit slowly revealed himself. He had a glittering and translucent physical appearance, standing about one foot tall, shaped like a seahorse yet having six pairs of transparent wings behind his back. The magnificent-looking item spirit had six eyes that shimmered brilliantly like sapphires. Using them, he gave Wu Qi a deep look and asked in a flat tone, "Has the Lady's soul vanished completely? I can sense her aura is gone now."
A massive, extremely cold pressure came pressing against Wu Qi, turning his body stiff and making him dare not to move even a little bit. Wu Qi felt that the aura sent forth by this item spirit was at least ten times stronger than the pressure he sensed coming from Lady Dark Gold Water's broken soul. Shockingly, this item spirit also had a cultivation base of a Gold Immortal! It was actually a Spirit Immortal cultivated from an item spirit! While it did not have a fleshly body, which had prevented him from giving play to the overall strength that matched his current realm, his spiritual pressure was not limited by that. As a result, the immortal pressure from a Gold Immortal had immediately restricted Wu Qi's movement.
Clenching his jaws tightly and staring at the item spirit of the hassock, Wu Qi said in a deep voice, "Yes. She tried to attach her True Spirit to my soul, wanting to absorb the power of my soul to heal herself. However, as I once had an extraordinary encounter, I've subdued a wisp of Divine Flame of Order and had it hiding in my spiritual ocean. She accidentally clashed into the flame, and that caused her soul to be completely disintegrated."
"Ouch…" the little item spirit shaped like a seahorse cried out with a surprise, "How could such an unlucky event happen to her? Well, it is not a real surprise actually. Since she was able to be poisoned by her best friend, being brutally beaten by them and left with only a broken soul, having ninety-nine percent of the spirit herbs and treasures in her palace robbed by the enemies, it is just a matter of time for her to be unlucky enough to bump into the Divine Flame of Order, an innate divine flame that specializes in hurting souls and divine will."
Breathing out a long sigh, the item spirit of Dark Yin Hassock wagged his head and said, "So... I'm free now?"
Wu Qi forced a smile to his lips, then nodded and said, "Yes, you're free now. You can go anywhere as you please. Nobody is going to restrain you, and nobody..."
Before Wu Qi could finish his words, the item spirit sent out a divine will so dense it nearly took a corporeal shape as it wheeled one round around Wu Qi. Then, the item spirit frowned and said, "The aura emanating from your body is a little bit strange. Hmm, could I be wrong in my sense? No, I don't think so, I can recognize that smell." The item spirit sprung up into the air and flew two rounds around Wu Qi, then he asked with a loud voice, "Hey, kid, do you have anything strange with you now?"
At that moment, countless thoughts leaped into Wu Qi's mind. "What strange thing?" asked Wu Qi with a deep voice.
Wagging his head, the item spirit continued to fly around Wu Qi. Suddenly, he plunged into Wu Qi's body. Wu Qi felt an extremely cold and biting airflow circulating inside his body. Through his primary meridians, it went one full cycle, and finally plunged into his spiritual ocean. All of a sudden, he heard a joyful laugh echoing inside his spiritual ocean, "I knew it is the innate water element energy! Kid, since you own such a precious treasure, how could you answer my question with a question?"
Inside Wu Qi's spiritual ocean, the item spirit plunged right into the vast expanse of water that stretched several tens of thousands of miles long, swimming fast and comfortably in it. Sighing loudly, he said, "Innate water element energy, ah, with its nourishment, perhaps I will have the fate to transform into an innate spirit treasure. If that really happens, I'll be able to shake off this damn status of an item spirit, become a true Immortal, and not have to work like a horse for someone else again!"
The item spirit flapped his six pairs of wings excitedly as bright gleams shone from his eyes, while the Dark Yin Hassock held in Wu Qi's hands flew up into the air, transforming into a blinding grayish-white beam and fusing into Wu Qi's forehead. Soon, the hassock reappeared in Wu Qi's spiritual ocean, unleashing a large sheet of grayish-white cold air and completely enveloping the spiritual ocean.
The item spirit laughed and said, "Kid, let's have a deal! Supply seventy percent of the innate water element energies produced in your body to me in the future, and once you have attained the cultivation base of a Gold Immortal, I'll let you control me. What say you?"
Using seventy percent of his innate water element energies to exchange for a promise from Dark Yin Hassock? With just a brief and quick pondering, Wu Qi said, "That's a deal!"
The Dark Yin Hassock laughed. Humming a little tune, he swam a few rounds in the vast ocean manifested within Wu Qi's spiritual ocean, then fell into a deep slumber joyfully. As promised, seventy percent of the innate water element energies produced constantly within Wu Qi's spiritual ocean were being channeled into his body. Whenever these energies fused into the item spirit's body, the glow emitting from the Dark Yin Hassock would turn softer, and its hue would turn paler.
"Since we've come to an agreement, how should I address you in the future?" Wu Qi asked with a deep voice.
The item spirit opened his eyes. After a long moment of silence, he frowned and said, "I did have a name when I was still alive. However, after my soul was forcibly extracted by the Lady and refined into an item spirit, I've forgotten my name... Usually, the Lady would call me Hassock... Well, you can just call me Hassock as well." Hassock said indifferently, "I've lost my life, and my soul is refined into an item spirit, so the name is not that important anymore."
Hassock's tone was cold, and filled with a faint sorrow and yearning.
Wu Qi remained silent for a while, then only used his Nascent Divinity to give Hassock some consoling messages.
Hassock did not respond to that. He just closed his eyes and sunk back into a deep slumber. At last, he murmured under his breath as if he were talking in his dream, "If I can transform into an innate spirit treasure, I'll be able to reforge my Nascent Embryo, and I'll be able to... able to turn into a new life again!"
Wu Qi did not say anything. It seemed to him that this Dark Yin Hassock was rather easy to get along with. At least, he was easier to get along with compared to his previous Master, Lady Dark Gold Water. On top of that, he was not a greedy and evil item spirit, as he just wanted to live temporarily in Wu Qi's spiritual ocean, absorbing innate water element energies to further evolve himself. If it were any other evil existences, perhaps their first thought would be how to kill Wu Qi and seize the innate water element energies.
After this incident of meeting with Hassock, Wu Qi warned himself once again that he really had to be extremely cautious in the future. He was lucky that Hassock was an honest and well-behaved item spirit. What would happen to him if he bumped into an evil item spirit next time?
Nonetheless, he believed that not all item spirits could sense the innate energies inside his body. Wu Qi stared at Hassock, a seahorse with six pairs of wings and six eyes. This was actually a creature recorded in the Scroll of Stealing, a 'Great Ocean Splitting Beast' that ranked the fourth tier among all the strange creatures in the entire universe. He was a formidable creature that when cultivated to the maximum, could become a Primordial Immortal. This peculiar creature had a very strong sensing ability towards all the water element energies under the Heaven. Therefore, it was not something surprising that he could sense the aura of innate water element energies inside Wu Qi's body.
Also, throughout the entire universe, there were most probably less than five of them. Because of that, Wu Qi did not fear that there would be too many people learning the secret hiding in his body.
"Well, I do have to speed up my cultivation. Once I've attained the overall strength of a Heaven Immortal, I'll be able to use the aura concealing technique found in Scroll of Stealing. With that, even the Great Ocean Splitting Beast can never sense any aura that leaks from my body."
While Wu Qi was indulging in his own thoughts, a sad and shrill cry was suddenly heard coming from the outside.
After piecing up Lady Dark Gold Water's memories and comparing them with the shadowy figure's narration in the Scroll of Stealing, Wu Qi's understanding of this world had become deeper and more profound, and he had faintly grasped something that was hiding in this world.
He waited until the feeling of restlessness in his soul was completely calmed, then produced some healing spirit pills to doctor his body which was badly injured by Lady Dark Gold Water's cruel torture. After that, he rose to his feet and left the jade dais, came to a pale-green jade brick on the ground, and gave it a powerful kick. With that, the jade dais moved aside soundlessly, revealing a hole that was about ten feet wide.
Without the slightest hesitation he jumped into the hole, descended for over one hundred feet, and came to a secret room, which measured not more than one hundred feet in both width and length. It had four walls paved with fine jades. Countless patterns of rolling waves were engraved on the walls. There was only a pale-gray hassock placed in the middle of the room, and on top of it was a pile of broken body parts.
Wu Qi carefully walked toward the hassock, stood before it, and offered the pile of broken body parts three deep bows.
"Even though you have ulterior motives, you were, after all, my Master for one day and one night. So, rest assured, I'll avenge you, and I'll spare no survivor in the entire Green City. However, as your corpse contained an immense amount of energy essence and power, it will be a huge waste to just let it be placed here unused."
Piling up on the hassock was Lady Dark Gold Water's fleshly body. She was once a very beautiful lady, but her head was now chopped away from her body, and so were her limbs, and there were seven see-through holes on her chest, with faint dark smoke rising up. Although her visage looked natural as though she was still alive, and the color of her skin looked just like a real living person, but this immortal body had lost all its vitality, and was sending forth an air of death that made one shudder.
After offering three more deep bows to Lady Dark Gold Water, Wu Qi produced the Phoenix Fire Pouch and refined her corpse into blood crystals. The yield was a total of 18,000 pieces of blood crystals that shone with a faint purple gleam, and they contained all the blood and energy essence remaining in her fleshly body. The energy contained in each of these blood crystals was comparable to the cultivation base of an advance-graded Heaven Immortal. If Wu Qi were to consume one now, he would have his fleshly body exploding instantly.
He carefully kept all these blood crystals into the Black Dragon Spirit Ring. Then, after a brief moment of pondering, he offered three bows to the hassock.
"Please don't blame me for doing this. As your soul has vanished from this world, this broken fleshly body is completely useless to you now, and we can't just let the energy essence remaining in it to go to a waste. I hold no bad intention against you. It is your own reckless behavior that destroyed your last hope of being reborn. Please, don't blame me!"
Standing up, Wu Qi extended his hand and performed a grabbing gesture, pulling the hassock over to him. He felt an extreme coldness when the pale-gray hassock came in touch with his palm. When he sent a thread of divine will into it, he immediately felt a vast, enormously powerful counterattack of divine will coming from within the hassock. It destroyed his thread of divine will, causing him to cough out a mouthful of blood as he nearly threw the hassock away.
This hassock was one of the nine precious treasures Lady Dark Gold Water carried with her all the time in those years - the Dark Yin Hassock. It contained a thread of Dark Yin True Water aura, which was able to restrain mental demons, was the bane of Yin flames, poisonous flames, ghost flames, demon flames, and fiend flames. Apart from the Heavenly Flame of Pure Yang, all flames would be restrained by it. When it was placed under a cultivator during meditation, it helped to keep out the harassment from all fiends and evil flames.
In addition to that, this hassock could be used to attack enemies. It could cast a grayish-white tornado of ice and snow that came with a biting coldness, and contained ninety-nine extreme Yin Waters in it, that would attack the enemies. Once an ordinary Immortal was rolled up by it, if he did not have any magical treasure that could keep out the attack, his immortal body and soul would be frozen instantly, and could easily have his soul disintegrated, and the flesh and bones turned into ashes.
Having an exaggerated opinion of his own abilities, Wu Qi tried to subdue the Dark Yin Hassock. He was lucky to have only his divine will shaken by a backlash. As the hassock was a treasure used by a Sixth Tier Gold Immortal, the cultivation base of its item spirit had reached a stage that no ordinary Immortals could have imagined.
The mouthful of blood sprayed onto the Dark Yin Hassock. A great swirling of snowflakes burst out from it, followed by a column of dense Dark Yin water vapor, amidst which, an item spirit slowly revealed himself. He had a glittering and translucent physical appearance, standing about one foot tall, shaped like a seahorse yet having six pairs of transparent wings behind his back. The magnificent-looking item spirit had six eyes that shimmered brilliantly like sapphires. Using them, he gave Wu Qi a deep look and asked in a flat tone, "Has the Lady's soul vanished completely? I can sense her aura is gone now."
A massive, extremely cold pressure came pressing against Wu Qi, turning his body stiff and making him dare not to move even a little bit. Wu Qi felt that the aura sent forth by this item spirit was at least ten times stronger than the pressure he sensed coming from Lady Dark Gold Water's broken soul. Shockingly, this item spirit also had a cultivation base of a Gold Immortal! It was actually a Spirit Immortal cultivated from an item spirit! While it did not have a fleshly body, which had prevented him from giving play to the overall strength that matched his current realm, his spiritual pressure was not limited by that. As a result, the immortal pressure from a Gold Immortal had immediately restricted Wu Qi's movement.
Clenching his jaws tightly and staring at the item spirit of the hassock, Wu Qi said in a deep voice, "Yes. She tried to attach her True Spirit to my soul, wanting to absorb the power of my soul to heal herself. However, as I once had an extraordinary encounter, I've subdued a wisp of Divine Flame of Order and had it hiding in my spiritual ocean. She accidentally clashed into the flame, and that caused her soul to be completely disintegrated."
"Ouch…" the little item spirit shaped like a seahorse cried out with a surprise, "How could such an unlucky event happen to her? Well, it is not a real surprise actually. Since she was able to be poisoned by her best friend, being brutally beaten by them and left with only a broken soul, having ninety-nine percent of the spirit herbs and treasures in her palace robbed by the enemies, it is just a matter of time for her to be unlucky enough to bump into the Divine Flame of Order, an innate divine flame that specializes in hurting souls and divine will."
Breathing out a long sigh, the item spirit of Dark Yin Hassock wagged his head and said, "So... I'm free now?"
Wu Qi forced a smile to his lips, then nodded and said, "Yes, you're free now. You can go anywhere as you please. Nobody is going to restrain you, and nobody..."
Before Wu Qi could finish his words, the item spirit sent out a divine will so dense it nearly took a corporeal shape as it wheeled one round around Wu Qi. Then, the item spirit frowned and said, "The aura emanating from your body is a little bit strange. Hmm, could I be wrong in my sense? No, I don't think so, I can recognize that smell." The item spirit sprung up into the air and flew two rounds around Wu Qi, then he asked with a loud voice, "Hey, kid, do you have anything strange with you now?"
At that moment, countless thoughts leaped into Wu Qi's mind. "What strange thing?" asked Wu Qi with a deep voice.
Wagging his head, the item spirit continued to fly around Wu Qi. Suddenly, he plunged into Wu Qi's body. Wu Qi felt an extremely cold and biting airflow circulating inside his body. Through his primary meridians, it went one full cycle, and finally plunged into his spiritual ocean. All of a sudden, he heard a joyful laugh echoing inside his spiritual ocean, "I knew it is the innate water element energy! Kid, since you own such a precious treasure, how could you answer my question with a question?"
Inside Wu Qi's spiritual ocean, the item spirit plunged right into the vast expanse of water that stretched several tens of thousands of miles long, swimming fast and comfortably in it. Sighing loudly, he said, "Innate water element energy, ah, with its nourishment, perhaps I will have the fate to transform into an innate spirit treasure. If that really happens, I'll be able to shake off this damn status of an item spirit, become a true Immortal, and not have to work like a horse for someone else again!"
The item spirit flapped his six pairs of wings excitedly as bright gleams shone from his eyes, while the Dark Yin Hassock held in Wu Qi's hands flew up into the air, transforming into a blinding grayish-white beam and fusing into Wu Qi's forehead. Soon, the hassock reappeared in Wu Qi's spiritual ocean, unleashing a large sheet of grayish-white cold air and completely enveloping the spiritual ocean.
The item spirit laughed and said, "Kid, let's have a deal! Supply seventy percent of the innate water element energies produced in your body to me in the future, and once you have attained the cultivation base of a Gold Immortal, I'll let you control me. What say you?"
Using seventy percent of his innate water element energies to exchange for a promise from Dark Yin Hassock? With just a brief and quick pondering, Wu Qi said, "That's a deal!"
The Dark Yin Hassock laughed. Humming a little tune, he swam a few rounds in the vast ocean manifested within Wu Qi's spiritual ocean, then fell into a deep slumber joyfully. As promised, seventy percent of the innate water element energies produced constantly within Wu Qi's spiritual ocean were being channeled into his body. Whenever these energies fused into the item spirit's body, the glow emitting from the Dark Yin Hassock would turn softer, and its hue would turn paler.
"Since we've come to an agreement, how should I address you in the future?" Wu Qi asked with a deep voice.
The item spirit opened his eyes. After a long moment of silence, he frowned and said, "I did have a name when I was still alive. However, after my soul was forcibly extracted by the Lady and refined into an item spirit, I've forgotten my name... Usually, the Lady would call me Hassock... Well, you can just call me Hassock as well." Hassock said indifferently, "I've lost my life, and my soul is refined into an item spirit, so the name is not that important anymore."
Hassock's tone was cold, and filled with a faint sorrow and yearning.
Wu Qi remained silent for a while, then only used his Nascent Divinity to give Hassock some consoling messages.
Hassock did not respond to that. He just closed his eyes and sunk back into a deep slumber. At last, he murmured under his breath as if he were talking in his dream, "If I can transform into an innate spirit treasure, I'll be able to reforge my Nascent Embryo, and I'll be able to... able to turn into a new life again!"
Wu Qi did not say anything. It seemed to him that this Dark Yin Hassock was rather easy to get along with. At least, he was easier to get along with compared to his previous Master, Lady Dark Gold Water. On top of that, he was not a greedy and evil item spirit, as he just wanted to live temporarily in Wu Qi's spiritual ocean, absorbing innate water element energies to further evolve himself. If it were any other evil existences, perhaps their first thought would be how to kill Wu Qi and seize the innate water element energies.
After this incident of meeting with Hassock, Wu Qi warned himself once again that he really had to be extremely cautious in the future. He was lucky that Hassock was an honest and well-behaved item spirit. What would happen to him if he bumped into an evil item spirit next time?
Nonetheless, he believed that not all item spirits could sense the innate energies inside his body. Wu Qi stared at Hassock, a seahorse with six pairs of wings and six eyes. This was actually a creature recorded in the Scroll of Stealing, a 'Great Ocean Splitting Beast' that ranked the fourth tier among all the strange creatures in the entire universe. He was a formidable creature that when cultivated to the maximum, could become a Primordial Immortal. This peculiar creature had a very strong sensing ability towards all the water element energies under the Heaven. Therefore, it was not something surprising that he could sense the aura of innate water element energies inside Wu Qi's body.
Also, throughout the entire universe, there were most probably less than five of them. Because of that, Wu Qi did not fear that there would be too many people learning the secret hiding in his body.
"Well, I do have to speed up my cultivation. Once I've attained the overall strength of a Heaven Immortal, I'll be able to use the aura concealing technique found in Scroll of Stealing. With that, even the Great Ocean Splitting Beast can never sense any aura that leaks from my body."
While Wu Qi was indulging in his own thoughts, a sad and shrill cry was suddenly heard coming from the outside.
