The Nine Infant Ghost was different from the Bracelet Fiend Skull. The fiend skull primarily relied on poison to kill, and its actual attacks were mediocre, but the Nine Infant Ghost was far more vicious. It could penetrate through Astral energy barriers, and those it attacked would have baneful energy enter their bodies and attack their organs. This was one of the killing weapons of the Ghost Raising Sect, and when they were cultivated to high levels, they could kill even Celestial Heart and Violet Palace cultivators.
Daoist Fuyu’s infant ghost clearly wasn’t at this level, but as it manifested as nine skulls, it clearly had the basic form. Even a Mortal Shedding Realm Nine Revolutions body might not be able to take an attack from it.
As the Nine Infant Ghost attacked, Tang Jie roared and used the Formless Golden Body and the Aquagel Shroud. He stood in front of Miss Xu and used his own body to take the attacks of the ghost.
The Nine Infant Ghost let out a shriek as it attacked. It broke through the Aquagel Shroud, all nine skulls biting down on Tang Jie’s back. Tang Jie felt like someone had stabbed into his back with nine knives, and he groaned in pain. At the same time, baneful energy entered Tang Jie’s body.
“Raaa!” Tang Jie bellowed as he activated the Blood Refining Spirit spell, putting a halt to the baneful energy attack. He circulated his blood energy, expelling the baneful energy and neutralizing the attack.
“Are you okay?” Miss Xu shouted.
Tang Jie bared his teeth. “It hurts a lot.”
Miss Xu was somewhat dumbfounded.
“It hurts a lot”?
This was his reply?
This was what he felt from the Nine Infant Ghost’s attack?
The two of them looked at each other, neither of them talking. Time seemed to freeze for a brief second, as if someone had pressed the pause button for the world.
In that brief second, Tang Jie’s relaxed and confident image was deeply branded in the girl’s heart.
She looked at Tang Jie and said, “My name is Xu Miaoran.”
Hmm?
What did she mean by giving him her name?
Tang Jie froze, and then Xu Miaoran shouted, “Dodge!”
Tang Jie hugged Xu Miaoran and rolled to the side. Boom! The Hearteater Ghost’s sharp claws thrust into the ground where they had just been standing.
Tang Jie pushed Xu Miaoran away and then grabbed one of the infant ghost skulls gnawing at his back, hurling it at the Hearteater Ghost.
He charged forward, his fingertip flashing with golden light as he thrust it into the Hearteater Ghost’s eye.
The Hearteater Ghost wailed, and then its savage body began to melt like snow. At the same time, Xu Miaoran threw out her golden bracelet, which struck the Soulmass Banner and pulverized it.
Having lost their anchor, the remaining ghosts wailed and began to run around like headless flies. Xu Miaoran took out her Soulfear Bells and began to suck these ghosts in.
Daoist Fuyu was aghast.
His trump cards had been the Hearteater Ghost, the Nine Infant Ghost, and the Soulmass Banner. He had used all three of these treasures, yet all of them had been neutralized. Having nothing else to fight with, he took several steps back in fright, and then with a scream, he turned and ran.
“Where do you think you’re going!?” Xu Miaoran shouted. The pennant in her hand expanded and then tightly wrapped around Daoist Fuyu. Meanwhile, Tang Jie threw out his Silver Cloud Needles, finishing off those Bluefang Ghosts.
Their battle had already alarmed those staying in the monastery, and all of them ran over to see what was going on. Young Lady Li took only one glance at the scene before fainting with a groan.
Tang Jie found this very strange. “Haven’t we cleaned up all the ghosts? Why did she faint after seeing someone tied up?”
Xu Miaoran rolled her eyes and pointed at his back. Tang Jie looked behind him, but he didn’t see anything.
“Your back!” Xu Miaoran bluntly said.
Tang Jie finally got it. It turned out that there were still eight skulls hanging from his back, and Young Lady Li had fainted after seeing the sight.
Tang Jie couldn’t reach them with his hands, so he pointed at his back and asked, “Could you help me out?”
Xu Miaoran chuckled and helped to pull them off. The Nine Infant Ghost had left its body and was not being controlled by anyone, so it had lost its power. Xu Miaoran was able to easily pull off the skulls and crush them.
Seeing that all eight of the infant ghost skulls had been pulled off, Tang Jie said, “Thank you.”
“I should be thanking you.” Xu Miaoran smiled. “I didn’t expect this Daoist Fuyu to be so troublesome to deal with. I would have never been able to deal with him alone. I didn’t think that you would be able to even withstand a Nine Infant Ghost. The techniques of the Basking Moon Sect are truly vast and profound.”
She didn’t know that this had nothing to do with the Basking Moon Sect, but Tang Jie couldn’t explain, so he decided to let the Basking Moon Sect take the credit.
As Tang Jie was about to say something else, Xu Miaoran said, “Don’t move.”
She turned Tang Jie around, took out some medicine, and began to treat Tang Jie’s wounds.
Tang Jie was about to say that he was fine and that the wounds would heal on their own in little time, but in the end, he kept silent and allowed Xu Miaoran to apply the medicine.
The medicinal paste was cool and refreshing, and the sensation of those soft hands gently moving across his back was indescribably pleasant.
While these two busied themselves with their own matters, the bystanders were all stunned.
While the Rosecloud Domain had a history spanning ten thousand years and was developed in many ways, there was still an extremely feudal flavor to its society. Let alone applying medicine to a man, this woman going around with a short blouse and exposed arms was rather offensive to public morals.
To take Liu Hongyan and Ping Jingyue as an example, while they normally mixed with the other students, there was actually a sharp line between men and women. Until a relationship was confirmed, even simply taking a hand would incite much gossip.
But this man and woman had only gotten to know each other earlier in the day, yet the woman was already applying medicine to the man.
A particularly closed-minded individual in the crowd started to go on about what a scandal this was and how society was falling apart, not caring about what had happened.
Fortunately, there were still those who understood what was important and asked about what had happened. Tang Jie, while enjoying the pleasure of a beauty treating his wounds, gave a general summary of what had happened.
When everyone found out that Abbot Fuyu was the culprit behind these murderous ghosts, they became indignant and began to curse him. But out of fear of ghosts, few of them dared to kick him. Instead, they seized the Daoist boys, who all proclaimed their innocence and said that what Daoist Fuyu did had nothing to do with them.
Daoist Fuyu refused to give in, shouting, “What do any of you understand? The Immortal path is difficult to climb, and as cultivators who cultivate the Great Dao, is there any of us who does not have hands stained in blood, who has never killed anyone? What does killing a few people matter?”
“Bullshit!” One of the Li Clan servants helped up his young lady as he rebuked, “The Basking Moon Sect is the brilliant orthodox school, and it has never done anything so low and filthy. If this Basking Moon student hadn’t intervened, we would have all been deceived by you and died here.”
Agitated, the man worked up his courage and kicked the Daoist.
“The Basking Moon Sect?” The Daoist burst out in laughter. “The same shitty Basking Moon Sect!? Among the cultivators of the world, the six major sects have killed the most people! It’s simply the way of the world that the winners are kings while the losers are bandits. It’s just that you nobodies are ignorant and allow yourself to be bound by ethics. You think that the Basking Moon Sect is full of good people? In reality, they’re nothing but a bunch of sanctimonious hypocrites. No matter how many people I kill with my ghosts, I could never compare to your Basking Moon Sect, which can kill tens of thousands with a single thought! Hahahaha!”
“You dare to slander this country’s Immortal sect? Damn you!” Everyone rushed up.
Only a few people noticed that Tang Jie hadn’t spoken up for the Basking Moon Sect, instead falling silent.
At that moment, he recalled the massacre that had taken place in the Cloud Marsh.
The Heavenly Extinction Sect!
Simply by tolerating the conduct of the Heavenly Extinction Sect, the Basking Moon Sect had indirectly killed countless people of the Sageheart Kingdom!
Fortunately, this thought only lasted for a second, and Tang Jie replied, “Spell arts are a knife. A knife can be used to kill people, and it can also be used to save people, and you cannot pin the crime on the knife just because of that. But the Ghost Raising Sect started sacrificing human lives from the moment it started forging the knives, creating countless hateful souls with its spells. Is there anything wrong with calling you a pack of heretical evildoers? If you think that the Basking Moon Sect is doing evil, then you should try to stop the evil, not commit even more evil. You’re clearly guilty of monstrous crimes, yet you’re full of grand excuses, as if you’re burning with righteous indignation. It’s not my first time seeing people like you, and it certainly won’t be my last.”
The Daoist was still unrepentant. Tang Jie ignored him and said to a few people in the crowd, “The culprit has been captured. Find someone who can get down the mountain in the middle of the night and report this matter to the local Basking Moon branch so that they can handle this matter. We’re going to take a look around this Daoist’s residence and see if he left behind anything harmful.”
While they claimed to be looking for anything harmful, they were actually looking for treasure. The Daoist didn’t have a Mustard Seed Bag, so if he had anything good, it was probably in his room.
The Li Clan sent someone down the mountain while Tang Jie and Xu Miaoran headed to the Daoist’s residence. It was very clean and devoid of anything good, but after searching for a while, they finally managed to find a hidden compartment.
The two of them were delighted, thinking that there might be some treasure inside. But when they opened it up, all they saw were several hundred spirit coins and a few bottles of extremely average medicine. There weren’t even a few decent magical tools inside. Tang Jie and Xu Miaoran were so angry that they blurted out in unison, “This was worth hiding?”
They glanced at each other and laughed.
After killing so many people and hurting numerous others, this was all he had. The Daoist had probably put all his effort and money into raising ghosts and cultivating.
“Well, there’s also this.” Tang Jie took a book out from the compartment. On it were written the words “Ghost Classic”.
When he opened it up, he saw that it recorded various secret methods for raising ghosts. It appeared that this was a book of the Ghost Raising Sect, and it even recorded many methods that had not survived to the present day.
“Strange,” Xu Miaoran said, taking the Ghost Classic. “Aren’t all higher-level techniques passed down through non-paper means? Why does this book exist, then?”
“When the sect exists, techniques can naturally be passed down through non-textual means to prevent others from stealing them, but when there’s no sect and the lineage has been cut off, there’s no time for such things. Thus, they’re recorded and left for anyone lucky enough to chance upon them. Finally, you just add a few words about how ‘if you work hard, you can bring yourself greater social status and revive my sect’,” Tang Jie commented.
Xu Miaoran just so happened to flip to the last page. When she looked at the words at the end, she laughed and said, “It’s really as you said. Take a look!”
She passed over the book, and Tang Jie saw that words similar to what he had said really were written there.
This Daoist Fuyu had happened upon this Ghost Classic, opened his Jade Gate, and followed this book to reach his current cultivation.
Alas, he had started cultivating too late and had poor aptitude, so he had never been able to reach the Mortal Shedding Realm. He wasn’t very strong himself and relied entirely on his ghosts.
Even so, he had left the two rather flustered, and they couldn’t help but sigh in wonder at the spell arts of the Ghost Raising Sect.
For Tang Jie, this battle was in the mode that Tang Jie had always thought cultivators most frequently fought in—his opponent had relied almost entirely on spell arts.
Suddenly, Tang Jie realized that he was sorely lacking when it came to spell arts.
The only thing praiseworthy about him was his tough body. In a battle of spell arts, he might not even be able to beat Xu Miaoran.
Xu Miaoran took the Ghost Classic and asked, “What do we do about this book?”