novelraw Chapter 118 : New Sprout of the Jianmu, Exhaustive Curse Breaking!
Chapter 118 : New Sprout of the Jianmu, Exhaustive Curse Breaking!
Chapter 118: New Sprout of the Jianmu, Exhaustive Curse Breaking!
That mysterious remnant soul saw that Xu Zhengyang was preparing to perform a soul search on him.
He spoke rapidly, “My true body was True Lord Qingyang!
Though he has already passed, I alone know the location of his cave abode in this world!
Even as a remnant soul, I still possess some means of defense.
If you attempt to search my soul,
I will seal off all memories related to True Lord Qingyang. You will find nothing about him from me!”
Xu Zhengyang feigned fear at those words and said, “After defeating that Chen Yabo, I became arrogant and acted presumptuously toward Senior.
I beg Senior’s forgiveness!”
As he spoke,
Xu Zhengyang bowed to the remnant soul of True Lord Qingyang.
That remnant soul had only inherited True Lord Qingyang’s memories and a small portion of his soul force. His thinking capacity was limited and not very clever.
Seeing Xu Zhengyang behave so courteously, he smiled and stroked his beard, saying, “A teachable child…”
But before True Lord Qingyang’s remnant soul could finish his sentence,
he saw Xu Zhengyang—who was showing him such reverence just a moment ago—suddenly use some unknown technique, and one hand abruptly seized his head!
“You dare!”
The remnant soul shrieked in alarm, saying, “True Lord Qingyang was a Nascent Soul cultivator. The cultivation methods, secret arts, and countless spiritual treasures he accumulated over his life…
are even more bountiful than some minor sects!
Are you truly not tempted in the slightest?”
“Hmph.”
Xu Zhengyang snorted coldly and directly cast the Soul-Searching Technique on the remnant soul, sneering, “Do you take me for that traitor Chen Yabo, starving so badly he'd even chew on shit?
The True Essence Sect has millennia of accumulated resources, with several Nascent Soul True Lords among them.
I am a True Disciple of Divine Mechanism Peak, even qualified to compete for the position of Sect Master. Why would I covet that worn-down cave abode of Qingyang?
His legacy—
could it possibly surpass my sect’s millennium-old foundation?”
As he spoke,
Xu Zhengyang ignored the remnant soul’s screams and activated the Soul-Searching Technique at full power, like a powerful water pump,
ruthlessly extracting the remnant soul’s memories!
...
After a moment,
when Xu Zhengyang had completely drained the memory sea of that remnant soul, he frowned and said,
“This old bastard really managed to seal his own memories?”
As expected of a Nascent Soul True Lord—even a mere remnant soul of his, even after enduring the Soul-Searching Technique, could still barely retain some human form and not fully dissipate.
“Ha… Haha… Ha…”
True Lord Qingyang’s remnant soul laughed painfully yet delightedly.
Then, like a final flare before death,
the remnant soul, previously as fragile as a candle in the wind and on the verge of vanishing, suddenly regained a hint of solidity.
At that moment,
the remnant soul looked at Xu Zhengyang with smug satisfaction and said, “This is a secret art my original body once acquired, called the Divine Locking Mantra!
Once I cast the Divine Locking Mantra, I can instantly seal away the most important information in my memory!
So even if you use the Soul-Searching Technique, what you get is just a useless lump—something that will merely take up space in your sea of consciousness!”
Xu Zhengyang said indifferently, “If I obtain it, it’s my fortune. If I don’t, then it’s fate.
Even if I can't obtain the inheritance you speak of, I won’t allow you, this unstable element, to remain inside the internal world of my artifact!”
The soul shell of that remnant soul grew increasingly dim. It was about to dissipate entirely, disappearing between Heaven and Earth, its soul scattered!
Yet despite this,
the remnant soul showed no fear. Instead, he smirked with satisfaction and said, “You don’t know what you've missed. That’s the only reason you speak so freely.”
Saying this,
True Lord Qingyang’s remnant soul chuckled coldly, then added, “Since my true body styled himself as Qingyang, his primary cultivation technique was naturally of the wood element.
Because of that,
in his cave abode, there is a sprig of Jianmu that he risked his life to snatch back!
So many years have passed—
even for the Jianmu, it should have taken root and sprouted by now, ready to be reborn!”
At this point,
True Lord Qingyang’s remnant soul grew even more pleased, laughing heartily, “But I will soon dissipate completely.
My memory has already been sealed by the Divine Locking Mantra, which must be unlocked with a specific chant.
And that chant is formed by mixing and selecting from the nine characters: Lin, Bing, Dou, Zhe, Jie, Zhen, Lie, Qian, Xing. If you want to access my memory,
even if you tried for a thousand or ten thousand years, you may never find the correct chant!”
Originally, Xu Zhengyang held little hope for this so-called Jianmu sprout.
But upon hearing those words, his eyes lit up, and he smiled, “If you hadn’t said that last part,
I might really have had no way to unlock the Divine Locking Mantra.
But since you told me that the chant is composed of nine different characters…”
At that point,
afraid the remnant soul wouldn’t understand, Xu Zhengyang directly manifested a blackboard in the internal world of 6090 and briefly outlined a simple calculation.
Then, he explained to the remnant soul, “If the chant composed of the nine characters doesn’t allow repetition, then there are only 362,880 possible permutations.
Even if repetition is allowed—like Lin Lin Bing Bing—
that’s just 9×9×9×9×9×9×9×9×9, totaling no more than 387,420,489 variations.
No matter how many permutations,
as long as it’s not infinite, I can try them one by one.
With enough time,
I will definitely find the correct unlocking chant!”
“……”
True Lord Qingyang’s remnant soul was dumbfounded, no longer feeling smug.
After a moment,
he finally said, “So what if you calculated the number of combinations? Over 300 million permutations—
even in a hundred or a thousand years, you won’t finish testing them all!”
“Hahahaha!”
Xu Zhengyang laughed heartily at those words and said, “Who said I have to test them myself?
I’ve already finished transforming the more than 1,500 remnant souls within the Ten Thousand Souls Banner.
Next,
all I have to do is distribute these 300 million-plus combinations among them and have them test it for me.
You do the math—
how long do you think it’ll take me to break the curse?”
At this point,
as the remnant soul of True Lord Qingyang grew ever more faint, on the verge of vanishing completely, Xu Zhengyang added one final strike, “Oh right—
my Ten Thousand Souls Banner can still evolve. Once I collect more souls, the speed at which I crack the chant will only increase!
When that happens, I’ll gladly accept that Jianmu sprout your true body risked his life to recover!”
At these words, the smugness on True Lord Qingyang’s remnant soul disappeared entirely. Eyes wide with rage, just as he was about to curse at Xu Zhengyang—
Xu Zhengyang had already used the Ten Thousand Souls Banner to refine the remnant soul completely, turning it into a pure strand of Yin energy.
Used to nourish the other souls inside 6090!
“A decent bit of waste recycling.”
Xu Zhengyang muttered as he immediately created a backup memory copy of the Divine Locking Mantra and embedded it into 6090.
From this moment on,
whenever the remnant souls within 6090 had no other tasks to perform,
they would chant at that backup memory copy, testing and eliminating incorrect combinations one by one—striving to help Xu Zhengyang unlock the secrets of True Lord Qingyang’s cave abode!