Chapter 89 - 《Imperial Corpse Technique》

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Edited by: Butter

From what the Ghost Masked Man had said, it was obvious that he knew.

Story translated by Chrysanthemum Garden.

“I know, but the time hasn’t come for me to tell you.” Ghost Masked Man said.

Yan Tianhen bit his lower lip and looked at him, “Then tell me, are they still alive?”

Ghost Masked Man said, “They should be alive.”

Should?

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“I haven’t seen him in so many years, how would I know for sure.” Ghost Masked Man rolled his eyes, “Your father and mother had already thrown you to some other couple to be their son, why are you still thinking about them?”

Yan Tianhen hung his head, slightly disappointed, then shook his head. “You don’t understand. My parents definitely wouldn’t have thrown me away because I’m ugly or lame. I believe that they must have had their reasons.”

Ghost Masked Man’s gaze turned more profound, but it was hidden underneath his huge mask, so Yan Tianhen didn’t notice it at all.

Ghost Masked Man threw a book at Yan Tianhen. “This is Yin Corpse Sect’s profound-level top-grade cultivation method 《Imperial Corpse Technique》. It has a total of three stages and nine layers. You can just take a look at it when you don’t have anything better do do. In any case, whether or not you want to practice it is up to you. Also, Benzun doesn’t have the time to spare to be a bodyguard for you and your Dage. Benzun doesn’t like you now, so I don’t intend to accept you as a disciple anymore. You’re on your own.”

Yan Tianhen: “….”

Does he need to be this willful?

“So?” Yan Tianhen waved the book in his hand.

Story translated by Chrysanthemum Garden.

“So, you can comprehend the methods written in that by yourself. How much you learn from it all depends on your talent and comprehension skills now. Even if you suffer from a Qi deviation, Benzun wouldn’t take any responsibility for it.” Ghost Masked Man said coldly.

Yan Tianhen sighed again, “You’re the classic example of the phrase ‘only care about killing but not about burying’.”

Ghost Masked Man, “…….”

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Yan Tianhen picked up the worn out book and took a look at it, “What kind of changes will I undergo after I cultivate this?”

“There won’t be much changes to your appearance, but you’ll slowly be able to transform the Profound Yin Qi in your body and turn it into an energy for your own use. Also, after you’ve cultivated up to the fourth layer of《Imperial Corpse Technique》, as long as you have a special method or magic treasure to conceal your Qi, no one will realise that you’re a demonic cultivator.”

Yan Tianhen appeared to be very conflicted.

“I won’t cultivate this, my Dage wants to bring me to Profound Sky Sect.”

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“Up to you. By the way, it’s only in this kind of closed-up world that such a strict division between demonic and righteous cultivation exists. If you get the chance to go to the outside world, you’ll realise that within a sect, both demonic cultivators and elemental cultivators are the same. They aren’t categorised as ‘good’ or ‘evil’, only as ‘strong’ or ‘weak’.”

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Yan Tianhen looked at Ghost Masked Man with a scorching gaze and asked, “Are you really saying the truth?”

“Why would I lie to you about that.” Ghost Masked Man responded, “We’re all pursuing the greater Dao, and we all treat the strong as kings. The more amazing you are, the more you would realise that whatever path you cultivate is merely a method, what’s most important is getting strong and attaining immortality.”

Yan Tianhen was immersed in his own thoughts.

Frankly speaking, ever since he met this Ghost Masked Man — and after he had bluntly pointed out the problems with his body — Yan Tianhen had already thought about becoming a demonic cultivator.

He’s not stupid, and is in fact very smart. So of course he had already clearly understood that realistically speaking, he would not be able to make any progress by cultivating the orthodox paths in the near future.

But Lin Xuanzhi didn’t have time to wait for his breakthrough.

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A craftsman — especially a craftsman with a talent that’s close to being heaven-defying — would be rapidly targeted by more and more powerful cultivators, and the Lin Xuanzhi today doesn’t have a single martial cultivator by his side whom he could wholeheartedly trust to protect him!

Yan Tianhen has always displayed a cheerful, ignorant and fearless disposition on the surface, but how was it possible for him to not care at all? In fact, he cares about this too much!

He even hates himself to the core for being a good-for-nothing who can’t even cultivate!

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Demonic path……righteous path.

No matter which path it was, as long as it could help him get stronger quickly so that he wouldn’t be a cumbersome existence that dragged Lin Xuanzhi down…even if he had to go through a mountain of knives and a sea of fire, or even if he had to endure nine layers of hell, he, Yan Tianhen, would be willing to personally go through all of these trials!

But there was a huge premise…he definitely couldn’t let Lin Xuanzhi find out.

“So, do you want to cultivate it?” Ghost Masked Man asked.

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Yan Tianhen decisively shook his head, “No, I won’t practice this art.”

But his hand gripped the book tightly without any hints of letting it go.

Ghost Masked Man nodded with gratification, then clapped as he laughed, “Amazing, amazing. Yan Tianhen, do you believe that you’ll become an amazing character in the future?”

Yan Tianhen’s eyes turned into half moons as he broke out into a hideous yet naive smile.

“I won’t tell you whether I believe it or not, but I know you do.”

Ghost Masked Man, “…”

Ghost Masked Man was too lazy to talk to this little rascal any longer. He threw him another incomplete scroll and said, “This incomplete scroll is called《Ancient Divine Devil Dance》. When you feel like you’ve reached a turning point in your cultivation, you can comprehend its contents by yourself. You definitely, definitely cannot let anyone know about this book, or else calamity will befall you.”

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Yan Tianhen opened the incomplete scroll, and within a blink of an eye, the incomplete scroll disintegrated into a ray of black light that rushed into Yan Tianhen’s forehead before emerging in his consciousness.

“I can’t open it.” Yan Tianhen said.

“Because the time has not yet come.” Ghost Masked Man smiled, “When the time comes, it’ll open up by itself; you need not force it.” Ghost Masked Man quietly left once he finished speaking.

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Yan Tianhen no longer felt sleepy.

He first got off his bed to go take a look at how his two tiger cubs were doing. When he saw that they were still sleeping with their bellies facing up, and were even snoring so hard a bubble could be seen coming out from their noses, Yan Tianhen couldn’t help but jab their bellies and purse his lips, “Useless little fellas.”

The moment the tiger cubs fall asleep, even the sound of thunder wouldn’t be able to wake them up. Yan Tianhen felt like he couldn’t count on these two tiger cubs who were already on their way to becoming puppies to guard him for the night.

After he rubbed Ah Bai and Hu Po’s soft bellies, Yan Tianhen returned to his bedroom and sat on his bed. He eagerly opened up the plain-looking book adorned with a black cover.

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The moment he opened it, a bone-chilling gust of cold Qi travelled from the paper to his finger tips, then continued along his bloodstream and meridians and rushed toward his heart.

But this sort of cold felt very comfortable to Yan Tianhen.

For as long as Yan Tianhen could remember, his hands and feet had always been icy cold. If it wasn’t because of his heartbeat and pulse, when other people touched him, they might have thought that they were touching a corpse.

Yet Yan Tianhen was extremely afraid of the cold. No matter how hot the weather got, he had never been able to feel warmth.

But now, he had only just touched the rune characters that were filled with the profound mysteries of Dao when he felt a warm Qi that was so comfortable he almost uttered a prolonged sigh of relief.

The current Yan Tianhen still didn’t know that the more wickedly Yin the cultivation method is, the more easily he could manipulate it.

Yan Tianhen’s fingertips traced over those runes and carefully recited the characters as well as the profound and almost incomprehensible meaning behind them.

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《Imperial Corpse Technique》is an introductory foundation cultivation method that belonged to Yin Corpse Sect. It has a total of three introductory stages and nine layers. The three introductory stages are: Corpse Refining, Gu Refining and Imperial Corpse. The nine layers are divided according to the level of the corpse that can be controlled.

The nine layers are: Corpse Soldiers, Corpse General, Corpse Ghost, Corpse Monster, Corpse Demons, Corpse Devils, Corpse Kings, Corpse Ancestors and Corpse Emperors. It is only when a user refines a corpse and inserts a Gu bug into it — that allows the corpse to move flexibly and establishes a connection between the corpse and imperial corpse user — as well as attain the same level as their corpse before they truly fulfill the basic requirements of being an Imperial Corpse user. As for controlling the corpse, the extent to which it can be controlled depends on the Imperial Corpse user’s own level as well as the corpse’s talent, and also their own fortunes.

Yan Tianhen was so engrossed in reading the book that he didn’t even realise that the sky had already turned bright.

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The Qi within his body was limited, and reading this kind of book required a huge expenditure of his consciousness and Qi. Thus, Yan Tianhen couldn’t continue reading further after a short while.

However, even though the Qi in his body had been completely exhausted, he felt like he had suddenly been enlightened and could grasp the secrets of cultivation, so he immediately began to meditate. He formed the basic introductory hand seals and uttered the magic seals in the book, then entered a state of cultivation.

In the earlier stages of cultivation, demonic and elemental cultivators don’t appear to be very different while cultivating. In addition, they both absorb the same spiritual Qi between the heavens and the earth, so when Lin Xuanzhi sensed that Yan Tianhen was cultivating, he didn’t think that Yan Tianhen had already begun cultivating the demonic arts.

By the time Yan Tianhen came out, it was already the morning of the second day.

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Lin Xuanzhi had already prepared breakfast and was placing it on the table. When he saw the Yan Tianhen who was stretching as he left his bedroom, he smiled and said, “Ah Hen’s complexion looks pretty good today, why were you suddenly enlightened?”

Yan Tianhen smiled as he ran over to sit by Lin Xuanzhi’s side, “I suddenly remembered that Daddy had shown me a book on alchemy before. I thought it was quite insightful so I gave it a try, and unexpectedly, it really provided some insight into the mysteries of cultivation for me.”

Lin Xuanzhi was slightly surprised, “Alchemy?”

Yan Tianhen nodded, “There has always been an alchemist fire within my body, but I have never been able to find a suitable alchemist path for me to cultivate and I didn’t have much insight either, so whether or not I had an alchemist fire never made a difference for me.

Lin Xuanzhi gazed at Yan Tianhen with a profound look in his eyes, “Then what is the name of the cultivation method that you’re using now?”

“《Partial Arts》.” Yan Tianhen responded.

“It’s actually 《Partial Arts》!” Lin Xuan was evidently quite surprised, but after he thought for a bit, he nodded. “It can only be a bizarre manual like《Partial Arts》, I can’t believe I never thought of it before.”

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《Partial Arts》is a manual at the intersection between the righteous and demonic paths. It didn’t only contain alchemy techniques, but of course, alchemy techniques were its main content, the rest were merely add-ons.

It’s just that, this manual can’t be judged as either righteous or evil, because those who can cultivate the methods in this manual are those with a special constitution.

For example, those who have an either extreme Yin or extreme Yang alchemist fire, someone who has all the crafting soulfires, and even those who have absolutely no talent in formation arrays can use it.

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And the medicinal pill recipes, equipment recipes, and formation descriptions recorded in it are quite different from the orthodox kinds — it could be described with the words “strange” and “weird”. Examples include a medicinal pill that can make you grow wings once consumed, a medicinal pill that helps you maintain a child’s appearance for a hundred years, a trap that can catch spirit beasts, etc.

Due to the limitations of《Partial Arts》, it is not widely circulated. With the additional bias of many righteous cultivators against this kind of unorthodox method, they tend to look down on it with scorn. Thus, up till today, other than a few lone books that could be found in the bigger families or sects, it was very difficult to find 《Partial Arts》on the market anymore.

As such, most cultivators don’t even know of the existence of this manual.

Lin Zhan was someone who liked to collect all sorts of cultivation methods. This unique hobby of his had allowed him to accumulate quite a few manuals.

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When Lin Xuanzhi was very young he had seen this 《Partial Arts》manual before. But at the time, he was just casually browsing around as he had never thought of cultivating auxiliary paths such as that of alchemy and the like.

Even now, Lin Xuanzhi didn’t plan on cultivating《Partial Arts》.

But of course, he was extremely supportive of Yan Tianhen gaining an insight to a cultivation path that was suitable for him through this manual.

“Ah Hen has an extreme Yin body type, and your alchemist fire is also of the extreme Yin quality, so《Partial Arts》suits you very well.” Lin Xuanzhi felt extremely comforted so he smiled as he said, “So it is true that every cloud has a silver lining. Yesterday, I was still worrying about how to cheer Ah Hen up and encourage you to continue cultivating, but I didn’t expect Ah Hen to grasp the knack to cultivation all by yourself.”

Yan Tianhen also revealed a happy smile as he said, “I also feel like my progress is especially fast when I use this cultivation method to cultivate. I should have begun cultivating it a long time ago.”