Chapter 1545: The Ancestor's Successor (Part One)
Li Yan’s answer still left the two of them in disbelief.
“How is that possible? Since the First Ancestor left behind a legacy, he… why didn’t he return to the clan? If he had, the Second and Third Ancestors wouldn’t have had a falling out! And you said… you’ve been to the Verdant Continent? Are you not a cultivator from the Verdant Continent? You found the Hellsoul Clan? What is going on there now?”
This time, it was Great Master Lan who fired off a series of questions, her tone filled with doubt.
“I said I received the First Ancestor’s legacy, but I am not a cultivator from the Verdant Continent, nor have I ever met the First Ancestor in person!”
Li Yan’s face was calm, but his words, after a moment of thought, seemed to make some things clear to Great Master Lan and Elder Hao.
So, Li Yan’s origin was not from the Second Ancestor’s lineage as they had thought. He had received the First Ancestor’s legacy, but fundamentally, he was still a member of the Hellsoul Clan.
The Hellsoul Clan itself was not a clan based on close blood ties. In the beginning, there were only the three ancestors. All the other clan members were disciples from the Verdant Continent and their descendants.
Great Master Lan and Elder Hao exchanged a glance, and then Great Master Lan continued the questioning.
“Did you receive the legacy from your sect, or did you obtain it yourself?”
“I obtained the legacy myself!”
“Where did you obtain it?”
“On the Forsaken Continent, in the ruins of a former ancient battlefield!”
“The Forsaken Continent? So you are a cultivator from the Forsaken Continent.”
“Yes!”
“Then how did you obtain the legacy?”
Great Master Lan’s questions came quickly, not giving Li Yan any time to think.
“That place was once an ancient battlefield, which later became a massive graveyard. I was there helping others when I discovered a blood pool. At the bottom of that blood pool, I found a storage pouch. Inside the pouch, I found a Voice Gui Jade Slip. It contained a Divine Sense voice message. The person said he was from the Hellsoul Clan and hoped that whoever found it could bring his remnant soul back to the Verdant Continent, promising a heavy reward and so on. He also mentioned that he could impart his entire cultivation method, but as I was investigating, before the Divine Sense message could finish, it dissipated on its own. Afterward, I searched the vicinity for a long time but couldn’t find any soul-like presence, only some low-level ghost creatures without spiritual intelligence. I suppose the soul that person mentioned had long since dissipated.”
“In that storage pouch, or when you were searching near the blood pool, did you find any jade box-like items?”
“No. At the time, I also thought that the soul the person mentioned might have been sealed in some treasure to be nourished and kept alive, but I found nothing of the sort!”
At this point in the conversation, Great Master Lan did not continue her rapid-fire questioning.
Li Yan’s answers sent both her and Elder Hao into a brief period of contemplation.
There were not many flaws in Li Yan’s story. In their view, that storage pouch must have been left by the First Ancestor.
The graveyard Li Yan mentioned was once an ancient battlefield. During that great battle, the First Ancestor must have been seriously injured, which was why he left a Voice Gui Jade Slip.
At the same time, he was probably on the verge of death. So after hastily leaving the jade slip, he likely placed his heavily injured soul into a treasure that could nourish the soul.
Treasures that could nourish the soul had to be refined from special materials, and they were mostly in the shape of jade boxes, jade vases, and the like.
Such treasures were highly effective for prolonging a dying life, and this was the strongest method of a Soul Cultivator. Nothing was more important than preserving one’s life.
Therefore, the two of them were certain that such an item must have existed near the blood pool Li Yan mentioned. And with the First Ancestor’s abilities, he would certainly have been able to seal his soul to prolong his life.
But this treasure seemed to have disappeared, or it had long since been destroyed by the erosion of time. Whatever the case, the First Ancestor had not been able to wait for someone to rescue him.
The reason they didn’t doubt Li Yan’s words too much on this point was that they also firmly believed in the methods of their own lineage’s Third Ancestor.
The Third Ancestor had used a Soul Cultivator’s forbidden art and had detected traces of the First Ancestor, concluding that he had already entered the cycle of reincarnation.
Therefore, they did not doubt Li Yan’s claim of not being able to find the other party’s soul.
“What was your cultivation level at that time? Were you a rogue cultivator?”
This time, it was Elder Hao who began to ask.
“Late-stage Golden Core! This junior did not come from a rogue cultivator background; I also joined a sect! Soul Cultivators are rarely seen in the Lower Realm. To even enter such a sect would require great fortune. Therefore, I did not have a traditional Soul Cultivator background!”
Li Yan answered without hesitation.
He knew the purpose of the other party’s question was to confirm how he had crossed realms.
Although Elder Hao was from the Immortal Spirit Realm and had only been accepted into the Soul-Suppression Palace later, he should know some things about the situation on the continents of the Lower Realm.
Li Yan had already thought of this during the time he was contemplating what might happen next, and he had run through it in his mind many times.
As expected, after hearing his answer, Elder Hao immediately pressed on.
“Oh? With your cultivation at that time, you were able to cross realms to the Verdant Continent?”
“Senior Hao, you probably haven’t been to the Verdant Continent, have you? After the great war of invasion between that continent and the Forsaken Continent, both sides agreed to a truce. For various reasons, a cross-realm grand teleportation formation was preserved. As long as one has Spirit Stones, it can be used. One can even spend Spirit Stones to have high-level cultivators help low-level cultivators withstand the cross-realm teleportation. This isn’t a secret. In fact, if one paid more attention to these two continents, they should be able to find out this information. After I obtained this jade slip, I was naturally overjoyed. This was the kind of immortal fortune everyone dreams of, and of course, this junior would not let it pass. Later, it was precisely by relying on the Spirit Stones from the storage pouch that I went to the Verdant Continent and subsequently found the Hellsoul Clan.”
Li Yan replied without a change in his expression.
Elder Hao was also taken aback. He did know some things about the Verdant Continent before entering the “Earth-True Domain.”
But concerning the various continents of the Lower Realm, he was most familiar with the North Ice Continent where his sect was located.
Even the old Sect Master was not very clear about the Verdant Continent because when he ascended to the Immortal Spirit Realm, he did so from the North Ice Continent.
And at that time, the Soul-Suppression Palace was still following the Third Ancestor’s last wish, continuing to search for the First Ancestor.
The occasional news they painstakingly gathered about the Hellsoul Clan on the Verdant Continent was always that the clan members were nowhere to be found.
As for the Forsaken Continent, by the time of the old Sect Master’s generation, it was likely only known as the place where the First Ancestor had fallen.
For the two people before him, Great Master Lan was even more clueless about what the Lower Realm was. The sky she could once roam was only as large as the “Earth-True Domain.”
Elder Hao himself was a cultivator from the Immortal Spirit Realm and had never been to the Lower Realm. But the information he had was that for cultivators from the Lower Realm continents to travel between them, they needed to be at the Nascent Soul Realm or above, capable of tearing open the void and flying across themselves.
Thinking that Li Yan at that time was probably not yet a Nascent Soul cultivator and couldn’t cross realms, he had asked.
He really didn’t know that on those two continents, there had long been a cross-realm grand teleportation formation available for ordinary cultivators to use.
“The storage pouch you obtained must have contained a token from the First Ancestor. Otherwise, you couldn’t have received his legacy!”
Elder Hao stared at Li Yan.
All cultivators placed great importance on protecting their own cultivation methods, fearing that others might easily obtain them. The level of protection varied with the strength of their cultivation.
But most cultivators would not casually record their main cultivation method on a jade slip and carry it with them.
Instead, they would either seal the part of their Sea of Consciousness that held the memory of the method, or they would use a special method to preserve it. The Hellsoul Clan used the latter.
Moreover, the Hellsoul Clan had multiple layers of protection. Even if someone mastered the special method, they might not be able to obtain a complete cultivation method.
After Elder Hao asked again, Li Yan did not answer immediately this time. He fell into a brief silence, as if weighing some matters.
After more than ten breaths, Li Yan slowly spoke.
“Are you talking about that earthen jar? The First Ancestor only said it could be used to inherit the cultivation method. Before he could finish, the Divine Sense dissipated. Was that earthen jar also a token?”
Li Yan knew there were some things he couldn’t completely hide. Otherwise, he would never be able to reach an agreement with the Soul-Suppression Palace or explain his identity clearly.
Therefore, revealing the earthen jar was likely inevitable.
To completely secure his life and eliminate any rifts with the Soul-Suppression Palace, he needed to complete a half-true, half-false lie. Achieving this was extremely complicated.
This matter was part real, part fabrication. To seamlessly connect the real and the fabricated, it had to be a chain of interlocking links, with no mistakes at any point.
The link that could tie everything together was the “Saintly Soul Transformation Art.” Only in this way could Li Yan be considered “one of them”!
And the cultivation method inscribed on that earthen jar was incomplete, containing only the cultivation manual for one hun and seven pos, but missing the manual for the other two huns.
The earthen jar was the only thing Li Yan could produce later to prove his identity.
At the same time, logically speaking, only the Second Ancestor’s lineage of the Hellsoul Clan should have the most complete “Saintly Soul Transformation Art.”
If Li Yan had previously claimed to be a successor of the Second Ancestor, it wasn’t just because he was afraid that a true successor of the Hellsoul Clan might appear someday, and he would be exposed under questioning.
If he were from the Second Ancestor’s lineage, he would either not be a core disciple of the Hellsoul Clan, in which case he would have had no opportunity to cultivate the “Saintly Soul Transformation Art” at all.
Otherwise, if you had cultivated the “Saintly Soul Transformation Art,” you couldn’t have cultivated a partial version, but a complete one.
Since Li Yan had cultivated the complete method, then before entering the Soul-Suppression Palace, he should have already been able to cultivate to the “The Stars Move and the Moon Appears” stage.
But if that were the case, it would not align with Li Yan’s performance after he appeared in the “Earth-True Domain.”