Chapter 1548: The Ancestor's Successor (Part Four)

Afterward, Elder Hao no longer hesitated and began to explain everything about the wine urn. However, the information he knew about it was not extensive.

But even what he knew was enough to clear up some of the things that had once puzzled Li Yan.

The origin of using a wine urn as a token stemmed mainly from the background of the three ancestors.

The three ancestors came from the same mortal dynasty. While resisting foreign enemies together, they formed a bond of life-and-death brotherhood.

After embarking on the path of seeking immortality together and experiencing several great calamities, they finally founded the Hellsoul Clan. Once they had a foundation, they each developed hobbies among the hundred arts of cultivation in their spare time.

The First Ancestor had loved statues since he was young. Even after becoming a cultivator, he turned carving into a form of cultivation to calm his mind, cultivate his character, and settle his comprehensions.

Slowly, the objects he carved began to carry the artistic conception of his cultivation.

From this, he gained much inspiration and enlightenment, which, while he enjoyed carving, also spurred the growth of his own cultivation.

After the Hellsoul Clan was founded, he carved statues of the three of them. And in these three statues, he embedded the strongest artistic conception of his understanding of the soul at that time.

In the end, these three statues were placed in the back hall of the Hellsoul Clan.

At the same time, he also refined two wine urns and one Iron Scroll Cinnabar Book, then gave one wine urn and the iron scroll book to the Second and Third Ancestors.

The First Ancestor designated these three items as their tokens.

Using an Iron Scroll Cinnabar Book as a token was understandable, as the Third Ancestor himself was a civil official by background. It was quite appropriate for him.

But what was the meaning of the wine urn? In the beginning, even their disciples who knew about the three tokens did not understand the meaning.

It was only later, while serving their masters, that their disciples slowly learned the reason. These two wine urns were modeled after the ones they used to swear their blood oath of brotherhood.

It was just that after some consideration, the First Ancestor, feeling that the Third Ancestor loved to read widely, changed his token to the Iron Scroll Cinnabar Book.

At that time, he also inscribed the “Saintly Soul Transformation Art” that the three of them had created onto the three tokens. However, at that time, the manual inscribed on all three tokens was a complete version.

When the First Ancestor gave one of the wine urns to the Second Ancestor, the Second Ancestor, after looking at it, erased the cultivation manual from his own on the spot. The fate of that item was later unknown.

Afterward, the Second Ancestor said something.

“Actually, brother, there is no need to divide these two tokens among three people. Two are sufficient! One, the wine urns are identical, representing the fusion of our bloodlines. One urn is enough. Why divide the same object? Our cultivation method is the Dao of the civil soul and martial po, the two complementing each other. Brother, you can inscribe the soul and po methods separately. In the future, if these legacy tokens are separated, then the Hellsoul Clan will surely have fallen apart. Why would we still need to pass down the complete method to future generations?”

After hearing this, the First and Third Ancestors knew that their second brother was stubborn. Once he made up his mind, it was very difficult to change.

But after hearing the Second Ancestor’s words, the Third Ancestor felt a little uncomfortable, feeling that the Second Ancestor still valued blood ties above all else. But he also knew that the Second Ancestor was not good with words.

And most crucially, the Second Ancestor was obsessed with artifact and formation refining and disliked managing clan affairs the most. Not wanting to be in charge of a token was also a way to hope that others would not disturb his cultivation.

Moreover, what the Second Ancestor said also made sense. One civil, one martial; one yin, one yang, perfectly corresponding to the Great Dao of the Yin Hun and Yang Po.

So after some more discussion, they did not completely adopt the Second Ancestor’s suggestion. They did not completely separate the hun and po cultivation methods, but instead turned them into two incomplete versions.

This was actually related to their cultivation philosophy. They believed that nothing in the world was perfect. Incompleteness was, in fact, a kind of Dao, and so was cultivation.

The complete separation of hun and po was a loss, not an incompleteness. It would be a completely uncultivable method, not the chaos of the Dao!

At the same time, no one could cultivate any Dao to a state of absolute perfection. If that were the case, you would become complacent and ultimately be unable to tread further!

Water overflows when full, and the moon wanes when full. If you obtain an incomplete cultivation method, it means you have an opportunity, not that you have gained nothing.

Everyone who comes into this world has countless opportunities waiting for them. An opportunity cannot give you everything; it is also a form of incompleteness.

Opportunities are everywhere, at all times. If you discover one, that is your fortune. You can use it as a foundation to perfect and fill in the gaps.

If you don’t discover it, the opportunity will also be fleeting, unable to display its brilliance again!

At the same time, the higher-level manuals of their cultivation method were also deduced by them. They had not yet reached that level, so there would definitely be problems with the later parts, and they might even be unusable.

If someone failed to cultivate these later parts, it meant the method was incomplete. You needed to use it as a foundation, or as a guide, to think about more rules of the Great Dao.

In that way, perhaps the “Saintly Soul Transformation Art” would become even stronger, just like when they had obtained that Soul Cultivator’s method and ended up walking a different Dao path.

After the three reached a consensus, the First Ancestor handed the two tokens to the Second Ancestor to be re-refined.

After separating the “Saintly Soul Transformation Art,” the Second Ancestor inscribed the two partial versions of the cultivation method onto the wine urn and the Iron Scroll Cinnabar Book, respectively.

Then, he gave them to the First and Third Ancestors. From then on, these two sect tokens, symbolizing the Yin Hun and Yang Po, came to exist between heaven and earth.

The result was that the First Ancestor fell and his token was lost. When the Third Ancestor had no choice but to leave the Hellsoul Clan, he originally wanted to leave the Iron Scroll Cinnabar Book in the clan, but he was refused by the Second Ancestor.

He didn’t want to see it again, lest it make him uncomfortable. The Third Ancestor could only take the Iron Scroll Cinnabar Book with him, but from then on, his disciples never saw him take it out again.

Even after he passed away, his disciples did not find this token among all his belongings. However, the Third Ancestor did leave behind the partial version of the “Saintly Soul Transformation Art.”

At the same time, he instructed his disciples that this method could be cultivated, but much of it was lost, and it would be difficult to achieve great success. However, it could be used to study the soul and po.

He also demanded that they must find the reincarnated First Ancestor or his token, and then bring the person or item back to the Hellsoul Clan to return to their roots.

Otherwise, none of them were allowed to go and disturb the Second Ancestor and his people.

It was for this reason that although the Third Ancestor’s disciples later established the Soul-Suppression Palace, they basically never went to the Verdant Continent.

“Basically” is the operative word here, because among his disciples, there were still some who, wanting to obtain the complete “Saintly Soul Transformation Art,” spent a long time secretly going to the Verdant Continent to search for the Hellsoul Clan.

But with their level of cultivation, they couldn’t find the clan’s location at all. The Second Ancestor’s methods were beyond their imagination.

In the years that followed, coupled with the fact that the North Ice Continent was too far from the Verdant Continent—a journey even Spirit Transformation cultivators would find long—no one went there anymore.

And all the disciples of the Soul-Suppression Palace had been cultivating the method modified by the Third Ancestor, which became the Dao tradition of their lineage!

The “Saintly Soul Transformation Art,” due to its incompleteness and the lack of the five-po cultivation method, became even more difficult to advance in the Lower Realm, which lacked good cultivation resources.

Later, only a few people cultivated it, and this secret was only known to the Sect Master and the elders within the sect.

The image of the vast army on the wine urn was refined onto it by the Second Ancestor. As a sect token, his idea was that since it was a token, it should naturally bring strong faith and combat power to the sect.

Needless to say, the cultivation method hidden within it was an opportunity contained within the token. He also refined the scene of the three of them galloping across the battlefield in their youth into an artistic conception.

Once the token was activated, it would cause one’s soul and po to spontaneously ignite. At the same time, the killing intent in those images would stimulate the killing thoughts in one’s soul, further increasing one’s combat power.

However, one could not look at this token for too long. Otherwise, those with low cultivation would be trapped in the endless killing intent, unable to extricate themselves.

And their own soul and po would also be burned away over a long period of time, scattering into nothingness. This was, in fact, a self-destructive ultimate weapon that would only be activated in the sect’s final moments.

The three of them had seen that scene before. Li Yan was the most severely affected. Elder Hao also explained this.

In fact, when the Second Ancestor refined these two tokens, he had just entered the Late-stage Nascent Soul Realm. But their understanding of the soul and po was something that even the current Li Yan could not compare to.

Even though Li Yan had reached the Spirit Transformation Realm, in the Dao path of Yin Hun and Yang Po, his comprehension of the laws was still not as profound as the Second Ancestor’s.

Li Yan thought about it and agreed. Those three were the founders of the Hellsoul Clan. He had, at best, only cultivated the soul cultivation method for a few decades.

Although his soul cultivation had already reached Spirit Transformation, he was walking in someone else’s shoes, on a path paved by others. Everything was smooth sailing.

But the Second Ancestor was one of the pioneers. He already knew the origin of every blade of grass, every tree, every clod of earth, and every pit on this path.

As for the three patterns on the wine urn, they were a kind of totem, but not the totem of the Hellsoul Clan.

They were inscribed to commemorate the greatest opportunity of the three ancestors, a mark of gratitude for the legacy given by that ancient cultivator.

The place where they obtained the advanced soul cultivation legacy should also have been an ancient clan. The three patterns were there, carved on the walls of the cave where the cultivation method was found.

The three ancestors inscribed the three patterns in the hope that if future generations of the Hellsoul Clan saw a clan with this pattern, they must treat them kindly.

Based on the images Li Yan saw, Elder Hao went on to reveal a few more secrets, concerning the Iron Scroll Cinnabar Book.

Although there were no patterns on the Iron Scroll Cinnabar Book token, it was said that the characters that appeared on the book scrolls could transform into the sound of war drums, which would synchronously boost a Soul Cultivator’s combat power.

Those drumbeats would cause the soul and po to synchronize with the rhythm. It was a method that could allow cultivators who did not understand coordinated attacks to cooperate with increasing tacit understanding under the influence of the drums, doubling their combined power.