Chapter 36: Mystery of Tianhai
“The Complete Records of Immortal World Customs…” He seemed to have glimpsed it while searching for sword cultivator content in the records.
It was a story that sounded somewhat fantastical.
Song Yan didn’t rush to take out the jade slip of the Complete Records of Immortal World Customs. Instead, he rummaged through Wan Songran’s miscellaneous items, seemingly to verify something.
A black wooden token with the character “Wan” carved in large in the middle, and two small characters “Songran” carved below.
A book.
He finally found what he wanted. It was a booklet of family rules and discipline for the Wan family disciples.
But it was very new. Perhaps Wan Songran himself had never even flipped through it, but Song Yan picked it up and began reading.
“The Wan family…”
“An ancestor at the Nascent Soul stage?”
“Wan Zhihong? Ancestral home in the Central Domain…”
So he really was from the Central Domain…
The Central Domain on this continent was vast and boundless, but it only had the Great Tang Immortal Court.
For places like Chu State, which survived in the cracks between the Central Domain and the Southern Border, the Central Domain, whether in the mortal or cultivation world, was a prosperous and thriving land that everyone yearned for.
His gaze fell on the flute.
The flute was three feet three inches long. Held in the hand, it felt no different from a short sword.
It was black-red throughout, with a black cloud carved at the tail end of the flute. The upper part seemed to have originally had some ornament, but it had broken off from the black cloud, leaving only the flute body.
Above the black cloud on the flute body, two characters were carved vertically in ancient script. Song Yan had learned this ancient script previously to annotate some obscure passages in the Five Stars Capture Vein technique.
“Glutton Tail.”
For some reason, when he stared at these two characters, it seemed as if a massive and terrifying demonic aura rushed toward him.
Song Yan was startled and shivered, but found nothing unusual around him. He only saw Xiao He, the snake baby, wrapped in a small blanket on the bed, staring at Song Yan and the flute in her hand.
“What a sinister treasure…”
“Yan Yan, what are you doing?”
You haven’t paid attention to me for so long.
“Oh, I’m reading an ancient legend…”
Song Yan then opened the Complete Records of Immortal World Customs and carefully searched its contents.
Finally, in one record, he found the legend that connected him to the Glutton Tail Flute.
“Secrets of Tianhai City…”
At some point, Xiao He had transformed into a small snake and climbed onto Song Yan’s neck, the tiny snake tongue gently touching the jade slip.
“I want to see too! I want to see too!”
An ancient secret affair, like scroll after scroll of paintings, slowly unfolded before the eyes of one person and one snake.
Legend had it that in ancient times in the Central Domain, there was a famous ancient city in the world called “Tianhai.”
In Tianhai City, cultivators and mortals coexisted harmoniously.
Here, cultivators were more like a profession, a pursuit, rather than lofty “immortals.”
One year, a demonic beast tide erupted without warning in Tianhai City.
The cultivators worked together, but could only continuously clear the beasts, unable to find where these beasts actually came from. They seemed endless, born from the shadows within the city.
The mortals simply could not endure such a disaster, and many cultivators were also killed or injured.
Just when everyone was at their wit’s end, a cultivator wearing a mottled Taoist robe came from the south. A black-red flute hung at his waist, and he called himself the Beast Summoning Daoist.
He saw the situation in the city and said to the people: “I have a method that may resolve this anomaly.”
“But it requires considerable effort, so I need your reward.”
The people of Tianhai City were overjoyed and agreed repeatedly, begging the mottled-robed Daoist to lend a hand immediately.
The mottled-robed man blew on the ancient flute in his hand, and a melodious flute sound rang out.
The demonic beasts that had been surging like a tide in Tianhai City surged toward the mottled-robed man in waves, stopping before him and watching, as if listening to the flute.
The mottled-robed man played the flute and left the city, with the entire city’s beast tide following him.
The matter seemed to be resolved perfectly.
But the story was far from over.
In the cultivation world, there were many theories about the aftermath of this story, which could generally be divided into two.
One was widely circulated:
The beast tide crisis was resolved, and the mottled-robed Daoist also received the reward he wanted.
The Daoist lingered in Tianhai City for several days. A careful cultivator followed him when the mottled-robed Daoist was about to leave.
But he discovered that the beast tide in the city had actually been orchestrated by him alone, all to obtain the cultivation resources in the city.
He returned to the city and told the cultivators. People were very angry, and the cultivators of Tianhai City pursued and killed him. In the end, the mottled-robed Daoist was severely injured and died.
The other version was not widely circulated, but it was completely different from the previous one:
The beast tide crisis was resolved, but when the mottled-robed Daoist wanted to obtain his due reward, the cultivators in the city reneged and refused to give him compensation.
The mottled-robed Daoist, in a rage, blew the flute, and the spirit beasts, spirit demons, and even mortals in the city suddenly went mad and killed each other.
But after all, the cultivators of Tianhai City had the advantage in numbers. They attacked together, and the mottled-robed Daoist fled, eventually dying from severe injuries.
“…”
Song Yan pondered.
Two stories, completely different versions.
“Yan Yan…”
“Hmm?”
“You tell me, which one is real?”
“…”
Song Yan shook his head, indicating he didn’t know either.
But he didn’t dwell on which version of the two stories was true.
Instead, he reappraised the value of this Glutton Tail Flute.
“If this ancient flute is truly the one from the ancient legend, then the mottled-robed Daoist in the Tianhai secrets is very likely the Wan family ancestor, Wan Zhihong.”
Could this flute be… the genuine article from a mighty being?
In the cultivation world, magical artifacts and talismans all had distinctions between genuine articles, imitations, and forgeries.
Take magical artifacts as an example. Genuine articles were naturally heaven and earth spirit treasures or original creations by master artifact refiners.
The power, ease of control, and other aspects of the magical artifacts were the strongest.
Imitations, as the name suggested, were products imitating the genuine articles created by artifact refiners of slightly lower skill, or disciples of the genuine artifact refiner.
They were inferior in all aspects but generally decent, with a higher cost-performance ratio.
Forgeries were things made by some amateur artifact refiners to fool people. They were generally useless and were just used to deceive uninformed cultivators and swindle spirit stones.
Song Yan had always believed that the so-called “treasures” in the hands of a Qi Refining stage disciple, no matter how heaven-defying their effects, were at most imitations.
But if this was real…
A magical treasure used by a Nascent Soul cultivator!!!
In Song Yan’s eyes now, this flute was no longer a flute.
It was an inexhaustible supply of spirit stones!
Sell it at the Lingyuan Ze market auction for three to five hundred spirit stones to a bunch of ignorant fools?
Absolutely impossible!
He needed to find a big buyer!
Having made his decision, he put the precious flute aside.
The remaining pills and talismans were sorted out by Song Yan. Those that could be used for his own cultivation were kept.
Those that couldn’t be used were put together with the magical artifacts he planned to sell. If they were legitimate, he would sell them to Granny Qin together when the time came.
If they were illegitimate… he would wait for the night market.
It was worth mentioning that among Wang Xi’s belongings, there was a bottle of Qi Condensing Pills.
The spiritual energy and pill effects of Qi Condensing Pills far exceeded those of Yellow Sprout Pills. These were pills that only late-stage Qi Refining cultivators would take.
Methodically completing everything, Song Yan began to plan.
“Right now, the most lacking items for cultivation are spirit-natured objects and a natal flying sword.”
One could strengthen the Dao seed under the Zhen Dao Sword Palace, while the other could not only strengthen it but was also one of the most important offensive methods for a sword cultivator.
It could be said that the natal flying sword determined whether a sword cultivator was powerful or not.
“First, restore my spiritual energy cultivation to the fourth level of Qi Refining.”
Whether it was the natal flying sword or the fusion of the spirit-natured object, both required at least a mid-stage Qi Refining cultivation level.
Restoring to mid-stage Qi Refining meant having the strength to protect oneself once again.
Song Yan sat cross-legged on the stone bed, gradually clearing the chaotic thoughts in his mind, and slowly began cultivating.
Only Xiao He remained, holding the jade slip and pondering hard at the table.
“Which one is real?”