Upon Mount Yanfu.
A colossal tiger-shaped puppet spread blade-like, feathered wings, bounding through the mountains at blistering speed.
Over a dozen figures stood atop it, the biting wind whipping against their robes until the fabric snapped and fluttered.
Even now, Deng Taiyue was still filled with marvel.
"This White Tiger puppet of your noble sect is likely comparable to a late Nascent Soul grand cultivator, isn't it?"
Surveying their surroundings, Luo Chen replied, "Brother Deng has a keen eye. However, the sheer amount of spiritual power consumed each time this puppet is activated is beyond what ordinary men can imagine."
Deng Taiyue glanced at the puppet's torso and down to its core inside the head, nodding inwardly.
They were all embedded with supreme-grade spirit stones!
Even among Nascent Soul True Persons, spirit stones of this grade were hard currency.
In times of peace, even a Nascent Soul upper sect situated on a superior spiritual vein could extract only a single supreme-grade spirit stone every ten years without degrading the vein's quality.
With supreme-grade spirit stones serving as its core energy and driving power, the puppet's destructive might was naturally staggering.
"Could this puppet have been crafted by Brother Luo's own hands?"
"You flatter me. I merely obtained this item by chance from an ancient ruin."
Luo Chen brushed it off with a casual deflection.
The White Tiger puppet beneath their feet was naturally the one he had obtained from Han Zhan back then.
Tracing its origin further back led all the way to the Land of the Fallen Demon.
It had cost him a full century of effort to slowly unravel its seals. Later, fearing some mishap might arise while he was away from the Luotian Sect for an extended period, he had specifically left it in Li Yingzhang's care. He had not anticipated it would be put to use at this very moment.
*Still, it arrived at just the right time!*
Luo Chen's gaze swept toward a seemingly ordinary waterfall ahead, and he raised his right hand high.
Seeing this, Canglong, who was controlling the puppet, caught on immediately. She cast an incantation gesture onto the White Tiger puppet beneath her feet.
The next instant, as Luo Chen brought his right hand down firmly, the halting White Tiger puppet opened its maw wide.
*Whoosh!*
A white beam of light saturated with destructive aura erupted from its mouth, hurtling straight toward the waterfall.
*Rip!*
Like tearing silk, the waterfall trembled violently.
Then, as the white beam sliced across from right to left, the cascade was severed down the middle.
With the waterfall cut off, the scene within was instantly laid bare.
Three figures sitting cross-legged opened their eyes at the exact same moment.
"Who is it?"
"Who dares disturb the Three Luoying Ghosts?"
"Courting death!"
The three Ghost Sovereigns halted what they were doing and surged into the sky.
Yet the moment their eyes fell upon the Luotian Sect party, their expressions shifted drastically.
"Master, what shall we do now?" Bai Meiling gazed at the three trapped Ghost Sovereigns, eager excitement surfacing on her face.
The corners of Luo Chen's mouth curled slightly. "Cut them down!"
With that command, the members of the Luotian Sect sprang into battle one after another.
Wang Yuan led the charge, his blood qi surging outward to form a startling beacon smoke of vitality.
"Leave this one to me! I want to test the effectiveness of Divine Astral Battle Qi against ghostly entities!"
The others naturally would not contest him, turning their attention toward the remaining two Ghost Sovereigns.
"Junior Sister Canglong, please back me up!" Lingfengzi chuckled heartily, retrieving a magic treasure and charging at one of the Ghost Sovereigns.
He was eager to display his methods and demonstrate his current prowess before Luo Chen.
This was the confidence that came with breaking through to a new cultivation realm.
Canglong nodded slightly, sword in hand, lingering in the rear.
As for the final Ghost Sovereign, it was directly snared by Bai Meiling, who had transformed into a Nine Nether Python.
Comparatively, Bai Meiling was at a slight disadvantage, simply because this last Ghost Sovereign was also the strongest of the Three Luoying Ghosts.
Had the Soul Refining Banner not unfurled its domain, the victor likely would have been decided very quickly.
Aboard the puppet, Luo Chen said mildly, "Caiyi, go assist Little Bai."
Gu Caiyi acknowledged with an affirmation. Flicking the long whip in her hand, she leapt straight off the puppet.
The other four Golden Core cultivators followed close behind. Using the Soul Refining Banner as their linchpin, they formed an array that firmly suppressed the Ghost Sovereign.
The deep pool beneath the waterfall instantly transformed into an orderly battlefield.
From time to time, the Three Luoying Ghosts let out cries of mingled shock and fury.
"You people are utterly unreasonable!"
"We will yield this cave abode to you! Spare our lives!"
"Just who are you?"
The Luotian Sect crowd paid no heed to these shouts and pleas. At the very least, until their Supreme Elder spoke, they would not halt their hands for a moment.
Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Luo Chen in the rear, Deng Taiyue watched the scene and clicked his tongue. "Brother Luo, you are using these ghost cultivators as sparring partners for your disciples!"
Luo Chen hummed in affirmation. "They need the practice. Otherwise, if another great war breaks out in the future, how will they possess the strength to protect themselves?"
Hearing this, Deng Taiyue was bewildered.
The great war in the Eastern Desolation had practically drawn to a close. Though some demon remnants still lingered within the Thirty-Six Domains of the Eastern Desolation, the main host had ultimately retreated.
Where could there be another war?
Yet Luo Chen did not explain. Instead, he began to project his voice to instruct everyone in battle across the distance.
"Ghost cultivators lack physical bodies, and thus possess no tangible presence. While concentrating attacks is effective, landing them is difficult. You should use wide-area strikes to force them to coalesce into a single point."
Hearing these words amidst his bitter struggle, Wang Yuan experienced a sudden flash of clarity.
The soaring beacon smoke of blood qi began to surge wildly with him at the center, transforming into an endless, boiling ocean of blood qi.
The boundless ghostly miasma enveloping him began to sizzle in the face of this intensely yang, intensely unyielding vitality, melting away like spring snow under a blazing sun.
The Ghost Sovereign's true form was beginning to manifest.
As for the remainder of that duel, Luo Chen did not even need to look to know the outcome.
Body cultivators focused on concentrating their attacks onto a single point without wasting a shred of power, generating extreme bursts of devastation.
Once Wang Yuan locked onto the entity's true form, its defeat was merely a matter of time.
"Lingfengzi, stop holding back. If you keep probing, your foe is going to slip away," Luo Chen remarked with mild exasperation.
In the earlier human-demon war, this fellow had been renowned for his survival and escape methods, and his fighting style always left an immense margin of safety.
His hallmark was pulling back the instant anything seemed amiss.
Yet right now, the Luotian Sect held an overwhelming advantage. With himself, Deng Taiyue, and even a White Tiger puppet holding the line, fighting in such a manner was a pure waste of spiritual power.
Engaged in a blow-for-blow exchange with his foe, Lingfengzi burst out laughing at the remark.
"Senior Brother saw right through me, after all."
"Very well!"
Lingfengzi suddenly disengaged and withdrew.
His opponent froze in confusion, only to see Lingfengzi stretching out his left hand toward him from afar.
A black hole manifested in his palm.
"Wind Hole, open!"
The next instant, boundless gale-force winds erupted violently from within.
Sweeping up everything in the surroundings, the tempest surged toward the dark hole in his palm.
Even the Ghost Sovereign, constantly shifting its form, could not resist the colossal pull. Shrieking in agony, it was dragged helplessly into the pitch-black wind hole.
In the distance, Luo Chen's brows twitched at the sight.
A wind aperture!
Back then, he had concocted a special Tier 4 pill for Lingfengzi called the Wind Aperture Pill.
It provided no cultivation enhancement for a cultivator, serving solely to open a new aperture within the human body.
Its name was the Wind-Concealing Aperture.
This aperture could harbor pristine wind, which would repeatedly wash through the body's spiritual power to bolster its potency.
At the time, Luo Chen had estimated that upon opening this aperture, Lingfengzi's strength might jump an entire tier.
Yet looking at subsequent events, the man's combat prowess had shown no apparent growth; the only noteworthy change was that his life-preserving escape arts had grown ever more consummate.
Even when the Great Demon Sovereign Qi Xi hunted Lingfengzi, he had managed to flee all the way to Baili Qingchuan.
Now it seemed the Wind-Concealing Aperture had not been useless for combat prowess after all.
It was simply that when forced to choose between boosting combat strength and enhancing survival capability, Lingfengzi had chosen the latter in order to scrape by during the human-demon war.
Now that he had broken through to the mid Nascent Soul stage, he had finally developed the offensive methods he ought to have.
*Sweeping away everything to pull out souls and refine spirits—this single technique alone is enough to threaten ordinary fifth- or even sixth-layer Nascent Soul cultivators.*
Luo Chen nodded slightly to himself, yet felt no sense of dread.
Ingenious though the technique was, it had a fatal flaw.
If pitted against him, a mere wisp of Wither-Bloom Divine Fire would feed upon the wind, reducing that Wind-Concealing Aperture to ashes.
Turning toward the other side, Luo Chen called out, "Little Bai, I taught you that Soul Fusion secret art—if not now, when do you intend to use it?"
Even with the aid of the array deployed by Gu Caiyi and the other four, Bai Meiling remained at a disadvantage.
Hearing this, she shifted her tactics at once.
With a sharp cry of "Fuse!", the Soul Refining Banner rolled upward, and boundless ghostly miasma rushed toward Bai Meiling.
This differed slightly from the Soul Fusion secret art Luo Chen practiced.
When Luo Chen cast it, he used the ghostly miasma and vast host of souls within the Soul Refining Banner to coalesce a formidable Ghost Sovereign.
Bai Meiling, however, made herself the vessel, bearing the infinite power directly.
In an instant, a colossal Ghost Sovereign stood half-crouched within the deep pool.
Her aura surged relentlessly, climbing from the early Tier 4 stage to the mid stage, and even pressing boundaries toward the late stage.
"Enough!" Luo Chen barked softly, startling Bai Meiling, who was currently the primary soul.
Vast ghostly soul energy was undeniably powerful, but it was also chaotic and impure.
The current Bai Meiling could not sustain any further elevation; otherwise, she would lose herself and devolve into nothing more than a mindless, vengeful specter.
Though she could advance no further, it was already more than sufficient.
With a piercing shriek, Bai Meiling's immense ghost body slowly straightened. With a single heave, she shattered the array formed by Gu Caiyi and the other four, raising a massive hand to snatch toward her enemy.
Under Luo Chen's pointers, all three battlefields underwent earth-shaking reversals in mere moments.
Standing to the side, Deng Taiyue watched with twitching eyelids.
He was amazed by Luo Chen's vast breadth of knowledge and the effortless command with which he offered combat guidance, while also feeling profound respect for the strength displayed by the Luotian Sect's Nascent Soul experts.
Above all!
Luo Chen's ability to oversee all three battlefields at once hinted at a formidable soul foundation that was likely only the tip of the iceberg.
Watching Luo Chen's focused profile, Deng Taiyue was deeply shaken.
*Those rumors did not exaggerate in the slightest!*
Amid Luo Chen's guidance and Deng Taiyue's astonishment, the battles steadily reached their conclusion.
Divine Astral sweeps cleared the land.
The wind subsided, and the ghost clouds dispersed.
The giant Ghost Sovereign planted both feet in the deep pool and let out a series of piercing shrieks, forcing the severed waterfall to churn backward thousands of feet once more.
"Stop howling, stop howling! Do you want to deafen Caiyi and the others to death?" Luo Chen spoke helplessly.
Bai Meiling giggled playfully. Her colossal ghost body dissolved, reforming into a pitch-black Soul Refining Banner.
Having absorbed another Tier 4 Ghost Sovereign, the banner's hue grew even darker and more profound.
"Supreme Elder, there is a cave abode here whose defensive array has been mostly breached!" Min Longyu called out from afar, delight written across his face.
The party flew over on streaks of light, arriving midway up the waterfall.
A simple, rustic doorway was indeed nestled within.
Looking at the cave abode's entrance, Luo Chen nodded slowly.
"Mount Yanfu is the sacred mountain of the Mingyuan Sect. In ordinary times, besides the three patriarchs who resided high in the Yanfu Heavenly Palace, many Nascent Soul True Persons dwelt and cultivated here. This place must have been the cultivation cave abode of a Nascent Soul True Person."
"Back then, when the three patriarchs used the Ming Water Springhead to suppress and refine Qinghexian, they dismissed most of the Nascent Soul True Persons on the mountain. Those people departed at their leisure."
"Consequently, there likely isn't much of value left inside."
Hearing this, the crowd came to an understanding, though they could not help feeling a wave of regret.
Obtaining the legacy of a Nascent Soul expert would have provided substantial aid to the current Luotian Sect.
Looking at the battered warding array, Min Longyu asked regretfully, "Are we going to leave this place alone for now?"
Luo Chen smiled faintly. "Our sole objective on this journey is the Ming Water Springhead. Before the springhead, no resource, treasure, or even Mingyuan heritage can compare. Naturally, leaving it behind for others is hardly our style, either."
Smiling as he spoke, he casually flicked his fingers, sending out series of restrictive seals that sank into the damaged warding array.
In an instant, the restrictions merged into the framework, repairing and supplementing it at incredible speed.
*Boom!*
The severed waterfall cascaded downward once more.
This signaled that the array was whole again.
Backing away, the group stared at Luo Chen in sheer astonishment.
"What blazing speed with restrictive techniques!"
"In that brief breath just now, the Supreme Elder laid down at least a hundred restrictions!"
"To think the Alchemy Grandmaster possesses such profound mastery over the dao of formations!"
Looking back at the waterfall, Luo Chen nodded.
"Let us proceed. Once we secure the Ming Water Springhead, Mount Yanfu will belong to our Luotian Sect. We will have ample opportunities to explore these cave abodes in the future."
With a sweep of his sleeve, Luo Chen led everyone back onto the White Tiger puppet.
As for the Black Tortoise?
Before setting out, Luo Chen had already instructed it to return to the Alchemy Saint Blessed Land to report their safety to Li Yingzhang and the others.
Setting off once more, a cheerful atmosphere filled the back of the White Tiger.
Lest everyone grow complacent, Luo Chen offered a gentle reminder:
"Though these ghost cultivators are ancient, they have been suppressed for thousands or tens of thousands of years, leaving their techniques crude and unrefined. Furthermore, lacking suitable life-bound magic treasures or True Artifacts, their true strength cannot be compared to Nascent Soul True Persons of the outside world."
"With True Person Taiyue and myself anchoring the rear, they were deeply intimidated, which allowed you to fight with such composure."
"If you face orthodox immortal cultivators in the future, things will not be nearly so easy."
These words carried considerable weight. Everyone's expressions turned solemn, and the prior merriment subsided slightly.
Along the mountain path, the winged White Tiger bounded and soared, ascending at blistering speed.
Thanks to the various ghost cultivators blazing a trail ahead, most of the restrictions and arrays had been heavily dismantled over the past decade, so the Luotian Sect's party encountered little resistance.
Whenever stray ghost cultivators appeared, Luo Chen had his disciples take action, either slaying or driving them off.
Throughout this process, the nine Luotian Sect cultivators grew increasingly proficient in their combat techniques.
Deng Taiyue, however, was somewhat puzzled.
With Luo Chen depleting his disciples' spiritual power in this manner, how would they handle a genuine battle later on?
Would they rely solely on the two of them?
The White Tiger soared through the air, piercing the sea of clouds. Faintly visible ahead, a colossal white jade plaza floated in the heavens above.
Suddenly!
A sinister ghost claw, depicted in startling, crystalline detail, descended from the heavens and struck toward the group.
It came without a shadow, falling without a sound.
The Xuanhuang Great Seal abruptly materialized, blocking the path above.
*Sizzle!*
Frowning, Deng Taiyue recalled his magic treasure; five deep claw gouges marred its surface.
"It is a Great Ghost Sovereign comparable to a late Nascent Soul cultivator!"
Luo Chen looked up calmly, his gaze briefly meeting the figure that had breached the white jade plaza.
"And the very existence that dispersed my prairie fire phoenix spell earlier!"
Chapter 1001