Whoever left such last words was very likely a cultivator of the Wuxiang Immortal Sect, someone who seemed to have stayed behind to cover a retreat.
Was all this a legacy left for posterity?
The incarnation quietly cast his gaze over the tokens and other items, guessing that when this person met their end, they must have died clinging to the hope that future generations would revitalize the Wuxiang Immortal Sect.
He cupped his hands and bowed toward the skeleton.
He naturally owed this person his gratitude. Even without these, his haul from the treasury had not been small, but it had fallen far short of his earlier expectations.
Having paid his respects, the incarnation gestured with his finger, summoning several jade slips into his hand.
*Taiyi Concealed Water*.
This was the sole cultivation method among the jade slips. True to expectation, it belonged to the Great Dao of the Water Element, and its profundity was equal to, if not greater than, Xuantian Palace's *Record of Pure Subtlety*.
*Lightless Shield*, *Primordial Silence Divine Wheel*, *Mist-Rippling Shadowless Illusory Body*...
Every single one was a top-tier divine ability.
Some were exceptionally abstruse, demanding devoted comprehension. Others were more akin to techniques for channeling true essence, from which someone with sufficient cultivation could easily draw inspiration.
Take the *Lightless Shield*, for instance.
The incarnation browsed through it, pondered for a moment, and swept a hand before him. His true essence surged, and the fluctuations immediately subsided, coalescing into an invisible shield whose potency was reasonably satisfactory.
He noticed something interesting: executing this divine ability was somewhat easier than he had anticipated, likely owing to the cold fiend he had refined from the ice disc.
He did not waste much time on it.
The incarnation examined the jade slips one by one, and what caught his eye the most was the final one—it actually recorded the pill formulas treasured by the Water Element lineage!
Delighted, the incarnation quickly scanned through the jade slip. At last, among the final three ancient formulas, he found an elixir named the Boiling Snow Pill, whose description matched the characteristics of the spirit pills he had obtained in the Water Element Lord's decoy tomb.
Boiling Snow Pill.
Lishen flower, heaven-coagulating incense, three sweetspring tree seeds...
There was also a note below: *Best concocted by a late Nascent Soul cultivator practicing Taiyi Concealed Water, who condenses Taiyi golden liquid to nourish the pill. This can increase the success rate by over ten percent.*
Scanning the list of spirit herbs on the pill formula, even Qin Sang could not help but click his tongue in awe. Setting aside their rarity, there were several items he had never even heard of.
Perhaps vast stretches of time had changed the names of the herbs, and Qin Sang knew little about the Dao of Alchemy to begin with, but the difficulty of concocting this pill was readily apparent.
Its medicinal effects were equally astounding.
Swallowing a Boiling Snow Pill immediately provided a cultivator with a boundless replenishment of origin qi. Even if their true essence were utterly depleted, it could be swiftly refilled, and it was just as effective for late Nascent Soul cultivators.
Reading this, Qin Sang instantly thought of the Three Lights Jade Liquid he had obtained years ago. Since that liquid, he had never seen another elixir with such miraculous potency.
However, the medicinal nature of the Three Lights Jade Liquid was gentle. When taken, it caused no harm to the body and instead nourished the flesh; Qin Sang had even regenerated lost limbs with it.
The Boiling Snow Pill, on the other hand, was far more violent. Upon ingestion, its medicinal power transformed into origin qi with the force of an avalanche. The cultivator inevitably suffered a tremendous shock, and taking even a single pill placed an immense burden on the body. Once out of danger, they had to quickly find a place to heal; otherwise, their Dao foundation might be damaged!
Even so, this did not diminish the pill's value in the slightest.
In times of peril, it was practically an extra life!
The other two pill formulas kept alongside the Boiling Snow Pill had different effects, each with its own merits, but they all shared the trait of being exceedingly difficult to concoct.
There were also numerous formulas only slightly less valuable than those three, including no shortage of elixirs beneficial to cultivation, which could offer considerable aid to both the incarnation and the original body.
He knew nothing of pill concoction and had made no deliberate effort to befriend grandmaster alchemists in Zhongzhou. Gathering the spirit herbs would also be a troublesome affair, so he put the pill formulas away for now to make plans later.
The jade slip did contain quite a few essays recording reflections on pill concoction, all penned by masters—doubtless the crystallization of wisdom from generations of alchemical grandmasters in the Wuxiang Immortal Sect.
Much of the content was obscure and difficult to parse, with some seemingly written by Deity Transformation cultivators. Qin Sang skimmed through them, only to feel his head swell as though reading a book from heaven.
He was well aware of their value; this single jade slip alone could nurture a grandmaster of the alchemical Dao. But whether he should divide his attention to take up alchemy in the future required careful consideration.
Judging solely by the alchemical Dao, this was the very pinnacle of a premier sect's foundation.
What Qin Sang did not know was that while the five lineages of the Wuxiang Immortal Sect were self-contained entities, each possessed its own distinct strengths. In those days, the Water Element Hall had been renowned for its alchemical Dao, enjoying even greater fame in that regard than the Fire Element Hall.
He estimated that these pill formulas likely represented the complete collection of the Water Element lineage. However, the lineage's techniques and divine abilities certainly extended beyond just these jade slips.
The divine abilities and Daoist arts left behind by the skeleton leaned heavily toward 'water,' with none belonging to the Great Dao of 'ice.'
*Did the master of the decoy tomb take the other part of the inheritance with them?*
He recalled the jade box taken by Old Man Yanshan; perhaps it was inside.
Next were the magic treasures. All were formidable, but none were spirit treasures. There was one damaged treasure, a broken saber, which had likely been a pseudo-spirit treasure when intact.
The incarnation swept them all away and looked at the final items: the neatly arranged tokens.
These tokens were peculiar in shape and made of a material resembling dark iron, red on top and white on the bottom, seven in total.
The upper edges were uneven, resembling a cluster of dancing scarlet flames, while the lower portions were perfectly neat, like clear mystic ice.
"Ice-Fire Tokens?"
The incarnation picked up an Ice-Fire Token; it felt lukewarm to the touch, neither burning nor freezing. After turning it over for a while, he gave it an arbitrary name, as he had not seen any mention of such tokens in the jade slips earlier.
He did not know whether the skeleton had lacked the time to record it or had deliberately concealed the information.
Channeling his divine sense over the Ice-Fire Token and probing it with true essence, he confirmed it was not a magic treasure, though its crafting technique was quite ingenious, resembling an array component.
Unfortunately, the skeleton had left no spirit array behind.
However, the incarnation sensed a peculiar power from the Ice-Fire Token that felt somewhat familiar. He could not help but look toward the mysterious ice disc, but bringing them together produced no reaction.
His intuition told him there was a connection between the two treasures!
Unable to glean anything for the moment, the incarnation stepped past the skeleton and, seeing that the path continued ahead, pressed deeper into the secret passage.
Before long, a hidden hall came into view.
Even before entering, the incarnation felt a crushing pressure close at hand. He could be certain that this hidden hall was the very source of the eerie blue heavenly light.
If his guess was correct, what lay ahead was the core of the Bingyi Palace grand array!
*Creak!*
He pushed the doors open with ease.
The scene inside the hidden hall met the incarnation's eyes: an extraordinarily complex flag array.
The flag array was already damaged.
The spirit array possessed a full eighty-one nodes with precious flags erected among them. An intact flag array would undoubtedly possess staggering power, but most of the nodes were now empty.
The surviving flags were also battered and broken.
By a rough count, only three to five flags remained relatively intact. The tattered flags supported the damaged array, drawing upon the spirit vein to operate on their own and barely sustaining the eerie blue heavenly light outside.
Most striking of all was the center of the spirit array, where an ice terrace stood, etched with a circular groove identical in size and shape to the mysterious ice disc!
There was just no place for the Ice-Fire Tokens.
*The ice disc truly is the treasure meant to suppress the array core!*
No sooner had this thought crossed the incarnation's mind than an icy wind rushed toward him, freezing him to the bone.
Within the spirit array, streams of chilly qi circulated ceaselessly, launching a spontaneous counterattack upon sensing an outsider's presence in the hidden hall.
Unflustered, the incarnation commanded the mysterious ice disc to shield him.
Sure enough, the moment the chilly qi touched the mysterious ice disc, it melted away like smoke.
Relying on the mysterious ice disc to clear the path, the incarnation easily reached the front of the ice terrace. He focused on observing the flag array, pondered for a moment, and attempted to place the mysterious ice disc into the groove.
*Clack!*
The ice disc settled into the groove with a seamless fit.
To his surprise, the spirit array did not immediately spring into operation as he had imagined. Instead, it rapidly drew upon the power of the spirit vein, channeling that force not to reinforce the array itself, but toward the central ice terrace.
A divine glow rekindled upon the ice terrace.
The incarnation could clearly see a beam of tangible cold light circulating endlessly around the ice disc within the terrace, undergoing wondrous transformations.
The unprecedented spectacle piqued his curiosity.
After staring at it for a long while, understanding dawned on him.
*So that's what the spirit array is for! The ice disc isn't suppressing the array core; rather, the grand array is being used to nourish the ice disc and store up its power...*
The ice disc contained only a single kind of cold fiend.
During his cultivation, he had sensed that with every wisp of cold fiend qi he absorbed, the disc held one wisp less.
The disc could restore itself—otherwise it could not have sustained the Water Element Lord's arrangements above the tomb for so long—but that process was bound to be extraordinarily slow.
The Bingyi Palace grand array could accelerate the recovery speed of the cold fiend qi!
*No, it's not that simple. The ice disc also serves as the treasure suppressing the array core, able to feed power back into the spirit array. The two complement each other—what exquisite craftsmanship!*
The incarnation placed a hand above the ice disc. Through it, he immediately felt a connection form between himself and the precious flags in the spirit array.
At that same moment, he made an unexpected discovery.
Beside the spirit array, concealed by the formation itself, lay another mysterious chamber!
*The layout of Bingyi Palace is truly labyrinthine...*
The incarnation muttered inwardly, looking down with curiosity at what else might be hidden inside. Having reached the array core and secured the inheritance of the Water Element lineage, he still had not found the end.
He calmed his mind and probed the spirit array.
Although he could sense the flags through the ice disc, that connection was limited to the few intact ones. Over the endless passage of time, it was already a marvel that the spirit array had survived at all; the damaged flags were on the verge of collapse, and a single disturbance might cause them to crumble.
A careless move could very well trigger the collapse of all of Bingyi Palace.
The incarnation lightly touched the ice disc, carefully nudging the spirit array with the utmost caution. Finally, he heard a grinding sound as the adjacent stone wall slowly slid open, revealing a dim, secluded chamber.
This chamber was distinctly larger.
He had not realized it before, but seeing this mysterious space with his own eyes, the incarnation realized that this was the true heart of Bingyi Palace, not the hall housing the spirit array.
After a brief thought, the incarnation left the ice disc on the terrace and stepped inside.
*Hiss, what intricate restrictions...*
Taking in the layout of the chamber, the incarnation was secretly shocked. The restrictions on the walls were dense and dizzying to behold.
At the center of the chamber stood another spirit array, one even more complex than the grand array outside.
At present, however, the array lay dormant.
A single glance told the incarnation that it lacked the treasures required to sustain it.
The spirit array took the form of a Taiji-shaped immortal terrace. Though the surrounding area was empty, the ground was riddled with dense grooves. Seeing them, the incarnation turned his hand and produced the Ice-Fire Tokens—sure enough, they fit right into the slots!
The tokens were clearly meant to be one with these grooves.
However, he held only seven, whereas there were forty-nine grooves in the floor!
Furthermore, the incarnation discovered a seat for quiet meditation at the center of the Taiji Immortal Terrace, along with two indentations at the Yang and Yin extremities.
The position at the Yin extremity matched the ice terrace outside, unmistakably designed to hold the ice disc.
The position at the Yang extremity was shaped like a jade pendant.
*For an array to be so intricate and require both the ice disc and another treasure of equal caliber, it must serve an extraordinary purpose. I wonder what it was used for...*
The incarnation was puzzled.
To find out, the only way was to test it.
Yet he possessed only the ice disc, and the number of Ice-Fire Tokens fell far short.
After weighing his options, he decided to give it a try anyway. He retrieved the ice disc from the ice terrace, returned to the Taiji Immortal Terrace, inserted the seven Ice-Fire Tokens at spaced intervals, and sat cross-legged upon the terrace, gingerly setting the ice disc into the Yin position.
Lacking one treasure, the spirit array was incomplete; even if an accident occurred, he could withdraw at any moment.
The immortal terrace showed no abnormalities.
Yet the moment the ice disc settled into place, the restrictions across the four walls flared to life.
*Whoosh...*
Suddenly, the incarnation looked on in horror as plumes of invisible flame drifted into the chamber.
"Yin fire!"
The incarnation's voice turned raspy, his hair standing on end.
Qin Sang had experienced the Three Calamities when breaking through to the Nascent Soul realm; how could he fail to recognize yin fire?
However, the yin fire of the Nascent Soul Tribulation was utterly trivial compared to what appeared before him now. Only the legendary Deity Transformation Tribulation could possibly be this terrifying!
The incarnation nearly fled on the spot before realizing the yin fire was not real, but an illusion projected by the restrictions on the walls.
When he saw clearly what unfolded within the illusion, he froze in place.
Within the vision, yin fire filled the sky.
In the midst of the flames sat a Daoist with a blurred countenance, seemingly undergoing a tribulation.
Beneath the Daoist was this very Taiji Immortal Terrace!
Yet on that terrace, the treasures were complete. All forty-nine Ice-Fire Tokens stood in neat alignment around the perimeter, the ice disc rested solemnly at the Yin position, and a scarlet immortal pendant lay at the Yang position!
Both the ice disc and the immortal pendant radiated brilliant light.
Cold fiend qi soared into the heavens, coalescing into a pillar of ice.
The immortal pendant shot forth a pillar of fire, its body appearing on the verge of melting.
The forty-nine Ice-Fire Tokens resonated with the two treasures, rising into the air in unison to dance around the Daoist.
At that moment, the qi of extreme yin and extreme yang passed through the terrace and the tokens. Instead of clashing, they blended into a wondrous force that began to circulate around the terrace and the Daoist.
When this force enveloped him, the violent trembling of the Daoist's body diminished significantly.
The fury of the invisible yin fire weakened drastically!
"This is a recorded projection of a Wuxiang Immortal Sect forebear crossing a tribulation! A Tribulation Crossing Grand Array! And for a Deity Transformation Tribulation!"
The incarnation's eyes went wide. Never had he imagined that the ice disc was a paramount treasure for tribulation crossing.
*Can it only withstand the first calamity, or all of them?*
Holding his breath, the incarnation focused intently. Unfortunately, the scene was too hazy to make out the finer details of how the Daoist endured the ordeal, yet he still gleaned numerous insights.
At last, the Daoist successfully weathered the calamity of yin fire.
As the next calamity loomed, the Daoist did not shut down the terrace; instead, the spirit array's power intensified even further.
Right then, the incarnation was jolted awake by a sharp sound. Looking down, he saw the Ice-Fire Tokens on the ground were on the verge of shattering.
The supreme treasures were incomplete, and yin and yang were unbalanced.
Moreover, the tokens were far too few; they could not hold out much longer.
He hastily retrieved the ice disc.
In an instant, the illusion vanished, and the restrictions on the four walls fell quiet once more, yet the scenes from the vision remained deeply etched in his mind.
Chapter 1627