Li Yiyuan's residence was the main building in the backyard, comprising three rooms: a bedroom, a study, and a meditation room.
Zhou Wuji knew this place intimately. Walking straight into the bedroom, he expertly turned the mechanism handle on a wooden cabinet, unlocked the hidden latch, and shoved aside the heavy cabinet to reveal a passageway leading down.
After sliding the cabinet back into place, Zhou Wuji locked the mechanism tight from below.
If anyone outside wanted to break in, their only choice was to force through the heavy iron plate concealing the tunnel.
Without the right tools, those outside would not be getting in anytime soon.
Descending about ten feet along the bluestone steps brought him to an underground chamber built of blue brick.
The secret chamber had a thick iron door, outside of which lay a natural cavern. Following the cavern downward, an underground river led straight out to the Jiuyuan River.
Li Yiyuan had prepared a skiff here; drifting downstream along the Jiuyuan River, one could cover several hundred li in a single day.
As Li Yiyuan's closest disciple, Zhou Wuji knew every detail of this secret escape route.
With this way out secured, Zhou Wuji was in no rush to flee.
Striking a fire striker, he lit an oil lamp, instantly bathing the chamber in dim, yellow light.
The chamber was small, holding only a crude wooden table. Resting against the wall were two wooden chests and a gourd roughly a foot tall, with nothing else besides.
Zhou Wuji casually opened one of the wooden chests to reveal stacks of gold inside.
There were twenty ten-tael gold cakes in total—two hundred taels.
Converted to currency from his previous life, its purchasing power was roughly equivalent to two million yuan—quite a substantial sum.
Even so, for a dignified seventh-rank Daoist to amass only this meager savings over a lifetime, Zhou Wuji felt his master had truly cared far too much about his reputation...
Zhou Wuji merely took a glance, and after confirming the gold was fine, he shut the chest.
He turned his gaze toward the gourd plastered with numerous talismans. Inside was sealed a baleful ghost.
In this world, spiritual qi was potent, so a person's spirit would not immediately dissipate after death.
When someone met a violent end and their malice lingered without dispersing, they had a chance of turning into a ninth-rank fierce ghost.
Nourished by the earth's qi, a fierce ghost could become a lingering eighth-rank malevolent ghost.
Feeding on blood, baleful energy, and essence qi, a malevolent ghost would turn into a seventh-rank baleful ghost.
Once it became a baleful ghost, it could physically interfere with reality and siphon the divine souls and spiritual essence of living beings.
The baleful ghost inside this gourd had slaughtered dozens of people. It could even materialize into a solid form in the dark, possessing formidable power.
Such a baleful ghost posed little threat to martial artists with robust vitality and blood. Conversely, ordinary martial artists had no effective means to deal with a baleful ghost either.
Precisely because monsters, demons, and specters ran rampant, the Daoist and Buddhist sects—dedicated to subduing demons and vanquishing evil—commanded immense prestige and were heavily relied upon by the imperial court and local authorities.
Li Yiyuan had captured this baleful ghost but never destroyed it, choosing instead to seal it inside the gourd with talismans and hide it in the secret chamber.
Zhou Wuji had never understood why his master kept a baleful ghost stashed away like this.
Now he understood: the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment needed baleful ghosts.
The intricate cinnabar runes on the talismans gleamed faintly in the dim lamplight, dazzlingly crimson.
Zhou Wuji took a deep breath and summoned the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment once more.
The ancient black tome slowly opened before his eyes. On the first page were sixteen archaic characters: "Commanding spirits and deities, slaying demons and fiends, exterminating evil and villainy, executing the law on Heaven's behalf."
On the subsequent pages were written thirty-six major precepts and one hundred and eight minor precepts.
The ancient script made Zhou Wuji a little dizzy, but as his mind shifted, each precept transformed into simplified Chinese characters.
Passed down by his master, the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment was already bound to his divine soul, allowing it to adapt to his will.
Li Yiyuan had made it crystal clear: the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment was the Daoist sects' foremost sacred slaughter artifact, possessing boundless might.
However, its precepts were also the most draconian; under no circumstances could they be violated.
"First Precept: The Executioner of Law must administer punishment strictly according to the law, without violation. Should punishment be meted out unlawfully in secret, life shall end and the spirit be extinguished, the soul cast into the fire purgatory, and five generations of kin by blood shall perish."
Just reading the first major precept made Zhou Wuji's scalp tingle with dread. This thing was truly wicked.
Administering punishment strictly according to the law meant scrupulously abiding by all one hundred and eight precepts.
His master, who had failed to follow the precepts, served as a grim cautionary tale.
Reading through the precepts once, Zhou Wuji felt they were utterly outrageous.
Take one of the minor precepts, for example: "Thou shalt not urinate or defecate facing north; violators shall have their life span reduced by ten years."
There were also bans against drinking alcohol and patronizing prostitutes, kneeling or praying to other deities, chanting Buddhist scriptures, associating with Buddhist followers, and so on...
Such suffocating rules bound a cultivator hand and foot. No wonder his master had achieved little even after acquiring the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment.
Zhou Wuji turned to the next page, where his name appeared alongside an annotation of his life span: fifty-nine years remaining.
Behind his name was a special tag: (Otherworldly Soul).
"What is this?"
With a thought from Zhou Wuji, an explanation appeared after Otherworldly Soul: "Beyond the Mandate of Heaven, unbound by karmic causality."
"Does this mean I don't have to follow the precepts?"
Zhou Wuji's eyes lit up instantly. He felt as though he had discovered an exploit in the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment.
Still, he needed to verify it first.
At this thought, he converted his remaining life span into seconds. The fifty-nine years turned into a long string of digits starting with a 1, which kept ticking down continuously.
Stepping out through the chamber's iron door, Zhou Wuji picked a spot facing north and took a piss—this was one of the precepts with the lightest penalty.
Looking back at his life span, it was still steadily ticking away second by second. Evidently, he had not suffered any penalty.
Below his name on the page, a line of text surfaced: "Urinating facing north constitutes great disrespect: life span reduced by ten years."
At the end of the text, there was another special notation: (Fully Exempt).
Zhou Wuji's eyes settled on "Fully Exempt," and he understood its meaning at once.
Completely and utterly exempt from all punishments under the precepts, without exception!
He was thrilled beyond measure. This actually worked...
Zhou Wuji then pressed his palms together and tried reciting a few verses from the Diamond Sutra—a Buddhist scripture in this world that he happened to have read and remembered a few lines of.
He then chanted the Buddha's name aloud, praying for the Buddha's blessing.
Though he violated several precepts in a row, each time the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment flagged the breach, it ended with (Fully Exempt).
Zhou Wuji paced in circles around the secret chamber in delight, unable to resist praising himself: Awakening past-life memories is freaking awesome! I'm so damn awesome!
After tinkering around, he figured out how to operate the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment.
Bound to his divine soul, the book acted like a clear mirror that reflected every aspect of his physical body and inner spirit.
In accordance with his intent, his true status appeared on the page:
Zhou Wuji: Ninth Rank (Otherworldly Soul)
Life Span: 80 (59 years remaining)
Northern Dipper Celestial Pivot Scripture: Fundamental Qi Cultivation Technique (Initiate)
Golden Light Incantation: Spell (Initiate)
Rejuvenation Incantation: Spell (Initiate)
Xiaoxiang Sword Technique: Martial Art (Proficient)
Looking at those few Daoist arts marked as (Initiate), Zhou Wuji felt helpless. He had long been unable to develop a sense of qi or draw in qi for cultivation, so his spells were mere forms lacking true power.
His sword technique was another story. Having practiced it for over a decade, it could at least be called proficient, no worse than that of any martial artist of the same rank.
Facts had proven that his talent in Daoist cultivation was thoroughly mediocre.
Fortunately, with the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment, mediocre talent was no longer an issue.
Zhou Wuji hesitated no longer. He tore off the talisman seal on the gourd and popped the stopper.
A gust of yin wind gushed out from the gourd, condensing in the blink of an eye into a ten-foot-tall, crimson phantom.
The phantom bore a hideous, savage countenance. Its body, like mist and vapor, gave off an intense baleful aura alongside a foul, fishy stench—the true visage of a baleful ghost.
Catching the scent of a living person, the baleful ghost opened its maw and lunged forward to devour his essence qi.
Forming a sword incantation gesture with his left hand, Zhou Wuji drew the Seven Stars Sword with his right and swept it across.
Unable to command true qi, he could not activate the Northern Dipper seven stars on the hilt.
However, the Northern Dipper Demon-Slaying Sword etched deep within the blade was an exceptionally formidable demon-subduing secret art of the Arctic Sect.
Having been tempered and nurtured by Li Yiyuan over many years, this dharma sword had already attained an extraordinary realm.
Relying solely on the weapon's innate power, the baleful ghost was severed and unraveled beneath the snow-bright blade, dissipating in an instant.
A mere baleful ghost, having already lost most of its baleful aura after being sealed in the gourd, was utterly powerless before the Seven Stars Sword.
As the baleful ghost was destroyed, light gleamed from the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment, and a line of text materialized on a blank page: "Baleful ghost (Seventh Rank) executed; can be refined into three taels and one qian of origin spiritual qi."
Zhou Wuji did not hesitate, immediately activating the Northern Emperor's Book of Heavenly Punishment to convert it into origin spiritual qi.
As the baleful ghost vanished, a round golden light like a dewdrop emerged.
Delight rose in Zhou Wuji's heart. Though this droplet of origin spiritual qi before him was minuscule, it should be enough for him to sense yuanqi and open his divine apertures...
Chapter 3