Spirit Vessel

“This place is the resting place of the ancestors with many vestiges left behind, you best be careful.” Dongfang Jingyue carefully pushed an old wooden door open. An ancient and sad aura slammed their face - one from several thousand years ago.

It was as if the temporal planes of the past and present were colliding.

Feiyun also felt a strange aura as if he had been here before. However, it was buried in his memories, unable to come up with something concrete.

“An illusion crossing through the spatiotemporal fabrics; looks like there is really something in there that is connected with me.”

The surrounding was quiet so they could hear their own footsteps. Of course, Jingyue’s sweet scent was also lingering in the air.

She brought him to a simple and natural room with an aged painting hanging on the wall. It has been corroded by time so the outer frame was peeling.

“It’s this one.” Her soft lips slightly moved as she gazed at the painting.

Feiyun also took a look - the sceneries here looked just like Duo - a simple village with green farms and rivers, lush thickets and beautiful mountains.

Seeing this made them recall the terrifying night in the past, causing them to palpitate.

Duo has already been drowned in time and had disappeared. Perhaps it would never appear again after the white vessel had left the shrine. It had lost its meaning for existence.

Beneath the painting were the words “Duo Village” written in an ancient style. The calligraphy was gentle and full of dao rhythm.

Feiyun was especially attentive about these words and heaved a sigh of relief after finding that it wasn’t Shui Yueting’s handwriting.

At the corner of the painting was a tiny shrine with a lamp inside - looking quite realistic just like the one they saw before.

Both of them stared at it at the same time as if there was a mysterious power from the unknown attracting them. This was a strange sensation.

He had an illusion that the flame inside the lamp was flickering.

“I feel a ripple on this painting, do you?” She found it harder to breathe.

He felt a ripple after entering this room as well as if a spatial portal had been opened.

“Who?!” Feiyun took out his weapon essence and became vigilant.

He could see a shadow flying out of the window just now from the corner of his eye.

Jingyue looked out and didn’t notice anything: “This is a forbidden ground guarded by a few ancestors. No one can come in.”

Feiyun didn’t let down his guard and thought about the weird images he saw earlier along the way. He said: “Outsiders can’t go in, but what if strange things are already here?”

She felt a chill after hearing this and became cautious as well after thinking about a few rumors.

He carefully inched towards the door after activating his divine intents and senses. He was certain that he wasn’t just seeing things earlier. The moment they got outside, a dark claw reached for his right shoulder.

He couldn’t see what it was but it was definitely not a human hand. He swung his weapon essence and unleashed a white ray.

However, this black claw wasn’t actually physical, more of something akin to a ghost. Physical attack was useless so he got a deep scratch on his shoulder with flesh coming off. If he wasn’t alert earlier and dodged to the side, his torso would have been ripped off.

Jingyue, on the other hand, didn’t see anything. Only the air fluctuating by Feiyun’s shoulder then blood came spurting out.

“What is that?!” She took out her spirit mirror. It floated above her and exuded a boundless light to protect the two of them.

He channeled the phoenix physique. The blood in his body started to burn in order to force out the invading evil energy and lessen the blood loss.

He said with a serious expression: “Must be a specter.”

“A specter…” Her expression darkened.

A specter was one of the three evils of the Yin World - specters, godfiends, and corpses. [1]

Treasure masters who walked on the boundaries of worlds knew about these strange things from the yin and yang worlds. Of course, the big shots knew about them as well but this was still a mystery to the rest.

Feiyun speculated that these two worlds existed in the Jin Dynasty inside secret realms - similar to the beast soul realm of the Wanxiang Pagoda or the royal clan’s sacred ground.

Of course, these spatial realms had their own classifications.

For example, the beast soul realm spanned for thousands of miles and was very unstable. There were only floating boulders, no complete continent. It was a low-level realm.

The sacred ground was hundreds of times bigger in comparison with five continents. Nevertheless, these continents were also unstable and needed terraforming for human habitation. Furthermore, it couldn’t create life and water by itself. This was an intermediate-level realm.

Above them were high-level realms, minor dimension, and grand dimension.

The yin and yang worlds were just two large realms. Perhaps they were at the intermediate or even the high level, certainly not the real yin and yang worlds. Even Feiyun hasn’t heard of something like that.

All of these creatures were born in the real world. Under the right conditions, a corpse would turn evil. They could cultivate and continue to transform to grow stronger.

This was the case for the Evil Woman. She had reached the fourth transformation and was as strong as an Enlightened Being. She had her own intelligence and regained some memories from her previous life.

A spirit making contact with strange items or someone who had died in strange circumstances might eventually become specters. They were also similar to corpse evil but had their own method of cultivation. They devoured the spirits of the dead or other specters to grow stronger. At a certain level, they would also regain the memories of the previous life.

Godfiends were the most mysterious among the three. They were the statues worshipped in shrines, daoist temples, and ancient pagodas. Of course they didn’t have life and flesh; but after so much praying and incense, these statues accumulated enough force for a spirit to be born. 

Gods probably didn’t exist in this world but everyone thought so. These “godfiends” were born from everyone’s belief and worship.

But why add the fiend part? This was due to the cultivation method of these creatures - different compared to the corpse evils and specters.

In order to grow stronger, they needed more faith and worship. Because of this, the majority of these fiends would personally create calamities and disasters. People would then come to worship and pray for the best. The disasters would eventually end and people continue this routine. As the days went on, they grew stronger.

Thus, they were no personification of justice and the “fiend” part was necessary.

Of course, after reaching a high level, they would form a real body to walk among men, destroying evils and establishing a state of divinity. This is how tales about gods and immortals come about in the mortal worlds.

At this point, these creatures would begin to do good things, akin to an extremely evil man turning around, wishing to have redemption and washing away their bloody past. They would then be worshipped for generations to come. 

These beings were very rare in the Jin Dynasty. Ever since someone opened the yin yang worlds, specialized masters would come to take them to the yin world and be under the rule of the Yin Mother.

This was a type of order that must have been established by a great sage in the ancient time. Otherwise, the dynasty would be much more chaotic right now.

Alas, the Evil Woman hhad broken this rule. Even the Yin Mother didn’t subdue her and take her back to the Yin World. Perhaps the current turmoil in the dynasty affected the yin yang worlds as well. Thus, the Yin Mother probably didn’t have time to worry about the Evil Woman.

“The yin world’s people have no influence over this territory of the Yin Gou so these specters are free to grow. I hope they’re not at the third level as Ghost Kings or we probably won’t leave this place alive.” Feiyun said with a serious expression.

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1. These used to be just fiends, but godfiend is required for the next section to make sense. If I were to be completely literal here, the names would be corpse evils, ghost evils, and divine/god evils. Specter and fiend sounded much better, but the next part necessitates me adding the god part again

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