.Chapter 321: Hunting Across the Ghost Domain
.Chapter 321: Hunting Across the Ghost Domain
For three full days, the Two-headed Tiger Sinister Spirit Beast King did nothing but fall over its own paws.
Lin Chang'an, watching through the split strand of his divine sense, felt his eyelid twitch every single time.
"This is worse than teaching a toddler to walk."
Two heads meant two sets of instincts fighting for control of four legs, and every time the tiger tried to pounce, it ended up somersaulting face-first into the dirt instead. The Azure-Horned Ox, still stationed at the cave entrance, had taken to simply lying down and covering its eyes with a hoof whenever it heard the telltale thud.
But Lin Chang'an did not rush.
He understood better than anyone how delicate this process was — a single moment of impatience while two consciousnesses fought for dominance over one body could easily result in the beast's mind splintering entirely, or worse, his own strand of divine sense being dragged down into madness alongside it.
"Xuantian Mana, circulate."
With each cycle of his cultivation method flowing through the connection, the raw, snarling instincts native to the sinister spirit gradually softened, like a wild current being pressed into a narrower channel. It did not disappear — sinister spirits were, by nature, closer to pure malice than beast — but it became something he could steer rather than merely restrain.
By the seventh day, the tiger managed its first clean leap.
By the twelfth, it could hunt.
"Good. Very good."
Lin Chang'an allowed himself a rare, satisfied smile as he watched — through eight golden eyes now, technically, though he still thought of it as "his" gaze — the beast tear through a nest of low-rank Sinister Spirits that had gathered near a collapsed shrine on the neighboring islet.
It was time to put this new asset to proper use.
……
The Ghost Domain, once the sealed and sacred ground of the Sinister Soul Sect, had reappeared after six hundred years with its spiritual energy undiminished and its treasures untouched by any living hand. But it remained treacherous. Sinister Spirits condensed from the restless dead drifted between the islands like living fog, and the deeper one went, the older and more dangerous the remnants became.
For an ordinary Core Formation cultivator, wandering too far alone was suicide.
But Lin Chang'an no longer needed to wander alone.
"Go."
With a single mental command, the Two-headed Tiger Sinister Spirit Beast King slipped from the temporary cave and vanished into the mist-choked waters, its aura deliberately suppressed to blend in among the countless wild sinister spirits already roaming free.
This was the true value of what he had done. A Quasi-Third-rank Beast King, born of this very land and radiating the same Yin-aura as everything else here, drew none of the suspicion that a cultivator — even a well-disguised one — inevitably would. Where he could not go without risking exposure, the tiger could walk freely.
Through his connected divine sense, Lin Chang'an watched island after island scroll past.
On the first, a colony of skeletal fish-spirits had claimed an old alchemy hall as their nest; the tiger dismantled them within minutes and dragged out three cracked cauldrons and a stack of water-damaged talisman scrolls.
On the second, deeper Yin energy pooled around a half-collapsed pagoda, and buried beneath its rubble, the tiger unearthed two sealed jade boxes still humming faintly with restrained spiritual pressure.
"Careful there," Lin Chang'an murmured to himself, guiding the beast to avoid disturbing whatever seal remained on the boxes rather than risk triggering it. Patience. There would be time to examine such things properly, later, from a safe distance.
Word had already spread that wandering cultivators were slipping into the Ghost Domain to test their luck along its outer islands. Occasionally the tiger crossed paths with such intruders — some fled outright at the sight of a two-headed monstrosity, while a bold few tried their luck with talismans and blades.
None of them lasted long enough to matter.
Lin Chang'an made certain of that. He had no interest in drawing attention by leaving witnesses who might later describe, in vivid detail, a two-headed tiger sinister spirit that behaved suspiciously more like a trained hound than a mindless monster.
……
Weeks blurred together in this fashion — the tiger prowling from island to island under the cover of its own natural camouflage, while Lin Chang'an split his attention between guiding it, refining what materials the Ox and Bird helped haul back, and continuing his own cultivation in the safety of the Earthfire Cavern.
The true prize came near the end of the first month.
On a barren, storm-scoured islet at the very fringe of the old sect's territory, the tiger's noses — both of them — caught the scent of something ancient beneath a collapsed watchtower. Digging through centuries of settled ash and bone, it uncovered a small underground chamber, sealed shut but long since abandoned by whatever ward had once guarded it.
Inside lay a skeleton in tattered robes, one hand still curled protectively around a weathered storage pouch.
Lin Chang'an felt his pulse quicken the instant he sensed it through the tiger's perspective.
"Late Core Formation, by the look of that cultivation ring... whoever you were, Fellow Daoist, I hope you'll forgive me for what comes next."
He had the tiger gather every jade slip, every scrap of parchment, every fragment of formation plate scattered around the chamber — and, carefully, the storage pouch and skeleton itself, in case anything remained hidden within the bones.
Bundle after bundle of ancient jade slips. Fragments of half-legible cultivation manuals. What looked, at a glance, to be pieces of the long-lost Puppet Refinement Technique the Sinister Soul Sect had once been infamous for.
It was, without exaggeration, more than he had dared to hope for.
"This alone may be worth everything I've invested into this plan."
Satisfied, and mindful that lingering too long in one place invited danger even for a disguised Beast King, Lin Chang'an finally called the tiger back.
It returned to the temporary cave abode heavy-laden, its jaws and the makeshift sling across its back stuffed with jade slips, scrolls, and the brittle, robe-wrapped skeleton — a harvest so large that even the Azure-Horned Ox let out a low, impressed grunt at the sight of it.
Lin Chang'an allowed himself a moment of quiet triumph as he surveyed the haul spread across the cave floor.
Then, as he reached out with his spiritual sense to begin sorting through the jade slips one by one, an inexplicable unease crept up his spine — faint, almost imperceptible, like a held breath somewhere just out of sight.
He froze mid-motion, brow furrowing.
"...Something isn't right."