Chapter 67: The Real Truth
When Yu Lian saw the little energy figure burst from the small flag, she felt a flicker of delight. Her vertical pupils narrowed to needlepoints as she said, "He looks delicious."
Wang Ping also found it somewhat amusing, but he was more on guard. He focused his mind completely, met its gaze, and asked, "Who are you? Are you an Artifact Spirit?"
Artifact Spirits were souls born from certain Magical Artifacts. This required the owner to nourish the artifact with Spiritual Qi for hundreds of years, and even then, the success rate was extremely low.
"Hasn’t your master ever told you what a Primordial Spirit is?"
"A Primordial Spirit? The kind one cultivates in the Third Realm?" Wang Ping’s gaze toward the little figure shifted. The five great sects of the Mystic Sect and the two great sects of the Heavenly Gate could cultivate a Primordial Spirit upon reaching the Third Realm. Beyond them, only a rare few from unorthodox schools could transform a soul into a Primordial Spirit using a Spirit Body.
"Then, who are you?" Wang Ping asked, his tone more serious this time.
"Just an unlucky soul. I was sleeping soundly when someone dragged me out of bed and tried to drain my energy. I had no other choice but to hide in here," the miniature old man, the Primordial Spirit, said, his voice tinged with dejection and resentment. "You can call me Tongyu."
"You’re the Taiyin Evil Cultivator from Yongming Port who was trying to break through to the Fourth Realm?" Wang Ping was inwardly amused, but at the same time, a chill crept down his spine. Yet, looking at the tiny Primordial Spirit before him, that creepy feeling vanished.
Then, as if remembering something, Wang Ping quickly asked, "Your breakthrough... did you succeed or fail?"
"First of all, I am a Cultivator of the Taiyin Sect, not an Evil Cultivator!" Tongyu interrupted Wang Ping with great solemnity. "Secondly, it wasn’t even time for my breakthrough. I was still hibernating when someone woke me. I suspect the puppet I left behind was discovered..."
"Wait..."
Wang Ping cut Tongyu off. "Hold on, don’t tell me your side of things yet..." He was just as serious. "You listen to me first, and then you can tell your story!"
"Fine!"
"About twenty-odd days ago..."
From his brief exchange with Tongyu, Wang Ping realized the truth of the Yongming Port incident might be different from what he knew. As he recounted the events—the cause, the process, and the outcome—to Tongyu, he mentally sorted through the entire affair once more.
After he finished, Wang Ping had indeed noticed many inconsistencies. He didn’t hide his confusion, looking at Tongyu and asking, "Do you have anything to say to that?"
But Tongyu was silent, seemingly devastated by the story Wang Ping had told.
After a long while, he finally spoke. "The tsunami at Yongming Port... I didn’t cause it. Before I went into hibernation, I was only a Second Realm Cultivator. A Second Realm Cultivator is actually not much different from a First Realm Cultivator; it’s merely a bridge to the Third Realm."
He offered this simple defense, then sighed and continued, "And I’m not an Evil Cultivator. I belong to the Pure Cultivation Sect of the Taiyin Sect. If you could return my Primordial Spirit to the Taiyin Sect, you would know I’m not lying. But I know you’d be unwilling to do that. There are too many uncertainties for you."
"I was stuck in the Second Realm for many years. Back then, when I heard about what happened at Yongming Port, I saw an opportunity. If I hibernated beneath Yongming Port, I could not only suppress the resentful energy from the deaths of hundreds of thousands of souls, but it could also aid my breakthrough..."
"Before I began my hibernation, I arranged for a puppet to stand guard outside. I can no longer contact it now. Someone must have exploited it..."
"All I know is that someone used my breakthrough to forge a Demon Soldier. That weapon devoured enough Nether Qi to have gotten me to the Fourth Realm..."
"Luckily, fate was on my side. During my centuries of hibernation, the Taiyin True Essence within my body automatically merged with the surrounding environment, successfully forming my Primordial Spirit. I only needed to hibernate for another fifty years at most to succeed..."
He sighed again. "While that person was retrieving the Demon Soldier, I used the Spirit Gathering Array they had set up to escape. I fled to the dense forest where you found me and managed to survive by attaching myself to this Purgatory Banner."
"It was originally a Demon Soldier I had refined myself. Someone must have seized it from my puppet... By placing it at the heart of the array, it perfectly combined with the Nether Qi that had gathered where I slept. A rather clever plot, all things considered."
Hearing this, Wang Ping was filled with mixed emotions. He didn’t want to believe Tongyu’s words, yet it didn’t seem like he was lying.
Yu Lian sensed Wang Ping’s thoughts and reminded him, "He has no emotions. I can’t get any reading from him."
At this point, Tongyu also stopped talking.
The silence lasted for several breaths. Once Wang Ping had processed Tongyu’s story, he asked, "It seems... you know who’s plotting against you?"
"More or less, I suppose."
"Who is it?"
"Are you sure you want to know? They might be a Fourth Realm Great Cultivator!"
Wang Ping fell silent.
"Who is it?" His silence didn’t last long. He asked again, insistently.
"Before my hibernation, he was the second-in-command of the Daoist Scripture Hall, the Fourth Realm Great Cultivator, Lord Xiao Shan. He cultivates the Taiyan Talisman. It’s rumored that once this Cultivation Technique reaches the Fourth Realm, it can blot out the sky. It can also create numerous clones to help him monitor everything in the world that concerns him!"
A tremor ran through Wang Ping’s entire body as countless thoughts swirled in his mind. After a long moment, he let out a deep breath...
"What will you do now?" he asked.
"The question should be, what do you plan to do with me?" Tongyu retorted, his tone one of complete resignation. He truly seemed crushed.
"Can you still reform a physical body?"
"I don’t know. I was only a Second Realm Cultivator before my hibernation, so my knowledge is limited." Tongyu sensed the goodwill in Wang Ping’s voice. "If you can let me continue to eke out an existence in this Purgatory Banner, I can survive for a long time."
"Then stay in here for now. But I must report this to my master..."
"Fine!"
The two of them fell silent again. Just then, Yu Lian rose up on a cloud and circled the small black flag twice, looking as curious as a kitten.
"You said this is called the Purgatory Banner. What kind of Demon Soldier is it?" Wang Ping said, trying to find a new topic.
"It can imprison the souls of living beings. You use it by channeling your True Essence with a specific Hand Technique. The price is that for the entire next day, your whole body will be in constant pain, no matter what you do—unless you are reading the Human Dao."
"That’s all? Such a small price?"
"Small? You have to read for an entire day! Twenty-four hours, without stopping. The only way to avoid it is to write out the ’Exhortation to Learning’ Chapter of the Human Dao from memory twenty times, and you must finish it within Half an Hour of using the banner."
"I’m very curious about the environment it was created in for its price to be... that."
"I’m just as curious. Every time I use it, the entire Human Dao appears in my mind, and my hand is uncontrollably compelled to write out the ’Exhortation to Learning’ Chapter. So, unless it’s an absolute last resort, you’d be better off not using it."
"Can’t you use it for me?"
"Don’t mistake me for an Artifact Spirit. If I could use it, do you think you would have ever gotten your hands on it? I would’ve made it flee long before you ever arrived."
"I mean, you could help me wield it."
"I’m just a Primordial Spirit. You can think of me as a being of pure energy, like the Spiritual Energy sprites you hear in your spiritual state. I can channel True Essence, but I can’t store it."
"I’ll supply the True Essence, and you wield it!"
"..."