Vessel of Worlds

"Very good—your timing was exactly right!" Xi Feng said approvingly as he descended slowly beside the clam's corpse.

With practiced hands, Xi Feng drew from the body a silvery, pearl-like orb half a cun across and placed it in a wooden box. He then detached the two great shells, shrank them with a hand seal, stored them in a jade box, and tucked everything into his storage pouch.

"Clam-type beast cores really are the prettiest. No other rank-three core looks half so fine," Xun San murmured beside him.

Xi Feng next produced a small jet-black bottle, three cun tall, and aimed its mouth at the head of the clam's corpse. Forming a strange seal with his free hand, he began chanting an incantation in a low murmur.

The incantation was not only long, but to Andy's ear it carried something eerie and sinister—it actually raised gooseflesh on his skin.

After chanting for half an incense stick's time, beads of sweat stood out on Xi Feng's brow, and at the tips of his seal-forming fingers condensed a ball of white light a cun across, unnaturally vivid and alluring.

He drove the white light into the clam's corpse, then fed spiritual power into it continuously, shifting his hand seals as though hauling something out of the beast's body.

Moments later, the white light emerged from the corpse wrapped around a smaller point of green light. The green point struggled desperately to escape the white light's grip, but could not break free. In the end, dragged along by the white glow, it was pulled into the jet-black bottle.

"That's the Soul-Drawing Technique. The green light is the clam's soul!" the girl Hongchen explained, seeing the puzzlement on Andy's face.

"The spell is extremely hard to master—the demands on spiritual sense are steep. It's technically a Foundation Establishment spell, but most can't learn it until mid-stage," Xun San added.

"Does a beast soul have some special use?" Andy asked, still perplexed.

"That I couldn't really tell you. But the ghost cultivators of the heterodox path—and certain practitioners of the stranger side disciplines—will pay handsomely for beast souls. Especially the souls of high-ranked beasts; their value is no less than any other material!" the big man said, shaking his head.

Andy looked to Hongchen, but the girl spread her hands with an expression that said don't ask me.

Xi Feng, having just stowed the beast's soul, spoke up: "Ghost cultivators possess many inconceivably powerful artifacts and dharma treasures that draw their might from the power of spirits. So they need souls in great quantity for forging and treasure-refining, or for sacrificial training in their special techniques. How exactly the refining works, I don't know either. The ghost path's methods are the most secret and uncanny of all—you'll rarely see them in any market." After a pause, he continued: "Everyone contributed to this kill, so it's twenty percent apiece. The core, materials, and soul of this rank-three clam come to a thousand spirit stones altogether—two hundred each. Let's rest and meditate, then continue the search."

Over the following months, the five found two more rank-three beasts and four rank-four beasts, all fairly common ocean species. Under Xi Feng's direction, they dispatched each with barely any real effort. Only one—a rank-four beast called the Flying Dace, with a pair of wings and a serpent's tail—gave them trouble with its tremendous speed and agility. But hemmed in by the five's practiced teamwork and worn down by sustained assault, it too fell in the end: Andy's flying needles crippled its wings, and Xun San's Wave-Rolling Halberd took its head clean off.

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In ordinary times, finding a single beast often took two or three months. This trip, they were locating one or even two every month. The talk of beasts growing more numerous and more active in the Outer Star Sea evidently had something behind it.

After several smooth rank-four kills, Xi Feng led the group cautiously eastward, hoping to find a solitary rank-five beast. A rank-five's offensive power was far beyond anything a rank-four could match—after all, a rank-five beast was the equal of a human Core Formation cultivator. Only its dim intelligence and inability to use dharma treasures—relying on nothing but its naturally formidable body and instinct—gave Xi Feng's team any opening at all.

Even with a peak-grade defensive artifact in hand, a rank-five beast's sudden strike would be difficult to withstand. So the five no longer dared skim the sea's surface, flying instead at altitude, searching for traces of a rank-five with eyes and spiritual sense alike.

"Look—that white froth on the water there!" Hongchen suddenly cried out in a hushed voice, pointing to a patch of sea a dozen or so kilometers away.

With eyesight far surpassing mortals and an unobstructed view over the open water, they could all see it clearly: small bubbles rising steadily in that patch of sea. Rather than bursting at once, the bubbles were accumulating into a mass of white froth a dozen zhang across.

Xi Feng spoke with a note of pleased surprise. "Those look like the bubbles a Blood Shark produces when it vents its breath—a rank-five. There may well be one in these waters. Follow me." Rather than approaching the froth, he flew toward a coral island only a few hundred zhang across nearby.

Once they landed, Xi Feng laid out his tactics: "A rank-five beast isn't just a full cut above rank-four in attack and defense—it's also blindingly fast. If it realizes it's outnumbered and decides to flee, we'd have little hope of running it down. So first we lay a formation to trap it, then use the formation's power to attack in concert. That gives us a real chance of killing it."

"And how do we lure it into the formation?" Andy asked.

Xi Feng produced a semi-translucent jade bottle with liquid swirling inside, and smiled. "Heh. The Blood Shark is the most common rank-five beast in the Star Sea—they even turn up in the Inner Star Sea now and then—so its habits have long since been studied through and through. This is called fishmint extract. To human cultivators it's colorless, odorless, neither harmful nor beneficial—but to a Blood Shark it's irresistible. And a Blood Shark can track the scent of fishmint extract from a hundred kilometers away. We simply sprinkle it at the formation's center, and this dim-witted rank-five will swim right in on its own. The moment it enters, I activate the formation and trap it."

"Make no mistake—it's still a rank-five beast, and its teeth are extraordinarily hard and sharp. A cultivator caught in its bite dies on the spot, obviously—but even a peak-grade artifact, once bitten, will likely be badly damaged if not destroyed outright. Only Zhao Five's flying needles, being so small, are nearly impossible for it to catch in its jaws. So in this battle, Zhao Five carries the main attack." Xi Feng turned to Andy. "The Blood Shark's scales are extremely tough—the needles won't pierce them. Its only weakness is inside its body. When we engage, I'll have Di Er bait it into opening its jaws, and you seize that moment to send the needles into its mouth and stab everything in reach. Just take care not to pierce the braincase between its eyes—that's where the core sits."

Xi Feng took out a set of formation flags and discs along with five red mid-grade spirit stones and handed them all to Hongchen. "These are for the Three Yang Blazing Fire Formation. Set it up on this coral island. With Fourth Sister's experience, I imagine it won't take you even an hour."

"The Three Yang Blazing Fire Formation? It's not large, and not especially complex either—half an hour will do!" Hongchen took the stones, flags, and discs, chose a spot on the coral island, and began laying them out with meticulous precision.

Xi Feng then turned to Di Er. "Di Er, those two puppet beasts of yours will have to be contributed as well. To hold the Blood Shark's attention, they'll have to serve as bait."

Di Er nodded without a word. A light shake of his right hand, and two miniature wooden tigers the size of fists flew from his sleeve. The instant they landed beside him, they grew into wooden tigers five or six chi long.

Di Er tapped each tiger's head, and a hidden compartment opened atop each skull. He produced two green low-grade spirit stones, set one into each compartment, and closed them again. At once the tigers' eyes lit with flickering green light, and a faint green glow spread over their wooden bodies. By their spiritual fluctuations, each was roughly the equal of a fifth- or sixth-layer Qi Condensation cultivator.

"So these are puppet beasts?" Andy asked curiously—and in the same instant, his thoughts leapt to a certain jade box in his own storage pouch.