Unsheathed

Upon returning to Cyan Gorge Island, Chen Ping'an paid a visit to the sword chamber to pick up the return letter sent by Wei Bo from Cloud Drape Mountain, and the flying sword immediately returned to the Dragon Spring Prefecture.

After parting ways with Gu Can, Chen Ping'an returned to his room at the entrance of the island, then opened the secret letter, which contained answers to Chen Ping'an's questions. As expected of Wei Bo, Chen Ping'an had only posed him a single question, yet he had provided answers to the questions that he had raised to Zhong Kui and Fan Junmao as well.

In total, the letter contained over ten thousand characters, detailing the rules of separation between the world of the living and the underworld, how people could become yin entities after death, many fine details regarding the underworld and the cycle of reincarnation, as well as the differences in ghost attendants and the entrances of underworlds that arose from the different customs and traditions in different lands.

Detailed information on all of the aforementioned topics had been laid out in the meticulously written letter.

At the end of the letter, Wei Bo had personally written out a pair of secret techniques, one of which was a prized unorthodox secret technique of the imperial clan of the Divine Water Nation, in which Wei Bo had once resided. It drew upon the essence of water fortune of heaven and earth to quickly search for a speck of true spiritual light, using which the souls of the deceased could be gathered and reformed.

Upon achieving full mastery of this secret technique, one would be granted command over all water-dwelling ghosts. Hence, the technique was a closely guarded secret of the Divine Water Nation, and only the nation's imperial preceptor and immortal guest elders were permitted to cultivate it.

The other secret technique was one that Wei Bo had unintentionally obtained from the armory of the Divine Water Nation. The foundations of the technique were rooted in sorcery, but it had incorporated some sword commanding techniques used by sword immortals of the ancient Shu Nation to break open the barrier between the world of the living and the underworld, creating a bridge between the two worlds, thereby allowing the living to communicate with the deceased.

However, a living person with a physical constitution that was innately abundant with yin energy had to be used as a vessel for said yin entity to return to the world of the living, and in his letter this person was referred to by Wei Bo as a "resting station." The vessel had to have been someone whose ancestors had accumulated a great deal of good karma, or a cultivation prodigy that was naturally suited to cultivating ghostly techniques.

Among those two options, the latter was more ideal as by serving as a resting station, the former would be burning through the good karma accumulated by their ancestors, whereas for the latter, it would be a beneficial experience that would advance their cultivation base.

Chen Ping'an read through this letter over and over again.

Unbeknownst to him, following the two battles that he had taken part in on Cloud Rain Island and in Cloud Pagoda City, Cyan Gorge Island was unable to keep him a secret from the other islands any longer. At the moment, rumors of a mysterious, young, foreign guest elder of Cyan Gorge Island with tremendous combat prowess was spreading like wildfire all over Bamboo Scroll Lake.