Chapter 39: Opening the Altar, Roughly Refining the Treasure

“Too impatient!” Ji Ming thought to himself.

He had intended to engage in a back-and-forth, gradually gaining the upper hand with Hu Tu’er.

“There’s something to it,” Ji Ming said, the venomous hook at the edge of his mouthparts scraping together.

He had, after all, spent the entire previous night busily crafting a batch of memorial steles and burying them beneath the crow’s corpse.

“Give me—” Hu Tu had just begun to state his demand outright, but quickly changed his tone, saying, “Those things are important to me. I can purchase them.”

Things were proceeding even more smoothly than Ji Ming had anticipated, so he feigned reluctance as he agreed.

“Foolishness! Young Master Tu, how do you know he isn’t deceiving you?” murmured the weasel spirit attendant at Hu Tu’er’s ear.

Hu Tu’er’s face darkened. He hated hearing the word “foolish” said in his presence, but…this weasel spirit did have a point.

“Master, let’s not be foolish,” the clan rat chimed in, showing rare alertness. “This centipede spirit knows every detail of our society’s affairs—he’s hardly the sort to be running petty scams. With the old master away, and you distracted year after year by repeated failures and endless exam preparations, neglecting your cultivation, best not to offend him.”

“Reasonable!” Hu Tu’er thought to himself.

Though he agreed, Hu Tu’er still felt their words, like the weasel’s, grated on him. What did they mean by “repeated failures” and “endless exam preparations”? He shot a resentful glare at the weasel spirit, who promptly shrank his head in fear.

Once Ji Ming saw their discussion had concluded, he said, “Well then, have you decided? Would you like to visit my friend’s grave first?”

“No need!” Hu Tu’er’s bravado ebbed yet again, and he moved to discuss the price with Ji Ming. But the item Ji Ming requested left him momentarily stunned.

“Rakshasa ghost bone!”

“Is there a problem?” Ji Ming knew this was a rather unconventional, even sinister, material for forging artifacts. But the Fox Society had the backing of the Celestial Fox Institute—what material could they not acquire?

“No, not exactly,” Hu Tu’er replied, his expression odd. “It’s just that, some time ago, Lord Ni asked my grandfather to help him collect rakshasa ghost bone from the Celestial Fox Institute as well.”

“Is it still around?”

“It was already handed over, but about half a year ago, Lord Bo Ni sent an envoy, entrusting the ghost bone and much of his personal wealth to my grandfather for safekeeping within the society.”

“Clever old Bo Ni—taking precautions against further extortion,” Ji Ming mused.

Hu Tu’er fetched the ebony casket containing the rakshasa ghost bone. It was easy to part with something that belonged to an outsider, after all.

Once he acquired Wu Songzi’s manuscript, he would be even more confident in passing this year’s exam. Upon entering the Celestial Fox Institute, he would ascend in a single stride, his name known in the Celestial Court, with prospects of immortalhood. Why should he care about a minor mountain spirit?

Ji Ming took the ghost bone and led Hu Tu’er to a hillside.

There, Hu Tu’er saw the corpse of Wu Songzi, exposed to the elements, long since rotted and dried into a skeleton clinging to black feathers.

“This…”

“This is what it means to return to nature,” Ji Ming explained offhandedly. “His belongings are buried here on this hillside. I, myself, spent the night—”

He coughed twice, tactically, nearly betraying the truth in his contentment.

“I spent the night burying them, lest my friend’s relics be destroyed by the creatures of the mountain.”

Hu Tu’er summoned his subordinates, who carefully moved the crow’s corpse aside and then began digging and raising steles on the hillside.

Watching these spirits struggle to carry just a few stone steles, Ji Ming couldn’t help but think how weak they were. He didn’t realize that, being of a different breed, having awakened his flying centipede form, and taken the medicine of the hundred-year red ginseng, he had long surpassed ordinary spirits.

Hu Tu’er sprawled across several steles, ordering the other spirits to turn away so he could examine them in solitude.

On the surface of the steles were sharply defined human figures and pointed-headed bird forms.

Seeing how intently Hu Tu’er studied them, Ji Ming was inwardly amused. If Hu Tu’er could really decipher anything from these, then surely the spirits would flourish.

With a flick of his thin wings, Ji Ming flew toward the Fox Society.

The yin energy emanating from this sprawling graveyard was perfect for refining the “White Bone Heart-Gathering Pearl.”

Were Old Master Hu present, Ji Ming would never have dared to use this treasured land, and would have sought out the riverside wasteland or the old lair of the White Bone Lady instead.

Ji Ming manifested a pair of arms and began opening graves and breaking coffins. Over two days, he gathered corpses into a small mound.

Stretching out his long limbs, he crouched atop the mound, sorting the bones, arranging them according to the “Yin Corpse Fire-Setting Altar” prescribed in the artifact forging ritual.

In Ji Ming’s view, forging artifacts was much like the anointment methods used in deciphering talisman diagrams—both required the opening of an altar as the first step.

Amid his work on the mound, Ji Ming took some time to collect the last breaths lingering in the corpses, thereby enhancing his minor yin wind technique.

To be honest, he rather liked this minor yin wind technique.

It had a low threshold and progressed quickly. In the later stages, one only needed to gather a dying breath from the newly deceased to rapidly achieve mastery.

As for its effects, much depended on the wielder. In his previous life, the “Yin Palm” he created was itself an innovation upon the yin wind technique.

Unfortunately, in this life, his centipede form made it difficult to achieve the “standing” and “spreading” postures of the Crane Control Art, let alone the third, relaxed crane form.

Atop the corpse altar, Ji Ming carefully opened the ebony casket.

Inside was a bone radiating a greenish glow, a piece that appeared to come from the spine.

This rakshasa ghost bone originated from the corpse of a rakshasa ghost.

Some rakshasa ghosts, upon becoming spirits, would remove this bone, transforming it into a piece of gold or silver jewelry to tempt greedy mortals.

Should a mortal succumb and accept the “gold and silver treasure,” hiding it on their person, it would take only a short while for the ghost bone to seize their heart and liver.

The essence of refining the White Bone Heart-Gathering Pearl lay in the “heart-gathering”—that is, enhancing the ghost bone’s innate ability to claim hearts and livers.

Ji Ming crouched atop the corpse altar, exhaling wisps of spiritual energy onto the ghost bone. As it absorbed the spiritual energy, its green glow intensified.

Bathed in this energy, the bone turned from deathly white to emerald, beginning to tremble faintly.

“Let there be fire!” Ji Ming shouted, his venomous hook scraping fiercely.

With a roar, corpse phosphorus ignited, and ghost fire—white and ethereal—spread across the pile.

The entire altar blazed, bones turning to fuel, flames shooting from eye sockets, shattered chests, and every gap.

“Let there be wind!” Ji Ming pressed into the flames, his iron-backed wings unafraid of the ghost fire’s burning.

He summoned a blast of yin wind, sweeping through the mound, altar, and beyond.

The wind fanned the flames, and the fire atop the altar shone so brightly it pierced the illusory veil over the Fox Society.

Through the howling black wind and swirling ghost fire, the stacked corpses obscured all trace of the black centipede crouched upon the altar.

Only a vague, elongated shadow could be seen, stretching and twisting wildly in the inferno.

Hidden throughout the graveyard, the fox-born clan rats, startled, poked their heads from their burrows, stunned by the fire, then broke into frantic cries.

On a distant hillside, Hu Tu’er held up a candlestick, poring over the stone carvings again and again, as if possessed.

Suddenly, he looked up, catching a glimmer of white light from the direction of the Fox Society. His eyelid twitched. “Opening the altar for artifact forging?”

“Yin Corpse Fire-Setting Altar, complete!”

Within the flames, the rakshasa ghost bone gradually melted, spiritual energy guiding its transformation into a smooth, rounded pearl.