Chapter 1424: The Slave Dao Supernatural Ability

Descendants of the witch race. The witch race! A flash of lightning crossed Qin Sang's mind. So that's it.

The Ghost Mother was in all likelihood a great cultivator of the ancient witch race.

A witch race powerhouse of that stature, surviving into the present age, had slumbered not on the Witch God Continent but in a place with no witches at all, and upon waking had been sealed away by Saint Tian Yue and nearly perished for it.

Qin Sang could not decide whether to call her fortunate or cursed.

No wonder Hundred Flowers Valley possessed a witch race inheritance. That refinement, which even Qin Sang who cultivated the life-bound insect gu himself could not have accomplished, had come from the hand of a witch race powerhouse!

No wonder Hundred Flowers Valley's grandmaster had hailed from Ethereal Sea. That grandmaster was very likely a disciple the Ghost Mother had taken back then.

No, perhaps not a disciple. More likely she had just awoken and been weak, and had offered a few people casual guidance so they could act on her behalf. Otherwise she would never have stood by while a disciple strayed onto the wrong path.

A casual gesture, and from it came a renowned order whose name shook Crescent Moon Realm.

In searching for insect-controlling secret arts, Hundred Flowers Valley had been unavoidable. Having found those arts there, coming to Ethereal Sea to investigate had been inevitable, a matter of when rather than whether.

Had he been a step slower, he would have missed Tan Hao. Conversely, a little earlier and he would have met the Ghost Mother.

Qin Sang could not help marveling at how fate toyed with people.

He had at his side one of the very witch race descendants she sought. Whatever her purpose, such a descendant was clearly of enormous importance to her. Qin Sang would not have needed to say a word; she would have thrown everything into waking Mute Girl.

And he had missed her by the narrowest of margins!

"Heavenly Corpse Sect's inheritance isn't purely Corpse Dao. Senior Ghost Mother created the Heavenly Corpse Talisman to raise the sect's strength quickly, combining the human Corpse Dao with a simplified version of a supreme witch race Slave Dao supernatural ability. That's why it has such miraculous effects. Had I found Senior sooner, there might have been a chance to save Tan Jie. But it was too late. He had already sunk beyond reach, and Senior tried several times and failed..."

Tan Hao's only regret was that his cultivation back then had been too weak, and the moment had slipped away.

"A Slave Dao supernatural ability, then." Qin Sang nodded. Everything fit.

It matched the Ghost Mother's style, refining first the life-bound insect gu and then the Slave Dao to suit human cultivators.

And there was also the bone curse, which was so close to divine patterns!

A living corpse was not a corpse at all but a corpse slave. No wonder the Heavenly Corpse Talisman was inscribed within the primordial spirit.

The complete Slave Dao supernatural ability must have extraordinary origins. Even simplified into the Heavenly Corpse Talisman, a low-level cultivator could deploy it and forcibly control someone of equal cultivation.

The witches of Canglang Sea, however, seemed to know nothing of the Slave Dao, or he would have caught the signs. That portion of the inheritance had likely been lost.

Slave Dao, life-bound insect gu, divine patterns. The witch race inheritance ran uniformly sinister.

Mhmm, barbaric, too. No, not quite. Primal, but closer to nature for it.

Turning over his impressions of the witch race, Qin Sang asked, "Did Senior Ghost Mother ever say why she was looking for witch race descendants?"

Tan Hao thought back. "She mentioned it once, I think. The witch race bloodline would be able... to aid her return."

Return. What does that mean? Qin Sang's thoughts jumped to the reception platform, and to Bai, Qingjun, and Old Devil Ye, all of whom had departed.

A witch race powerhouse was contending for passage as well.

If she needed the witch race bloodline, was it to obtain guidance from beyond the boundary? And if I did find the Ghost Mother, would that be good for Mute Girl or ill?

Every possibility ran through his mind. With the Ghost Mother gone, there was no way to verify any of it. Having missed this chance, finding her again would be difficult.

Zhongzhou. The name alone sounded significant. It very likely held witches too. Once the Ghost Mother achieved her purpose, would she return to the North Sea, or simply go straight back to wherever she came from?

As for going to Zhongzhou himself... Qin Sang was not optimistic.

He was unwilling to stop here. Now that he knew of Zhongzhou, and that a nautical chart to it existed somewhere in the North Sea, he would certainly make the journey, searching for a way out of the cage and for the truth of this world.

But that lay centuries away. First he had to find a way to obtain a chart, and then he needed strength enough to survive the storm belt.

Zhongzhou would surely not be close. The journey from Beichen Realm to the North Sea had carried enormous risk, and he would not dare set out before the late stage of the Spiritual Infant Realm. If the distance proved too great, with no clearly marked havens along the chart, he might need to reach the Divine Transformation Realm.

Divine Transformation. Qin Sang did not dare hope so far.

Can Mute Girl hold on that long? Qin Sang wondered.

He had no Jade Liquid of Three Radiances left. If he failed to find a substitute spiritual herb soon, then even if the Soul-Nourishing Wood could sustain her soul, her body would lose its vitality and complete its transformation into a corpse.

"When Senior Ghost Mother tried to save Tan Jie, what method did she use?" Qin Sang pressed the question, and as he spoke he summoned Mute Girl forth.

Tan Hao glanced at her, then at Qin Sang, without probing into their relationship. He lowered his head and gazed at her for a while. "Senior once said the Heavenly Corpse Talisman she created was imperfect. Easy to bind and hard to loosen. Undoing it requires a supreme witch race Slave Dao secret technique, applied with great care. Otherwise it's easy to make matters worse and create an irreversible situation. Even Senior waited until she'd returned to the North Sea and recovered her strength before attempting it."

Tan Hao's words weighed on Qin Sang all the more heavily. The greater the talisman's provenance, the smaller the chance Mute Girl would wake on her own.

"Oh?" Studying her, Tan Hao's expression turned to surprise. "How long has she been asleep?"

"More than half of two centuries, and then some," Qin Sang said.

"What?" Tan Hao exclaimed. "That's barely later than Tan Jie. How have you kept her in this good a state?"

Jade Liquid of Three Radiances, Soul-Nourishing Wood, and a spiritual insect of unknown origin that had bound itself to her by choice.

Running through the list in his mind, Qin Sang suddenly realized that compared with Tan Jie, Mute Girl's fortune had been nothing short of heaven-defying. With that many treasures spent on her, surely there had to be some difference.

Seeing Tan Hao's expression, he asked quickly, "What have you noticed, Brother Tan?"

Unhappy memories surfaced, and Tan Hao's voice dropped. "Back then, after you left, I kept Tan Jie with me. The corpse qi contaminated his body soon enough, and the crystal coffin could only delay it so long. Fortunately his primordial spirit hadn't perished. His awareness was blurred, but I could still feel it, and that kept a thread of hope alive in me.

"As time passed, though, I found his primordial spirit undergoing an eerie change. It grew rigid, deathly still. His awareness dimmed further and further until it went silent altogether. After I met Senior Ghost Mother, she first tried several methods to nourish his primordial spirit and call back a portion of his awareness, but it was beyond saving. Had I met you earlier, Brother Qin, the outcome might have been different."

Qin Sang did not know how to console him.

He still had several Soul-Nourishing Wood tablets and could spare one easily enough. But the fat silkworm, which had bound itself to Mute Girl of its own accord and served as her anchor to the present world, had no equal.

He had a feeling that the greatest contributor to her condition was not the Soul-Nourishing Wood at all, but the fat silkworm!

After a silence, Tan Hao reached into his robes and produced a round jade pendant.

"Senior refined this by hand while infiltrating Mystic Heaven Palace and gave it to me as an alarm token. It holds a strand of her spiritual thought. If you ever encounter her again, she should be able to sense it."

"If the chance comes, you must wake her! You must!" Tan Hao's gaze moved from Tan Jie's gravestone to Qin Sang, and he placed the pendant solemnly in his hands.

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