I have Immortality In The Cultivation World Chapter 263

Chapter 263: Chapter 243: The Banner of Ten Thousand Souls

The National Dynasty implemented Spirit Root testing, and the process was very smooth.

All registered citizens were screened, and the Imperial Court had a clear grasp of how many cultivators there were in the National Dynasty.

After all, Spirit Roots are not codes that you can just distribute whenever you wish!

All cultivators were assigned positions, and these were not just nominal ranks but actual posts as members of local branches of the Investigation Bureau, wielding astonishing authority when handling ghostly entity cases.

No one in the world can refuse power, especially since modern cultivation techniques can be somewhat overzealous.

Since cultivators do not study Buddhist or Daoist scriptures, their strength grows rapidly but without the corresponding state of mind, making them more susceptible to worldly temptations.

Most cultivators accepted the control of the Imperial Court, grudgingly classified as contributing to the fight against the ghost crisis, while the small remainder found it difficult to stand alone and had no choice but join the majority.

The few ascetics who cared little for the mundane world dug into the mountains and never came out again.

The Imperial Court did not force the issue, for there are no politicians more skilled at taming human nature than those who shepherd people.

For example, they stood at the moral high ground of salvation, with an approach both mild and friendly.

Cultivators are people too!

At the same time, the Imperial Court was also looking to the future and promulgated new laws.

Newborns must undergo Spirit Root testing, and if they had a Spirit Root, the Imperial Court would fully provide for them, disbursing nourishment funds according to the quality of the Spirit Root, with higher-tier Spirit Roots earning more than the wages of the parents.

Once the news was out, everyone on social media was announcing their second or third child, with no need for the Imperial Court to urge or persuade them.

With the emergence of the cultivators from Kunlun Cave Heaven, all of whom were top-notch in their era, the rule of the Imperial Court became even more stable.

Two years later.

The National Dynasty was still the same, but Xianjing now held a different significance.

On the streets of the capital, it was common to see cultivators flying. At first, this caused quite a stir, but later it became normal.

Many people online joked that this was the legendary Heavenly Court reflected on Earth.

On this clear morning,

At Top Scholar Street,

There was a pawn shop.

Zhou Yi finished his cultivation and emerged from the cave heaven, routinely expending five hundred years of lifespan for divination.

The spiritual token fell to the ground.

Top sign!

“Hmm?”

Zhou Yi raised his eyebrows, “The day has finally come!”

No one knew the exact time of the ghostly apparitions' night march, and such a celestial change leading to a calamity across the Nine Continents was beyond Zhou Yi's power to divine.

So he changed his approach, divining not the disaster itself but the best time for Artifact Refining.

The Ghost King Sect possessed a top-tier artifact called the Myriad Souls Banner, which required at least ten thousand fierce souls and malevolent ghosts to refine.

Zhou Yi had already prepared the banner fabric; he divined daily whether it was a suitable day for refining the artifact, and today's top sign indicated that the heavenly timing was right, thus deducing that the night march of a hundred ghosts would soon arrive.

This method of divination was akin to exploiting a loophole from the heavens.

Human efforts can't compete with fate; when you exploit a loophole from the heavens, the heavens lay a trap for you in advance.

“Time to send out a message for a heads-up.”

With a thought, Zhou Yi's Yuan Ling avatar immediately instructed his subordinates to send a pop-up notification through the Qi Sect's external branch software.

—-Ghastly apparitions are about, do not venture out after dark!

The Qi Sect's external branch software had a hundred billion users, claiming to be the largest gathering place for cultivators in the Nine Continents, even though ninety-nine percent were non-Spirit Root commoners.

Therefore, once the message was sent out, its impact was not limited to the National Dynasty; the other eight continents also received the warning.

In no time, it topped the trending searches on all social media platforms; after all, Heavenly Monarch Yuanling, aside from being a Kunlun immortal, was the most powerful cultivator of the time, and his video lectures on practices would always spark a viewing frenzy.

Open any app or browser, and you'll find the trending lists to be identical.

The Imperial Court's Eight Methods to Subdue Ghosts, pinned at the top.

Do not go out after dark, trending!

The ghosts are coming, hot!

The night march of the ghosts, hot!

Qi Sect, popular…

“With this atmosphere built up, the night march of the ghosts couldn't not happen!”

Zhou Yi opened Cloud Chat, and all the chat groups were talking about it, with some people even planning to team up for ghost hunting because the Imperial Court had long distributed electric guns that did massive damage to ghostly entities.

Many friends invited Zhou Yi to face tribulation together, such as number eight, number eighteen, number eighty-eight…

He replied one by one, declining and agreeing to celebrate after the tribulation.

“When I exorcise spirits on normal days, I always leave behind some talismans,” he said. “They may not be very effective, but at least they can ensure that ghostly entities dare not approach. When golden wind and jade dew meet, that's fate!”

Zhou Yi put away his phone, and in a flash, he turned into two figures–one continuing to watch over the shop with a split of his mana.

The original turned into an old Daoist with a wide forehead and long beard, holding a Myriad Souls Banner with a purple face and a green pole, below which was a yellow ox formed from conjured mana.

He soared into the sky, hiding in the air waiting for the right moment.

Zhou Yi looked down at the capital city, where rows of armed soldiers patrolled in neat steps.

The citizens had already arrived at designated spots in their respective marketplaces according to prior rehearsal. With many people gathered, the strong yang energy prevented ghostly entities from approaching, and everyone held special electric guns issued by the Imperial Court, ready for battle.

Time passed, second by second.

Dusk fell.

All of a sudden, Zhou Yi opened his eyes wide and keenly sensed the changes in heaven and earth, noticing that the yang energy was decreasing while the yin energy was rising.

“The transition from day to night is the natural cycle of yin and yang, but today's yin energy is too dense. Not only those who died with grievances, even the aimless residual souls and wandering spirits will catalyze into ghostly entities…”

Residual souls rarely remember their past lives, and after becoming ghostly entities, they instinctively absorb yang energy and devour Qi-Blood.

It was past midnight.

The yin energy had become so tangible that it enveloped the atmosphere like mist, and when he looked up at the moon, it was eerily clear and visible.

In the mist, silhouettes emerged out of thin air, floating aimlessly about. Looking closely, they were various kinds of incomplete spirits, continuously transforming as they absorbed the mist.

Those missing arms and legs grew sharp claws, the drowned spewed water from the Yellow Springs, those who died in fire spat phosphorous fire…

Weird and innumerable.

What they all had in common were their crimson eyes, emaciated frames, as if they had been starving for hundreds of years, drooling black saliva at the scent of a living person's breath.

Boom, boom, boom…

Before the ghostly entities could continue to evolve, the military had already initiated annihilation.

The art of Artifact Refining from the path of immortality had solved the material problem, and many weapons that were previously only concepts had now been equipped within the military.

For example, a vehicle on the street that looked like a tank had a barrel at least as thick as two people could embrace. What it fired was not bombs, but bucket-thick arcs of lightning.

The Lightning Method has long been the bane of ghostly entities!

As the barrel rotated from side to side, the lightning left nothing but emptiness in its wake, obliterating evil spirits and fierce ghosts.

“Changing to the Lightning Method's power, that's almost equivalent to a Foundation Establishment real person. The only flaw is the lack of agility…”

Zhou Yi had not finished speaking when he heard the buzzing of propellers. Drones flew over the city like a swarm of bees, ignorant to any Illusion Technique influence from the ghostly entities, carrying out a carpet-style electric arc exorcism.

“Immeasurable Heavenly Honored One!”

“Don't destroy my Artifact Refining materials!”

Zhou Yi hastily waved the Myriad Souls Banner, casting a vast purple aura over the capital, swallowing all the spirits and ghosts.

Then, he turned into a beam of escape light and flew towards other cities. If he was too late, he wouldn't even be able to scrape up a ghost hair.

The rising yin energy continuously spawned ghostly entities. The first wave was the largest in number. With no residual or wandering souls left to transform, the number of new ghosts dwindled and they were no match for the military.

Zhou Yi checked his phone to find that the top trending topic had changed.

The ghost calamity is nothing more than this. Explosive!

With each transition of eras in the Nine Continents and the rise and fall of Spiritual Energy tides, there have always been night marches of a hundred ghosts, but never has it been so easy as today.

Fortunately, evil spirits and fierce ghosts can be regenerated, or else some experts and beasts would certainly start preventing the military from carrying out genocidal strikes!

Of course, casualties were inevitable. As the number of people killed by fierce ghosts exceeded one hundred thousand, the tragic extinction of the Ghost Monsters reached the internet, and no one pitied the ghostly entities anymore.

As Zhou Yi rode the beam of light and flew past cities, he waved the Myriad Souls Banner, sweeping clean the ghostly entities.

At the same time, he kept an eye on news on the net. Wherever Ghost Monsters appeared, he would immediately go to deal with them to prevent greater chaos.

Several days later.

The Myriad Souls Banner was refined to great completion. Since he had refined only evil spirits and fierce ghosts, without using the souls of the living to pad the numbers, its power ended up being a bit stronger than recorded in the annals.

With a slight flick, a hundred miles around became a Yin Sha Forbidden Land, and tens of thousands of ghostly entities devoured the enemies clean.

“No wonder the path of devilry is hard to extinguish. One doesn't need to search for any rare Spiritual Objects to refine a top-tier magical weapon!”

Zhou Yi tossed the Myriad Souls Banner into Kunlun Cave Heaven, planting it at the entrance of the Daoist temple like a flag. Now that he had three Sect-Defending magical treasures, there was no need to use this demon treasure anymore.

In combat, one would naturally hurl the most powerful treasures, why bother using an inferior one for a test?

The night march of a hundred ghosts passed safely, and large-scale gatherings would be difficult to come by in the future. Now it was up to the Imperial Court to search for the remaining ghostly entities.

With this matter concluded, Zhou Yi celebrated for a month, then closed his doors, locked up, and flew towards the deep waters of the Eastern Sea.

Chapter end

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