Chapter 338: Leopard's Transformation |
For Nanshui Yao Village’s Golden Serpent Gu technique, three things all have to be present. The soul, the vessel, and the nature. Shaman Xia’s weak point was capturing and stabilizing the Gu soul. If she can shore up that one flaw, her Golden Serpent technique will jump to a whole new level. That's why, no matter what, she had to trade with Liu Xiaolou.
Liu Xiaolou’s own Secret Methods of Serpent Gu is missing something too. What it lacked was Gu nature. So he was just as eager to trade. Once he patches that gap, his Snake Gu technique will finally be complete, leaping up to the next level as well.
The Gu soul he refined was the soul of a spiritual leopard. The Gu vessel was a bone flute. As for the final piece, the Gu nature, that had to be cultivated slowly over time. What kind of Gu nature it would develop depended entirely on what kind of miasma the owner used.
Because of that, Liu Xiaolou spent the entire trip back thinking about which miasma to choose.
Wulong Mountain did have miasma, like the Green Grass Miasma of the Sky Pit Drum and the Yellow Plum Miasma of the Stone Flower Cave. But neither of those packs much punch. They’re fine for knocking out rats or bugs, no problem, but anything bigger, like cats or dogs, they couldn't handle.
The nearby Wuling Mountains had far more varieties of miasma, such as Python Miasma, Yellow Wasp Miasma, Mengsha Miasma, and Wetwater Miasma. Even your average snakes, tigers, wolves, and leopards could not withstand them. The problem was that these miasmas appeared only in small patches and never in fixed locations. They were hard to collect and impossible to obtain consistently. This made them poor materials for refining.
That was why he decided to use the Night Peach Miasma from the Dehang Mountains to cultivate the Gu nature of his leopard Gu. Its killing power was only slightly weaker than the deadly miasmas of the Wuling Mountains, but it could be gathered in large quantities. For his current needs, it was easily the best possible material.
After nine straight days of tempering with thunderfire, the amount of Night Peach Miasma inside the gourd was reduced by about half. What remained was far purer. It settled at the bottom of the gourd, thick as swirling pink mist, sloshing gently as the gourd moved.
Next, Liu Xiaolou pulled out his bone flute and started playing. As the notes rang out, a leopard phantom emerged from the flute. At a quick glance, it looked no different from a real leopard. But if you looked closer, it seemed unnaturally thin, flat somehow, lacking that genuine vitality of a spiritual creature.
Urged on by the flute’s melody, the leopard phantom sprang forward and leapt onto the stone crevice, settling there. The moment the thing to be refined was put in place, Liu Xiaolou realized that the crevice functioned like a natural refining furnace. Spiritual energy surged upward without end, feeding the flames and making them burn even fiercer. Bathed in the tempering fire of the fire element, the leopard phantom continuously absorbed spiritual energy, triggering some bizarre reaction.
At the same time, driven by Liu Xiaolou’s true qi, the Night Peach Miasma began to boil and rise. It spilled out of the gourd’s mouth, filling the entire crack. And under the pressure of the flames, it slowly seeped into the leopard phantom.
Liu Xiaolou settled into a cross-legged sit beside the stone crevice, arms stretched out wide. From his wrists, elbows, and shoulders, he folded his limbs into bizarre, twisted shapes. Up and down, shifting constantly. To anyone watching, it looked like some weird hand dance. In reality, this was one of Nanshui Yao Vilage’s witch-gu hand seals.
At the same time, he murmured under his breath, uttering incantations no layperson could make sense of. These too were ancient Gu spells:
“Six-inch blades of green grass,
Ninefold vault of the august sky.
No earth is seen below,
So how can the way ahead be divined?
Fierce Sha and Lou ghost generals,
Hunt down the hearts of wandering souls.
Sever their twin liver spirits,
Drive them living into festering needles.
Who knows where King Pan’s blade will fall,
Or where one might hide their form?
Bind them and send them down the road to the dark springs,
Deliver them to ruin in the underworld.
The dead shall not defy their hour.
Gather the corpse and await judgment.
By command of shadow and light, yin and yang,
Swiftly seize and confine!”
By the time night fell, Liu Xiaolou was still up on the summit of Qianzhu Ridge refining his gu. Firelight leaked from the stone crevice, throwing his shadow onto the bamboo shelter. The incomprehensible chants, paired with the eerie contortions of his arms, cast a downright bizarre and unearthly shadow-dance across the bamboo's wall.
After midnight, Liu Xiaolou’s mind sank completely into the process. The shadow cast onto the bamboo shelter slowly fell out of sync with his movements. There was a delay, no longer than a blink of an eye, between his body and its reflection. If you weren’t paying close attention, you’d never notice it. But if you stared long enough to catch it, it’d send chills straight down your spine.
He refined the Gu like this for seven days. Then, at a particular moment, the leopard phantom curled in the crevice twitched. Liu Xiaolou swore on his life it wasn’t him making it move.
It shook itself like a drenched dog. All at once, the leopard phantom contracted by an inch or two. Just that small change was enough to make it feel more solid, fuller, and more real.
The phantom slowly stepped out of the stone crevice and padded over to Liu Xiaolou’s side. It circled him twice, letting him get a good, close look. What had seemed like vivid, lifelike fur was actually countless tiny flames flickering across its body...
And between him and the phantom, some indefinable thread had formed. A strange connection that he could put into words. But... they could sense each other’s emotions and even share the simplest thoughts.
Suddenly, the spiritual leopard reared up on its hind legs, as if ready to pounce at Liu Xiaolou.
Liu Xiaolou instantly remembered being chased like crazy by this beast years ago in the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains, and he immediately understood what it was trying to do.
“Roll!” (also means piss off)
The spiritual leopard froze for a second, then did exactly what Liu Xiaolou told it to. It flopped right over onto the ground and rolled around a few times. Liu Xiaolou stared, totally fascinated. This thing was actually rolling for real!
After messing around with the spiritual leopard for a good hour, Liu Xiaolou was grinning ear to ear with satisfaction. This thing wasn’t just brimming with intelligence; it had way more punch than before. And that fur? Every strand was pure flame, the kind tempered by thunderfire essence no less. Even standing a few feet away, you could feel your hair starting to singe and curl from the heat. If it actually touched you, there was no way you would come out fine.
From that moment on, the spiritual leopard officially became the Heavenly ThunderFire Leopard. Power aside for a second, just look at the damn thing! It’s got one hell of an impressive appearance.
With a blow of the bone flute, the leopard obediently shrank back back into it, returning to its old home.
At this point, the leopard soul bound to the bone flute was finally refined, though only in its basic form. If it was going to really grow stronger, he’d have to keep feeding it regular doses of ThunderFire Essence and Night Peach Miasma. That kind of work took time. There was no rushing it.
Liu Xiaolou tucked the bone flute, now holding the leopard, into a crack in the rock. About six feet from the ThunderFire Essence. The distance was just right. It allowed the fire essence to continue refining the flute without damaging it.
Coming down from the summit, Liu Xiaolou headed back to the little courtyard. It had already been tidied up nicely by Big Goose and Little Black. It was finally livable again. The two critters had been kicked off the peak by him days ago and weren’t allowed back up, so they’d been sulking hard, bored out of their minds, just chasing bugs around the yard to kill time. The second they spotted Liu Xiaolou showing up, they both bolted for him without a moment’s hesitation.
“Sorry you had to put up with that,” Liu Xiaolou said with a smile, clearly in a good mood. “I’ll make you some fish soup tonight to make it up to you.”
The two beasts bolted past him in a blur, legs pumping, and made straight for the summit. Liu Xiaolou could only chase after them helplessly, yelling at their backs, “Don’t go lying on the fire...”
Once he stepped back into his own home and looked around at the familiar rooms and courtyard, certain people and moments came to mind. He let out a quiet sigh, then brushed that faint sadness aside. Pulling himself together, he took out the Abyssal Blackstone Formation again and started poring over it, mulling over ways to improve the design.
One thing that needed changing was the fish swimming in the pond. He had to add measures for dealing with people who tried to sneak in and fish.
The second tweak he had in mind was the drain from mass attacks. How was the formation supposed to handle getting swarmed by dozens, or even hundreds, all grinding it down with sheer numbers at once?
The days drifted by like this. Liu Xiaolou spent his time refining ideas to perfect the formation disk while also transplanting the July Fragrant Orchids he had brought back from Dafeng Mountain into the flower beds. July Fragrant Orchid was an excellent spiritual flower. Not only did it enhance flavor when used in cooking, but when he eventually refined his Bewildering Fragrance Tendons, adding some of it would make the scent more intoxicating and raise the quality to another level.
The Han family had only given him a pouch of roasted July Fragrant Orchid seeds. Good thing Big White came through, scavenging a whole intact plant, roots, whiskers, and all. Perfect for planting. After getting it settled in the soil, Liu Xiaolou stepped back to check on the other three spiritual flowers. The more he looked, the happier he got with the whole setup.
His little flower garden was really starting to look the part.
He was just about to head back up to the summit and try tempering the formation disk with ThunderFire Essence when a sudden stir ran through his mind.
His spiritual sense was linked to the two ghost banyan saplings. From the view along the main mountain path, he could see someone climbing up, glancing around as they went.
This ghost banyan had only been growing for four years. Its main trunk was barely seven feet tall, with a few branches no more than five or six feet long. It was still very much a sapling. Like a newborn calf that fears no tiger, it had no sense of danger at all. Several branches quietly prepared to coil around the intruder.
Liu Xiaolou hurriedly reined in the ghost banyan’s reckless impulse, then strode down the mountain path himself to meet the visitor.
If the ghost banyan actually tried to grab them, it would die a very ugly death.
After all, the person coming up the mountain was in the late stage of Foundation Establishment.
A late-stage Foundation Establishment sword cultivator.
“Senior Sister Lin, what brings you here in person? Oh my, please, do come in!”