A Record of a Mortal’s Journey to Immortality c1-2248

by Translator: Johnchen

  A glint flashed from the grey-robed monk’s eyes and he asked, “How about you hand over the Celestial Blue Cauldron to us three outsiders for the time being? We’ll return it to you when the time comes, of course. And this way, we’ll be able to focus on helping you wholeheartedly.”

  When Han Li and the old woman heard this, they were startled but soon understood what he meant.

  “Yes, that will do!” Han Li readily agreed.

  The old woman took a moment of thought before eventually nodding.

  When the azure-robed middle-aged man heard this, he shook his head, “Master Mojiu, isn’t this too much? You should understand the origins of the Celestial Blue Cauldron. It is the magic tool dedicated to cultivating our sect’s Celestial Ice Flames. How could we allow it to be taken by others?”

  The mink’s kindly expression “We are only holding it for a short time. When we leave here, we will return it with thanks. We have no intention of keeping it. Please think it over, Fellow Daoist Ouyang!”

  “But...”

  Just as the middle-aged man was about to continue, Arctic Dragon cut him off, “Enough, Junior Martial Brother Ouyang, Master Mojiu’s words hold reason. I agree to this condition, but which of the three will hold the cauldron?” When he asked this question, he took a long look at Han Li, then taking a quick glance at the other two.

  The monk and the old woman both grew quiet.

  The old woman eventually broke the silence, “Since Master Mojiu raised the condition, he should be the one to safeguard it! I believe he’s always been a trustworthy individual.

  Han Li narrowed his eyes as thoughts flashed through his mind like lightning. He eventually nodded in agreement.

  “With your trust, I will take the cauldron into my care,” the monk solemnly agreed.

  With the three having come to a decision, Arctic Dragon wasted no time and pointed to the cauldron high in the air. It spun as it made its way down with its flames extinguished.

  The monk reacted instantly, releasing green mist from his sleeve. It wrapped around the cauldron and would soon restrain it, serving as a temporary shackle.

  Although the Celestial Ice Flames could emerge from the cauldron, he had nothing to fear as his own body harbored a flame of extreme cold.

  When Han Li saw this, he shot over to the pillar of purple light in a streak of light. After some close observation, he gained a near-complete understanding of this technique.

  However, he would need to see the technique used to completion in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of it.

  That was why Han Li was willing to stay sealed inside the cave despite his misgivings. He was also confident in his own exceptional abilities and felt he didn’t have much to fear. Additionally, Arctic Dragon would have unstable cultivation even if he managed to succeed; there would be time before he could prove a threat.

  Besides, Deity Transformation-stage cultivators were restricted in the mortal realm. Before she left for the Spirit Realm, Ling Long left behind a jade slip that dispelled many of his fears of these mysterious cultivators.

  And just to be safe, Han Li mentally commanded the Great Yin Trueflame to stealthily enter the spell formation and hid itself under a stone. It succeeded in being undetected.

  The others each flew up to their respective pillars in the formation.

  Arctic Dragon then set forth, activating the spell formation once more with flicks of his fingers.

  Bright mist suddenly filled the air around them and a barrier appeared around them once more, blocking the cavern’s white storms.

  Han Li blinked and carefully looked around him. Although the activated restrictions were the same as before, there were clear differences in their spiritual fluctuations. As an accomplished scholar in spell formation, he discovered a few of its inner workings as he silently analyzed them.

  “Let us start! Hehe, if this truly succeeds, I won’t forget your kindness!” Arctic Dragon said with a deep laugh. He held his hands in an incantation gesture and blue flames quickly ignited from his body, soon turning into the deep blue color of a clear ocean. The sight was completely entrancing.

  When the old woman saw this, she muttered with a tone of awe, “To think you refined the Celestial Ice Flames to this degree. I fear you’ve already reached the highest purity of glacial flames allowed in our mortal realm.

  ‘Those are glacial flames refined to their utmost limit?’ Han Li’s heart stirred and he took a deeper glance at Arctic Dragon.

  At that moment, the others began to sit down on their respective pillars and huge light lotuses slowly wrapped around them.

  Han Li lightly smiled and sat down as well, grasping his hand in an incantation gesture.

  Glacial flames spurt forth simultaneous from all the cultivators, but before any of them urged them on, the cultivators let out series of soft incantations.

  As their chanting continued, the lotuses grew, multiplying their size in an instant. The flames burning from the cultivators’ bodies spread to the lotuses, lighting them up in a dazzling display.

  Han Li simply felt a trace of a burning sensation from his body, lasting only for an instant as his body drowned in the Purple Apex Flames like a small sun.

  Chapter 1100: Demon Soul

  Immersed in glacial flames, Master Arctic Dragon slapped his hand on the crown of his head.

  A muffled thud sounded, followed by the ejection of the three-inch-large Nascent Soul covered in blue light.

  The Nascent Soul sat cross-legged with its hand in an incantation gesture. A jade pendant hung from its neck, sparkling with silver light.

  The Nascent Soul floated ten meters above its body and took a breath, exhaling a ball of blue flame.

  The flame was the purified essence of the Celestial Ice Flames that Arctic Dragon bitterly cultivated for hundreds of years.

  As the blue flame danced in the air, it formed a blazing shining wheel underneath the Nascent Soul. Then, the Nascent Soul slowly floated up out of the sphere of glacial light.

  When the cultivators saw the appearance of Arctic Dragon’s Nascent Soul, the others immediately moved into action, pointing at the sphere of glacial light, sending threads of their own flames towards it.

  Before the glacial flames touched the Nascent Soul, the wheel underneath it suddenly revolved at immense speed. The flames trembled once before gathering in the direction of the wheel.

  The flames stained the blue wheel with five colors in a gorgeous display, leaving who would gaze upon it mesmerized.

  The Nascent Soul then softly shouted, releasing a string of spell seals into the wheel of light.

  Booms sounded out as the flames trembled, shortly detonating one after another.

  At that moment, the Nascent Soul’s casting rapidly increased, exhausting its magic power in a single breath as it released spell seals without pause.

  Under the Nascent Soul’s control, the glacial flames ruptured as they began to fuse together into a single lotus.

  Black, white, red, yellow, green, and blue: the colors of the six glacial flames, could be faintly seen from its translucent petals, but the colors faded together to create a magnificent sight.

  The ten-meter-large lotus made a rather large contrast to the tiny Nascent Soul, but as it uttered a chain of profound incantations, the lotus flickered with light and began to grow smaller. Each time it shrunk, it released dazzling rays of light.

  After a short while, the lotus became a foot tall and its petals now appeared solid and material. The six flames danced across them in an otherworldly display.

  The five cultivators couldn't help but betray their surprise, but they released their flames with increasing intensity regardless.

  When these flames poured into the lotus, they seemed to disappear.

  Then, the Nascent Soul suddenly opened its eyes, revealing an odd golden shine. It then reached one of its hands towards the lotus.

  Crackles repeatedly sounded as countless blue threads ejected from its fingertips
, fusing with the nearest lotus petal.

  While Nascent Soul’s incantations continued, it folded its fingers towards its palm. Blue light then sparkled with ever-increasing intensity as the threads began to tremble violently.

  Drones hummed from the lotus with the pedals soon closing around another. Shortly after, time seemed to reverse as the lotus shrunk back to a bud, the Nascent Soul buried within it.

  The six flames continuously spun on its surface, filling the air with its brilliance.

  When the cultivators saw this, they cast a spell seal and released their control over the glacial flames for the time being.

  The six-colored bud faintly trembled and dropped downward.

  Rays of light shot out from it for a time as the bud disappeared into the sphere of white light. The bud shined once more before slipping into the unconscious body of Master Arctic Dragon.

  At that moment, the other five resumed releasing their glacial flames into the light sphere.

  The flames then condensed into rays of light after entering the sphere and shot into Arctic Dragon’s body. The extreme cold of the flames stimulated his body, coordinating to break his bottleneck.

  Suddenly, the cracks of tearing space sounded from within the formation.

  ...

  Outside of the Profound Jade Cave, on a remote street in the palace’s ice city, there were two white-robed palace disciples walking side by side.

  They wore cold faces and their eyes vigilantly looked around them.

  The huge ice phoenix that was circling the sky earlier had disappeared, along with the two elders that were fighting it.

  Although the two were currently in a remote corner of the palace ice city, the sides of the street were filled with lines of buildings.

  The two disciples already knew that all the low-grade disciples in the area already evacuated and should be empty. But even as such, the two didn’t dare to be careless and kept on guard.

  “Finally, we’ve arrived.” One of the disciples blinked and looked ahead of them. They then turned a corner and entered one of the buildings from behind.

  Their surroundings lit up before them, following the appearance of a hundred-meter-wide spacious area with a man and a woman waiting there for them.

  When the middle-aged woman saw the two appear, she looked at them with a trace of resentment and said, “You’re late. If you took any longer, we would’ve started without you!”

  The man standing next to her was a large man with pitch-black skin. They wore the robes of North Night Palace, but their uniform appeared to belong to the lowest grade disciples, far lower in rank than the two that had just arrived. But strangely enough, the woman’s tone didn’t appear polite in the slightest.

  One of the disciples that just arrived let out a cold snort, “Our allies on the outside already attacked the outermost layers of the grand formation and are at least fifty kilometers away from the city. The cultivators have frequent patrols as well, so it took quite some effort for us to find an excuse to come over here. Else if we were to raise their suspicions, our efforts would completely went to waste!”

  The woman raised her brow and was about to say something, when the dark-skinned man at her side lost his patience, shouting, “Enough empty words. Let’s take action! Even if I am only an incarnation, I won’t be so easily defeated.”

  She decided to remain silent when she heard this, and the two who arrived also kept silent as if in fear. They each took out a pile of formation plates of spirit stones from their storage pouch and began to place down a spell formation.

  They moved with practiced movements and in only a moment, they formed the outline of a small spell formation. But if an experienced spell formation master were to examine it, they would astonishedly discover that it was an interim teleportation formation, one that could only receive.

  In the time it took to take a meal, when the spell formation was nearly complete, a series of loud explosions boomed

  To the astonishment of the four, they all released their protective magic tools in surprise.

  “A few trifling demon beasts dare to stir up trouble before the sect? Old fogies like us could hardly allow this to continue!” An old voice emerged from the icy mist in the air, followed by the appearance of two men.

  One of the men was old, had bold eyebrows and long facial hair. The other was a middle-aged man with red-brown skin and wore a longsword on his back.

  “It’s the enforcement elders of North Night Palace! Let’s run!” When the woman saw the two, she shouted in alarm and shot away in a green streak.

  The other three conspirators reacted no less quickly and fled hurriedly.

  “If those demons manage to escape, we’d be a laughingstock!” The middle-aged man sneered and flicked his hand, releasing four blinding swordstreaks.

  Three screams immediately followed as the sword Qi swept through the woman and two of the men. Only the large dark-skinned man continued to flee, having only stumbled from the strike.

  “Yi? Interesting!”

  The middle-aged man found this odd and opened his mouth, releasing a streak of blinding white light to pursue the large man. In the blink of an eye, the light circled around him and cleaved him in two.

  At that moment, the bold-browed old man shook his sleeve and released four magic tools shaped as willow leaves. They soon vanished from sight.

  In the following moment, four leaves struck the corpses and sprouted green flowers instantly from them, releasing an odd shriek before turning the corpses into clouds of smoke.

  When the red-faced middle-aged man saw this, he turned his gaze to the nearly completed teleportation formation with a sullen expression. With a wave of his hand, he struck it with a dense swordstreak.

  Following a loud explosion, the teleportation formation was replaced with a large crater.

  “Let’s go. Although we might not be able to truly harm the demons by slaying their incarnations, it should still leave an impression on them!” The old man twirled his beard before shortly flying off in a streak of white light.

  The red-faced middle-aged man chuckled and left the area with a relaxed attitude.

  In other remote regions of the Ice City, similar events occurred. The disciples puppetted by soul threads of high-grade demon beasts were massacred by elders of North Night Palace.

  Deep underground in one of the halls of North Night Palace’s Hidden Arctic Dragon Border, there were six Nascent Soul cultivators solemnly talking with one another, the palace master included amongst them. Three of them, including the palace master, appeared extremely pale as if their vitality was damaged,

  The beautiful woman, Palace Master Liu, tensely frowned and said, “It is beyond expectation for Myriad Demon Valley to bring along their Myriad Demon Banner. I originally believed it to be an ordinary spirit treasure replica, but to think it was this powerful. If it weren’t for Elders Fang and Huang, I fear I wouldn’t have been able to block the strike from Old Demon Che’s incarnation.”

  Chapter 1101: The Powerful Demon Beasts

  "Won't it be too early if we were to go now? We can just retreat when those demons get to the city," a heavily-bearded and disagreed.

  A white-faced elderly man who had already sustained injuries retorted, "If we wait until then, it'll be too late."

  He was clearly in agreement with the beautiful woman's opinion.

  "Hmph, have you become a coward just from a single battle against these demons, Senior Martial Brother Wang?" the bearded man jeered.

  In the face of the man's jeers, the old man remained calm as he said indifferently, "You don't know anything, Junior Martial Brother Tong; you haven't seen the might of the Myriad Demon Flag with your own eyes. Even though it's only a spirit treasure replica, it's power won't be inferior to the primordial Heavenwielding Seal by much. Thankfully, Old Devil Che hasn't arrived on the scene in person. Otherwise, even if I were to join forces with the palace master, it would still have been extremely difficult for us to match the en
emy in power."

  The bearded man's expression wavered slightly, but he still shook his head as he argued, "Is it really that powerful? Even so, it definitely won't be a simple matter for our enemies to break through the final few layers of restrictions we've set up. I feel like it would be a waste to retreat before we take advantage of that fact."

  The beautiful woman's brows furrowed upon hearing this. She cast her gaze toward the faces of the people around her and said in a slow voice, "Don't forget that there are enemies who have already reached the city. If it weren't for Junior Martial Sister Bai and Junior Martial Sister Ye luring the Ice Phoenix into the Illusionary Light Formation to trap it, we most likely wouldn't even be here discussing this matter right now! That Ice Phoenix is a pureblood descendant of a heavenly spirit beast. It may only be a grade ten demon beast, but it possesses power almost comparable to that of a half-Deity Transformation cultivator; it's definitely not something that late-Nascent Soul human cultivators like us can compare with.

  "Even with two elders controlling the formation spell in person, they won't be able to contain the beast for long. Under such circumstances, we should prepare for a retreat as early as possible. However, Elder Tong's suggestion is not entirely unfounded. How about this? We'll get the weaker disciples to hide in the Spirit Void Hall first; the more powerful disciples and I will use the final few layers of restrictions to deal the enemy a heavy blow. We'll kill as many demon beasts as possible, but do not engage in prolonged battles and retreat back to the Spirit Void Hall at the first sign of the restrictions being broken. Please remember that our main priority is to conserve our forces, not to eradicate demon beasts."

  Everyone felt like this was a feasible course of action, so they all nodded in agreement with her suggestion.

  Thus, they began to implement her plan as everyone left the palace to rally the disciples, preparing for retreat as well as the final battle.

  As for the beautiful woman herself, she remained in the hall and sat down in a chair, falling into deep thought with a hint of concern in her eyes.