Wayfarer

Chapter 290: The Red Moon Yin Body

A month later, in the Xiao manor in Yongding, Xiao Nanfeng frowned as he glanced at the Spirit Emperor's charm in his hand. "Divine Emperor, this charm has quintessence of solarfire within it, so why can't I extract it?"

Black smoke seeped out of his storage ring and formed words: "If you want to die, keep striking the charm with your spiritual power."

"Is something wrong?" Xiao Nanfeng asked.

The Divine Emperor ignored him.

Xiao Nanfeng: ...

What was going on? A month ago, the Divine Emperor had been more than willing to help take down Xiang Pojun, and Xiao Nanfeng had thought that it would be open to further communication. Why was it suddenly being so unresponsive?

Xiao Nanfeng had no choice but to set the Spirit Emperor's charm aside for now.

By this time, he had finished examining all the items in Xiang Pojun's storage artifacts. There was plenty of treasure, but nothing that could help advance his cultivation. There were quite a few relics, but none that caught his eye.

Suddenly, he stilled. Something had happened to his avatar.

His avatar was currently situated in the internal space of the divine purple rock, simultaneously attuning to it and molding it into the shape of a seal, and attuning to the Heavenly Dao Scroll and attempting to repair it. Something in his avatar's mindscape had shattered with a bang.

Xiao Nanfeng's avatar immediately sat cross-legged in anticipation. "Nalan Qiankun's decision did end up being beneficial to me, after all. By ceding Marquis Wu's lands to my father, he's granted me access to a shocking amount of fortune tithed by the common people. Have I already made a breakthrough with the Taiqing Yin Body?"

Within his mindscape, his stellar lake was surging with waves. A full red moon hung high overhead, bathing his mindscape in resplendent crimson light.

As Xiao Nanfeng meditated and channeled his qi in accordance with the Taiqing Yin Body, the waters of his stellar lake rose into the air and began pouring into the red moon.

His stellar lake was like a raging ocean, but the red moon managed to drain it dry.

The crimson light that it gave off slowly diminished, and the moon quickly turned pale—then entirely colorless, as though in a lunar eclipse.

Xiao Nanfeng could sense something gestating in the moon, something that drew his consciousness within. He had the strange feeling of suddenly becoming a fetus in the womb, the spiritual power around him nourishing him as he rapidly grew within the red moon. He could feel his body turning more and more mature.

An indeterminate amount of time passed. As his growth seemed to peak, he tore at the shell surrounding him. Once wasn't enough. Ten times, a hundred times—it took him almost a thousand attempts to finally break out of the shell.

A gap had been torn out of the red moon. Red light shone out from the gap and lit up Xiao Nanfeng's mindscape once again. A red figure slowly crawled out of the gap bearing Xiao Nanfeng's appearance. Unusually, however, the body appeared to be translucent.

The red, translucent Xiao Nanfeng walked out into the mindscape. He looked at his hands. "Yin Body? This is my yin body? I've become a deity..."

Behind him, the gap in the red moon widened until it spanned the entire moon, which had returned to its original appearance.

Because it had just birthed a yin body, however, the tremendous consumption left the red moon looking rather pale.

Xiao Nanfeng's yin body stepped out of his mindscape, accompanied by the red moon floating behind his head. Xiao Nanfeng was amazed by the scene.

"Except for the translucent aspect, this yin body looks very much like my physical one. It even has its own mindscape..." Xiao Nanfeng felt his yin body.

He reached out and infused his remnant spiritual power from his physical body into his yin body. At the same time, his physical body decayed rapidly and vanished in a cloud of ash.

Xiao Nanfeng's yin body punched forward experimentally. A huge storm formed on impact, but that storm only extended about fifty kilometers from him before it was suddenly cut off.

"This is a deity's domain—where the red moon shines, my yin body can exert influence in physical reality!" Xiao Nanfeng's eyes lit up.

He left the purple seal's internal space and strode over to a room in the Xiao manor. The red moon behind his head released an incredible burst of light as the spiritual aether within fifty kilometers flocked toward his yin body.

Simultaneously, Xiao Nanfeng's main body began to guard his avatar.

It took three whole days for spiritual aether to continuously gather around Xiao Nanfeng's yin body and be distilled into spiritual power to replenish what had been consumed. Not only had all the spiritual power been replenished, his stellar lake had grown to ten times its original size. In addition, the red moon behind his head had grown even more lustrous and lurid.

His yin body had turned from translucent to opaque, almost as though it were a physical body in its own right.

Just then, black smoke continuously seeped out of Xiao Nanfeng's main body's ring.

"Has your avatar reached Yin Body? Why is your yin body different from others'?" the Divine Emperor asked.

"Different? How?"

"At the Yin Body stage, yin bodies should be transparent. Only by reaching the realm of True Yin will you become a deity proper. A yin body needs an incredible source of vitality to manifest solidly like a physical body. Your avatar clearly hasn't reached True Yin, so how can its yin body have developed to such an extent?"

Xiao Nanfeng could guess why. The red moon was responsible—it had merged with the cursed spiritual avatar of a cursed king, which was able to generate its own vitality.

The red moon needed an incredible amount of vitality to sustain itself, and the red rope cursed king's spiritual avatar met that need. Not only that, it had apparently given his yin body sufficient vitality to make it look as solid as a physical body.

"My red moon is different from others'," Xiao Nanfeng explained.

The Divine Emperor fell silent. It had thought Xiao Nanfeng strange from the beginning, but this level of peculiarity was beyond what it could comprehend.

"There is something wrong with your spiritual cultivation technique," the Divine Emperor declared.

"My avatar cultivates the Taiqing Yin Body, one of the premier spiritual cultivation techniques of the era. It has one major flaw: it's particularly demanding in terms of physical bodies. I had a lot of trouble keeping up its supply in the past, and I imagine it'll only get worse at Yin Body." Xiao Nanfeng laughed.

"And why would you need a physical body?" the Divine Emperor asked.

"What else would I do? Let it float around as a soul? I—" Xiao Nanfeng suddenly cut himself off as he realized something.

"Before Yin Body, your spirit needed a physical body as a vehicle to access the physical world, to protect the spirit, and to conserve spiritual power. Now, however, you've become a deity. What need have you for a physical body? Your avatar's strength is in spiritual cultivation."

Xiao Nanfeng considered the Divine Emperor's words for some time before nodding. "You're completely right, Senior. Why would my avatar need a physical body? It just feels strange not to use one all of a sudden."

"Your red moon carries an ominous aura. It is particularly sinister, and there is something deeply problematic about it. If you continue pursuing its cultivation, something horrible may descend," the Divine Emperor continued.

Xiao Nanfeng's lips twisted. What was ominous about his red moon? He had already cultivated a yin body—wasn't it too late for such a warning? How could he start from scratch now?

"Believe me as you will." More words formed.

"I don't disbelieve you, Senior. Might you have a solution for me?" Xiao Nanfeng inquired.

However, the Divine Emperor ignored Xiao Nanfeng.

Xiao Nanfeng: ...

Was the Divine Emperor just proud or indifferent? Would it only talk to him when it was feeling in the mood for it?

A month ago, it had helped Xiao Nanfeng deal with Xiang Pojun. Was that its way of showing its gratitude for Xiao Nanfeng's help with Envoy Ying? Would it go back to ignoring Xiao Nanfeng now that it had repaid its debt?

Xiao Nanfeng sighed and decided to ignore the Divine Emperor for the time being. He happily studied his yin body, which had conjured a set of red robes from spiritual power. He sent his red moon back into his mindscape and found that, under ordinary circumstances, there was no need to expose it at all. He was still able to manifest a small deific domain around himself even with the red moon internal to his body.

His avatar had reached Yin Body, but his main body had yet to break through. He could sense that the silver moon of his main body was very close to advancement, but not quite there just yet. He wasn't in a rush. As he amassed more fortune, his main body would quickly reach Yin Body as well.

Two nights later, outside the city of Yongding, a series of shadows continuously appeared by a hill and stationed themselves all over in an orderly fashion. They were looking respectfully toward a black-robed figure at the peak of the hill, Envoy Ying.

Tang stood beside Envoy Ying, shocked by the thousands of shadow cursed effigies that had gathered around him. An army of such shadows might well be able to take down an empire. If they all surged toward Yongding, wasn't Xiao Nanfeng going to die?

"Lad, I'm here to kill Xiao Nanfeng. Why have you followed me?" Envoy Ying asked coolly.

"The division leader informed me that, because he was otherwise occupied, I was to witness Xiao Nanfeng's death on his behalf," Tang stated.

Tang was hardly going to say that Xiao Nanfeng had instructed him to spy on the shadows; Cui Haisheng would be his excuse.

"Is Cui Haisheng scared of us? He's more of a coward than you are," Envoy Ying replied disdainfully.

"I'm afraid too, Senior," Tang admitted.

Envoy Ying snorted. It looked toward the shadow cursed effigies all around the mountain. "See the city of Yongding before you? If the Divine Emperor is captured, I'll let you eat your fill. The whole city will be yours."

The thousands of shadows roared in excitement.

The Divine Emperor is in the Xiao manor over there," Envoy Ying continued. "Now, let's get started."

The shadow cursed effigies roared again, then shot toward the Xiao manor in Yongding as beams of black light.