Chapter 351: Bone Bones and Yin Energy

These giant skeletons stood motionless, their bodies translucent like white jade, yet the aura emanating from each was unmistakably at the peak of Qi Refinement.

Wang Yu murmured incantations under his breath; the banner in his hand swelled with the wind, growing back to a height of several zhang, then with a loud "boom," plunged straight into the ground.

He then formed a single hand seal and pointed at the bone banner.

"Whoosh."

A gray, misty wind gushed from the banner, sweeping across the piles of bones around him.

The translucent white bones within the piles instantly leapt free, rushing toward the giant skeletons and melting into them, reshaping themselves.

The giants' bodies flickered with gray light, quickly forming thick, spiky bone armor, while their hands now held an array of bone weapons: towering bows over a zhang tall, bone shields half a meter thick, and massive blades nearing two zhang in length.

The aura of these giant skeletons surged dramatically, reaching the peak of Qi Refinement.

"Go."

At that moment, Wang Yu formed a single hand seal and pointed at the bone banner.

"Puff."

The pitch-black banner fluttered and billowed, and a faint, hazy image of a white bone gate appeared upon its surface.

The next instant, all the giant skeletons shuddered, dissolving into clouds of gray mist that soared upward and streamed into the massive bone gate.

On the pitch-black banner, a host of skeleton patterns suddenly appeared, writhing grotesquely as if pouring out from the gate.

Simultaneously, dozens of gray-white inscriptions materialized as faint shadows upon the banner, overlapping one another—twenty-five in total.

The banner had completed its fusion of the Bone Demon and the Spirit Banner, becoming the Bone-Spirit Demon Banner, and had already reached the mid-grade second-rank level.

The appearance of such a dark-art artifact in the Login Hall was due to Wang Yu's earlier Qinshoulianzhi of a second-rank Wind-Fire Bone Blade, for which second-rank beast bones could be replicated within this space.

With unlimited second-rank spiritual bones available, it was no challenge for him to craft high-quality Bone Demons and Spirit Banners here.

As for the yin energy required to nurture them, it was merely a variant form of ambient spiritual energy; by arranging these second-rank bones into a simple malevolent feng shui barrier, the latent yin energy could be slowly drawn out.

Naturally, the higher the rank of the bones, the better the transformation—and using entire beast skeletons yielded even better results.

This minor technique for extracting yin energy was widely used by dark-art disciples, and even the Four Great Sects of Great Ming had records of it in their scriptures, for many secret arts and methods also required yin energy.

Although the yin energy produced this way was limited, and maintaining it required daily consumption of considerable bone material, it still could not compare to the yin pools and yin lands of dark-art sects—but it was more than enough for his personal artifact cultivation.

After all, in the Login Hall, Wang Yu could replicate spiritual bones endlessly, ensuring a constant supply of yin energy, unlike the dark-art sects' yin pools and yin lands, which, despite producing astonishing quantities, required constant input of yin materials and had to sustain the collective consumption of dozens to hundreds of disciples.

Even dark-art disciples wishing to enter these yin pools and yin lands had to pay contribution points and spiritual stones—they could not use them at will.

Of course, besides these methods, dark-art cultivators often preferred one-time massacres to obtain the yin energy needed for cultivation.

This method, by directly refining the residual souls of living beings, could yield a substantial amount of pure yin energy in one go.

Wang Yu would never resort to such methods; he could only slowly accumulate yin energy through bone transformation.

The Bone Demon and Spirit Banner nurtured in his real-world cave still lacked a bit before they could fuse into the Bone-Spirit Demon Banner, precisely due to insufficient yin energy.

The yin energy converted from first-rank bones was vastly inferior in both quantity and purity to that from second-rank bones, leaving the quality of the Bone Demon and Spirit Banner in his cave perpetually just short of completion.

In contrast, the Bone Demon and Spirit Banner in the Login Hall, forged directly from second-rank materials, met the fusion requirements the moment they were crafted.

After fusing them directly, he obtained a second-rank low-grade Bone-Spirit Demon Banner, and under unlimited yin energy supply, he nurtured it from fifteen inscriptions to mid-grade twenty-five inscriptions within just a few years.

Yet even so, the spiritual stones he had spent over the years purchasing bones were staggering, and the cultivation of the Crimson Sun Art was an even deeper abyss, leaving his spiritual stones and contribution points nearly depleted.

Had he not quietly become a second-rank alchemist two years ago and sold a batch of surplus second-rank pills at nearby markets, he would have already been desperate for spiritual stones.

As for the contribution points he earned by exchanging first-rank artifacts, they fell far short of covering the deficit—he even owed the General Affairs Hall nearly eighty to ninety thousand contribution points as a True Disciple.

Not long ago, Wang Yu had resolved to find a good opportunity to demonstrate his ability to craft second-rank artifacts to the sect.

After all, through constant practice in the Login Hall over the years, he could now effortlessly craft over a dozen second-rank artifacts.

For second-rank artifacts with fewer than twenty-four inscriptions, he had virtually no chance of failure; for two or three mid-grade artifacts, his success rate reached seventy to eighty percent.

The one artifact he practiced most—a fifty-two-inscription high-grade artifact—still only gave him a thirty percent chance of successful crafting in one attempt.

Clearly, whether improving artifact crafting or alchemy, the only path was sheer familiarity through repetition.

But Wang Yu never anticipated that before he could act on this plan, he would first encounter the formal invasion of the dark arts.

This made him hesitate over whether he should reveal his second-rank artifact crafting ability.

Thinking of the matter made his head ache further; after taking a deep breath, he refocused his attention on the mid-grade second-rank Bone-Spirit Demon Banner before him.

He glanced at the swirling black mist around him, then looked upward.

Above, more than ten zhang high, black vapors churned and yin winds howled.

Wang Yu slapped the giant banner before him and injected a stream of pure cultivation energy into its inch-thick surface.

The gray-white inscription shadows on the banner rotated together, converging into a single point—the vanished bone gate image reappeared upon the banner's surface.

"Swoosh."

A thread of gray light shot out from the bone gate in all directions.

Wherever the light passed, the yin-energy mist was swept away, surging like a tide toward Wang Yu and vanishing into the massive bone gate image.

Within mere breaths, all the black mist had been completely absorbed by the giant bone gate.

With the mist gone, a translucent, half-spherical dome, inverted and covering an area of an acre, appeared in the surrounding void.

Outside the dome, the familiar silver hall was faintly visible.

After absorbing such vast quantities of pure yin energy, the pitch-black banner surface glowed with a faint Youguang, but after Wang Yu formed a hand seal, it and the bone gate image both vanished.

With a wave of his hand, the giant banner shot skyward and plunged back onto the bone altar as a streak of dark light.

Wang Yu looked at the now-empty void, expression unchanged; he tapped the ground with his toe, murmured incantations, and infused cultivation energy into the earth beneath him.

The next instant, four black array plates slowly rose from the ground at the dome's corners, and columns of gray light erupted from them, shooting upward.

"Woo-woo."

Beneath each pile of bones, vast gray array shadows emerged, emitting eerie sounds.

Thick streams of black energy surged from the bone piles, vanishing into the void, and the piles shrank visibly before his eyes.

Only when the piles had shrunk nearly in half did Wang Yu sense the yin energy in the air with his spiritual sense, then tapped the ground once more.

"Puff." "Puff."

The light columns and gray array shadows instantly collapsed, and the black array plates sank back into the earth, disappearing.

Within the dome, black mist once again swirled—but the purity of the yin energy was now less than one-third of what it had been.

After all, triggering the barrier's power to accelerate yin energy transformation consumed far more bones; under normal circumstances, no cultivator would resort to such a short-sighted act.

Only in the Login Hall, where Wang Yu did not care about the cost of bones, did he activate the barrier each time he entered, accelerating the nurturing progress of the Bone-Spirit Demon Banner.

Wang Yu was genuinely curious: just how far could he nurture this second-rank artifact in one go within the Login Hall?

Would it reach high-grade second-rank? Or Jipin?

Or even break through to third-rank?

In this process, besides gaining nurturing experience to avoid mistakes in the real world, another reason was that this Bone-Spirit Demon Banner was unique—it differed greatly from other artifacts he had crafted here.

Thinking of this, Wang Yu reached both hands into the void; points of crystalline light flickered in his palms, and two objects began to coalesce out of thin air.

One was a bone blade, stark white, wreathed in swirling green and red auroras—clearly the Wind-Fire Bone Blade.

The other was a miniature banner, a foot long, with a white bone shaft and a black silk surface—the Bone-Spirit Demon Banner!

The former quickly became clear and solidified fully, but the latter remained blurred and flickering—then with a "pop," it dissolved into nothingness.