Chapter 409

When Wang Yu first obtained the crafting method for the White Bone Demon Flag, he later discovered over a dozen "Life Soul Flags" as unfinished vessels under the inspection of Tianchan Laozu, so he naturally became deeply interested in the data regarding the Three Soul Flags.

He subsequently studied numerous related texts and materials, gaining a certain understanding of these demonic artifacts.

The Yin Soul Flag is forged from spirit bone as its primary material, then nurtured with yin energy to cultivate numerous yin spirits, which evolve through mutual consumption into mid- to high-grade ghost entities, subsequently controlled to combat enemies.

The Life Soul Flag is crafted primarily from the peeled skin, hair, and fur of living cultivators, soaked in human blood for forty-nine days to form the vessel, then slaughtered with magical tools to transform vast numbers of life souls into impure substances; when deployed against foes, it corrupts and disrupts their spells and magical items, its power astonishingly formidable.

As for the most mysterious Blood Soul Flag, the available information is the scarcest; it is known only as an auxiliary artifact for cultivating the famed Blood Sea Art of the demonic path, capable of nurturing invisible, formless Blood Spirit Offspring within the flag—equally terrifying.

The yin spirits used in the Yin Soul Flag are ferocious spirits born from yin energy, a lowest-grade type of ghost.

The life souls to be purified and transformed by the Life Soul Flag are the essence souls of living beings—whether birds, beasts, humans, or demonic races—all living creatures inherently possess the Three Souls and Six Spirits, and under certain conditions can directly transform into ghost entities.

Thus, yin spirits and life souls are fundamentally distinct, yet share a common trait: like other ghosts, both can grow stronger by consuming their own kind and each other, and even more so, they crave consuming dissimilar entities more than their own kind.

Hence, the numerous yin spirits in Wang Yu's Yin Soul Flag nearly lost control during the slaughterhouse's assembly line, desperately attempting to burst through the talismans and devour the life souls of the slaughtered pigs within the two electric shockers.

In the cultivation world, life soul iron is classified by the number of fused life souls: hundred-soul, thousand-soul, and ten-thousand-soul tiers.

Hundred-soul life soul iron is a first-grade material; thousand-soul is second-grade; ten-thousand-soul is third-grade, accessible only to Golden Core cultivators, and utterly unobtainable on the open market.

Outside the demonic regions where Yu State lies, other cultivation sects dare not collect or manufacture such violently evil third-grade materials under normal circumstances.

Although life soul iron can be forged by slaughtering large numbers of mortals to obtain many life souls, only a tiny fraction of those souls can actually be absorbed into the iron—allegedly, only one in a dozen or so can be taken in.

That means to forge a ten-thousand-soul life soul iron using mortal life souls, one would need to slaughter at least one hundred thousand ordinary people.

In Wu State, a settlement housing over one hundred thousand people counts as a small city, capable of producing many disciples with spiritual roots; nearby cultivation sects would never allow demonic cultivators to commit such atrocities.

Even the demonic sects within Yu State refrain from indiscriminately slaughtering mortals within their own territories—it would be like killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

As for wild beasts and demonic races, the latter naturally possess magical power and often surpass cultivators of the same level in strength; the former require finding herds numbering in the hundreds or thousands, which is nearly impossible unless in regions ruled by monstrous beast kings, and even then, such herds are usually owned by others.

Yin spirits, by contrast, arise endlessly wherever yin energy is abundant, making them vastly easier to obtain—hundreds or thousands of times simpler than life souls.

This is why even demonic sects mostly craft Yin Soul Flags, while Life Soul Flags are exceedingly rare—this is precisely why Tianchan Laozu was surprised upon seeing over a dozen Life Soul Flag vessels in Wang Yu's storage bag.

As for why the electric shockers became life soul iron, aside from the fact that these two shockers had killed countless pigs, he could think of no other explanation.

It seems that even in an environment devoid of spiritual energy, the essence souls of living beings linger after death; he had failed to notice this previously because he lacked magical power and thus could not perceive it.

Yet Wang Yu still harbored doubts.

He had only noticed this phenomenon in the slaughterhouse this time; for many preceding days, he had passed through countless crowded places where countless people died daily, yet he had detected no trace of life souls—surely something contradictory lay hidden here?

Were life souls on Blue Star too short-lived to be detected, or did they only manifest under special conditions?

As Wang Yu pondered this, he had no immediate answer, and unconsciously he weighed the black rod in his hand—it felt heavier than ordinary metal.

The original material of the electric shocker was likely some form of copper alloy, but its surface appeared coated with another metal, originally silver-white; only after activating it with magical power and merging the embedded life souls into the rod did it turn pitch black.

The other piece of life soul iron remained inside the Yin Soul Flag.

Wang Yu thought of this, then tapped his forehead with one finger; a thread of spiritual awareness shot out, vanished in an instant, and silently sank into the swirling surface of the bone flag before him.

Inside, yin energy churned violently, forming a separate space where countless dense black shadows of yin spirits were tearing at hundreds of blood-red pig spirit apparitions.

Among these blood-red pig spirits floated another black rod.

Each time a pig spirit was fully consumed by a yin spirit, another pig spirit surged forth, roaring toward nearby yin spirits—as if the device could release only a limited number of life souls at once.

Compared to the yin spirit shadows, these pig spirits were clearly more violent; one largest pig apparition had grown three or four times larger than its peers, capable of swallowing nearby yin spirits whole with a single gulp.

Among the surrounding yin spirit swarm, seven or eight entities far exceeded their peers in size, while more yin spirits continuously surged forth from the nearby yin energy.

Wang Yu watched silently for a moment, then withdrew his spiritual awareness from the flag's surface.

Unlike ordinary magical items, banner artifacts incorporate spatial materials during their forging; once completed, they almost always contain independent spaces of varying sizes, so to many cultivators, treating banner artifacts as special storage pouches is perfectly normal.

Some cultivators, wishing for larger internal spaces, can not only upgrade the banner to a higher-grade artifact but also spend exorbitant sums to embed special spatial materials to expand the space themselves.

The space naturally contained within the Yin Soul Flag was designed to store yin energy and nurture yin spirits; now that this ten-thousand-soul life soul iron had been thrown inside, it instantly triggered a great war between yin spirits and life souls.

Though he did not know when this battle would end, the ghostly consumption that was meant to occur only after merging the Yin Soul Flag into the White Bone Demon Flag had undoubtedly been prematurely ignited.

Whether this situation was good or bad, Wang Yu himself could not say clearly; but the Yin Soul Flag was still only an entry-grade artifact, and he believed that as long as he retained his magical power, suppressing these low-grade ghosts within the flag would pose no real problem.

Conversely, if he wished to uncover the true reason behind the electric shockers becoming life soul iron, he would need to visit the slaughterhouse multiple times, observe more pig-slaughtering procedures, and perhaps then find an answer.

If this life soul iron mechanism could truly be replicated, he would never lack low-grade ghosts to consume, and his ability to cultivate the Yin Soul Flag—or even the future White Bone Demon Flag—would far surpass even the wildest imaginings of demonic cultivators in the cultivation world.

After all, the cultivation world has no slaughterhouses, assembly lines, or places where hundreds or even thousands of livestock are gathered and slaughtered at once.

In Pengjie City alone, there were likely over twenty slaughterhouses larger than his own.

If the electric shockers in these slaughterhouses were also ten-thousand-soul life soul iron, what would he have to worry about regarding ghosts for mutual consumption?