Chapter 804: Summoning a Little Skeleton
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
To be precise, Mu Zi didn’t really ferment it. He just buried the wine jugs at the boundary with some basic ingredients in it. After that, he only had to dig it out. Samsara wine was born from the energy of the Samsara law in this strange place.
Mu Zi dug out a huge wine jug. “I think this is ready, but the others require a little more time.”
w.a.n.g Zhong was flabbergasted. “How did you think of this idea?”
Mu Zi smiled, revealing his pearly whites. “I like to bury stuff at familiar places. The first time I opened the stuff I buried here, the contents turned to wine, and after a few adjustments, it became like this.”
w.a.n.g Zhong couldn’t bring himself to laugh. Burying food was probably something that only the most lonely and insecure person would do.
“Haha, I’m going to become a rich man all thanks to your sudden inspiration. Okay, I’m going to bring this big jug back.” w.a.n.g Zhong didn’t stand on ceremony with Mu Zi.
Mu Zi shook his head. “Wait a moment, it needs to be processed.” While speaking, Mu Zi placed the large wine jug into his Life and Death Coffin.
“The stuff here is not suitable to be consumed by living creatures. Even if this side looks beautiful, they are dead in essence.” Mu Zi said.
w.a.n.g Zhong was stunned. He turned to look at the energetic little creatures bouncing around. He infused Soul Power into his eyes, and the wonderful sight disappeared instantly. What replaced it was the dry and black ground, as well as some skeletons jumping around. Decaying corpses were moving under the power of the undead.
“Actually, I really wish that I couldn’t see all these sometimes. In some cases, pretense and deception can be merits for humans too.”
“Are you talking about white lies?” w.a.n.g Zhong smiled bitterly. Mu Zi was extraordinarily talented. His ability to perceive truth was even stronger, so he could see through the essence of everything. This also made his life a lot less interesting. Others saw pretty women as beauties, but Mu Zi saw them as nicely dressed-up skeletons. That made life very boring.
“It’ll be done soon. I’m just getting rid of the death aura. Things turn into their opposites when they reach the extreme limit. I feel like this jug will taste good,” Mu Zi said.
w.a.n.g Zhong could already smell the wine fragrance. He couldn’t help but inhale deeply. “Mu Zi, this is awesome!”
A bright smile appeared on Mu Zi’s face. Although his smile was a little silly, it was very cute. He had gradually come to feel like a person instead of a loner.
Once w.a.n.g Zhong returned to the Holy Land, he first dropped by at Lan Daier’s as usual. Lan Daier was already used to him going missing every few days. Even newcomers from prominent families were rather obedient and abided by the rules during their first year in the Holy Land. However, this fella was bold enough to go missing every few days! Nonetheless, the quality of the Samsara wine was better this time.
“The Samsara wine that you gave me previously is all sold out. Here’s 5,000 Holy Coins. We don’t have much supply of the wine, so I’m planning to change our marketing strategy,” Lan Daier explained. The Samsara wine was surprisingly popular in the Holy Land, and they hadn’t even publicized it yet. Once their reputation spread, there would definitely be more interested customers. Lan Daier had to be prepared by then since they couldn’t afford to offend some people in the Holy Land. If a Sacred Teacher wanted the wine and you didn’t have it, this matter wasn’t one that could be resolved easily.
“I’ll let Sister Daier take care of everything,” w.a.n.g Zhong said nonchalantly. w.a.n.g Zhong changed his way of addressing her at her request; he only called her teacher when there were outsiders. “Can you make a sumptuous meal that will help boost my Soul Power? I want to reach the Peak Heroic Soul Stage as soon as possible.”
Lan Daier smiled. “You finally came to your senses. Leave it to me. I need to prepare the ingredients first to reduce the side effects though.”
At this juncture, both of them were business partners, so they didn’t mention taste-testing wages anymore. Lan Daier had never seen a person like w.a.n.g Zhong who didn’t care about Holy Coins and actually trusted people. Nowadays, all the Holy Disciples were very cunning and shrewd, afraid that their teachers would deceive them.
Honestly, w.a.n.g Zhong didn’t really care. It would be too easy for a teacher to deal with a student anyway. Once you found someone who could be trusted, why think so much?
In the past few days since he came back, w.a.n.g Zhong carried on with his Cellular Cosmology cultivation every day. There wasn’t any shortcut to boosting his power. Although his Soul Power did increase, he had to take it step by step to construct a Soul Core. He spent the rest of his time staying in the library to look at books regarding wards, alchemy, and other stuff. He wasn’t picky in his choice of books, but he didn’t have the right to anyway. He tried to learn about everything that seemed interesting to him, laying a foundation for himself. As he wasn’t from an aristocratic family, he ultimately had lesser knowledge in these areas.
It could be said that after the CHF, the knowledge that he relied on Simba for was outdated. Simba seemed to know more about things from the old civilizations, and he wasn’t familiar with things in the Holy Land. Some of his beliefs were very different from that of the Holy Land too.
In public places such as the library, w.a.n.g Zhong had always been the center of attention.
Naturally, he couldn’t avoid people gossiping about him wherever he went. There were all sorts of comments. Some were saying that it was fine if he was a brainless supporter of Cellular Cosmology since there were others in the Tyrants who fell for that too, but why would a dude from the Tyrants’ Tempering Faculty go and dabble in wards? That took it too far.
Could he even understand it? It wasn’t to say that people from the Tyrants were ‘dumb’, but the key thing was that w.a.n.g Zhong was studying something that had no link to his field. It was as if someone who graduated with a mathematics degree suddenly wanted to be an archaeologist or someone with a history degree wanted to study aeros.p.a.ce and s.p.a.cecraft. What were they going to do!? Study the engraved calligraphy on the b.u.t.tons of a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p?
However, whatever w.a.n.g Zhong did had nothing to do with them. Why was he the center of attention?
Because the others felt inferior and stressed!
All the newcomers and Holy Apprentices desired to become Holy Disciples. Degrading w.a.n.g Zhong would increase their own confidence, happiness, and sense of superiority, making their cultivation journey slightly easier.
Every time they gossiped, they felt like they were one step ahead of the weaker people. Of course, the stronger people didn’t care about this stuff.
w.a.n.g Zhong didn’t mind all the gossiping and scornful looks others gave him. Notwithstanding his magnanimity, he was numb to all these long ago. There were more and more things he needed to learn; he didn’t have the time to care about this.
After a few days of obsessive reading, w.a.n.g Zhong had a detailed understanding of wards masters. The history of wards masters wasn’t considered to be long. It was true that the concept of wards already existed when the Fifth Dimension arrived, and humans often ran into all sorts of wards in the Fifth Dimensional World. However, it was only after the Holy Saint Teacher discovered and moved into the Holy City that a concrete human wards master system was formed.
Almost all the wards masters that trained according to the system came from the Holy City, which was the origin of modern wards masters. Generally speaking, there were two major categories — elemental wards masters and runic wards masters.
The former was rarer, and most of them relied on their innate talent. Heaven Bearers such as Mo Xingchen were considered as elemental wards masters. Their wards didn’t have a specific structure, and they used elemental power from the heavens and earth to construct their wards, allowing them to construct wards out of thin air. Elemental wards masters couldn’t be trained; they could be discovered by luck but not sought. If you didn’t have an outstanding talent in this area, you didn’t even need to think about becoming an elemental wards master.
Most wards masters from the Holy City belonged to the latter. They used crystals, Soul Power, or other dimensional energy bodies as power sources and runes as the structure and carrier to construct a complete ward. Unlike elemental wards masters, runic wards masters could be trained with the help of a complete information system. The requirements to become a runic wards master were lower, and there were many Holy Disciples who were talented in runic wards in the Holy City every year. These Holy Disciples would go on to become people that various Great Teachers and exploration teams fought over to have on their side…
However, w.a.n.g Zhong wasn’t sure which cla.s.s he belonged to. If he a.s.sumed himself to be a runic wards master, it wasn’t right since he could construct runes out of thin air too. He learned that from Aiolos and thought it was normal, yet after looking at the detailed cla.s.sification of wards masters, he realized not everyone was able to construct runes out of thin air. When he created the Subwoofer Cannon with Grai, they didn’t hide anything from others in the process; but other than w.a.n.g Zhong and Grai, the others in the Tianjing Squadron weren’t able to learn it no matter how hard they tried. Previously, he thought that the others just weren’t familiar with runes and didn’t have enough control over their Soul Power. Now, it seemed that those factors weren’t the reason why they couldn’t do it, and there were many other factors.
Mr. Du, who he met in the Headless World, was considered as rather proficient in the wards domain; however, he still needed some tools when he constructed wards, such as crystals which acted as power sources, as well as runic pens for constructing runes. Looking at this aspect, w.a.n.g Zhong seemed to be an elemental wards master.
On the other hand, w.a.n.g Zhong used runes as the structure and carrier of wards. His interest in becoming a wards master and his confidence in learning it were established based on his knowledge of wards. His style wasn’t like that of an elemental wards master who was unconstrained in style and tended toward the random.
Perhaps he was somewhere in the middle? Or a fusion of both types of wards masters?
w.a.n.g Zhong thought that this question didn’t matter… As long as a white cat or a black cat could catch mice, they were good cats!
w.a.n.g Zhong placed a runic pen, equilibrium gold powder, three energy crystals, and a simple ritual bowl in front of him. As a beginner, it would be better to adhere to the rules.
Summoning wards was something that almost all newcomers in the Holy City would come in contact with sooner or later. It was mandatory to summon a dimensional creature for yourself whether you learned it by yourself or asked someone to teach you. You merely needed some ordinary materials to summon a beast and become a Soul Beast Master that was envied by everyone on Earth. Only fools wouldn’t do it.
The creatures that Soul Beast Masters summoned would have a high degree of affinity with them, and it was very convenient to command and control them. Of course, that only applied to the basic-level summoned creatures. There was danger everywhere in the Dimensional World. Many were eaten by the creatures that they randomly summoned, and some creatures even took over their master’s body. It was said that there were beautiful Soul Beast Masters who summoned lewd demons… Of course, that might just be the dark humor of the people whose subsidiary job was Soul Beast Master.
However, those stories referred to people who attempted intermediate or higher level summoning ward spells. The one that w.a.n.g Zhong was attempting now was a basic level spell. It was his first time trying this out, so it would be better to start from the basics to build his confidence. After reading up, w.a.n.g Zhong was rather confident in attempting this spell. He already had a foundation in this, which was more advantageous as compared to the alchemy and gourmet fields.
Honestly speaking, this basic summoning spell was useless. It was a compliment to say that it was a basic spell. The supposed 32 basic summoning ward spells were simplified versions that merely served as practice for newbie wards masters. In this case, don’t even think about summoning a powerful Soul Beast; it would be considered a success if you managed to summon a 1st or 2nd rank mutated rat.
The first step was to construct the basic runes, which was something that w.a.n.g Zhong was familiar with. The runes involved in basic summoning ward spells might seem complicated to newbies, but that completely wasn’t the case for w.a.n.g Zhong. It was around the same standard as the Subwoofer Cannon or maybe a little harder. w.a.n.g Zhong committed all of it to memory after scanning through briefly.
Runic pens were similar to soul tools, just like thunder mauls. It could channel the Soul Power in your body and the energy in the crystal b.a.l.l.s. The equilibrium gold powder possessed a certain amount of Soul Power and could stabilize wards. These were the more basic materials to aid in your practice. Once you were more skilled, you didn’t need them anymore.
Not long after, a blue runic construct the shape of a hexagram appeared on the table. w.a.n.g Zhong placed the ritual bowl in the middle.
He crushed the Border Gra.s.s, Kudzu Herb, and Psychic Stone together and spread the mixture evenly along the bottom of the ritual bowl. These were materials that had spiritual properties. They were the basic materials that linked two worlds together in this spell. The last step would be the so-called ‘sacrifice’.
Basic summoning ward spells only created a link between two worlds, but it was up to your sacrificial offering’s aura to decide which world you would be linked to. Also, sacrificial offerings were the key to attracting dimensional creatures. This basic summoning spell was too simple and didn’t have the power to force any dimensional creature to sign a contract with you. You could only attract a dimensional creature’s interest through your sacrificial offering and make them come over of their own accord.
It was said that the person who summoned a mutated rat only put a piece of braised pork as a sacrificial offering. w.a.n.g Zhong hadn’t decided on what kind of creature he wanted to summon, but he didn’t have any braised pork with him currently. After walking around his dorm, he discovered a piece of broken bone in his clothes pocket. It must have gotten into his pocket during the battle at the Life and Death Realm.
It would be rather interesting to summon a little skeleton.
He put the broken bone into the ritual bowl and p.r.i.c.ked his finger, dripping a few drops of blood into it. Lastly, he chanted the spell to activate the runic array. w.a.n.g Zhong was a little excited, and even Simba looked forward to what would happen. This was fun. Maybe w.a.n.g Zhong could summon an interesting baby for it.
“w.a.n.g Zhong, if you succeed this time, let’s summon other interesting stuff. There are many magical creatures in the Dimensional World.”
w.a.n.g Zhong rolled his eyes. “You’re treating me like an expert wards master!”
The blue hexagram glowed and shone on the ritual bowl in the middle. The crushed materials with spiritual properties were set ablaze immediately.
A few wisps of smoke rose from the bowl, and a faint fragrance lingered in the air. The runes on the table seemed to have come alive. They were compressed together to form a cube. The runes and smoke served as the connection as an extremely small spatial hole opened up slowly above this runic ward.
It was done!
w.a.n.g Zhong laughed. Although he had absolute confidence in his craft and what he had learned, it was his first time constructing a ward after all, so he was fairly pleased.
This pleasure only lasted for two seconds before the power of the ward vanished all of a sudden. w.a.n.g Zhong was astounded, and his confident face fell immediately. Simba couldn’t stop laughing.
“w.a.n.g Zhong, this is what you’re so confident about?”