Chapter 78: Surging: Part 3
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Lin Sheng fell off his bed. With muscle pain all over his body and underwear drenched in sweat, he seemed like he had performed a rigorous round of exercise. But lying on the cold surface of the floor did not make him feel as drowsy as before. Instead, there was a feeling of pleasant surprises.
The priest that he had just killed was Dell Baffis, one of the admirers of Ancellia, the Sacred One, in the Snowgale Fortress. But this was not important. What was crucial was that the priest’s memory contained the knowledge system of extraordinary ability that Lin Sheng had been looking for all this while.
“Before this, there was a monster that mastered the extraordinary power in Blackfeather City, but it was ridiculously invincible. This one is a lot better.”
Lin Sheng got to his feet, dusted his clothes before putting on a jacket. He checked the time; it was 6.35, which was still early. He could not wait to immerse himself into the memories of the priest.
“Firstly, it’s a type of attack method, very much like black smoke!” The surprised expression on his face faded away, and disappointment set in slowly as he rummaged through the memories.
The priest had detailed memory about the extraordinary power. The black smoke was the combination of multiple Ashen Seals forming the extraordinary power. Just like the one he had, this black smoke required nine different types of Ashen Seals to create the Ring of the Ashen Seal, and the acquisition of the Ashen Seal must go through the sacred book, that was the Dawn Scripture, through which Lin Sheng had acquired his Ashen Seal protection before.
The Ashen Seal that Lin Sheng saw in the priest’s memories was blurry. The only Ashen Seal protection that he could see clearly through the Sacred Ring was the one he had acquired.
“Is there any other way?” Lin Sheng frowned. Not willing to give up just yet, he performed a more in-depth examination of the priest’s memories. And he had indeed made some remarkable discoveries concerning the descriptions of the souls in the temple. Sensing that he had struck gold, Lin Sheng singled out this information and studied it carefully.
The spirit of man is given by G.o.d. Like the most beautiful jigsaw puzzle, it is divided into five parts as if five guardian angels. Together, they build the sacred temple of the souls. These five parts are:
The Angel of Power representing all powers, courage, anger, hatred, and madness.
The Angel of Wisdom representing wisdom, logic, memory, and reason.
The Angel of Desire representing all deeply hidden instincts, natures, and desires
And the Angel of Fire accommodating the best sides of the souls.
Lastly, the Angel of Darkness accommodating all the ugly sides of the souls.
“The five angels?” Lin Sheng had heard about the myth of the angels before when he was on Earth. But the angel of the souls was something new to him. After digesting what he had read, he continued.
The best way to create a powerful warrior who is forever loyal to the temple and keeping the orders is to getting rid of the Angel of Darkness in the soul and engraving the light in his Angel of Desire. And the only way to engraving is through the Sacred Baptism
The more Lin Sheng read, the creepier he felt. The so-called Sacred Baptism was the process of removing a part of a person’s soul through a mysterious method and replacing it with a part of the spell caster’s soul. A master-servant relationship would be formed between the spell caster and the subject after the exchange of the souls. This relationship was clearly manifested between the priest and the temple warrior, who had been brainwashed. A priest could control a warrior through his Sacred Baptism, and this mystical spell would only be used on the elite soldiers.
“I cannot believe that this mystical spell actually exists!” A cold ran down Lin Sheng’s spine. According to his understanding form the memories, a person cast with this Sacred Baptism spell would manifest any undesirable effect. Instead, the subject would only cry, have a clear conscience, become enlightened and repent as the dark side of him was stripped away. The subject would also be totally open to the spell caster, who then could engrave his name in the Angel of Desire. The most terrifying part of this mystical spell was that the subject would retain his intelligence, emotions, memories, and personality. The difference was that he would become a fanatical loyalist of the spell caster.
“The subject will not know that he has been brainwashed if it is done directly to the soul. He will think that he is just attracted to the spell caster’s personality.” The mere thinking of this had Lin Sheng felt a chill down his spine. However, the Sacred Baptism had some strict rules to follow. Only a person with the most robust soul would ever become a priest, and only a priest with a Blackfeather birthmark could perform the Sacred Baptism. People with the Blackfeather birthmark were strong in soul, in which the size of the Angel of Darkness was naturally large.
Lin Sheng quickly examined himself but was disappointed when he found no birthmark on his body. The Sacred Baptism might be cruel, but it also depended on who the spell caster was.
Compared to the vicious and the wicked, Lin Sheng thought that he would be a far better person to master the Sacred Baptism because he would be a blessing to the society, country, and people around him. He would not trust anyone other than himself for mastering this mystical spell.
The Sacred Baptism aside, Lin Sheng had also found the only unrestricted ceremony that he could use without needing the Ring of the Ashen Seal. It was a summoning ceremony—a magic array—that could summon real creatures. Unlike the sacrificial rite that summoned the unknown dangerous beings to obtain power, this ceremony only summoned the lower covenantal beings, which were creatures that established a covenant with the spell caster. This was the most significant find that Lin Sheng had gotten.
A person only needed to make the ceremony work once, and he could subsequently summon his covenantal creatures to him using the activation phrase, which worked pretty much like having a remote call device. This ceremony was called the Vow.
Lin Sheng got out of bed and sat in front of his desk. He took out his notebook and pen and quickly jotted down the information.
The Vow ceremony required that the spell caster was of at least level 3 and had mastered the extraordinary Sacred Light, the sacred power in the temple needed in the ceremony. Other materials also needed to be prepared in advance.
Lin Sheng noted down the details and drew up the magic array. He then encrypted the activation phrase using his newly encryption method of combining pinyin, Han characters, and the Blackfeather City’s slang version of an old Rehn expression to ensure absolute security. After all, this was done and keeping the note securely, it was already seven-thirty.
“If I could complete the Vow ceremony, then I will be able to make a covenant with some more bada.s.s creatures, and this will solve the problem of controlling the pet remotely!” He was full of antic.i.p.ation. Although the Vow ceremony was an orthodox temple ritual and it would require level-3 power to use the sacred array, he believed he was not far from it as he was currently at level 2.
Lin Sheng had occasionally felt a faint warmth surging in his body whenever he meditated the Ashen Seal. Other than extraordinary abilities, the Ashen Seal had another function, which was to break through the limit, enabling warriors at their limit to transcend into the extraordinary. This was also the exclusive Limit Breaker of the temple.