Chapter 177 – King poison cauldron
w.a.n.g Lin’s eyes sparkled as he stared at the stone bridge. During these three days, he had been observing the stone bridge and still hadn’t taken one step onto it.
Aside from this stone bridge, there was nothing in this grey world.
w.a.n.g Lin pondered for a bit before waving his hand. All 42 tornados behind him suddenly stopped spinning. They turned into tens of thousands of small creatures, and then the creatures began to spread out.
w.a.n.g Lin slightly closed his eyes and used his connection with the second devil to perceive the small beasts. The small beasts scattered, leaving behind only the sound of wings fluttering. After a bit of time, even those sounds were gone.
After a very long time, he suddenly opened his eyes and flew northwest. The small creatures began to gather from all directions and reformed the tornados behind him.
Before long, w.a.n.g Lin stopped as he arrived before a stone tablet more than 30 feet tall. The tablet gave off a red light, giving it a demonic feel. There were a few small creatures on the stone tablet. They were flapping their wings and letting out buzzing sounds.
After seeing w.a.n.g Lin arrive, those small creatures flew toward him and rejoined the tornados behind him. w.a.n.g Lin saw four big words on the stone tablet — Road of No Return.
These three words contained an ancient feel. w.a.n.g Lin looked at them for a bit before s.h.i.+fting his gaze to the bottom right corner. He seriously looked at it for a while before waving his hand. A gust blew by, blowing away all the dust and dirt on the tablet and uncovering a small row of words to appear.
“I have pa.s.sed through the earth trial and captured the king creature there before arriving at this Road of No Return. This place is very interesting; if anyone in the future sees this, then consider it fate. I’ll give you one piece of advice: ponder the meaning of ‘No Return’.”
w.a.n.g Lin’s expression remained calm, but he was secretly shocked. These small words were the same as the one he saw in the black tower. They were clearly written by the same person.
From the look of these words, the earth trial was beyond easy for this person. Even the powerful king creature there was captured by him.
However, on second thought, w.a.n.g Lin narrowed his eyes. If this person had captured the king creature in the earth trial, why was it still there? There must be some lie in these words. The word “capture” implied that it now followed this person.
There was of course the chance that he really did capture it and another one was simply born after countless years.
w.a.n.g Lin wasn’t interested in whether this was true or false. His gaze returned to the words “Road of No Return” and he began to ponder.
After a long time, he turned and flew toward the stone bridge with the tornados following closely behind him.
After returning to the bridge, w.a.n.g Lin slapped his bag of holding and the devil Xu Liguo immediately flew out. He looked jealously at the small creatures and secretly complained in his heart, “So what if he has a lot of little brothers following him? I’ll just get my own followers!”
Wan Lin looked at the stone bridge and pointed at it. This time, Xu Liguo immediately sprinted toward the bridge without trying to bargain like in the past. He was full of energy as he proudly looked at the tornado and thought, “See this? This fiend still thinks I’m more important. Why wouldn’t he let number two do it instead otherwise?”
When he looked at w.a.n.g Lin, he revealed an appeasing look before flying toward the stone bridge. He flew for a long time without finding any danger and even circled it a few times before returning.
w.a.n.g Lin slightly frowned. He stretched his hand out. A small creature flew out from the tornado and landed in his palm. It looked at him with its small eyes and remained still.
w.a.n.g Lin threw the small creature toward the black stone bridge. The small creature moved three steps before stopping. w.a.n.g Lin stared at the small creature with a serious expression.
The small creature’s body trembled while it slowly turned around. Its eyes were filled with fear. Then, just as it turned around, a vortex appeared under the small creature, sucking it in. An instant later, everything returned to normal.
w.a.n.g Lin pondered for a while. He understood that the stone bridge was the key to leave this Road of No Return. He tested the bridge out with a few more small creatures, and the result was the same.
However, w.a.n.g Lin noticed that when a group of small creatures went, only one would be affected at a time while the others were not affected until the first one died. Then another small creature would be affected and so forth.
w.a.n.g Lin’s eyes sparkled as he muttered “No Return… No Return… it means that once you take a step forward, you can’t turn back…” He pondered this but still didn’t step onto the bridge.
He sat down in the lotus position next to the bridge and took out two bags of holding. One of them had a golden thread. This was the one he had stolen from the mysterious corpse while he was learning the Divine Path in the War G.o.d Shrine.
Unfortunately, there was a mysterious force on the bag that prevented his divine sense from going inside and opening it. w.a.n.g Lin knew that the bag contained someone else’s divine sense and that he had to erase it before he could open it.
However, this divine sense was too powerful; after trying a few times, w.a.n.g Lin gave up. Instead, he surrounded it with his divine sense so that the divine sense in the bag would be cut off from the outside world, making it so its owner couldn’t sense it.
Although w.a.n.g Lin wasn’t powerful enough to erase the divine sense, he still managed to hide it with his Ji Realm divine sense.
The other bag of holding was the one he had stolen from Hunchback Meng. The divine sense on there had already disappeared, meaning that Hunchback Meng was dead.
w.a.n.g Lin sneered in his heart. His eyes lit up when he opened it. This was indeed thousands of years of savings of a Soul Formation cultivator. Just spirit stones alone, there were more than 300,000 piled up like a small mountain, and all of them were high quality.
What made w.a.n.g Lin’s eyes s.h.i.+ne even more were the two pieces of stone with halos around them. They were the very rare, top quality spirit stones.
w.a.n.g Lin’s heart suddenly skipped a beat. Just these two top quality spirit stones were worth the risk of stealing from Hunchback Meng.
In addition to the spirit stone, there were several bottles. Finally, for magic treasures, there was only the green cauldron that was split in half and nothing else.
w.a.n.g Lin understood after he pondered for a bit. Hunchback Meng was trapped for a long time, so he must have used up all his treasures.
His guess was very accurate. Hunchback Meng had many treasures, and they were all Nascent level or higher. However, after trying to break through the tornados multiple times, he used up all his treasures, especially during that one time when he used ten spirit beasts as subst.i.tutes. He threw out countless treasures in that attempt. He was even willing to explode his treasures to make a path, but sadly, he still failed in the end.
It was because of this that the only magic treasure he had left was the green cauldron.
Aside from all of this, there were also many jades inside the bag of holding. w.a.n.g Lin checked them one by one, and the smile on his face got wider after each one. These jades were filled with alchemy methods, refining methods, and records of spirit beasts.
These things were very useful to the current w.a.n.g Lin. At least there wouldn’t be any more issues of not recognizing a valuable material when he sees it.
Also, Hunchback Meng specialized in alchemy and poison, so the bag contained a lot of jades that specialized in those. w.a.n.g Lin spent a long time reading them all. This made his knowledge increase by over 100 times.
There was a dark green jade that caught w.a.n.g Lin’s attention. It was a cultivation method, and its name was only one word: Underworld.
This method was described to have come from the demon G.o.d Qi, who used poison as the basis of one’s dao. There were a total of nine layers, and by layer six, even Soul Formation cultivators would not be able to resist the poison.
However, this method was very vicious. One would have to endure unimaginable pain because various poisons would have to be injected into the body to create a full poison body.
This side effect stays until one reaches the ninth layer. This was when all of the poison would be expelled from the body to form the true underworld poison, allowing a person to return to normal. Before all of that, a person would suffer deformities. The first thing that would happen was pustules would grow on the person.
After w.a.n.g Lin finished looking through it, he pondered for a bit and gave up on the idea of cultivating this. Hunchback Meng must’ve had that stench because he practiced this method. Although w.a.n.g Lin wasn’t one to care about his looks, it was described in the jade that by cultivating this method, your body would be filled with poison. There was a chance that the poison would invade your consciousness, thus turning you into a hollow sh.e.l.l that only knows how to kill.
This was the main reason why he gave up on cultivating this method. Although he couldn’t use this cultivation method, there were still many techniques in the jade that he could use if he had the poison.
As for refining poison, w.a.n.g Lin had already read the jade containing all of Hunchback Meng’s experiences, which made w.a.n.g Lin’s heart tremble with excitement.
He took out all those bottles from the bag of holding and used the jades to identify each of them. Almost all of them were poison, and only one bottle contained pills w.a.n.g Lin knew, which was the pill he had taken to prevent himself from being poisoned.
This anti poison pill was only medium quality. Only by taking a mild poison along with this pill could the pill’s effect increase.
w.a.n.g Lin put everything into his bag of holding and threw Hunchback Meng’s on the ground. Then he picked up an object and his expression became serious.
This object was Hunchback Meng’s life treasure, the green cauldron.
Although this cauldron had split in half, there was still powerful spiritual energy coming from it. However, this spiritual energy was filled with poison. The green substance that could kill divine sense made w.a.n.g Lin extra cautious when examining it.
He knew that aside from the top quality spirit stones and the green jade, the next most valuable thing in Hunchback Meng’s bag was this cauldron. After all, this cauldron was a Soul Formation cultivator’s life treasure, and it had been refined in his body for thousands of years.
When he checked the jades, there was an explanation on it. When one reaches the second layer, they require a treasure to suppress the poison in their body.
This cauldron was an imitation of the legendary King Medicine Cauldron. Although it was an imitation, the materials this green cauldron was made of were not worse than the King Medicine Cauldron’s. What made it inferior was that it couldn’t absorb the spiritual energy from tens of thousands of plants like the King Medicine Cauldron could.
This cauldron was the most important treasure of a sect in a rank 3 cultivation country. Hunchback Meng spent hundreds of years to get it. He first joined the sect and became the sect head’s personal disciple due to his talent. Then, when he got the chance to get close to the cauldron, he stole it, killed his master, and escaped to the Sea of Devils. After that, he used the cauldron as his life treasure.
He forcibly took a King Medicine Cauldron and refined it into a King Poison Cauldron. If he had managed to reach the ninth layer, then although it wouldn’t reach the level of the legendary King Medicine Cauldron, it would be pretty close. However, instead of a King Medicine Cauldron, it would be a King Poison Cauldron.
Unfortunately, he died before getting there, and due to chance, this cauldron was now in w.a.n.g Lin’s hands.
w.a.n.g Lin recalled what the jade said about this cauldron. After pondering for a bit, if he also cultivated the same technique, then after he reaches a certain level, he could devour it and make it his own life treasure. However, he had already decided to not cultivate this method, which made this cauldron hard to deal with.
w.a.n.g Lin would feel very frustrated if he couldn’t use this kind of treasure. The reason for doing all of this was to become stronger. Although he wasn’t close to reaching the Nascent Soul stage and this wouldn’t increase his chances of getting there, he had to travel through this dangerous place, and this green cauldron could definitely increase his survival rate.
w.a.n.g Lin’s face was gloomy. He raised his head and looked at the stone bridge. His eyes sparkled before he opened his mouth for the crystal sword to fly out. The sword flew around him a few times before stopping in front of him.
w.a.n.g Lin looked at the flying sword with a lingering expression on this face. He clenched his teeth and hit the crystal sword. The sword trembled for a bit before letting out a sword hymn. Then, red lines appeared on the body of the sword.
This was the soul essence blood he had used to blood refine this sword back in Zhao. Although both his and the sword’s bodies were destroyed, the blood refining technique was very tyrannical. It forcibly carved the soul essence blood onto the sword’s spirit.
This sword spirit was originally without shape or intelligence, but it was inside w.a.n.g Lin’s soul for so many years, and it underwent a change when w.a.n.g Lin became a soul devourer. The sword spirit gained a hint of intelligence and was preserved.
It wasn’t until w.a.n.g Lin used the War G.o.d Shrine’s refining technique to make it another body that it completed its transformation.
It could be said that this flying sword had done much for w.a.n.g Lin. Countless people had died to this sword. The sword had garnered so much killing intent that it could now be considered a killing treasure.
w.a.n.g Lin revealed a serious expression while moving his right hand over the sword. The blood lines on the sword became even more noticeable until the sword cracked along those lines and fell to the ground in pieces.
There were only lines of blood floating in the air now, and the image of a sword would appear and disappear.
w.a.n.g Lin took a deep breath before slapping his bag of holding. The reaction furnace flew out. He threw the two halfs of the green cauldron into the reaction furnace. A green gas immediately covered the reaction furnace while sizzling sounds came from inside.
w.a.n.g Lin’s eyes became cold. His hand formed seals that he placed on the reaction furnace. The reaction furnace began to spin faster and faster until it even caused the green gas surrounding it to spin, creating a green tornado.
w.a.n.g Lin reached out and grabbed all of the shattered pieces of the crystal sword. He picked up one piece and stared at the rapidly spinning reaction furnace. After a very long time, he threw one piece into the fast-spinning reaction furnace.
The moment it entered, the crystal piece melted and mixed with what was inside the furnace.
w.a.n.g Lin calmly threw the pieces into the furnace, and after one hour, all of the pieces were inside the furnace. w.a.n.g Lin let out a sigh of relief. Then, his hand formed seals and he placed them on the reaction furnace.
After doing this, the reaction furnace started spinning much faster. Now he couldn’t see what was inside anymore; there was only a spanning ma.s.s. The green vortex looked like it had stopped, but if one looked closely, they would see that it had not stopped moving. It just moved so fast that it looked like it was still.
w.a.n.g Lin muttered, “Still not enough!” With his divine sense, he could see that the heat created from the spinning of the reaction furnace wasn’t enough. This heat had only caused the green cauldron to turn slightly red, but it hadn’t melted yet.
w.a.n.g Lin’s eyes lit up as several objects flew out of his bag of holding. He didn’t even look at them as he grabbed one and accurately threw it into the reaction furnace.
When the object fell in, there was a puff of green smoke. Although the reaction furnace wasn’t spinning faster, the temperature inside it increased by one fold. The green cauldron inside it was now completely red.
But there was still no sign of it melting.
The object he threw inside was a special refining material of the War G.o.d Shrine, the Chicken Blood Stone. When stimulated by spiritual energy, it can generate high temperatures.
If too many are used, then instead of increasing temperature, it lowers it instead. Which was why w.a.n.g Lin put them away after using a few.
The inside of the reaction furnace had reached a terrifying temperature, but the green cauldron was still just burning red with no signs of melting.
w.a.n.g Lin pondered for a bit before throwing out Purple Moon Vines, Shattered Flower Stones, Blue Moon Wood, and dozens of other War G.o.d Shrine refining materials. After these things were thrown into the reaction furnace one by one, a multicolored cloud of smoke rose from the reaction furnace in the shape of a cauldron.
This cauldron of smoke shattered the green vortex, but then, in a mysterious manner, it went back inside the reaction furnace, dragging the green gas along with it.
A series of thunderous roars came from the reaction furnace and cracks began to appear on it. w.a.n.g Lin focused himself and watched the green cauldron inside. The green cauldron had started to melt, but the speed at which it melted was very slow. At this rate, there was a high chance that the reaction furnace would shatter before the cauldron was finished melting.
w.a.n.g Lin’s eyes sparkled. He raised his right hand and a blue flame appeared, causing the temperature around him to immediately drop. This was the underworld flame created when he completed the underworld ascension cultivation method.
This ice flame had already fused with w.a.n.g Lin’s golden core, so it will never disappear, but if it was overused, it would damage his golden core.
This was why he had only used this as his ace before. He wouldn’t casually use it.
Seeing that the reaction furnace was at its limit and about to shatter, he sent the blue flame forward.
w.a.n.g Lin was highly concentrated as he controlled the flame to slowly move forward. He had to make sure that there weren’t any fluctuations in the flame to maintain it at a constant, low temperature.
At this moment, the number of cracks on the reaction furnace suddenly increased, but before they could spread, they were surrounded by the ice flame, solidifying the furnace.
After just these few breaths, w.a.n.g Lin was covered in sweat. He had taken a big risk. If he controlled the flame well, it would help keep the reaction furnace together, but if he messed up, it would increase the speed of the reaction furnace shattering.
Right now, thanks to the reinforcement from the ice flame, the cracking of the reaction furnace was slowed down. However, if he didn’t limit how cold the flame was, then it would affect the melting of the green cauldron inside. This made w.a.n.g Lin even more focused, because he needed to keep the temperature at a point where it would help keep the furnace stable but wouldn’t affect the melting of the green cauldron.
The green cauldron slowly melted. w.a.n.g Lin didn’t dare to relax this entire time. After an unknown amount of time had pa.s.sed, the green cauldron completely melted into a puddle of dark green liquid.
w.a.n.g Lin let out a sigh of relief as his hand formed a seal that landed on the reaction furnace. This caused the reaction furnace to stop spinning. w.a.n.g Lin reached out and pulled out all of the green liquid.
Inside the liquid, the image of a small cauldron would appear and disappear. w.a.n.g Lin knew that this was the cauldron spirit of this King Poison Cauldron. Without any hesitation, he waved his hand and the sword spirit floating in the air merged with the green liquid.
The cauldron spirit merged with it as well. w.a.n.g Lin’s expression was serious. The two spirits didn’t act as w.a.n.g Lin predicted and attacked each other. After some resistance, the cauldron spirit turned into green gas and entered the sword spirit.
After the two merged, w.a.n.g Lin finally relaxed. His hand pointed a few times while the green liquid slowly solidified according to w.a.n.g Lin’s will into the shape of a 6-inch shortsword.
Two rows of countless small thorns grew out from the two sides of the sword. They gave off a green glow that looked very stunning.
The flying sword had completely solidified and was now dark green. The sword also contained the poison of the King Poison Cauldron. If one was. .h.i.t by it, if the sword didn’t immediately kill them, the poison eventually would.
Even if a Nascent Soul cultivator were to get hit by this flying sword, it would be hard for them to escape death. After all, the poison in this sword was from Hunchback Meng’s King Poison Cauldron.
However, after reforming this sword, he no longer dared to swallow it and instead nurtured it in his golden core. Even when he uses it, he will have to be careful because if he is. .h.i.t by it, it will be hard for him to live as well.
There was no antidote for the poison of this King Poison Cauldron. Aside from Hunchback Meng, no one could cure it.
w.a.n.g Lin was confident in its power, particularly the thorns on the sides of the sword. With just a thought, the thorns could break off to attack the enemy, making it very hard to guard against.