Chapter 1124: Primordial Slaughter Sword; Soul Imprint; Setting Sail; Divine Origin City Shut (I)

At first glance, it appeared as little more than a cold point of light suspended in the air. Only under closer scrutiny could one make out the weapon. The sword's hilt and guard were black as ink, while its blade was crimson. Its edge was honed so sharp and the tip so fine that the eye could scarcely tell where the blade ended.

This was the weapon that had once shaken the cultivation world: the Godslayer Blood Sword. Well, in all fairness, this was not its true name, but a moniker it had earned from the rumor that it had once slain an Ascendant.

Luo Chen studied it without immediately reaching out. He was no longer the broke Qi Refinement cultivator who once struggled to survive in Dahe Market. As a Sage, he now possessed more enchanted treasures than he could easily count, yet only three were truly worth his attention.

The first was naturally the Primordial Unity Cauldron, the life-bound enchanted treasure he had nurtured for many years. Its foundation had already been extraordinary before it absorbed the mysterious gray light and the power of heavenly lightning. Even after advancing into a True Artifact, it remained as responsive as an extension of his own body, and its abilities far surpassed those of an ordinary treasure. In battle, the cauldron could imprison enemies and suppress even powerful weapons. Outside combat, it could temper his subsidiary soul and serve as a furnace for both alchemy and artifact creation. Aside from Luo Chen's superb alchemy skill, the cauldron deserved much of the credit for allowing him to refine the Great Soul Pill and Grand Origin Pill in such a short time.

The second treasure was the White Tiger puppet. Its strength rivaled that of a late-stage Sage, so bringing it under his control would immediately give Luo Chen an assistant comparable to a grand cultivator. That prospect was the reason he had cultivated a subsidiary soul and devoted so much time to studying puppet techniques. Unfortunately, the same power that made the puppet so valuable also made it exceedingly dangerous. The White Tiger soul within it was far too strong for Luo Chen to enslave. Even Han Zhan had expended tremendous effort to bring the puppet under partial control, and despite his superior divine soul and mastery of puppetry, he had never managed to draw out its full strength.

Beyond that, there was simply no way to refine the puppet. Little Jade Mountain did not just house Luo Chen, and a puppet with such power would be impossible to hide once it was taken out. Moreover, even that brief clash of Domains with Zhou Yunshen had likely drawn the attention of every vigilant cultivator nearby. If Luo Chen revealed the White Tiger Puppet here, it would only invite further scrutiny and unnecessary trouble. Thus, he had decided to keep it away for the time being.

That left the third treasure: the Godslayer Blood Sword. In terms of raw power, it was no less formidable than the White Tiger puppet. Although it had not truly reached the level of a spirit treasure, any True Artifact capable of killing an Ascendant could not be far from that threshold. More importantly, the sword was ultimately still only a True Artifact and could therefore be forcibly refined! Even if Luo Chen failed to subdue the spirit within and destroyed it in the attempt, the sword's inherent power would remain. And since Blood Nightmare had wielded it despite being only an early-stage Sage, Luo Chen saw no reason he could not do the same.

His confidence was not born of arrogance. He had always possessed strength far beyond others in the same realm, and that strength came almost entirely from his own abilities rather than from powerful external treasures. To put it bluntly, he had never owned an offensive weapon worthy of his cultivation. Back when he was still a Qi Refinement cultivator, he had relied primarily on spells, and that remained true after he became an Initiate. Although he had acquired many treasures during the Golden Core Realm, he had never found an offensive enchanted treasure that truly suited him.

Over all these years, only the Mystic Flame Sword had been reasonably compatible with him. Unfortunately, it had been crudely made, and its tier had been far too low to accompany him much further along his path. Sadly but inevitably, it had long since been destroyed.

The Godslayer Blood Sword was different. It ranked among the finest supreme-grade True Artifacts and might even possess the potential to evolve into a spirit treasure. Its power was formidable enough to kill an Ascendant, yet still not impossible for someone at Luo Chen's level to control. Also, unlike the Heaven Refiner Cauldron, it did not threaten to shatter the moment he pushed its power too far. Thus, once he brought the sword under his control, his arsenal would definitely rise to an entirely different level.

As for how to deal with the sword's spirit, Luo Chen already had a few ideas. As he considered them one by one, the last trace of hesitation disappeared from his face.

He sent his divine consciousness to slowly enter the blood sword. The dense crimson light surrounding the blade resisted him at every turn, but it could not drive him back. The sword remained imprisoned within the Primordial Unity Cauldron, where Luo Chen held absolute control. No matter how fiercely it struggled, it had nowhere to flee.

After a while of steadily pressing deeper, Luo Chen found the faint spark of spirit light. So this is the spirit of the Godslayer Blood Sword?

It resembled neither man nor beast; in fact, it had no recognizable form, and it lay curled tightly around itself like an unborn creature still enclosed within a placenta. A faint stench of blood seeped from it.

Luo Chen frowned. He had never encountered anything of its kind. It could be anything, really—a demonic beast, a devil beast, an artificially created species, or even one of the naturally sentient sprites born from the world itself. Whatever it was, identification could wait. For now, he needed to find a weakness he could exploit.

Time passed little by little, and it took Luo Chen a long and painstaking examination in order to reveal what had been hidden within it. There were three layers of seals in total! Only the outermost seal had been broken, and corrosive blood filth covered the damaged area.

This must be Grand Elder Blood Sea's doing.

The man had once attempted to refine the sword, only to suffer a terrible backlash that bound his cultivation to the weapon. And it was through this connection that Blood Nightmare later inherited both. The second seal, on the other hand, had not been broken, but it was riddled with openings.

Did Blood Nightmare create these? If so, I may be able to use them. I might even be able to slip my soul imprint through one and plant it directly onto the spirit.

He slowly withdrew his divine consciousness as the full picture came together. Blood Nightmare had spent years trying to master the Godslayer Blood Sword and still fallen short. The broken seals were proof of both his efforts and his failure. Luo Chen, however, would not be starting from the beginning. After all, Blood Nightmare had already carved a path through the sword's defenses.

***

Three days later, Luo Chen sat cross-legged before the Primordial Unity Cauldron with his eyes closed and his hands locked in a seal. Within his Purple Mansion, the tiny Nascent Soul mirrored every movement with its plump white hands. As his breathing settled into a steady rhythm, the muscles in his face began to tremble, and golden light slowly gathered between his brows.

This radiance condensed into the shape of a flame: the soul imprint Luo Chen had developed based on the principles of the puppet techniques he had learned. Once planted within a puppet, it would establish a far more convenient control than strings, mana, or even threads of divine consciousness ever could. Naturally, an ordinary puppet master could never create such a high-level soul imprint. Only someone who had mastered the art of splitting the soul and possessed a powerful divine soul foundation could accomplish such a feat.

The moment the soul imprint emerged, he did not relax in the slightest and sent it straight into the cauldron. The next moment, the sword seemed to realize what was happening and radiated spirit light in an attempt to repel it.

Luo Chen gave a cold snort. "Restrain!"

The Primordial Unity Cauldron trembled at his command. Radiance of five colors streamed through its interior and wound around the sword like countless silken bands until the blade was completely sealed beneath them.

And that was not all.

PZZZZTT!

Silvery-white lightning crackled through the cauldron and lashed the space around the sword like a storm of whips. Within those brilliant arcs flickered faint threads of black. The silver lightning was merely the outward manifestation of the tribulation power absorbed by the cauldron; its true essence was the black lightning that had once taken the form of a terrifying lightning beast. Luo Chen would not dare to draw upon that power recklessly in battle, and now, he only drew forth the faintest trace.

Under the combined pressure of the five-colored restraints and the black lightning, the sword shook violently and rang without pause. To Luo Chen, however, those cries sounded less like defiance than helpless wailing.

Luo Chen chuckled lightly. "Just submit to me!"

He guided the soul imprint through one of the openings Blood Nightmare had carved into the second seal. The moment it touched the sword spirit and began to merge with it, a torrent of fragmented memories poured into Luo Chen's mind.

He first saw a small beast emerging from its mother's womb. Before it even drew its first breath, it had turned on its eight siblings and devoured them one by one. Its vicious nature had revealed itself from the moment of its birth.

The vision then shifted. A radiant sword emerged from a furnace and was carried to Weapon Mountain, where it absorbed the surrounding energy and slowly honed its edge. One day, the sword burst free of the mountain and shot into a world untouched by light. Countless exotic beasts inhabited that dark realm, and all manner of people came seeking to subdue the sword. A few held it briefly, but ultimately none ever escaped that world. In the end, every one of them became a sacrifice to the sword. Among them was an elderly man dressed in crimson robes embroidered with plum flowers. Something about the style seemed vaguely familiar to Luo Chen. Unlike those who had come before him, the old man had seized the sword with his bare hands.

The memories shifted again. A mindless dragon soul carried the sword out of the dark realm between its jaws, but the sword broke free along the way and eventually fell into the hands of a woman. Unable to refine it, she instead used it as bait to lure out a far greater prize. Yet for all its sharpness, the sword managed nothing more than to carve a scar between the brows of a man who appeared middle-aged. Then, under the influence of yet another divine consciousness, it was forced to fly back into that dark world, where it remained until someone brought it out once more.

The visions also contained the many ways its former owners had attempted to refine it. Some had bound it with blood, while others had restrained it with mana or tried to enslave its spirit directly. A few had even offered their own flesh as nourishment. After enduring one act of coercion after another, the sword's spirit had become twisted and corrupted; it was so utterly steeped in concentrated bloodlust that even its mere presence carried an overwhelming stench of blood.

Now, Luo Chen had subjected it to yet another attempt at enslavement. The curled spirit slowly opened its eyes and let its bestial pupils fix upon him with both cruelty and a strangely profound attachment. After staring at him for a moment, it closed its eyes once more.

At the same instant, Luo Chen felt the sword respond to him. I succeeded?