A Hundred Lineages atop the Tower – Raising a Mountain of Corpses to Summon Ghosts
Jing Qian was completely absorbed in Book Mountain, nearly unable to pull himself free.
He read the Annals of the High Empress with meticulous care, as though standing in the vantage point of Empress E'gao herself, seeing, feeling, and understanding the world through the perspective of a supreme cultivator whose gender, cultivation, status, and age were all vastly different from his own.
Every angle gave rise to new insights.
It was a joy beyond joy, a happiness bordering on bliss.
Just then, a young palace maiden in a dark-purple embroidered court robe stepped through the doorway.
She cast one glance at Jing Qian, who stood utterly still before a bookshelf, then quietly turned away without disturbing him. Instead, she walked toward the opposite shelves.
On the other side of this 17th-level library, directly across from where the Annals were stored, stood an even larger bank of shelves. The jade slips here far outnumber those of the Annals.
This opposing shelf was kept beside the Annals for one reason:
The material stored here directly corresponded to and supplemented the content of the Annals themselves.
For most readers who came to the 17th floor, the two sides had to be read in parallel.
The girl moved with practiced ease, plucking a jade slip from the shelf and reading it intently.
Her violet robe was a symbol of high-level clearance within Book Mountain.
While nowhere near Jing Qian's golden robe, granting him unlimited full-access her clearance still allowed her to freely read all books in three entire library tiers, one of which was this 17th level.
She focused on the jade slip, immersing her consciousness into it. But the content was abstruse, convoluted, and archaic before long; her head throbbed, and her spirit grew drowsy.
She looked back toward Jing Qian, who remained perfectly calm and unmoving, and for a moment she simply could not accept what she was seeing. A ripple passed through her heart.
"Is he… pretending?"
"Who on earth can actually read the Annals of the High Empress like that?"
"I get a headache just reading the exam prep booklets; if I opened the Annals themselves, I'd probably faint from information overload."
"If I had even half his ability, I'd pass the imperial exam guaranteed!"
Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to continue reading. Her jade slip contained an endless sea of terrifying exam questions:
"Actions that violate the Harmony of Heaven incur backlash. From the eight options below Heaven, Earth, Black, Yellow, Universe, Wilds, Chaos, Origin, which trigger the Empress's Heaven-Mandate rules and result in immolation by karmic flames?"
"What taboos exist when rearing a Red-Flame Golden Nemean Beast? Choose one or more from the following eight options."
"After irrigating the core eye of an Eight-Trigram Spirit-Locking Formation with Kui-water essence, which trigram transformations occur?"
…
In the Wuji Celestial Dynasty, the system governing the promotion and assessment of Lingguan (spirit officials) was strict and enormous.
Low-ranked officials could rise through accumulated merit, cultivation, or seniority, but could also leap ahead through the Imperial Exam, the Empress's official selection process.
High-ranked officials' descendants, even those with hereditary positions, must still pass the exam to receive the true mantle and its divine authority.
In short:
Anyone who aspired to survive or rise within the Celestial Bureaucracy had to face the exam.
And the exam drew its questions from the infinite knowledge stored in the Annals.
From that foundation, countless monstrous trick-questions were derived. Even mid- and low-ranked officials with real strength rarely passed.
The girl before the Annals was reading from the public servant exam archives, past papers, mock questions, and official explanations. After a million years of accumulation, the archive had grown so enormous that it eclipsed the Annals themselves.
If she could just understand the Annals properly, she wouldn't need to spend time grinding through exam papers.
But that was exactly the difficulty.
Though Jing Qian moved through the Annals with effortless clarity, reading faster, deeper, and more blissfully the longer he went, that was only possible because:
He possessed Worldly Insight and his Three-Life Samsara Eye, both peerless cognitive artifacts.
Even in the vast Wuji Dynasty, very few geniuses could actually read the original Annals without collapsing.
Each jade slip of the ten-thousand-volume Annals contained overwhelming cascades of information; an ordinary cultivator opening one without proper mental protections would have their consciousness shattered by the data flood.
Thus, though everyone knew Book Mountain contained the road to heaven…
Getting to the mountain, finding the right books, and actually reading them each step was its own nearly insurmountable barrier.
During this entire process, the great aristocratic clans naturally held an overwhelming head start.
This, too, was a disguised form of class monopoly.
A girl who could wear a purple robe and study official selection exam papers already stood ahead of ninety-nine percent of all competitors.
Yet compared to Jing Qian, who directly read the Annals themselves, she was separated by an impossible gulf.
Jing Qian, however, knew none of this.
He simply treated reading the Annals of the High Empress as an essential part of his cultivation.
Not only the Annals, but he had already decided that in this Book Mountain, he would take root, read as much as he could, read well, and deepen his foundation.
Having finished the Geography Volume, he had now completed the History Volume.
The record-keeping tradition of the Wuji Celestial Dynasty was rigorous to the extreme; the historiographic lineage was absolutely complete.
Just the Empress's daily court record, the Diary of Attending the Empress, filled over two hundred jade slips.
The History Volume began with the moment Empress E'gao ascended to fourth-rank Star-Seizer, establishing her first divine nation, and traced her rise all the way to becoming a first-rank Empress.
Along the way, her divine nation grew from a small mountain-realm kingdom into a power dominating the entire Northern Heaven.
A million years of history were narrated through a blend of annalistic and biographical formats; no memorable event, war, or figure was omitted.
It was full of countless joys and sorrows, triumphs and tragedies.
Jing Qian's favorite part was the biographies of the 2,724 High Spirit Officials of the Celestial Dynasty.
The historians who wrote the biographies of these second-rank and above officials all wielded marvelous literary skill, well-versed in the art of "satisfying literature."
They depicted each mighty cultivator as the protagonist of an epic rise, their struggles and breakthroughs gripping and vividly colored.
Jing Qian read them with utter fascination.
After spending a full month on the History Volume, he now understood the Wuji Celestial Dynasty better than almost anyone living within it.
He grasped their administrative system, networks of interest, factional structure, cultural norms, values, and long-term strategies.
Though he had never set foot in the Celestial Dynasty, he understood it more thoroughly than the vast majority of its own citizens.
A strong anticipation for that realm rose in his heart.
He would, sooner or later, visit the Heavenly Capital of the Empress.
Pulling his thoughts out of the Annals, he prepared to turn to the next volume, but to his surprise, he noticed a purple-robed girl standing not far from him.
Seeing him regain awareness, the young lady bowed and gestured politely.
Jing Qian immediately understood and said:
"Ah, my apologies."
He put the jade slip down and stepped aside from the shelf containing the History Volume.
He had inadvertently been blocking her.
The girl, clearly well-educated and well-mannered, bowed in return and picked up a jade slip.
But unlike Jing Qian, she could not simply open it freely and absorb its contents.
She acted as though facing a great enemy, gathering her full mental strength to withstand the torrent of information inside.
The moment that overwhelming stream crashed over her, her vision darkened; her face flushed as though drunk; her body swayed.
Still, she clung to her last thread of clarity, trying to extract the one specific answer she needed.
But in the end, she failed.
Though she, too, was at the Fuling Realm with deep cultivation roots, compared to Jing Qian, the gap was immeasurable.
Failing to extract what she needed from the Annals, she had no choice but to seek another solution.
Her eyes drifted toward Jing Qian, who had once again sunk into serene reading, and she quietly stepped to his side, waiting.
She could not even read a single jade volume properly, yet this young man consumed an entire slip in half an hour.
As Jing Qian was about to reach for the next jade text, the girl finally spoke:
"Greetings, sir. I am Lady An of the An Clan An Ran. Forgive my impertinence in disturbing you."
If she had said "An Clan woman" before he read the History Volume, Jing Qian would have had no idea what that meant.
But now, after devouring the biographies of the High Spirit Officials, he immediately knew she was a direct descendant of An Jian, the Heavenly-Appointed Minister of Revenue.
An Jian had attained the Dao 5,700 years ago, rising from a commoner under the Celestial Dynasty, climbing step by step into high office.
He now held the upper first-rank title of Shangshu Ling, a second-rank powerhouse, and the man controlling the Empire's entire economy, one of the most powerful figures in the dynasty.
A true symbol of the dynasty's meritocratic ideal.
As his direct descendant, this young woman was naturally born into the uppermost aristocracy.
Jing Qian replied:
"What guidance does Lady An seek?"
An Ran bowed again:
"Sir, I am preparing for the upcoming official selection examination.
Grandfather hired tutors for my studies, but the practice questions they assigned are extremely difficult.
I have searched Book Mountain for a long time, but two questions still elude me."
"I saw how easily Sir reads the Annals, so… I dared approach.
Would sir be willing to help me with these two questions?"
"For each question, I am prepared to pay a gold-jade coin."
She drew out a special gold slip bearing the written questions.
The currency system of the Wuji Dynasty was unique, ranging from white jade to gold jade, each coin corresponding to a wisp of life-flame of the same color.
Two gold jades were not cheap.
But Jing Qian did not care; he took the slip casually and scanned it with his consciousness.
The questions were indeed fiendishly tricky, built around the History Volume.
Without memorizing the entire Annals, scoring well was nearly impossible.
Fortunately, he had just finished reading the History Volume.
With answers fresh in mind, these problems posed no difficulty at all.
Jing Qian lifted his hand and filled in the correct answers on the gold slip.
He also corrected the three questions An Ran had gotten wrong, then returned the slip to her.
An Ran received it, reviewed it carefully, and her eyes lit up.
"Many thanks for your help, sir. May I know your esteemed surname?"
"When I leave Book Mountain, I will send the payment to your residence atop the noble towers."
Jing Qian waved his hand.
"It was nothing. Lady An need not concern herself."
He neither accepted payment nor gave his name.
In the next moment, he had already sunk back into the jade slip in his hand, ignoring her entirely.
Seeing how cold and distant he was, barely responding to her, An Ran pouted faintly, gave a polite bow, and walked out of the pavilion.
Her task was complete.
Having been battered by the flood of information in the Annals' original text, her divine sense was severely drained.
She left Book Mountain directly and reappeared in her boudoir.
With a wave of magic, she summoned an attendant nanny.
"Mama, send this gold slip to my tutor and ask him to grade it."
"And also just now on the seventeenth level of Book Mountain, I met a gentleman in a golden robe who could freely read the original Annals of the High Empress.
Go fetch the steward and have him find out which family he belongs to."
"Yes, Miss Sun."
The nanny departed.
An Ran walked over to a massive floor-to-ceiling window, lay comfortably on a reclining chair, and stared outside in deep thought.
From her vantage point, one could see that her chamber stood a thousand zhang above the ground at the summit of a colossal sky-piercing tower.
This was the absolute heart of the Wuji Celestial Dynasty, the core of Heavenly Capital Star.
The landscape of the dynasty consisted of nine smaller stars arranged around Heavenly Capital Star, ten celestial bodies in total.
This tower was the ancestral estate of the An Clan, one of the dynasty's ultra-elite families, a Responding-Heaven Tower, a structure only the mightiest aristocracies could build.
It could attract and channel the dynasty's world-energy and had countless wondrous uses.
And around the An Clan's tower, many other sky-towers rose into the heavens, each representing a family that had once produced a High Spirit Official worthy of a full imperial biography.
These families were known as the Hundred Apex Bloodlines.
Any one of the hundred possessed foundations no weaker than the Ying Clan.
And among them, the Ministry of Revenue and Clan stood at its peak power and influence at its height.
Jing Qian was so outstanding that, simply by visiting Book Mountain once, he had already formed a faint karmic connection with one of these apex clans.
But he knew none of this.
He was simply reading quietly.
As he took in more knowledge, his spiritual consciousness felt as if it were being refined anew.
His entire aura deepened; even the Saint Manifestation behind him grew more condensed.
More importantly, the Sumeru Dao Stele reacted to the massive amounts of knowledge he was absorbing.
He could clearly sense that with enough knowledge, the stele would undergo another evolution.
The anticipation thrilled him.
So far, his Life Stele had evolved twice.
The first time, it reforged his Life Pattern and elevated his Heavenly Mandates.
The second time, it granted three title slots and refined the titles he already possessed.
Each evolution had transformed the entire structure of his cultivation.
A third evolution would surely bring something even more miraculous.
Three months passed.
Jing Qian finished the entire Annals of the High Empress.
He felt reborn, his inner world surging with newfound strength.
Returning to the physical world, he realized his spiritual sense had been tempered and dramatically increased by at least fifty percent.
The impact was immediate.
He waved a hand, and the Sumeru Immortal Sword-Foetus flew thirty zhang from his body, far superior to before.
It still couldn't compare to the complete fusion of the Yinji Immortal Sword-Foetus, but it was a massive improvement nonetheless.
Books truly held the road to heaven.
Books truly held the essence of the Dao.
For the first time, he understood: reading was an immensely powerful form of cultivation.
He stood up, stretched his long, stiff limbs, and looked toward his new disciple, Shengyu, still reading.
Armed with knowledge, Jing Qian now had the uncanny sensation of glimpsing the "god within the heart."
Looking at anything, he could naturally see straight through to its essence.
This was not the clairvoyant power of the Three-Lives Eye,
but understanding born from grasping the underlying logic of all things.
In a world where power ultimately returned to oneself, learning could still change destiny.
In Jing Qian's eyes, Shengyu's cultivation process was completely transparent.
He was using the Yanfudao ghost-driving lineage to re-refine the Flame Mara.
The one-Mandate Heavenly Demon was transforming from a Spiritual Construct into Shengyu's Life-Ghost.
Once the refinement succeeded, the Flame Mara would become his Heavenly Mandate, an external spirit refined inward, fully absorbed.
A third-rank Spiritual Construct becoming a Heavenly-Mandate-level life-ghost meant no loss of strength and a leap in foundational quality.
Before long, flames of Burning Heaven rose from Shengyu's body, and a faint Human Emperor Fengshan Manifestation appeared.
He spoke:
"Master, please aid me in achieving the Dao!"
Jing Qian had long anticipated this moment.
With a full-force strike from the Yinji Sword-Foetus, he shattered Shengyu's old power at its roots.
Shengyu then detonated his Lifespan life-pattern, dropping his Life-Origin power back to the White-Tooth stage.
His entire cultivation collapsed by seventy to eighty percent.
His realm plunged back to ninth-rank Fixing Fate.
He had destroyed all his previous cultivation, intending to rebuild himself from the foundation up, following the Yanfu Netherwheel Dao Manual.
Such boldness was astonishing.
At ninth rank, he already had two Heavenly Mandates and a third-rank life-ghost faintly resembling a true Dao-Heir.
Exhaling in relief, Shengyu exited his cultivation state and bowed:
"Thank you, Master. I may leave seclusion for now."
Jing Qian nodded, took Shengyu, and bid farewell to Old Snake.
Then the two vanished.
Old Snake flipped the Ghost-Origin Palace back into its serpent form, returned to the white snake matriarch, and asked:
"The new Master has limitless potential. Should we entrust the Life-Hearth to him as well?"
The white snake shook her head.
"Wait until he passes the Yanfu trial."
"I suspect the previous Dao-Heirs never warned him.
We should not interfere too deeply in this matter."
"Yanfu Dao is nothing like what it was in Zhongshentian.
At present, it is little more than a rotting pit.
The sooner we cut our ties, the better."
Old Snake let out a long sigh and said no more.
...
On the deserted island, Luo Tian used the flesh of a true dragon's offspring as the main ingredient.
He prepared another grand feast, employing all sixteen of the Chef King Pavilion's secret cooking methods: roasting, baking, pan-frying, stir-frying, deep-frying, sautéing, steaming, boiling, stewing, braising, simmering, glazing, quick-frying, marinating, smoking, and more.
He had already sealed in the freshness and fragrance long ago, waiting patiently for the two Dao-friends to return.
When Jing Qian and Shengyu returned from the core of the world-qi, they arrived just in time to enjoy the meal.
Even Ying Hao, born of imperial blood, had never enjoyed treatment on par with having a Chef King Pavilion master personally serve him.
The three teenagers quickly worked up an appetite and ate until their bellies were round.
A true dragon's corpse was saturated with powerful world-qi and essence, an enormous tonic for them all.
Jing Qian's cultivation rose by dozens of Purple-Pupil Life-Essence units on the spot.
He then said:
"Shengyu, your next step is to re-practice the Revolving Heavenly Son Seal and complete your Spirit-Construct forging."
"Just follow me."
"Old Luo, there are four dragon corpses left. Handle them at your leisure."
"I need to take care of something in the Sea of Wronged Souls."
"Go wait for me in Hunzhou for a few days."
"When we're done, we'll go wander through Juzhou."
"I'm getting tired of seafood, time to find some mountain delicacies."
"Alright, Dao-master. I'll follow your arrangements."
Luo Tian packed up his mobile kitchen, the chairs and stools included, and drifted away leisurely toward Hunzhou in a streak of escape-light.
Jing Qian grabbed Ying Hao and vanished from the island with a single flash.
When they reappeared, they were already above one of the Ten Great Perilous Grounds of the Yingfu Tuo Realm: the Sea of Wronged Souls.
Jing Qian was extremely familiar with this place.
When his cultivation had been low, he had come here many times to harvest ghosts and accumulate Life-Ghosts for the Hell Scroll.
He had deep dealings with the two siblings here: the Ghost Emperor Wuchang and the Ghost Mother Wusheng.
After their last deal, where he'd used the Wuchang Temple as leverage, they'd basically become "friends rather than enemies."
The Sea of Wronged Souls was originally the Yellow Springs Palace, one of the core assets of the Yanfudao ghost-driving lineage.
This extremely powerful lower-first-grade Spirit-Construct was equal in rank to the Yanfu Palace buried in the Sea of Spiritual Clarity, and to Old Snake's Ghost-Origin Palace, all core structures of the sect.
When Yanfudao fell into calamity, the Ghost Emperor Wuchang stole it away, used it to ascend to second-grade Ghost Emperor, and in this place opened a vast ghost-domain, forming what is now the Sea of Wronged Souls.
For Jing Qian and Shengyu, two newly ascended ghost-driving disciples, this sea was an excellent training ground.
But now Jing Qian was a Fuling-realm cultivator; his Saintly True Form activated his status and power completely different from before.
This time, he returned to the Sea of Wronged Souls not to sneak around, but openly, to visit the Ghost Emperor.
The moment they appeared, a black-jade carriage drawn by a ghost-dragon rushed out from the sea below.
The two youths fearlessly boarded the carriage and were carried deep inside.
Jing Qian feared nothing; his strength was overwhelming; he was the acting master of Yanfudao.
Ying Hao, for his part, was fully confident in his imperial bloodline, believing no one in the Yingfu Tuo Realm would dare harm him.
The carriage brought them to the front of the Yellow Springs Palace.
They stepped inside.
The Ghost Emperor Wuchang had already been waiting.
Seeing them, he spoke first:
"Master No-Money. True-Heir Shengyu. What have you come for?"
Jing Qian cupped his hands.
"Greetings, Ghost Emperor senior.
My disciple and I seek suitable ghosts from the Sea of Wronged Souls to fortify our cultivation.
We ask for your support."
Strictly speaking, the Ghost Emperor was undeniably a senior of the Yanfudao ghost-driving lineage, a figure ranked higher than true disciples, second only to the Yanfuzi himself.
He had anticipated their request.
He said:
"For our ghost-driving lineage to produce even one Yanfuzi is no small feat.
The previous generation belonged to the 'Death-Sealing' branch; before that, the 'Meat-Banquet' branch of Wuyan."
"It is only fair that our lineage finally receives its turn."
"Your request is reasonable."
"However, the Sea of Wronged Souls is now independent.
Even for you, I cannot allow excessive demands."
"My sister has just cleaned it out.
There are fewer than a hundred thousand ghosts of grade seven or higher left."
"I can give you thirty percent at most, just… don't be too ruthless."
Jing Qian laughed.
"Senior Ghost Emperor is generous. I don't need that many!"
With that, he took Ying Hao and left.
The two Yanfudao heirs separated.
Ying Hao went to find a place to refine the Revolving Heavenly Son Seal.
Jing Qian flashed and arrived at the deepest core of the Sea of Wronged Souls.
There, he summoned his Reincarnation Disk Spirit-Construct and the Hell Scroll Heavenly Mandate simultaneously.
Together, the two powers manifested the mysterious god-object: The Corpse Mountain.
The moment it appeared, the ghosts throughout the sea went insane, lunging toward it.
But Jing Qian unleashed a ray of clear light from the Reincarnation Disk, locking the Corpse Mountain inside a barrier.
Masses of ghosts could only press themselves against the light they could not enter.
Jing Qian stepped onto the Corpse Mountain and looked toward the ghosts outside.
He reached out, grabbed a seventh-grade ghost, and tossed it onto the mountain.
When the ghost touched the Corpse Mountain's divine power, something remarkable happened:
A new body manifested
Neither living nor dead, similar to a zombie but exquisitely lifelike, no different from a normal human.
Even more astonishing, the ghost, empowered by this flesh, regained its living intelligence.
It stood revealed as an elegant, handsome cultivator!
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