Soul Tempering Art

Following her memory, Shi Yu precisely deconstructed the interconnected and entwined source runes from the damaged talisman one by one onto paper.

The complete source runes she drew directly from memory, while for those that were damaged, she first deduced their complete forms before drawing them out one by one.

Once everything was drawn and she confirmed nothing was missing, Shi Yu focused her gaze on the patterns on the paper.

“What mystery is actually hidden inside?”

The mysterious source runes seemed to slither before her eyes like snakes.

In Shi Yu's mind, these source runes gradually began to connect, forming one wondrous, ever-shifting scene after another.

Source runes were formed by heaven and earth, embodying the principles of nature. Every single source rune possessed its own special function, and when combined, they held immense power.

Not only that, but source runes also served as vessels for information.

Each one represented several concepts and imagery. In ancient times, it was said that cultivation manuals were recorded directly using source runes.

For instance, the damaged talisman Master Lu Yue had obtained served primarily a recording function.

The reason she had deciphered the message of a "tomb" was due to one source rune carrying an intent of slaughter, which contained concepts of demise, tombs, wear, and forging.

When interpreted alongside the adjacent interconnected source runes that implied direction and location, it naturally produced the meaning of a tomb's coordinates.

Shi Yu's brows creased slightly as she murmured, “Something isn't right...”

She looked back at the source runes from the damaged talisman that had been worn down by time and were incomplete.

Shi Yu possessed a deep foundation in the Talisman Dao and naturally knew numerous source runes. Seeing that those runes were fractured, she had instinctively restored them to their complete forms when drawing them earlier.

“That's wrong.”

Her eyes narrowed, and with a sudden realization, she lifted her brush and crossed out the source runes she had restored.

Relying on her memory, she re-drew them in their original, damaged state.

“So that's how it is...” Shi Yu stared at the fractured source runes for a long moment before letting out an enlightened smile. “I see.”

Because of her profound attainments in the Talisman Dao, seeing those incomplete source runes had caused her to subconsciously complete them.

The line of thought Master Lu Yue had spent years painstakingly pursuing was likewise focused on completing the source runes.

However, the message deciphered through that method was precisely a trap set by the owner of the damaged talisman.

Searching according to that information would naturally yield nothing at all.

“The tomb was merely a decoy.”

Realizing this, Shi Yu singled out those few fractured source runes and combined them together.

With this combination, she immediately felt a subtle connection between them.

It was as if individual chess pieces had come together to form a complex game.

“The damaged talisman was not damaged by time—it was intentionally made this way from the start.”

“Anyone who painstakingly tries to restore it would truly be falling into the trap.”

Shi Yu shook her head and let out a light laugh.

The owner of this damaged talisman was quite an intriguing individual, likely using this method intentionally to filter out and find the person they sought.

However, even after understanding the key mechanism and ignoring the superficial trap, interpreting the true hidden meaning was still no easy task.

These source runes formed enigmatic and unpredictable patterns. Merely performing a vague mental overlay and deduction caused a massive drain on Shi Yu's spiritual sense, leaving her dizzy.

She had no choice but to stop and rest to recover.

Now that her thoughts were clear, Shi Yu was in no rush to deduce everything in one go.

Pressing her temples, she turned her attention to the two storage bags Lu Yujiao and Master Lu Yue had handed over earlier.

She had only glanced at them briefly before and hadn't inspected them thoroughly.

Starting with the storage bag Lu Yujiao had surrendered with great reluctance, Shi Yu swept her spiritual sense inside. She found a good seven to eight hundred low-grade spirit stones, a considerable amount of high-quality spiritual materials, and two artifacts.

“The artifacts don't match my spiritual meridian's attribute, and their quality is rather mediocre. I'll just sell them.”

“These spiritual materials...” A look of delight crossed Shi Yu's face. Ignoring those of ordinary quality, she picked out three items: “White Star Stone, Mystic Ice Crystal, and Jade Sun Marrow.”

These were all materials that could be used to refine a Spirit-Gathering array plate, each possessing significant value. Lu Yujiao had likely painstakingly gathered them to commission someone to refine her natal artifact in the future.

The spiritual materials required to refine a Spirit-Gathering array plate were quite complex and varied.

Earlier, she had drawn up a list and asked Jiang Qihe to help procure them. Although he had acquired some over this period, several key components were still missing.

Now, Lu Yujiao's storage bag contained several usable pieces. Once she found the remaining few, all the necessary spiritual materials would be assembled.

With a Spirit-Gathering array plate, activating a Spirit-Gathering Array while cultivating inside would boost the concentration of worldly spiritual energy by several fractions compared to the outside, naturally raising cultivation efficiency considerably.

The difference might not be noticeable in a day or two, but over time, the gap between having one and not would become increasingly obvious.

Changyuan Prefecture was remotely located, lacking blessed paradises, and its worldly spiritual energy could not compare to other prefectures in the East Continent. To avoid falling behind, a Spirit-Gathering array plate was an absolute necessity.

“This saves me quite a lot of trouble.” Shi Yu swept them all into the Yin-Yang Fate-Tapping Bell.

“There are still a few missing. I'll inform Manager Jiang that if any of the spiritual materials I need appear at the auction, the seller can be given priority to bid for Spirit Wandering Talismans.”

Having made her plan, Shi Yu turned her gaze back to the storage bag given by Master Lu Yue.

Master Lu Yue had studied the Talisman Dao for a long time. There were not many items inside this storage bag, but almost everything was related to spirit talismans.

Inside was a wealth of high-quality talisman paper, all tanned from the hides of high-tier spirit beasts.

There were also dozens of silk sheets woven from Celestial Silkworm Silk. Using these as talisman paper would be more than sufficient even for drawing Tier-3 spirit talismans.

Besides the talisman papers, there was only a single jade slip.

Shi Yu raised her delicate brows slightly, retrieved the jade slip, and examined it for a few moments.

“A technique manual?”

The information recorded in a jade slip had to be engraved using divine soul power.

Techniques preserved in jade slips far exceeded ordinary written manuals in value. This was because jade slips carried the personal insights and comprehension of the recorder, akin to receiving guidance from an enlightened master, making it virtually impossible to stray onto the wrong path.

Shi Yu held the jade slip in her hand and sensed it for a moment. Detecting no dangerous aura, she finally submerged her spiritual sense into it.

Once her spiritual sense clearly saw the content recorded inside, her expression subtly shifted.

“《Soul Tempering Art》...”

It was precisely a technique titled 《Soul Tempering Art》.

In the eyes of ordinary people, divine soul power was innate. It would naturally grow slightly with age, and further increase alongside the growth of one's cultivation strength.

However, this growth was relatively slow, and the increase was limited.

Aside from that, one could only rely on repeated exhaustion and recovery to gain tiny increments of growth.

Because of this, auxiliary professionals like alchemists and talisman masters, who constantly drained their spiritual sense, would undergo this cycle repeatedly. As a result, both their spiritual sense and the associated divine soul power were significantly stronger than those of ordinary cultivators at the same stage.

Apart from these two ways, there was no other method to enhance the divine soul—such was common knowledge among most cultivators.

In truth, however, there existed extremely rare techniques in this world specifically for cultivating the divine soul.

Because they were so scarce, they were virtually unknown to the common populace.

The technique before her, titled 《Soul Tempering Art》, was precisely one of these extraordinarily rare methods of divine soul cultivation.