Cultivators filed out of the low wooden house.

The vast majority of Cultivators attending the Auction House—or rather, most Cultivators active in the Black Market—were in disguise.

The more skilled, like Chu Mu, used Magical Artifacts or Secret Skills to conceal themselves. Others simply altered their physical appearance or hid their faces with clothing and hats.

Walking among them, Chu Mu didn’t stand out.

Tucked away was the Auction House’s Jade Order, which had not been collected. According to the information he received before leaving, this underground Auction House was held once every six months, and anyone with an order could attend.

For Chu Mu, this auction had undoubtedly been another eye-opening experience.

Especially that suit of Bright Moon Battle Armor. In his previous life, such a creation existed only in fiction. This time, it was right before his eyes, and it was an incredibly mature piece of technology!

From the various Puppets he had seen in the Marketplaces to the Bright Moon Battle Armor just now...

The path of Artifact Refining, and Puppetry, its advanced branch...

An endless yearning had been ignited within him!

Even with Alchemy Skill, his goal was simply for Cultivation and to secure a source of income, not because he had any great longing or passion for it.

But for the Artifact Refining Skill, and the Puppetry Skill which was its advanced form, he truly felt that passion!

This feeling was just like the jokes from his past life about hand-crafting aircraft carriers and nuclear bombs. Here in the Cultivation Immortal Realm, as long as he mastered the Artifact Refining Skill and accumulated enough knowledge, he could surely make it happen!

Countless fantastic ideas could be turned into reality!

At this moment, he was eager to return home.

His original plan to visit other Black Markets, or even the Blood Killing Pavilion’s contact point, was completely suppressed by this desperate urge to go back.

Leaving the Black Market, his heart still set on returning, Chu Mu didn’t linger for a moment and headed straight for the Jade Emperor Valley Marketplace.

But this time, his luck didn’t seem to be as good as when he left the Fengming Valley Marketplace.

He had only traveled ten li out of the Black Market before he was ambushed!

Chu Mu was startled at first, but after confirming it wasn’t the premeditated ambush he had imagined, his Fireball Skill at the Realm of Returning to the Essence was still a deadly weapon!

On the road back, his hands were once again stained with blood.

However, this time, under his Fireball barrage tactics, the two corpses were preserved intact. On his final strike for each, he had held back some of his power.

It wasn’t that he wanted to leave his opponents a complete corpse, but rather to preserve his spoils of war, and...

Amidst the stench of blood, Chu Mu knelt before one of the bodies and placed a hand on its head. Then, a horrifying scene unfolded.

Beneath his palm, a faint black shadow slowly emerged from the head of the corpse, whose eyes were wide open in death.

The shadow grew clearer, a distorted black form that seemed to be caught by his palm, pulled bit by bit from the skull.

Finally, a head-sized black shadow floated in Chu Mu’s hand.

Vaguely, one could just make out a human-like face within the shadow, resembling the Resentful Souls he had once seen in Nanshan Town!

And this was precisely the Residual Soul of the dead Cultivator.

Divine Appearance solidifies the Divine Soul, and a solid Divine Soul allows for Divine Appearance.

For any Divine Manifestor, their Divine Soul is already stable.

In a sense, the Qi Cultivation Realm is also a process of further stabilizing and strengthening the Divine Soul.

And after a Cultivator who has achieved Divine Appearance dies, as long as their Divine Soul isn’t intentionally destroyed, their Residual Soul will generally persist for a period of time before slowly dissipating.

Chu Mu had even heard that for Cultivators above the Qi Cultivation Realm, their Divine Soul could leave the body. Even if their physical form was destroyed, as long as the Divine Soul was unharmed, they could abandon their body and be reborn through Possession of another Cultivator’s body!

However, it was said that Possession had extreme limitations, though he didn’t know the specifics.

But the Residual Soul of this Cultivator before him was undoubtedly quite clear.

He hadn’t intentionally harmed the Divine Soul, but the Divine Soul of a Qi Cultivation Realm cultivator was ultimately too fragile. Killing them had already obliterated most of it, leaving only this shapeless Residual Soul behind.

As he observed it, Chu Mu suddenly recalled seeing a Cultivator’s Divine Soul for sale in the Marketplace a few days ago.

’To obtain a complete Divine Soul, you have to extract it before the Cultivator dies.’

This was the so-called Soul Extraction and Spirit Refining, an extremely cruel method!

But as far as he knew, a Cultivator’s Divine Soul and physical body both had extremely wide-ranging uses. They were all very important... Spiritual Materials!

Chu Mu took a long, dark-black bottle he had bought from the Black Market out of his Storage Talisman. Its purpose was specifically to preserve souls. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

He immediately stuffed the Residual Soul into the long bottle. He performed the same operation on the other corpse, extracting its Residual Soul and storing it in the bottle as well.

"The bodies..."

Chu Mu stared at the two corpses before him, his brow furrowed slightly.

This time in the Black Market, he had spent a great number of Spirit Stones and gained a lot of knowledge. Although he had only skimmed through a few pages of many of the books, his perspective had clearly changed.

For example, before, he didn’t know a Cultivator’s soul was a type of Spiritual Material, or that a Residual Soul would remain after death.

And a Cultivator’s body was an even more important Spiritual Material.

The most common Support Elixir for Body Refiners was the Qi and Blood Pill.

And the main ingredient for the Qi and Blood Pill was not some kind of Spirit Medicine, but a Cultivator...

The stronger the body, the more potent the Qi and Blood Pill refined from it!

The only drawback was that while the Qi and Blood Pill was potent, because it was condensed from a Cultivator’s flesh, it would inevitably contain the influence of the Cultivator’s mental impurities.

Therefore, after consuming it, these mental impurities would subtly erode the consumer’s Divine Soul.

An extreme personality, or even insanity...

These were all potential consequences of this Pill.

Although the consequences were severe, the Elixir was cheap, its effects were quite good, and... the refining method was very simple and widely circulated.

He had easily obtained the refining method after a quick tour of the Black Market.

After a moment of contemplation, Chu Mu raised his hand. The scene he had once witnessed beneath the memorial arch in Nanshan Town now appeared in his own hands.

The full-fleshed corpse shriveled at a speed visible to the naked eye. In his hand, a mass of blood-red Energy slowly compressed, finally becoming a blood-red Elixir Pill the size of a pigeon’s egg.

He did the same with the other corpse.

Two blood-red Elixir Pills materialized in his hand, and before him lay two dessicated corpses.

He casually tossed a Fireball, and the two dry corpses burst into flames, turning to ash within a few breaths.

Chu Mu stood rooted to the spot as memories of Nanshan Town surfaced in his mind.

The Cultivator from the Li Family seemed to have used this very method to refine the old man from Qili Village into a Qi and Blood Pill.

And that youth from Qili Village...

Chu Mu remembered it vividly. During that late-night encounter when he obtained the Puppetry Skill inheritance Jade Scroll, the scarlet in the youth’s eyes, that madness, that derangement...

And at that time, more than a few of Nanshan Town’s Inspectors and common folk had been turned into dried corpses!

’He’s ruined!’

Chu Mu shook his head and sighed inwardly.

’When using a Cultivator to refine a Qi and Blood Pill, you can at least cleanly extract the Divine Soul, leaving only a few mental impurities. With time and effort, the influence can be minimized.’

’But based on the knowledge he gained in the Black Market, mortals of the secular world have not achieved Divine Appearance; their souls are muddled and in a state of Chaos.’

’If you refine a mortal into a Qi and Blood Pill, it’s basically a poison that distills all the emotions and mental impurities of that person’s entire life!’

’Taking one is equivalent to confronting a mortal’s lifetime of emotions and mental impurities.’

’It’s not hard to guess why that youth back then had the look of a madman!’

’He went down the wrong path, so how could he possibly be sane?’

He casually tossed the two Qi and Blood Pills into his Storage Talisman. He had no intention of using them; he was simply curious about the nature of this type of Elixir.

Refining Pills from flesh and blood was undoubtedly a completely different path. Researching it might provide some valuable insights.

After this battle, it seemed he had established some intimidating presence. The rest of the journey to the Jade Emperor Valley Marketplace was peaceful.

「By the time he reached Yuning Town, it was dusk.」

After some ten days, the town obviously hadn’t changed much.

Wisps of cooking smoke carried the faint aroma of food mixed with a slight stench.

Old Chen was still pulling his manure cart, collecting filth from door to door. The house across the way still had its door shut tight; the Female Cultivator named Miaoyu seemed to have a bustling business.

Back in his room, Chu Mu closed the door and carefully inspected it before setting up and activating the miniature isolation Restriction again.

With the Restriction in place, Chu Mu sat cross-legged in his room and took out several Storage Talismans.

His trip to the Black Market had cost several thousand Spirit Stones, but his gains were naturally substantial.

There were over twenty books of various kinds, covering all sorts of topics. Chu Mu hadn’t been too selective; if he thought a book might be of some use, he bought it.

The content of the books was mostly rudimentary. Aside from a few basic texts, like a book on the fundamentals of Fire Attribute Runes and a few Body Refining Techniques, the rest were mostly useful only for broadening his knowledge.

He had four Jade Scrolls in total. Three he already owned—for Alchemy, the Wild Bull Technique, and the Puppetry Skill. The last one was the Artifact Refining Manual he had won at the underground Auction House.

It was said to be the foundational inheritance left by an Artifact Refining Master. Considering its price, it should be able to meet his needs.

In addition, he had also purchased six bottles of Elixirs in the Black Market.

There were two types of Elixirs in total: one called Body Tempering Pill and the other Bone Marrow Cleansing Pill. Both were Support Elixirs for Body Refining Cultivation. He had bought three bottles of each, spending several hundred Spirit Stones.

The only disappointment was that he couldn’t find any trace of the Body Refining Pill Recipes he wanted, only that twisted thing, the Qi and Blood Pill.

Furthermore, there were the spoils from his battles.

For instance, the Formless Needle, and from the two Cultivators he’d slaughtered on his way back: two Residual Souls, two Qi and Blood Pills, and a greatsword that was a Lower Grade Spiritual Artifact.

The rest was his own property: several hundred Vein Nourishing Pills, over two thousand Lower Spirits, and some Talismans he had purchased earlier.

As for the Defensive Spiritual Artifact he had wanted to buy, he hadn’t found one to his liking in the Black Market.

All his possessions were laid out before him.

...