Grasping Evil

On the fourth month, his magical art skyrocketed and finally, it broke the sword-testing rock.

On the fifth month, the inside of the rocky chamber was filled with scorching heat and White Bone sword shadows.

On the sixth month, the rocky chamber was silent, but stamps of feet rumbled from time to time, along with the wails of a vessel spirit.

Half a year was only a brief period. Gradually, the atmosphere in the rocky chamber quieted down. What was left was the random sound of fire burning inside and a vague sign of a godly weapon being produced.

He had successfully learned a few magical arts, sharpened his skills and gained a deeper understanding of the two sword Qi. As for his Body Refining Technique, he had mastered the Eighteen-Meter Body. But, what delighted him most was that he had achieved a small accomplishment in both the Falsifying Art and Defense Art.

In the rocky chamber, one of his hands was placed behind his back while the other stretched out a finger. Immediately, a stream of sword light shot out from it, turning into fire.

He made a stamp with one foot and it caused the entire rocky chamber to shake. Countless images of White Bone emerged from the ground. In between the spaces of the images drifted a vague bloodstring that was condensed out of killing intent.

After summoning back the two sword Qi, he revealed a faint smile as he finally comprehended the small realm of both sword intents. At this point, he no longer needed a sword to send out a sword Qi. All he needed was a finger and a stamp.

He regained his composure, closed his eyes, and touched his glabella. Immediately, silvery light enshrouded his body, and then gradually, his body grew to eighteen meters tall. He was now muscular, brawny and impressively big in size.

This was no doubt the Body Refining Technique that he had cultivated. Although this seemed insignificant compared to Mosha Emperor's thousand meter giant form, this was Ning Fan's first time cultivating a Body Refining Technique and the result was impressive. When he transformed into an eighteen meter giant, his physical defense was doubled and his strength was enhanced by thirty percent, which meant that he could easily kill any Harmonious Spirit opponent just by only using his brute force.

Once this technique was fully cultivated, it could be one of his trump cards when his magical strength was expended, because Body Refining Technique only consumed the strength of blood and Qi instead of magical strength.

He returned to his usual form and slowly let out a sigh. Shortly after he rested, his expression froze and his face started to morph at high speed.

Meng Chu, Xue Qing, Zhou Ming, Nanyang Zi, Yu Chi and Sinister Sparrow!

Anyone that Ning Fan had seen before, anyone who had a lower spirit sense realm than him had their faces being morphed on Ning Fan's face. The appearance looked similar to the original person and even their Qi was exactly the same.

This was the Falsifying Art. It allowed one to change their appearance or conceal oneself. No one except those who had a spirit sense realm higher than Ning Fan could see through his camouflage. Ning Fan's current spirit sense has already reached the half-step Nascent Soul realm. This meant that no one in Yue Country would be able to discern his disguise.

He morphed back to his original appearance and slowly closed his eyes. A surge of ethereal Qi gradually arose in his body.

Suddenly, he patted his storage pouch and took out a medium grade flying sword. He stretched out one finger and the flying sword shot outwards. After flying for nine meters, it changed direction all of a sudden, flying back towards Ning Fan's chest.

It was a medium grade flying sword! Ning Fan was going to be stabbed to death unless he activated the Eighteen Meter Body.

But the strange thing was that the sword stopped all of a sudden, as if it had hit an invisible barrier three feet away from Ning Fan.

In the void in front of him were ripples of wavy patterns that consisted of the Qi of spirit sense. Any expert who saw this would be shocked because the defense was made up entirely of spirit sense.

It is the Defense Art!

He kept his flying sword and smiled pleasantly. The biggest harvest in his seclusion was his accomplishment in these two divine arts.

Before his seclusion, he had never thought that the mystery of the Divine Art was beyond his expectation. To view it in the aspect of profundity, it might even be on par with the Yin Yang Transformation.

He had already cultivated the Falsifying Art after consuming the Spirit Refining Grass. At this point, any expert below the Nascent Soul realm wouldn't be able to see through his disguise and concealment.

As for the Defense Art, the prerequisite was to break five vessel spirit magical treasures. With this technique, he could defend himself against the deadly one-strike-kill of a Nascent Soul expert.

Of course, his cultivation in these two arts were still far from perfection. If he had completed the cultivation of the Falsifying Art, he would be able to conceal himself even from experts who had a higher spirit sense realm than him. Regarding the current level of his Defense Art, he could only use it once per day. If he used it the second time, it would deal a great damage to his spirit sense and if he used it for a third time, it would crush his sea of consciousness.

For the Divine Art to reach a higher realm, more Spirit Refining Grass and Vessel Spirit Magical Treasure were needed. Vessel Spirit could be traced and found in the Rain Immortal World, but the Spirit Refining Grass… Ning Fan found it hard to imagine that there would be another weirdo like Meng Chu who accidentally planted such kind of grass.

The result of six months of seclusion was satisfactory. Although his magical strength didn't improve during this period of time, he had cultivated various means and techniques.

There seemed to be only one thing left to be done—refining the Separation Slayer.

He approached the furnace in the rocky chamber and drew out the earth fire. He spat out the Starlight Sword Shadow. It then turned into a bright crystal flying sword in his hand. He was studying it carefully as if he was trying to make a hard choice.

After a long period of time, he flicked the Cauldron Ring and retrieved a piece of jade-like rib bone.

Replacing the sword body wouldn't cause essential changes to the flying sword, but in order to prevent unexpected phenomenon from happening, he had spent certain amount of immortal jades to deploy a Core Realm Grand Formation to hide the scent of the treasure.

The current him was no longer a nestling cultivator. Thinking back how he spearheaded all those activities in Seven Apricot City, it reminded him how dangerous the situation was. Even though he had obtained the memory of an Immortal Emperor at that time, he was still a youth. He could only rely on Ancient Chaos' experience as his experience was limited.

Killings after killings had made him realize the truth of the cultivation world. He realized that it was neither as unpleasant as he imagined nor as perfect as the myth of the fictitious land of peace and happiness. This was where the complexity lay. The cultivation world consisted of love, conspiracy, hatred… which was no different than the mortal world. Any cultivator could be betrayed because of carelessness. So in order to avoid dying in vain, one had to be cautious at all times.

There was an old saying in the cultivation world: you never knew where the enemies were hiding while they're stalking you!

Ning Fan's sword sense could kill all opponents who were below early Gold Core realm, but it was still inferior to Bone Sovereign's Absolute Realm Divine Intent.

Comparing Ning Fan's Ancient Chaos' inheritance, the demonic girl in the Godly Void Pavilion had an even nobler inheritance—the inheritance of Godly Void and even the inheritance of innumerable Immortal Emperors and Fiendgods.

That was why some said there were greater experts beyond experts and Heavens beyond Heavens, and Ning Fan understood this pretty well.

Therefore, one had to be as cautious as possible at all times in order to survive this chaotic world.

Hundreds of thoughts were racing in his head, which faintly enhanced his state of mind. Slowly, he exhaled and placed the Separation Slayer into the furnace.

"There is a treasure refinement technique named Thousand Refinements in Ancient Chaos' memory. When the raw material is refined a hundred times, it become steel. When it is refined a thousand times, it will turn into a treasure and when refined for ten thousand times, the treasure will be brought to life. So one has to at least refine it for a thousand times in order to create a magical treasure. To put a vessel spirit in a magical treasure, the treasure will need to be refined for at least ten thousand times... but in truth, a magical treasure with vessel spirit isn't a good item. There is nothing absolute in this world. For instance, magical treasures similar to flying swords will become a better weapon with the vessel spirit whereas it is best to have no vessel spirits in heavy-duty swords."

Ning Fan murmured. Most of the cultivators would use flying swords as their weapon as they could just point their fingers to attack, but in ancient times, Fiendgods used their giant physiques to fight.

When a cultivator had to hold the sword to hack and slash, it was categorized as a heavy-duty sword. The flying sword stressed on lightness whereas the heavy-duty sword emphasized on sweeping a thousand troops.

If the flying sword consisted of a soul, the cultivator could control it using their spirit sense with ease, making their strikes very accurate. However, when a heavy-duty sword was equipped with a soul, it would be hard for the cultivator to coordinate perfectly with the sword and no one could guarantee that there would be no rejection from the sword Qi during battle.

He had decided not to put a soul in the Separation Slayer as he was going to turn the sword into a heavy-duty sword.

But this didn't mean that the flying form of the Separation Slayer would be destroyed. Although there wasn't a significant feature in the Thousand Refinements, there was an astonishing mystery in this method—if the flying sword was reforged and smelted more than ten thousand times, it would be turned into a magical treasure with double purpose!

That was to say, Ning Fan could use the sword as a flying sword and a heavy-duty sword at his will.

Experts in Yue Country would be shocked when they heard about this, but in the Rain Immortal World, it was far from enough. The creation of a true magical treasure depended not only on its power, but also on its ability to transform.

It was said that the long-lost '36 changes of Heavenly Dipper' and '72 changes of Evil Spirits' in the ancient times of Fiendgods was a very profound transformation technique.

After removing all of his miscellaneous thoughts, Ning Fan began to control the earth fire to separate the steel body of the Separation Slayer. At the same time, by using his spirit sense, he used the fire to smelt Bone Sovereign's rib.

The rib of Bone Sovereign was similar to the bone of a Void Fragmentation expert. It had traces of soul and pride, and it was reluctant to become a raw material for a magical treasure. Therefore, it couldn't be melted despite the heat of the earth fire.

It was because of this trace of soul that allowed Bone Sovereign to use the Bone Seeking Technique to search for the whereabouts of the bone and identify Ning Fan's identity.

Although the soul could never be extracted from the bone, it could be erased from it.

Ning Fan's eyes glowed with a cold light. He spread his spirit sense out into the rib bone. With a violent and forceful scrape, the trace of soul was forced out of the bone. A white strand of Qi exited the bone and dissipated within the flames.

In this way, Bone Sovereign could no longer detect his lost rib regardless of how heaven defying his ability was.

After three days of leaving the rib in the fire, it finally melted and turned into liquid. Without wasting any more time, Ning Fan quickly exerted the fire using his spirit sense, forcing out the steel body from the Separation Slayer.

The rank of the Separation Slayer fell dramatically after that, and immediately, Ning Fan infused the liquid into the sword's body. The originally light and resplendent Separation Slayer began to undergo changes.

Three feet of starlight grew into seven feet long and one feet in breadth. Its bony body was snowy white, but it was no longer shiny. Heavy and stifling killing intent was radiated from it without restraint.

This was a huge heavy-duty sword . Its rank had been increased by more than a great realm, to the peak of medium grade.

"The Separation Slayer has been successfully refined into a heavy-duty sword!"

But this wasn't the end yet. While he was cooling off the body of the sword, Ning Fan flicked his sleeve to dry off the pond of water. Then, he patted his storage pouch and took out the Thunder Water he got from the Merit Hall.

It was the cold spring water used to refine immemorial Divine Weapons. Using this water would attach a trace of lightning into the weapon.

However, such water was extremely scarce. The ancient Fiendgods would always have a pond of Thunder Water before refining a Divine Weapon, but today, Ning Fan only had a bottle of it which was definitely not enough. As such, he had to increase the volume by diluting the Thunder Water.

With a flick of the Cauldron Ring, he poured the Cold Moon Spring he obtained from Hu Clan into the cooling pond, mixing with the Thunder Water.

The Cold Moon Spring was actually a famous cooling spring, but comparing it to the Thunder Water made it ordinary. As the cooling spring was ready, the last step would be to cool the sword's body.

With a pat on the furnace, the fire inside was extinguished and by using his spirit sense, the Separation Slayer was immediately drawn into the cooling pond, making the water boil.

As the Thunder Water continued to evaporate, traces of lightning separated from each other and entered into the large sword. Then, lines of obscure lighting began to emerge on the surface of the sword's body.

And now, the sword was done.

Ning Fan took the sword with one hand, but suddenly, his wrist was pulled downwards. The tip of the sword hit and entered three feet below the ground.

"It's quite heavy! It has to be at least five thousand kilograms! The brute force of this sword alone is scary. If a Gold Core expert is careless, he will die under this sword."

"Ha!"

Along with a loud shout, silvery light appeared around his body and his strength rose drastically. With a 'ceng' sound, the large sword was yanked out of the ground, and then it was swung violently at the ground.

After a sound of a 'bang', about three meters of the ground was removed and became as flat as a mirror. One should know that the ground was made of rock that could resist a full blow of an early Gold Core expert.

"A heavy-duty sword depends not on the sharpness of its edges but on the skill of the swordsman. But if the sword is also sharp, it will be matchless! This will be the closing ceremony of this seclusion… Time really flies. This has always been the life of a cultivator."

By using his will, he turned the giant sword back into the Starlight Flying Sword and kept it into his body.

Then, he sat down cross-legged and adjusted the magical power in his body.

It seemed like he took more time than he expected. Anyway, it was only a few days of difference from the agreed day of bet and that shouldn't be a problem to any cultivator.

<strong>Note:</strong>

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<strong>Credit:</strong>

G-SEAN(TL)