Yama Rising

Qin Ye swallowed the swelling complaints in his heart and smiled, “There’s naturally evidence to back all of these. Just catch a Yin spirit that harbours great grievances in its heart, and keep feeding it with other wandering spirits. You’ll notice a difference in its disposition within a single week!”

“Absurd!” The man in a white lab coat exploded. He was anticipating a clever response from Qin Ye, only to receive a completely outrageous one that was akin to a lightning bolt out of the blue. In the heat of the moment, he completely forgot that he was still in the First Academy of Cultivators, and his chest rose and fell heavily as he barked back at Qin Ye, “The reason why they’re called Yin spirits is precisely because they cannot be touched by objects of Yang! Unless they take possession of something, the only thing we can do is to purge them! How could you possibly carry out that experiment?!”

Qin Ye felt incredibly weary.

He finally understood why Arthis always harped on the same thing over and over again - It’s not that I’m against anyone in particular. It’s just that everyone seated here is complete and utter trash.

I mean… how long have you allowed your legacies and traditions attenuate? These are things that I’ve been able to do ever since I was a meagre Netherworld Operative! How could none of you know it? And yet at the same time be able to extract the essence of the sun and the moon? Isn’t your tech tree a little skewed to one side?

“Then… do any of you know about the soul sphere?”

Silence.

The thing which Man hated most was an abrupt and awkward silence.

A hand slowly rose into the air amidst the awkward silence. Qin Ye nodded his head, and Ye Xingchen stood up, “Instructor Qin, what’s a soul sphere? I’ve never heard about it in my clan, nor have I seen it anywhere written in the treatises.”

Eh? Not bad!

This student looks promising… The panel of evaluators immediately gave him a look of approbation, before quickly turning back to scrutinize Qin Ye’s response.

Qin Ye was already prepared for this. He took out a soul sphere which he had prepared beforehand. This was far weaker than the soul sphere that he had originally used to seal Arthis with, and the runic symbols on it were far simpler. This soul sphere was something that Qin Ye had prepared under Arthis’ personal guidance, and it formed part of the curriculum of all newly-minted Netherworld Operatives. He had tested it before - the soul sphere he had prepared could only capture Yin spirits up to the level of vengeful apparitions.

As soon as he pulled it out, the soul sphere immediately shot out of his hands and flew straight towards the panel of evaluators. However, the soul sphere suddenly paused mid-flight, shifted slightly to the left, and then shifted slightly to the right again. Xu Anguo was seated on the left side, while Zhou Xianlong was seated on the right. Both had stretched out their arms, eagerly pulling the soul sphere towards them for their own inspection!

Both of them were somewhat stunned by the peculiar turn of events, but Zhou Xianlong quickly gave in and retracted his arm with a dry cough. The soul sphere promptly landed in Xu Anguo’s hand, and Zhou Xianlong and Professor Yu minced their way over in an instant to inspect it. Zhou Xianlong immediately asked after a single glance at it, “Ancient Sanskrit?”

“Indeed so.” Old Man Yu’s gaze burned as he reached out to touch it, but his advances were quickly foiled by Xu Anguo who turned it around and scrutinized every corner of it, “The writings on it should form a part of a seal… Take a look at this. The ancient Sanskrit writings flow from line to line in an incredibly precise manner. If you just infuse your true energy into it, these points become nodes that connect the entire seal together, transforming it into a magic artifact. What an ingenious design!”

Zhou Xianlong immediately added, “This should be a long lost technique. It has never been recorded in any of the ancient texts in our possession! The texts we have right now only record restored versions of Yin spirit sealing techniques. But these are definitely incomplete…”

He managed to lay a finger on the soul sphere before he finished speaking, and he immediately infused it with his true energy. The Sanskrit words around the soul sphere immediately flared up with a golden light, and the sphere trembled slightly as though it had just come alive.

The runic symbols flowed well. The soul sphere was usable!

“Principal Xu, I suggest handing this over to Professor Tao for verification immediately!” Zhou Xianlong immediately declared, “This artifact is sophisticated. We should test it out right away to see if it is truly possible to capture Yin spirits! If it is… it would be of immense assistance to Cathay right now!”

Tao Ran’s expression was ashen like the base of a cauldron.

Zhou Xianlong, I didn’t expect you to be like that… You’re the acclaimed expert in all regards… and this is clearly a matter of great importance that should be personally handled by the Head of the Faculty of Combat. And yet you’re asking me to go so that you can continue listening to this lecture?

I want to hear more as well!

You’re the one who has seen the sphere, so why am I the one doing the legwork instead?

“I think that the SRC has more say in this.” Tao Ran redirected the attention to the SRC. He, too, was adept in pushing the buck around.

Old Man Yu responded even more outrightly.

“You.” He turned around and handed the soul sphere to one of his subordinates and glared at him, “Go catch us a Yin spirit. If it breaks… Instructor Qin, how are we supposed to catch the Yin spirit anyway? Do you still have any other such soul… soul spheres?”

“There’s plenty more where that came from.” Qin Ye smiled, “I can make more of it myself. This is something I drew up earlier in preparation for this class. It’s simple to operate. When you want to use it, simply unravel it and use it like a whip. As soon as it wraps itself around a Yin spirit, it will automatically roll itself up into a ball again.”

Just then, the students began to show signs of displeasure.

You old fogeys! We’ve been putting up with your nonsense for some time now! Not only are you interrupting the class, you’re even hogging all the teaching materials to yourself? Aren’t we supposed to be the precious gems that the nation is nurturing? Don’t you think you should take a good look at yourselves in the mirror?

“Alright.” Xu Anguo, Tao Ran, Zhou Xianlong, and Professor Yu responded in an almost-concerted fashion as they ignored the begrudging looks in the students’ eyes. Professor Yu entrusted the precious soul sphere into the hands of a man in a white lab coat, “One hour. You must return by the end of this lecture! I want to see the results live!”

After that, he heaved a sigh of relief and turned his attention back to Qin Ye. It was only at this moment that he’d noticed the increase in his heart rate.

And he most certainly wasn’t the only one. Everyone turned their attention back to Qin Ye with a somber expression on their faces.

One could say that most of the non-students in the room had borne the heart of an observer at best, waiting to see whether any of the instructors lecturing today would come forward with a passable performance.

But now, their outlook of the lecture had changed completely!

Every member of the panel of evaluators had already opened up their notebooks, eagerly anticipating the next thing Qin Ye was about to say. And then there were others who even subconsciously whipped out their phones with a view of recording the lecture… The Blaze Squad who were observing the lecture couldn’t help but gnash their teeth in resentment as they noticed how the panel of evaluators were behaving.

“Bloody hell… I shouldn’t have sat in for this class at all!” Local Bully tightened his grip around his pen so much that he nearly snapped it in half, “To think that this kid has so many tricks hidden up his sleeves… he didn’t even bring this out when we were purging Yin spirits last time!”

Li Runxue glanced at Qin Ye and shook her head with some measure of resignation, “This is no different from entrapment…”

Su Feng was fuming from every orifice he had, “Damn it… does he even realize the kind of earth-shattering ramifications the prospects of capturing Yin spirits could bring? No, he must know of it! But he’s obviously not going to expound further on it just yet! He’s going to discuss it only in his second lecture. That’s crafty… this kid is far too cunning!”

However, no one else paid any attention to the little discussion going on in the corner. The panel of evaluators were all staring intently at Qin Ye. Basking in the glorious baptism of expectant gazes, Qin Ye continued, “Where was I… Oh, that’s right. Incarnate revenant and devouring. Coming back to the topic at hand, devouring is the fastest and best means for a Yin spirit’s advancement. This is naturally also why we’d have to eradicate a Yin spirit as soon as we discover its existence. After all, we want to minimize its opportunities to devour its kindred spirit and attain the next qualitative advancement in abilities.”

“A Yin spirit’s advancement isn’t quite the same as the advancement of us cultivators. When Yin spirits advance, they grow far more bizarre and peculiar in their own rights, and they also gain access to a more diverse spectrum of killing methods. In fact… I don’t know if they would gain the ability to manipulate physical objects in the mortal realm, but I’m quite sure that some of them gain the ability to touch the human body!”

“In that light, an incarnate revenant is none other than a Yin spirit with a massive grievance that continues to remain unchecked as it devours Yin spirit after Yin spirit, until it finally transforms into a creature with extreme spiritual awareness and overflowing bloodthirstiness!”

He paused for a moment, and grew stern and somber as he tapped on the LED screen using his pointer, “Just like how chronic irritation of the columnar epithelial cell would result in a transformation into a squamous epithelial cell[1], this is a form of evolution or qualitative transformation of sorts. It is also called an incarnation. This represents the point at which a Yin spirit infiltrates human society, moving about in the day as it lurks within our ranks. This is incidentally also when it gets most difficult to discover their existence!”

“Dawn voyage?” “Is… is this even possible?” “Can we possibly see ghosts in the day?”

A number of gasps and murmurs sounded throughout the hall as soon as Qin Ye dropped the bombshell.

“Silence.” Xu Anguo spoke up in a rare display of authority, “Listen to Instructor Qin.”

None of the panel of evaluators spoke a single word.

The Hellguard-class experts around would have heard of the concept of dawn voyage before, and even Zhou Xianlong nodded his head in approval.

Of everyone present, Zhou Xianlong was the only person who had participated in the operations to subdue an evil ghost in broad daylight!

This was a top secret operation. The top three cultivators in Cathay were mobilized to lock down the entire city, under the cover story of a nuclear leakage. All in all, five Judge-class experts, including the top three cultivators in Cathay, eleven Hellguard-class experts, three hundred Hunter-class experts and one thousand Operative-class experts were mobilized in their efforts to finally banish the evil ghost that was traversing the mortal realm in daytime.

Qin Ye wasn’t making things up.

And what shocked him the most was why these thoughts had never crossed his mind. Why incarnate revenant? Even if he decided to go along with the name that Qin Ye had coined, what was that evil spirit doing in the heart of the city center? In fact, the top three cultivators in Cathay couldn’t believe their eyes when they first encountered the Yin spirit - it was actually picking up girls in the amusement park!

But right now, after listening to Qin Ye’s exposition on the phenomenon, he finally had an explanation of the situation.

This was a form of evolution.

Just as the world evolved, Yin spirits evolved as well! The more advanced the Yin spirits got, the more spiritually aware they became. And as they assimilated into the cities and disappeared among the crowds, they would have then begun to undergo… an incarnation.

The living incarnation of a dead spirit.

“Are there any incarnate revenants in Cathay?” Zhou Xianlong murmured. But he quickly noticed that the entire faculty of students had turned back to glare at him with a begrudging look in their eyes.

It turns out that he had subconsciously asked his question aloud to Qin Ye.

Student A - Haven’t you guys had enough yet?! Instructor Qin has only spoken statements thus far! What’s going on with you guys?!

Student B - Do you understand what it means to be in attendance at a lecture? Can you please stop with these interruptions? If not for the fact that you’re an Infernal Judge, I’d have given you a flying…

Student C - Damn it! I haven’t seen such an attention-seeking diva like you throughout my years of school thus far! Are you making up for not having been to college in the past?! Why should we cede our opportunities to ask questions to you?!

Students D to Z - Please shut up, thank you!

Qin Ye could feel the onset of a headache as well - You guys sure have a lot of questions! Can’t you just be good, hold your tongue and listen to my lecture silently?! How am I supposed to take the top spot at this rate! I can’t even cover any content! I can’t even remember where I’ve just left off!

Nevertheless, he revealed a virtuous instructor’s smile, “Definitely!”

His decisive response startled everyone present. Zhou Xianlong’s eyes burned with an impassioned gaze.

“Take a look at here, here and here.”

He pointed at the Westriver region, Pearl River region and the northeastern region.

“Westriver and its surrounding provinces, especially the Arms Province and the Southbound Province, are practically covered in red. Even their provincial capitals aren’t exempted from this phenomenon!”

Su Feng’s pupils narrowed as he whispered, “I recall that… the provincial capitals of both provinces have both been broadcasting supernatural alerts, haven’t they?”

“It’s not just them.” Local Bully whispered back softly, “What you just mentioned is true of all the other places he’s pointed out earlier. It’s easy to tell from the red patches on the map. Could it be… that those places hide an in-in-incantation revenue?”

“... Local Bully… I’m truly embarrassed to call you a squad mate…”

1. Shoutout to freylowd for lending a hand on these medical stuff!