63: Chapter 63 My Own Flaws

After beginning to Cultivate, his progress was rapid, achieving Foundation Establishment at the age of ten; his speed was so fast that his peers could only look on in envy.

The major Sects of the Dachuan Dynasty scrambled to take him as their disciple. The Tianque Sect, Ziyun Sword School, and Langya Pavilion all extended olive branches, each offering conditions more generous than the last.

The Gu Family Clan Chief grinned from ear to ear. The name of Chief Clerk Gu Qing was celebrated throughout all of Dachuan, and everyone said that the Gu Family was about to produce a Nascent Soul powerhouse.

But in the year he was to officially join a Sect, everything came to an abrupt halt.

At the ceremony to test his Spirit Body, the Spirit-Testing Stone revealed that his Spirit Body was incomplete...

An incomplete Spirit Body.

It was not unheard of in the Cultivation world, and the fate of those people was always the same.

In the early stages, they might appear no different from ordinary people, and their cultivation speed might even be faster than others. However, once they reached a certain Realm, the flaws in their Spirit Body would be completely exposed. Their cultivation would be stuck firmly in place, unable to advance even an inch, with no progress possible for the rest of their lives.

Once the news spread, those Sects that had once scrambled to have him join them vanished overnight.

The smile of the Gu Family Clan Chief disappeared, and the compliments of his clansmen turned into whispers behind his back.

It took only one day to go from Genius to trash.

Chief Clerk Gu Qing was unwilling to accept this.

He cultivated with all his might, working harder than anyone else, attempting to use Acquired diligence to compensate for his Innate flaws.

But the hurdle of the Late Stage Foundation Establishment stood before him like a massive mountain that he could not cross no matter what.

One year, ten years, thirty years, fifty years...

Chief Clerk Gu Qing tried every method he could, visiting famous mountains and rivers and seeking out all kinds of experts, only to be met with the same sentence: an incomplete Spirit Body is incurable.

Finally, nearly a hundred years passed.

Those of his generation had long since reached Major Achievement in Golden Core, while he remained trapped at the Late Stage Foundation Establishment, having not advanced a single step.

The Gu Family gradually lost hope in him. As generations of younger clansmen rose, he was pushed to the periphery.

The former Gu Family Prodigy was eventually assigned to the frontier Long City, becoming a lowly official.

Later.

During a campaign by the Dynasty to encircle and annihilate the Evil Path, Chief Clerk Gu Qing followed the main army deep into the heart of the Evil Sect. That battle was fought until the sky turned dark; the Righteous Path coalition suffered countless casualties, and the Evil Path also suffered severe damage to their Origin Qi.

In the chaos of battle, Chief Clerk Gu Qing became separated from the main force. While being pursued by several Evil Path Cultivators, he fell into a bottomless crevice in his panic.

Beneath that crevice was actually a Secret Realm of the Evil Path.

The Secret Realm was not large, and it was filled with eeriness everywhere.

The stone walls were covered in crooked runes, emitting a nauseating scent of blood.

The ground was scattered with white bones and shattered Magical Artifacts; they were ancient, and it was unknown how many years they had lain there.

Chief Clerk Gu Qing explored the Secret Realm for a long time, eventually discovering an ancient book on a dilapidated stone platform.

The cover of the ancient book had decayed, but the inner pages were intact. Chief Clerk Gu Qing opened the ancient book and read through it page by page; the more he read, the graver his expression became, and the faster his heart beat.

The ancient book recorded a fragmentary forbidden technique of the Evil Path called 'Blood-Bone Transference'. It recorded that this was a technique of the ancient Great Evil Venerable 'Li Jiuqing', but because the Legacy had been passed down for so long...

The technique was incomplete and fragmented.

By now, this technique had been altered from a Divine Ability into a Pill Formula.

By using a Magical Artifact in conjunction with a chant, one could extract the essence blood of a Transcendent Spirit Body.

Using that as a catalyst to refine into a Medicinal Pill, after consuming it, it could allow an incomplete Spirit Body to regrow.

This was because a Transcendent Spirit Body inherently possesses the power of transcendence.

Using the essence blood of such a Spirit Body as a medicinal catalyst, the refined Medicinal Pill could allow an incomplete Spirit Body to, like a transcendence, shed its old, incomplete parts and grow new, complete parts.

In essence.

This Pill Formula was created by the Evil Path to Cultivate talent.

But ultimately, because Transcendent Spirit Bodies were too rare—the ancient Evil Path had raised countless Mortals only to produce three—such efficiency meant it was naturally abandoned later on.

Yet, for something that was as useless as chicken ribs to others, it was the hope of a lifetime for Chief Clerk Gu Qing.

After that.

He secretly searched for the whereabouts of a Transcendent Spirit Body for who knows how many years, having almost scoured more than half of the Dachuan Dynasty, yet he never found one.

Transcendent Spirit Bodies were too rare, one in ten thousand, and they were only born among Mortals; they had never appeared among the descendants of Cultivators.

He was almost about to give up.

Until the news of the Spirit Child's birth arrived, and he learned that the parents who gave birth to this Spirit Child were just an ordinary couple, his obsession, which had almost died, was rekindled.

A hundred years of unwillingness, a hundred years of humiliation, a hundred years of obsession.

Those who had once complimented him later looked at him with eyes that shifted from pity to contempt, and from contempt to ignoring him.

He had had enough.

"Let all of this end here!"

Chief Clerk Gu Qing's Heart Demon roared, his eyes bloodshot.

"My own body is flawed, separate the blood and bone!"

The hardest part of this technique was how to completely extract its Origin from the other party's Spirit Body.

In the entire current Dachuan Dynasty.

There really was no one who could accomplish this, at least not openly.

And if Chief Clerk Gu Qing wanted to achieve this, he had to rely on the bronze mirror in his hand; this mirror was crafted by the ancient Evil Path to extract the Spirit Body's Origin by imitating the forbidden technique of the 'Great Evil Venerable Li Jiuqing'.

It was a one-time use item, but it was definitely enough.

"Profound Yin as catalyst, essence blood as medicine, Heavenly Demon bestows power, cast the broken body anew!"

The moment the incantation was finished, the last trace of hesitation in Chief Clerk Gu Qing's eyes vanished. He loosened his left hand, and the Spirit Child slowly floated up from his arms, as if being held by an invisible hand, suspended in mid-air.

The Spirit Child woke up and began to cry again, but the crying sounded as if it were separated by a thick layer of water, muffled and unclear.

Chief Clerk Gu Qing waved his right hand, and the disc from before flew out from his sleeve, hovering below the Spirit Child.

The disc spun, its light flaring brightly, runes lighting up one after another, and its shape began to change.

It transformed from a disc into a bronze mirror; the mirror surface was as pitch-black as ink, its edges carved with twisted runes, and seven dark red gemstones were inlaid on the frame, as if blood mist were flowing within the gems.

"Hum~~"

Both floated in the air.

The mirror surface faced upward, and the Spirit Child faced downward.

The bronze mirror rose slowly, and the Spirit Child descended slowly, the two drawing closer and closer.

When the Spirit Child was only three feet from the mirror surface, the bronze mirror shook violently. The pitch-black color on the mirror surface rippled like water, and the seven gemstones lit up simultaneously, emitting an eerie dark red light.

That light was not blinding, but it made one's heart crawl, as if something had reached out from inside the mirror and grabbed the Spirit Child's shadow.

The Spirit Child stopped crying.

His eyes were still open, but his pupils were unfocused, as if his soul had been extracted.

The light of the bronze mirror grew increasingly intense, and a dark red beam of light shot out from the mirror surface, enveloping the entire Spirit Child within it.

Within the beam of light, golden threads were visibly extracted from the Spirit Child's body; they were as thin as hair, looking like blood vessels or tree roots.

Those golden threads were extracted from deep within the Spirit Child's bone marrow.

Chief Clerk Gu Qing watched those golden threads, his eyes filled with greed. Even just looking at them for a few moments, he felt as if the incomplete Spirit Body within his own body was about to regrow.

Seeing this scene, Chief Clerk Gu Qing's eyes were filled with greed, his breathing as rapid as a bellows.