Yuan Ming released the soul crows and returned to his room, where he closed the door and sat down to meditate. Through the eyes of the soul crows, he soared high above, surveying the entirety of the Precious Spirit Sect.
This was not a spur-of-the-moment action for Yuan Ming; it was a premeditated plan.
When Gu Qiuming invited him to his sect, Yuan Ming had already set his sights on their ancestral hall’s incense offerings, which he was sorely in need of.
Unlike the talent-depleted Xuanhua Guan, the Precious Spirit Sect, while not a powerful large sect, had an orderly inheritance and was clan-based, suggesting that their incense offerings would be purer.
The only trouble was the sect’s highest cultivator, who was at the late stage of Core Formation, a fact Yuan Ming had already ascertained. With the cloak given to him by Xiying, and as long as he was careful, the risk was still within a controllable range.
After all, to most cultivators, incense ash was just trash, probably requiring manpower to clean up every so often.
Although Yuan Ming didn’t talk much with Gu Qiuming on the way to the sect, he had subtly inquired and roughly determined the location of the ancestral hall. So, it didn’t take much effort for Yuan Ming to find it.
Like most sects, the Precious Spirit Sect placed their ancestral hall at the highest point of their territory, which was just a small hill to the southeast of the sect.
The hall’s design was similar to many clan ancestral halls in the south of Great Jin, with white walls, black tiles, and high wind-fire walls adorned with exquisitely carved statues symbolizing good omens.
Yuan Ming controlled a soul crow to get closer to the ancestral hall for observation, but before it could land, a white light shot out like a flying blade, nearly slicing the crow in two.Startled, Yuan Ming quickly made the crow flap its wings and awkwardly ascend. It was then that he saw a middle-aged man in a green robe sweeping the ground in the courtyard, cursing "bad luck" in the direction of the crow.
"There’s actually a cultivator at the late stage of Foundation Establishment guarding the place; this complicates things," Yuan Ming deduced from the attack, finding himself in a difficult position.
With his current cultivation, using soul crows to steal incense ash under the nose of a late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator was no easy task.
"Anyway, I have to stay here for a while without alarming anyone; better to play the long game," Yuan Ming thought to himself.
He decided not to let the soul crows get too close and instead took out an elixir to consume, then closed his eyes to cultivate the Nine Elements Formula.
***
As the night deepened and the sounds of insects filled the air, the crescent moon outside Yuan Ming’s window tilted westward, signaling the late hours.
Yuan Ming sat by the window, cultivating the Death Moon method, when suddenly a rustling noise came from outside. He frowned slightly, opened his eyes, and looked in the direction of the sound.
Out of nowhere, a small tree had grown outside his window, with a fresh branch poking through, topped with a dark purple, enchanting vine flower.
"Hua Zhi..." Yuan Ming whispered to the dark purple vine flower, and the branch with the flower trembled up and down as if nodding in agreement.
Moments later, the small branch slowly withdrew from the window, along with the entire sapling, retracting into the ground.
Yuan Ming waited a moment, judging that the time was about right, then donned the gray cloak given to him by Xiying and climbed out the window. He released four soul crows to patrol the skies and alert him to any guards, easily avoiding everyone and smoothly reaching the hill near the ancestral hall of the Precious Spirit Sect.
There, he did not let the soul crows approach the hall but instead carefully concealed his presence, finding a hidden spot to hide.
Yuan Ming then took out the Stealing Heaven Cauldron, inserted a stick of Enchanting Incense, and lit it with a pinch of his fingers. He then controlled the censer with a spell, making it fly slowly towards the ancestral hall. The Stealing Heaven Cauldron spun out, hovering half a foot off the ground like a spark of light, and quickly arrived near the entrance of the hall.
Yuan Ming, using the vision of a soul crow high in the sky, was surprised to find that compared to the daytime, there was now a beast resembling a hunting dog with unusually large ears sitting between the two stone lions at the entrance of the hall. The large-eared beast’s ears twitched, and it immediately noticed the stealthy, drifting censer. Its eyes glowed red, ready to sound the alarm.
However, Yuan Ming had already controlled the incense smoke with his spiritual consciousness, quickly entering the beast’s nostrils. The large-eared beast’s cry was cut off before it began, its eyes rolled back, and it fainted.
Inside the ancestral hall, the green-robed middle-aged man sitting in meditation suddenly opened his eyes, feeling something amiss and preparing to check outside. But as he stood up, he was overcome with an intense drowsiness and, like the large-eared hound, fell asleep.
Moments later, under an old pine tree in the courtyard, the soil bulged outward, and a branch slowly emerged, then expanded and branched out, forming a tree person with dense branches. It was Hua Zhi, who, if not looked at closely, seemed like an ordinary tree that belonged there.
Hua Zhi held a clay pot in its arms and glanced towards the great hall of the ancestral hall. Seeing that the cultivator had fallen asleep, it shook off the mud on its feet and tiptoed slowly inside.
Inside the hall, the floor tiles and walls were made of the same material as Yuan Ming’s rented room. Hua Zhi bypassed the middle-aged man and immediately saw an oversized incense table with layers of ancestral tablets piled up like a small mountain behind it. On both sides of the hall, rows of ever-burning lamps of varying heights were lit, burning some kind of fat that gave off a stable flame and a faint fragrance.
Hua Zhi glanced around and then focused on the incense table, where three exquisitely crafted gold-inlaid incense burners were filled with incense ash accumulated over many years. Hua Zhi, not forgetting its mission, stepped forward and placed the clay pot on the table. It then extended its branch-like hands, which transformed into shovel shapes, and scooped the incense ash from the burners into a storage bag hanging at its waist.
Afterward, Hua Zhi opened the clay pot and poured the ordinary incense ash it had collected from elsewhere into the three incense burners on the table. Having completed its task, Hua Zhi retreated from the ancestral hall. When it reached the courtyard, it formed a broom from a thin branch and swept the mud it had brought back under the old pine tree. Then, it retracted into the ground and disappeared.
***
It was a long time before the green-robed middle-aged man woke up, and when he realized he had inexplicably fallen asleep, he was shocked awake, and all his drowsiness vanished.
He stood up immediately, extended his spiritual consciousness to scan the surroundings, and looked around, but found nothing unusual. He knew the layout of the ancestral hall by heart, and whether something was missing or moved, he could easily detect it. But incense ash, which he considered useless, was not worth his attention.
Finding nothing unusual, the middle-aged man went outside the hall. When he opened the door, he discovered that the alert beast had also fallen to the ground, sound asleep. His brow furrowed, he bent down and slapped the beast’s large ear. The alert beast woke up with a start, still looking confused.
Seeing its state, the middle-aged man sighed, checked again carefully, and naturally found nothing, so he had to give up.
***
Meanwhile, Yuan Ming, who had returned to his room, looked at the newly acquired incense ash on the table and was in high spirits. "Good, this should last me a while," he thought.
The incense ash he had obtained from Xuanhua Guan had already been used up, including the Black Incense made from it, leaving him with only a few sticks made from Jiuli Temple’s incense ash. These sticks had a shorter possession time and lacked the psychological inducement effect, so the incense ash he had just acquired was a timely solution.
Once he returned to the market in Xiaohu City, he could buy some Spiritual Wood materials and make a new batch of Black Incense. With the foundation of the Precious Spirit Sect, he expected the effects to be stronger than those from Xuanhua Guan, and perhaps even better than those from the Liuxin Sect. Yuan Ming was full of anticipation.
***
Two days later, around noon, Yuan Ming intended to continue cultivating the Nine Elements Formula when, on a whim, he lit a stick of Black Incense and attached his soul to Guoguo, once again seeing Xiying. At that moment, Xiying was sitting beside an elegantly arranged boudoir desk, resting her chin on one hand and holding a writing brush in the other, deep in thought, occasionally wrinkling her nose in a charming and cute manner. Guoguo sat obediently beside her on a stool, squinting and dozing off, only occasionally glancing at her.
After Yuan Ming’s soul possessed Guoguo, he tried to urge the cat to open its eyes and tease Xiying, but the limited effect of the Jiuli Temple’s incense made it impossible for Guoguo to sense his hints, and the cat remained half-asleep. Yuan Ming was both anxious and annoyed, but helpless.
"Knock, knock, knock," a knocking sound came from outside the door, and Xiying turned to look. "Didn’t I say not to disturb me if it’s not important?" Xiying frowned and asked, clearly annoyed at having her thoughts interrupted.
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