Chapter 290

: Cultivating a Soul Skill     Yang Kai’s expression cramped up, but fortunately, this time he had mentally prepared himself, and although it was still a painful experience for his soul, he was not completely helpless like before.

As his soul became further damaged, a tingling sensation sudden arose; the Soul Warming Lotus had once again played its role in a timely manner, sending a burst of cooling sensation to his mind, numbing the painful throbbing.
Hovering mid-air, Yang Kai took a deep breath, slowly adapting to this new environment before continuing his descent.
After falling another thousand meters or so, he felt the surrounding black gas’s attack on his soul strengthen sharply, bringing about the same unbearable kind of pain, forcing Yang Kai to halt once again.
Now stuck in place once again, Yang Kai surveyed his surroundings, but still could not see the bottom of the Coiling Dragon Stream.
Frowning, Yang Kai faintly felt that the pain in his soul was too much to bear.
The damage caused to his soul here was much worse than when he had been lost in the white mist field.
When he was trapped inside the white mist field his soul was constantly being damaged, but here, not only was he suffering pain, he was also being bombarded with a fierce hostility and all kinds of malicious intent, which was slowly trying to corrupt his mind.
In terms of hardening one’s soul and cultivating spiritual energy, this place was basically a paradise!  All he had to do was descend slightly and Yang Kai could clearly feel his spiritual energy being enhanced.
If he could cultivate here for a long time, opening his Knowledge Sea would probably not be problem.
Unfortunately, Yang Kai understood that he could not afford to spend too much time here. If he did, his mind would probably be poisoned by the surrounding evil aura.
After a long period of silence, Yang Kai suddenly had a thought and asked Old Demon,
Do you know of any Soul Skills?  One that can be used for defence would be best.


I do!
Old Demon readily responded.

How come you never mentioned something like that?
  Yang Kai asked somewhat bitterly.

The martial skills and secret arts that Old Servant has mastered are all extremely evil, so Young Master has always been quite opposed to cultivating them.
  Old Demon replied in a wronged tone.

Is this soul defence skill like that too?
  Inquired Yang Kai.

Although it could be considered so, but if you cultivate here, then there would be no need for any cruel or evil methods.  Since this place is thick with Demonic Qi it is actually ideal for cultivating this skill.


Good, no need for further nonsense then, quickly teach me this soul skill!


En…

Old Demon’s memory was still somewhat garbled, so although it had been more than two years since he met with Yang Kai inside the Heaven’s Inheritance Cave, there was still a great many things he could not remember clearly.  But in response to Yang Kai’s orders, Old Demon thought long and hard about this soul skill and eventually imparted all of to him.
Soul Palace!
According to Old Demon, if one wanted to cultivate this soul skill, one would have to find some sentient beings, torture them and finally kill them.  Only after experiencing fear, hatred, and despair, would these people leave behind lingering souls after their deaths that could be used to cultivate the Soul Palace skill.
A cultivator would collect these remnant souls and forge them into a labyrinth within their own mind.
The rounds of torture and instilled grievances these souls experience were akin to tempering the bricks for the maze, the more resentment they had, the greater the strength of the labyrinth.
After successfully cultivating Soul Palace, the Knowledge Sea of a cultivator would appear to an outsider as a layered structure, filled with twists and turns.  This soul skill’s biggest use was no doubt for defense.
But this skill could actually be thought of as a combination of offensive and defensive soul skills.
If one’s enemy used their Spiritual Energy to attack, their Divine Sense would fall into this maze and would never be able to find its way out, gradually being exhausted by the hidden grievances within the Soul Palace.
Soul Palace did not have a grand accomplishment stage because a cultivator could continuously surround their Knowledge Sea with more building blocks to further consolidate and expand the labyrinth.
Its purpose was to guard a cultivator’s Knowledge Sea tightly, forming an impregnable defense.
And this place, filled with such thick hostile Demonic Qi, was undoubtedly the most suitable place to forge Soul Palace bricks.
Studying this soul skill gradually made Yang Kai grin, quickly comprehending it in order to begin cultivating.
After a short while, Yang Kai became familiar with how to use his own Divine Sense to grasp this free floating hostility and use it as the cornerstones for casting his mental maze.
The entire process was actually quite simple, Yang Kai had already cultivated his Divine Sense considerably, so now he just needed to experiment in its usage.
Over the next few days, Yang Kai familiarized himself with manipulating his Divine Sense, pulling a ray of dark evil aura into his mind then according to his own thoughts and ideas transforming it into bricks and tiles, gradually constructing a fortress around his Knowledge Sea.
Just like building a towering palace in real life, wanting to build a palace in his mind followed the same principals, constructing the maze from the ground up.
Gradually becoming familiar with the process, his actions became faster and more agile.
For an entire month, Yang Kai remained within the Coiling Dragon Stream, cultivating his Soul Palace.
Grasping a wisp of demonic Qi with his Divine Sense, bringing it into his mind, and forging it into a brick. After repeating this process thousands of times, his mental labyrinth gradually took shape and slowly expanded.
After one month of painstaking cultivation, Yang Kai could clearly feel that his own Spiritual Energy had strengthened greatly.  He could also spread his Divine Sense out a full twenty kilometers from himself now.
One’s Spiritual Energy was very difficult to cultivate, even for Immortal Ascension Boundary masters. Wanting to have great accomplishments with their Divine Sense was as difficult as ascending to the Heavens.
It was significantly harder than cultivating one’s body.
The most common method was to use a soul cultivating skill, or to consume Spiritual Energy enhancing precious treasures.
However, in Yang Kai’s case, loitering in the Coiling Dragon Stream under such harsh conditions to cultivate Soul Palace, and with the assistance of the Soul Warming Lotus, his Spiritual Energy becoming strong was an eventuality.
After another ten days or so, his Soul Palace skill had finally reached an intermediate accomplishment stage.
Although he was still unable to cultivate out his Knowledge Sea, Yang Kai could still clearly feel that surrounding his mind was a thick layer of protection, keeping the most critical parts of his mind secure.
This extra layer of protection was formed from the evil energy emanating from the Coiling Dragon Stream.
But it did not affect Yang Kai.
Because when Yang Kai cultivated this soul skill, all the evil energy had been marked with his aura.
With his Soul Palace completed, Yang Kai naturally couldn’t wait to try it out.
At his current position within the Coiling Dragon Stream, the vicious hostility no longer made any impact on him.
So he once again dove down, faster and faster.
Two thousand meters, his Soul Palace was unshaken.  Three thousand meters, his mental defences were still undamaged.
Falling to the deepest depths of the Coiling Dragon Stream, Yang Kai never again experienced any erosion from the surrounding hostility.  Contemplating for a moment, Yang Kai suddenly realized.
This had nothing to do with his Soul Palace’s defence, but rather because he had used the Demonic Qi in the Coiling Dragon Stream to cultivate this Soul Skill in the first place.
His Soul defence and the surrounding Demonic Qi were essentially the same, how could it possible affect his Divine Sense?

This soul skill is perfect.
Yang Kai grinned.
Taking a moment, Yang Kai clearly felt just how potent and frightening the evil atmosphere inside the Coiling Dragon Stream was. If he did not have this Soul Palace’s assistance, his Soul would likely have been instantly destroyed.

The source of this Demonic Qi should be right ahead.
Old Demon suddenly said.

This place is also the source of the Yang Qi!
  Yang Kai was a bit delighted when he felt the Yang Origin Seal in his chest suddenly throb quite violently.
Whatever the Yang Qi source in front of him was, it was no doubt an extremely valuable treasure!
Thinking as such, he briskly moved forward.
The Coiling Dragon Stream was very long, seemingly unending.
As he walked along its depths, Yang Kai saw many bleached and broken bones; when he accidentally stepped on these bones an eerie snapping sound would ring out.
Obviously these were the bones of those who had been sealed within the Coiling Dragon Stream, the High Heaven Pavilion disciples who had been condemned to death here.
On both sides of the canyon there were some short trees that had dark fruits hanging from them.
It seems like in this forsaken place there were still plants which could grow.  Yang Kai readily picked one of these fruits and soon found that it too was filled with Demonic Qi; cold to the touch, the fruit radiated a creepy aura.

Evil Spirit Fruits… Heh, this thing really is here.
Old Demon muttered in surprise,
No wonder your Sect Master’s Second Disciple could survive down here for so long.


I had also been wondering what he was eating here for ten years.
  Yang Kai smiled wryly before reaching out and plucking the few remaining fruits and tossing them into the Black Book’s space.
The Sect Master’s Second Disciple had not picked clean the fruits here; perhaps he thought that since he had raised these fruits here for the past ten years he should leave something behind as a memento.
But there were not many left in any case, only two or three, and these were not good things by any stretch, they all seemed to contain large amounts of evil energy within.
Continuing forward a while longer, soon Yang Kai spotted a murky figure within the dark Demonic Qi.
Yang Kai’s pupil couldn’t help but shrink, suddenly freezing in pace, gazing forward vigilantly, circulating his True Qi secretly.
In this place, he did not dare use his Divine Sense; once his Divine Sense left the protection of his Soul Palace, it would immediately be disintegrated, so he had been completely unaware of this figures presence until now.
But this figure gave Yang Kai a weird feeling.
It emitted not the slightest breath of life but was still sitting cross-legged, its body surrounding by a dozen meter thick ink black atmosphere that seemed to continuously be churning around it.  This black gas completely obscured its true appearance.

It’s dead!
Old Demon concluded.
Yang Kai nodded, slowly approaching it.
As he got closer, Yang Kai caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a chain attached to a collar wrapped around its neck.  This chain wasn’t long, probably only about half a meter in total length.
Yang Kai couldn’t help being surprised.
Because he found that the chain and collar were no doubt the Yang attribute treasure he had sensed earlier.  This thing was radiating an aura akin to the primordial Sun, many times more potent compared to his True Yang Yuan Qi.
Faintly, Yang Kai felt that his own True Qi was somewhat similar to the Yang aura being emitted from this collar.
However, this was not that surprising when he considered that he had absorbed a great deal of Yang Qi from the Coiling Dragon Stream to build his own foundation, and that Yang Qi had more than likely come from this collar.
This person’s clothing had long ago been turned to dust, and his physique had almost completely withered, but still, this seemingly fragile body still gave off an intimidating aura that made anyone who gazed upon it tremble lightly.  All the Demonic Qi within the Coiling Dragon Stream had actually come from this single person’s body.
Even without looking closely, Yang Kai noticed that there was a huge, ferocious wound upon this person’s chest.