Mortal: I am the young sect master of the Thousand Illusions Sect

Chapter 94 The Swamp of Shadows

Meanwhile, Su Mixin, already deep within the abyss, finished collecting the corpse of the black dragon and once again erected her golden protective spiritual light shield, her body condensing into a dazzling golden escape light. Following the guidance of Feng Hou's divine sense transmission, she continued to speed forward along the pre-planned route.

After a long journey, four days flew by, and Su Mixin finally escaped the Poisonous Mushroom Forest completely.

At the edge of the forest, a vast, desolate, and endless deep black swamp suddenly unfolds before your eyes.

The soil in the marshland was as dark as ink, with a deathly deep black hue. On the surface of the puddles and lakes, thick, dark bubbles would occasionally break through the soil and rise to the surface, bursting open upon contact with the air and releasing wisps of bone-chilling cold.

Looking across the entire swamp, the world was deathly still, not a blade of grass grew, and there was not a trace of life. All that could be seen was desolation and coldness.

Su Mi's eyes darkened slightly. After a moment's hesitation, he did not turn back. He stabilized the golden protective shield around him, summoned the spirit bird Golden Feather, and leaped onto its back, riding the bird into the dark swamp filled with overwhelming yin energy.

After another three days of travel, Su Mixin stopped deep in the swamp and halted her steps.

After traveling for three days, he did not find any trace of ordinary monsters in the swamp, but there were quite a few evil spirits wandering around.

In the world of cultivation, when a human cultivator dies, his soul remains in the world and gradually becomes a wandering spirit.

If a demon beast's lingering soul remains after its death and is nourished by yin energy, it becomes a yin spirit beast.

This deep, dark swamp is filled with a massive amount of Yin energy, so dense that it is an ideal habitat for Yin spirits and Yin beasts.

Along the way, they encountered several attacks from Yin Spirit Beasts. Su Mixin casually killed several of them and also figured out the details of this place.

Thanks to the Yin energy within the swamp, the Yin spirits here can be nourished and level up. The weakest of the Yin spirits encountered here possesses at least the power of a level two demon.

The beast's strength is top-tier, its cultivation level and strength are no less than that of a level four demon beast.

However, the tricky part for Su Mixin is that, apart from her few unique supernatural abilities and spells that can restrain Yin spirits, most of her methods, including the sword techniques she uses with the Cold Swan Sword, are greatly weakened and have little effect when they hit the ethereal soul of the Yin spirit beast.

What's even more disappointing is that the Yin spirit beasts here are completely different from the Yin spirit beasts that Han Laomo encountered in the Yin Netherworld within Luo Hou's body in the original work.

When those Yin Spirit Beasts die, they drop a rare treasure called a Soul Stone. However, the Yin Spirit Beasts in this Black Swamp, once killed, will only turn into a wisp of dissipated Yin energy and dissolve into the world, without dropping any treasures.

Exorcising spirits is a waste of both spiritual energy and mental strength, and yields no reward whatsoever; it is truly a losing proposition.

But the scenery blocking her path forced Su Mixin to stop and concentrate.

This small woodland, located in a corner of the deep black swamp, is filled with dark wood with a faint gray mist swirling around its grain. It is a rare spiritual material in the cultivation world—the Yin Huai wood.

Su Mixin spread her divine sense to carefully investigate: a tall, thousand-year-old shady locust tree stood in the forest, and the remaining thirty-odd trees were all shady locust trees over a hundred years old, all of superior quality.

Upon seeing this, a glimmer of light suddenly flashed in Su Mixin's eyes.

The value of the yin locust wood is already considerable, but more importantly, it is the core material of a famous demonic artifact in the cultivation world, and the raw material for the pole of the most widely circulated and renowned demonic artifact, the Soul-Seizing Banner.

In the cultivation world, there are many different types of Soul-Capturing Banners, with vastly different grades. For example, the Yinluo Banner, the sect's most treasured item in the original work, is extremely powerful and rare.

The most widely circulated and well-known common Soul-Capturing Banner in the cultivation world is made primarily of Yin Huai wood, with other auxiliary materials used to refine it. It is extremely versatile.

The thousand-year-old shady locust tree in front of us is of excellent age and quality, enough to be used to forge a Soul-Capturing Banner of the level of a magic weapon.

Su Mixin immediately took action, felling and collecting all the centuries-old and millennia-old shady locust trees.

There is only one regret: the Yin Huai wood grows in extremely Yin and evil places, and the water, soil and energy fields are indispensable. It cannot be transplanted and stored in the World Ring, and can only be harvested locally.

After carefully storing the locust wood, Su Mi's mind raced, and she came up with an excellent plan.

The entire Black Swamp is filled with vast Yin energy, and it is not limited to this Yin Locust Forest. In addition, there are countless Yin spirit beasts of level two and above in the swamp. Instead of going to great lengths to detour and avoid them, it would be better to use the local materials to refine some Soul-Capturing Banners and subdue the wandering Yin spirit beasts around us for our own use.

While the raw wood of the Yin Huai tree is indeed valuable, a finished Soul-Capturing Banner that has subdued a Yin Spirit Beast of level two or above is worth dozens of times more than the raw wood, making their cost-effectiveness vastly different.

Besides the main trunk of the Yin Huai tree, several auxiliary materials are needed to refine the Soul-Capturing Banner, so the preparation is not simple.

However, Su Mixin possesses a Hearthstone, which allows her to easily modify the teleportation point on Earth Abyss Island, moving it to this location, and then teleporting back to Thousand Illusion Sect to replenish her materials.

In Su Mixin's eyes, while finding the Bitter Yin Spirit Water was of utmost importance, the temptation of such immense wealth before her made delaying her return journey for weapon forging for several days entirely worthwhile.

Having made up her mind and weighed the pros and cons, Su Mixin no longer hesitated.

Inside the Thousand Illusions Sect's mountain gate, in the quiet room of the Minxin Hall, a flash of white light suddenly appeared, and Su Mixin's figure materialized.

Without the slightest delay, as soon as he left the pass, he instructed the attendants outside the palace to order Su Han to immediately go to the Mi Xin Palace for a meeting.

The chamber of commerce that Su Mixin has built up is mostly staffed by people drawn from the Su family, so the main person in charge of the chamber of commerce is Su Han.

Before long, Su Han arrived at the reception room of the Mi Xin Palace and bowed to Su Mi Xin, who was seated at the head of the table, to pay her respects.

Su Mixin got straight to the point, inquiring in detail about the recent operations of the Chamber of Commerce. She immediately issued an order, instructing Su Han to retrieve all the inventory in the Chamber of Commerce's warehouse and send all the auxiliary materials for refining Soul-Capturing Banners, such as the hides of all level two and above demonic beasts and Yin Silkworm Silk, to Mixin Palace.

After allocating the chamber of commerce's supplies, Su Mixin personally went to the sect's treasure vault.

Subsequently, several senior weapon refiners were dispatched from the sect to assist them. The group spent five days using more than twenty relatively young century-old yin locust trees to jointly refine fifty-two soul-capturing banners.

All of these Soul-Capturing Banners reached the top-tier level of magical artifacts, but due to the limited age of the Yin Huai wood, their quality varied significantly.

The best quality rods can simultaneously imprison several Foundation Establishment stage Yin spirits and demon beast spirits.

The worst quality one can only accommodate one soul body above the Foundation Establishment stage.

Su Mixin collected all the remaining unused refining materials into her world ring and took them with her.

With everything prepared, Su Mixin once again announced her seclusion. In an instant, her figure vanished from the quiet room of Mixin Palace, using her Hearthstone to...

Return to the abyss.

Returning to the heart of the abyss, which he had named the Swamp of Shadows, Su Mixin changed direction and continued toward her predetermined goal.

From then on, when he encountered wandering Yin spirit beasts on the road, he no longer deliberately avoided them. Instead, he took the initiative to go forward, activated the newly refined Soul-Capturing Banner, and subdued them one by one.

After traveling for two days, Su Mixin found the second grove of shady locust trees.

This woodland is relatively small, with only about twenty locust trees. The oldest tree in the woodland is about seven or eight hundred years old, but it has not yet reached the thousand-year mark.

After another seven days of travel, they arrived at a flat depression in the heart of the Yin Soul Swamp, where a vast forest of Yin Locust trees suddenly came into view.

The entire woodland is home to nearly two hundred locust trees, with a towering giant tree standing in the very center of the woodland. The tree is already tens of thousands of years old, and its aura is awe-inspiring.

Besides this ancient shady locust tree, there are three other mature thousand-year-old shady locust trees in the forest, all of excellent quality.

But with opportunity comes danger, for lurking here is the first Yin Spirit Beast King that Su Mixin has encountered since stepping into the swamp.

The so-called Yin Spirit Beast King is a Yin Spirit Beast of level five or above. These souls are uniquely endowed and have already condensed their own Yin attribute demon core.

For a Yin Spirit Beast to break through to the fifth level of King Transformation, the difficulty is hundreds of times greater than that of an ordinary demon beast. Those who can become kings are mostly high-level demon beasts that have condensed their demon cores in their previous lives.

Previously, Su Mixin had used her mist-transformation ability to get close and hide to investigate. Now she had already retreated dozens of miles and was relying on the live point map to observe its movements.

In the Marauder's Map, all ghostly entities are marked with gray dots, making them easily identifiable.

The Yin Spirit Beast King guarding the forest has the form of a dragon. Judging from the patterns on its body and the remnants of its scales, its original form in life was also a black dragon.

Based on the information from the live map and the oppressive aura he had previously sensed, it was determined that this Flood Dragon Yin Spirit Beast King's cultivation had barely reached the fifth level.

The Marauder's Map shows that it has been wandering around the Shady Locust Forest, showing no intention of leaving.

After weighing the pros and cons and calculating the combat strength for a long time, Su Mixin immediately chose to set up the Inverted Five Elements Formation on the spot. Then she took out the complete thousand-year-old Yin Locust Wood that she had previously obtained, along with a monster hide, a sufficient amount of Yin Silkworm Silk, and a weapon-refining cauldron.

He planned to forge a Soul-Capturing Banner of magical treasure quality on the spot to suppress and subdue this dragon-shaped Yin Spirit Beast King.

This beast hide was taken from the Thousand Illusions Sect's treasure vault. It is one-third of the complete hide of a level 5 Bloodline Flood Dragon, more than enough to forge a magic weapon called the Soul-Capturing Banner.

The main trunk of that thousand-year-old shady locust tree was enormous. Su Mixin only cut one-fifth of the main trunk wood, which was enough to make a single banner.

After two days of tireless work, a brand-new magical artifact, the Soul-Capturing Banner, was successfully crafted and floated in front of Su Mixin.

The banner and flagpole were jet black, with intricate blood-red patterns engraved on the shaft. The plain white banner surface was spotless, and a faint, dark mist swirled around it, its malevolent aura concealed and its power hidden.

Su Mixin forced out a drop of her primordial blood from her fingertip and slowly poured it into the banner, using her blood to recognize its master and completely refine this magical treasure, the Soul-Capturing Banner.

On the day he completed the refining process, he set off again, sweeping through the entire large Yin Huai Forest. All the timber in the forest was stored in his ring, and the Yin Spirit Beast King that guarded the forest had been suppressed and subdued by the Soul-Capturing Banner, becoming the main soul within the banner.

Su Mixin looked up at the ancient shady locust tree in the center, her eyes filled with undisguised joy.

This wood is a rare treasure nurtured in a place of malevolent influence, and its value is immeasurable.

A month passed in the blink of an eye, and Su Mixin finally crossed the entire Yin Soul Swamp and set foot in the outer region of the swamp.

At this moment, his world ring contained an extremely abundant supply of Yin Huai wood: apart from the priceless ten-thousand-year-old Yin Huai wood, there were eight other Yin Huai wood trees over a thousand years old, a small piece of which had already been used to refine the magic weapon Soul-Capturing Banner; and there were more than five hundred Yin Huai wood trees that had matured in a hundred years.

Inside that magical Soul-Capturing Banner, besides the Dragon-shaped Level 5 Yin Spirit Beast King, he also subdued a Tiger-shaped Level 5 Yin Spirit Beast King.

After careful consideration, Su Mixin took the level six black dragon demon soul she had previously obtained from the killing and stored it in the banner for nurturing.

However, for this level six demon soul to recover to the combat power of the Core Formation Realm, it still needs to rely on the Yin energy within the banner for a long time to nourish it.

Besides the three top-tier main souls, the banner also imprisoned seventeen level-four Yin spirit beasts. At this moment, this Soul-Capturing Banner could be described as having overwhelming ferocity.

In addition, Su Mixin also crafted a batch of Soul-Capturing Banners on the spot. Now there are a total of seventy-six top-grade Soul-Capturing Banners. These banners contain more than one hundred and fifty Yin Spirit Beasts of level two or above, and are priceless.