Chapter 401: The Ancient and Modern Recorder (12)
Liu Yizhi felt ice-cold all over.
An inner sect elder had actually died here. And he alone knew of it. His first instinct was to report the matter to the sect. The death of an inner sect elder was no small affair. Yet he quickly suppressed the thought.
Discovering the elder's death would earn him some credit, true enough, but that credit would amount to little more than a few dozen low-grade spirit stones or a handful of second-grade pills. Before today, such a reward would have seemed an unimaginable fortune to Liu Yizhi. Now, however, the contents of the storage ring alone far surpassed any such prize.
The spirit stones alone numbered in the tens of thousands, piled into a small mountain. Alongside them lay a dazzling array of pills and treasures.
"Elder, if your spirit still lingers in the heavens, do not blame this disciple," Liu Yizhi said. "My talent falls short of Zhang Hong, Song Xing, and the other true prodigies. My background cannot compare to Wang Xingjian, Zhao Jingfu, and those born into great clans. Though my heart for the martial path remains firm, it has become a burden that holds me back."
With that, he knelt, pressing his forehead and all five fingers firmly against the ground in a deep, respectful kowtow toward the corpse.
"Though this disciple Liu Yizhi never knew the elder in life, I swear that should I one day reach a realm of true power, I will find the enemy who killed you and avenge you."
Clutching the storage ring, Liu Yizhi rose. He found a stretch of barren ground, dug a deep pit, and carefully lowered Li Zhiyuan's body into it.
"Elder… for now, this is all your disciple can do, to let you rest in the earth. Should fortune one day smile upon me, I will raise a proper stele in your honor. Please forgive me."
As the words left his lips, something struck the ground. The dead elder's hands had finally loosened their grip on the mask he had held so tightly against his chest. Liu Yizhi knew at once that the mask was no ordinary object. No common item would have remained clutched in an inner sect elder's hands until the very end.
He picked it up. The surface was cold and smooth, radiating an unmistakable aura of quality.
"Thank you for this gift, Elder. Your disciple will not fail the trust you have placed in him."
The hands that had clung so desperately to the mask had suddenly released it. Liu Yizhi took this as a sign that the elder's spirit approved of him, and the thought filled him with fierce emotion. He finished burying Li Zhiyuan, then forced down the trembling excitement in his chest and raced back to his quarters in the sect, a clean and tidy stone-brick dwelling.
Only after confirming that no one was nearby did he dare relax. Carefully, he drew the mask from his robes and began to study it in earnest.
Yet after a long while, he still could find nothing extraordinary about it. He knew it had to be a fine treasure, but having seen so little of the world, he could not judge its true rank.
"A mask is meant to be worn, isn't it?"
The thought struck him suddenly, and he cursed himself for being a fool. He had never encountered a treasure of this caliber before and had half expected some secret chant or a drop of blood to claim ownership. Even if he had bled himself dry, the mask would not have stirred.
He placed it over his face. The moment the cool surface settled against his skin, Liu Yizhi felt a subtle change within himself, though he could not yet name what it was.
Suddenly, inspiration struck Liu Yizhi. A thin membrane formed over the surface of his body. At that moment, a fierce hunger seized him, yet his mind grew sharper and clearer with every passing second.
The Spirit Awakening chapter of the Heavenly Origin Art was the foundational technique every outer sect disciple of the Heavenly Origin Sect had to learn upon entry. Its grade was modest; at best, it could carry a cultivator to the peak of the ninth level of the Spirit Awakening Realm. Progress within the art was divided into four stages: entry, minor accomplishment, major accomplishment, and perfection. The closer one drew to perfection, the faster one's cultivation advanced, the difference sometimes reaching several times over.
Liu Yizhi had spent three months after joining the Heavenly Origin Sect to reach a minor accomplishment in the Spirit Awakening chapter. Now, in an instant, it leapt to a major accomplishment, and his cultivation broke through from the sixth level of Spirit Awakening to the seventh.
The seventh level. For an outer disciple who had only recently entered the sect, that already marked him as something of a minor genius, with a real chance of entering the inner sect if he continued to work hard.
"This mask actually heightens my thinking and sharpens my comprehension!"
Liu Yizhi wanted nothing more than to throw back his head and laugh aloud, yet he dared not. He clamped a hand over his mouth. He knew he had stumbled upon an enormous opportunity. With it, entry into the inner sect, even rising to the rank of an inner sect elder, no longer seemed impossible.
Armed with abundant resources and the comprehension-boosting mask, his progress became rapid. In only a single year, he reached the peak of the ninth level of Spirit Awakening. Notably, within the first month of obtaining the mask, the Spirit Awakening chapter of the Heavenly Origin Art had already been elevated to perfection under its influence. Without that, he could never have advanced so quickly.
Beyond the ninth level of Spirit Awakening lay the Spirit Gathering Realm. The free technique distributed by the Heavenly Origin Sect stopped at the peak of Spirit Awakening. To obtain a Spirit Gathering technique, he would have to enter the Scripture Pavilion and select one himself. The storage ring did contain Spirit Gathering techniques, yet Liu Yizhi dared not cultivate any of them. He had concealed an inner sect elder's death and claimed the elder's treasures as his own. If the truth ever came to light, even ten lives would not be enough to pay the price.
Fortunately, because he had reached the peak of the ninth level of Spirit Awakening within two years, the sect allowed him to choose one free Spirit Gathering technique as a form of cultivation support.
He selected a technique called the Earth Origin Art to serve as his path forward after Spirit Awakening. With the mask's aid, he sealed himself away for more than two months, doing nothing but cultivating between meals. At last, he achieved entry into the Earth Origin Art, and his cultivation broke through into the Spirit Gathering Realm.
The Spirit Gathering Realm. Of all those who had entered the Heavenly Origin Sect in the same batch as him, only Zhao Jingfu, whose talent and background were both outstanding, had reached it, and even then he had not been ahead by much. Zhao Jingfu had long since caught the eye of an inner sect elder and would, in due course, be accepted as a formal disciple by a true power-holder once he entered the inner sect.