Stirring the Seas Beyond | External Incarnation

Chapter 378: Stirring the Seas Beyond | External Incarnation

The island’s only town sat at its eastern tip, close to the harbor. The island’s western side held a small mountain range over twenty li long, topped by two modest peaks—one about two to three hundred zhang high, the other only a hundred or so.

From high above, Han Li spotted the peaks. He suppressed his slight excitement and descended into the center of the town first.

The arrival of Han Li and Qu Hun caused a small commotion. An old man who introduced himself as the town head hurried over to receive them.

Han Li handed him the jade slip marked with golden symbols. After examining it, the town head immediately declared that the entire town would obey any orders from the Immortal Master.

Han Li had no business requiring mortal assistance. He simply asked a few general questions about the island’s conditions and, most importantly, how much of the protective formation’s spirit stone consumption the townspeople could cover.

When he heard the figure—so small it might as well have been zero—Han Li felt a quiet frustration.

Was he supposed to shoulder the entire cost?

The middle-aged cultivator’s suggestion about “collecting some spirit stones from the residents to offset the losses” had sounded generous in theory. In practice, it made no difference at all.

Han Li grumbled inwardly about that middle-aged cultivator, then offered a few words of comfort to the old man.

Afterward, he went to check the formation core at the town center.

He estimated the formation’s spirit stone consumption, compared it to what the town head had told him, and handed over a year’s worth of formation stones on the spot.

He instructed the old man to come to his future cave dwelling each year to collect the next year’s supply.

Without waiting for further thanks, Han Li and Qu Hun flew toward the island’s western end.

As soon as he entered the mountain range the locals called “Little Huan Mountain,” Han Li sensed a faint brush of spiritual qi against his face. He felt a flicker of satisfaction.

Moments later, aboard the Divine Wind Boat, he circled the two peaks several times.

The taller peak offered denser spiritual qi. But the shorter one was broader, better suited for a cave dwelling. It even had an abandoned cave from a previous cultivator, still intact and nearly ready for immediate use.

Han Li hovered in the air, lost in thought. His eyes flickered with a sharp light. Then he made his decision.

He flew into the abandoned cave on the shorter peak. Finding a hidden spot deep within the cavern, he released his magic tools and began striking the ground.

By midday, an underground passage had taken shape. The passage, about two to three zhang in diameter, drove straight toward the mountain’s base.

When the tunnel reached a depth more than ten zhang below the mountain’s base, Han Li abruptly changed direction. The tunnel now angled toward the other peak, only two to three li away.

Even with his sharp-edged magic tools and Qu Hun’s assistance, the great excavation took two full days before successfully connecting the two peaks.

Then, following the model of his old cave in Tiannan, Han Li opened a new cave dwelling inside the taller peak.

Everything matched his old one in the Taiyue Mountains.

This time, however, he left no exit except the hidden tunnel. The cave was completely sealed.

This was where Han Li would truly cultivate and nurture his spirit herbs.

One false cave and one true cave—this arrangement was far safer.

After finishing the cave, Han Li set up his first “Reversed Five Elements Formation” near the entrance of the shorter peak.

But after circling between the two peaks for a while, he still felt uneasy.

He retrieved two more powerful formation sets from Xin Ruyin’s gift—“Heavenly Wind Furious Array” and “Phantom Form Heaven Net Array”—complete with their flags and plates.

Both formations covered a wide area. Once activated, they enveloped both peaks in their protective barriers.

Though not as mystical as the Reversed Five Elements Formation, even Foundation Establishment cultivators would find them a headache.

Unless a Core Formation cultivator attacked directly, Han Li’s cave was now effectively secure.

From above the outer formation, Han Li gazed at the peaks now hazy behind milky white mist. He chuckled softly, then slowly descended into the mist and vanished.

Inside the true cave, Han Li did not rest. Instead, he kept busy without pause.

First, he planted some spirit herb seeds in a secret spirit garden he had opened. Even with the ability to accelerate growth, the seeds needed to become seedlings first.

Then, he buried his most prized small vial in a corner of the garden. He placed the broken treasure fragment over it as before, allowing the vial to absorb starlight through a tiny hole in the cave wall and condense green liquid.

Next, he opened dozens of chambers of various sizes. Following the Imperial Spirit Sect cultivator’s insect-raising notes, he modified each chamber’s environment, placed the pair of white spiders and the surviving strange insects inside, and set up restrictions to prevent them from escaping.

He also scattered a sufficient amount of insect feed.

After completing the most important tasks, Han Li did not immediately take medicine and sit in meditation. Instead, he carefully pulled out the gray-white jade slip he had obtained from the Yue Emperor. It contained many bizarre secret arts he had long coveted.

Among them was the “External Incarnation” technique.

Han Li sank his spiritual sense into the jade slip, studying the technique’s cultivation method repeatedly, before withdrawing and falling into deep thought.

Though he had already made up his mind long ago, careful scrutiny now confirmed that the risk was significant.

The jade slip was clear: if the refinement of the incarnation failed, the spiritual sense planted inside it would be destroyed and could not be recovered.

If the cultivator’s spiritual sense was not strong enough, the severe loss could lead to prolonged madness in mild cases, or heart-devil backlash and death in severe ones.

Even if the refinement succeeded, this so-called “External Incarnation” was merely an advanced puppet that could cultivate on its own and be manipulated freely.

It was a far cry from the legendary immortal arts where one became two, or transformed entirely into multiple beings.

But Han Li had the “Blood Condensation Five Elements Pill.” He had a strong chance of forcing the incarnation to form a “Demonic Core.” This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—a Core Formation guardian puppet.

Even if it was only early Core Formation, it would give him a fighting chance against Core Formation cultivators.

The most critical and difficult prerequisite for the External Incarnation technique was a suitable body—one that possessed spiritual roots and was physically intact.

He already had one.

Qu Hun. The soul-less corpse.

Normally, extracting a cultivator’s primordial soul—especially a low-level one—was a brutal process that damaged the body’s meridians, rendering it incapable of cultivation. That was why so many cultivators were surprised that Qu Hun, a corpse, still emitted spiritual energy fluctuations.

A body that remained intact after soul extraction was possible, but it was pure coincidence—a one-in-a-hundred stroke of luck.

The External Incarnation technique required exactly this: a body that was unharmed after extraction, and one that belonged to a low-level cultivator below the sixth layer.

Finding such a body was even harder.

Han Li did not know why the technique had such a strange requirement, but he suspected it had to do with making it easier for the planted divine sense to master the body.

He did not know how Yu Zitong and Doctor Mo had managed to produce Qu Hun under such coincidental circumstances. But the body met every condition—it was a perfect vessel for the incarnation.

The Yue Emperor had probably extracted countless low-level cultivators’ souls before stumbling upon a suitable body. Otherwise, he would have refined more than one incarnation.

Sitting cross-legged on the ground, Han Li deliberated for a long time.

He decided to refine the incarnation only after he had trained the Great Derivative Art to the second layer. That way, even if the refinement failed, the consequences would not be severe. He had already experienced firsthand the art’s remarkable effect on strengthening spiritual sense.

But before cultivating the Great Derivative Art, he needed to restore his cultivation to early Foundation Establishment first. The External Incarnation technique could only be practiced by Foundation Establishment cultivators.

After the incarnation was refined—success or failure aside—he would begin exploring the “Three Revolutions Heavy Origin Art.”

That art, along with the “Azure Origin Sword Art,” was the key to whether he could form a core and step onto the path of great Dao.

Having laid out his future cultivation plan, Han Li entered the cave’s meditation chamber and began taking pills to refine his qi.

For now, he still relied on low-grade pills like Yellow Dragon Pills and Golden Marrow Pills.

Foundation Establishment Pills were still too potent for him. He would wait until he reached the seventh layer before taking them.

He estimated that without a bottleneck blocking his path, he should break through to Foundation Establishment quickly.