When I had prepped for the sect trials, I believed that I could slap an easy Qi Condensation head. Frankly, this wasn’t a hard trial for me.

However, as someone who’s been around a thousand years and seen some shit, I did consider what I could do if I needed to get in contact with one in the higher realms.

From my years here, I knew how these statues worked. And I knew what the cultivators trapped inside were aware of.

Being souls — even one trapped within stone — they could vaguely sense the mind and soul of their opponent. This sense intensified when they used the spectral arm connected to their soul to attack.

Of course, since they were connected, damaging one would harm the other.

And, back in the day, I had been warned several times that if I injured the spectral arm, I could also harm the soul within. If a soul became too damaged, they’d send it on its way to drink Meng Po Soup.

Considering that we only had this many statues and that acquiring more meant that the demonic cultivators were at it again, everyone agreed to keep things to a minimum.

Due to my body’s circumstances, I couldn’t use my soul’s cultivation. But I still had an Immortal Ascension stage soul.

If these statues dared to smack me... they’d do more damage to themselves. It would be like a mundane human punching a mountain.

While the souls inside weren’t that smart, they knew when to back away from a dangerous predator.

The only issue was that my soul was currently camouflaged. Undoing that camouflage in an area that possibly had a few Nascent Soul elders watching... was a bad idea.

That didn’t mean I had no options.

I sat down and took out my Midnight Spectre Bone Brush, my precious Divine Pine Wood Ink Stick, a jar of Graveyard Well Water, and my Coldfire Inkstone. These were the same supplies that I used to create the seal on my soul.

The first thing I did was sit in the lotus position. Next, I poured a drop of the well water and started to grind the ink. This was still a stupidly slow process.

I made a mental note to myself to learn a bit more from the four arts cultivators on how to make ink faster. They probably had a secret technique that they were keeping to themselves. Jerks.

Young Master Zhang looked at me with a mixture of confused bafflement and horror.

“What are you doing?”

I stilled my hand. “You have an expensive spiritual tool to help you get through this trial. I have my own talents.”

Fortunately, for what I needed, I didn’t have to spend six whole hours grinding ink like last time. I only needed twenty minutes worth of ink.

The fact that I managed to annoy the shit out of the arrogant brat was a plus.

Once I was finished grinding, I dipped my special brush in the glowing ink.

Fortunately, it was way simpler to create an illusion of an Immortal Ascension realm soul than it was to hide one.

The soul illusion technique came to mind as I poured spiritual energy into my arm then my tool.

After bringing my brush to rest in mid air, I started writing. With each stroke I built on the idea of a simple illusion. One based on my real soul.

This was the perfect way to hide the use of my real soul’s cultivation... and it was something that could actually work if done properly — even by someone at my current realm. It only had to last an hour, making it very cheap (though not cost effective).

I double checked that each stroke had been perfectly penned. When I was positive that everything had been transcribed with little to no flaws, I set my brush down with a click.

Fortunately, the Arrogant Young Master was too enthralled with my process to disturb me. I didn’t blame him. These kinds of soul techniques were unusual. There was a very high chance that this would be the only time he would ever see something like this in his life.

I dumped out a couple dozen spirit stones and pulled the spiritual energy from them. They crumbled to dust at my feet. Quickly, I infused the energy into the line of ink I’d created.

Using a clean knife, I scratched the back of my arm and collected a drop of blood. I flicked it onto the line of text. Each of the ethereal letters became stained with red.

Then I used a series of hand symbols and made a pulling motion. The line of writing wrapped around my body like a blanket before vanishing.

I let out a long breath.

Having successfully (probably), double hidden my soul, I put everything back into my ring and stood up.

“What did you do?”

“You’ll see.” I smirked at the arrogant brat. Then I chose a nearby statue that had one bulging eye and a crooked nose. Its power was equivalent to someone at the beginning of Nascent Soul stage.

I remembered this demonic cultivator’s story because it was particularly nasty.

He had a cultivation path that stole the life energy of those around him. And it had a tendency to take the life energy of children before adults. So everywhere he went, he would force parents to watch their children perish. Of course everyone in town would eventually die anyway, but that didn’t make it any less fucked up.

Just imagining how many mortal towns and entire mortal kingdoms he had to go through in order to reach Nascent Soul with a grim messed up cultivation method like that…

Fuck this evil piece of scum.

In fact, he was one of my favorite slapping statues. Whenever I came here for training I’d always stop by this scum bucket and slap him so hard that his statue moved.

I used to receive a lot of complaints from the caretakers of this training ground... Whatever.

Fully prepared, I started to run toward the face. While the pressure from the demonic aura hit me, it wasn’t anything I hadn’t experienced before. I pushed forward without even breaking a sweat.

When I was halfway to the statue, a spectral arm zoomed towards me.

A foot away from me, it froze.

A shiver ran down it’s translucent ethereal shape. It arched like a cat that sensed danger. Then it retracted back into its statue faster than it flew out.

I stared into the statue’s lifeless eyes, pulled back my arm and slapped it hard. Considering the durability of the stone, my pitiful strength — even including my body cultivation — did nothing to it.

But it felt a little satisfying. The soul inside would feel it, afterall.

Having finished, I turned and walked back.

It was doubly satisfying to see Young Master Zhang bare his teeth in frustration.

“How did you manage to make a bit of ink and spiritual energy do that?”

I put my arms behind my back like the master I was and raised a brow, “Do you understand now, that, unlike some people who use tools they didn’t create themselves, I have actual talent?”

His little face turned red. I thought for a moment that he would have a little aneurysm.

“A girl like you will never marry!”

Was that supposed to be an insult? “Who needs marriage when I can cultivate to immortality? Marriage is for mortals and clans who want to spread their genes around. Who cares about that when we’re in a sect?”

He was probably experiencing what it was like to throw a rock at a pillow. The kid’s face turned so red that I thought he might develop a serious heart demon if I let him keep going.

“We still have two more rounds.”

He swallowed. “I think there is no point in continuing for two more rounds.”

I grinned, “So you concede?”

“No!” He coughed. “Let’s decide this in the next round.”

“You sure?”

He nodded stiffly.

“Agreed! We’ll each choose the statue with the highest cultivation we think we can handle.”

Both of us turned to the remaining statues higher than the beginning of Nascent Soul.

He started walking toward one right at the peak.

After he passed a cross section in the paths, a girl in peasant’s robes ran past. Curious, and since I was going to head in that direction anyway, I followed.

I noticed that the Young Master also caught up to me.

This was actually the girl who had to be thrown up in order to get the last bird. She shockingly made it through whatever trial she was in last time.

And she was approaching the largest head statue I had ever seen here… One that I’d never seen before. Not even when I first went through this trial.

That meant that in my last life, sometime between now and a year from now, it had vanished.

Maybe it had been retired?

Just from looking at it, I could tell that this particular head was in the Immortal Bone Creation stage. It had the appearance of an unearthly and disturbingly beautiful man with a third eye. But, on the base, his many crimes against mortals and the cultivation world were listed.

This fucker was no saint. And part of his cultivation was about stealing the bodies of others to improve his own.

Curious, I watched the girl take out a crystalline orb from her bag and walk towards the massive head.

I was having trouble placing that spiritual tool. But, considering where we were, it had to be something similar to Young Master Zhang’s scroll.

Perhaps the girl’s cheap attire was there to fool others into thinking she wasn’t a threat. That may have helped her get through the last test.

A spectral arm zipped towards her. Right when it was about to slap the little prospective disciple it instead hit the orb she was carrying.

I had expected the arm to bounce off it or something. Instead it slowly started to enter the orb as if being sucked in!

And it was fast!

Fuck! This kid was a plant from the demonic sect trying to break out one of their elders!

Not even hesitating, I pulled out my sword and sent my most powerful slash of sword Qi at the orb. Fortunately, the tool itself wasn’t very strong. When my Qi hit, it exploded into a billion pieces of debris.

A few of the girl’s fingers had also been severed. She collapsed to the ground clutching her hand.

Unfortunately, some of the soul of the demonic elder had already started to leak out. It did not look like it wanted to go back and was already pooling itself into a useful form.

So, how to stuff it back in?

It wasn’t like I could use my own more powerful soul to gather it together and force it back. Not at my cultivation, anyway.

But that didn’t mean that there was nothing I could do.

The soul of this Immortal Bone Creation monster wasn’t in good shape. It must have been stuck in this statue for several hundred years or so.

It was probably insane.

The last thing the world needed was an insane demonic sect elder running about causing havoc.

There wasn’t any time, so I could only use what I had on hand. Which was the statue itself. It was designed to keep demonic souls within them. Even powerful ones like this fucker.

I ran toward the statue.

Several arms extruded to slap me.

When they got close enough to feel my soul, they stilled. Unlike the Nascent Soul statues, these arms looked like they were confused.

But I didn’t give them time to think too much. I took this chance to smack the shit out of the smooth stone face.

The whole area seemed to vibrate with energy. Both the soul and the spectral arm were forced to return to the statue.

Even the part of the soul that had almost escaped returned, though it struggled, twisting and jerking as it was sucked back inside.

I turned to the possible demonic cultivator plant.

Her face looked pale and she stuffed a low grade healing pill in her mouth.

This fucking bitch almost released a monster into the world and she had the gall to take a healing pill in front of me?

Thinking about all the deaths that could have happened if she’d succeeded, I kicked her in the stomach. She groaned and curled into herself.

She deserved worse. But that would be for the sect to handle.

I pointed the tip of my sword at her throat and grinned down at her with teeth.

Ignoring Young Master Zhang’s shocked face, I called, “Senior Soft Storm!”

Yelling might have been unnecessary since he was already on his way over.

His pale skin looked bleached. He swallowed. Then he looked down at the girl who was clutching her stomach and her missing fingers.

“She attempted to release this demonic cultivator. I assume she's either a patsy or a hidden member of a demonic sect.”

He swallowed. “I’ve already sent a message to the sect’s Disciplinary Pavilion. They’re on their way.”

I pulled the girl’s storage bag off her waist and looked through it with my consciousness to see if there was anything incriminating. There wasn’t but she did have a few pills and weapons on her so I handed it to Soft Storm.

He glanced at me. “Disciple, how did you realize what was happening?”

“Oh that?”

Suddenly, a big pressure filled the room as the Sect Leader and Unyielding Firestorm both landed near me.

Ah, my friend did always have good timing.

“Greetings to the Sect Leader and Junior Sect Leader,” Both I and Soft Storm said at the same time while bowing.

Unyielding threw a familiar rope around the girl and picked her up.

My friend motioned for us to move back and took in the situation at a glance.

When his eyes reached the statue they wavered. “My Martial Uncle, Immortal Zhenren Sword Within the Light of Virtue, was the one who brought this demonic cultivator down. He’d warned us not to keep him like this, but my master at the time decided that it would be better to force his soul to do some good to try to make up for the horrors he committed in life. I’m afraid my martial granduncle might have been correct.”

He looked past the statue, as if remembering.

“Just imagining what evil deeds this demonic cultivator would have committed…” he murmured. Then he waved his arm at the statue. It shook for a second before crumbling to dust.

That was all it took for him to obliterate this thing, soul and all.

“If this demonic cultivator had succeeded in escaping his prison, he would have murdered all the prospective deciples here and taken their skin as his own.”

Well, that was a disturbing fact. And unfortunately, not something I hadn’t seen before. Seriously, this Xianxia universe was fucked up.

In most Xianxia, demonic cultivators were misunderstood outcasts who cultivated unorthodox cultivation methods that were either too powerful or outlawed for good reasons. In this particular Xianxia, the original author decided that he would be a bit different (though, it wasn’t that unusual).

Not only would all the demonic cultivation methods corrupt a person’s personality in this universe but it would also cause a cultivator to exude an evil aura.

Also, demonic cultivators had more difficult tribulations. They couldn’t ascend to immortality (and, if they could, it happened so rarely that I’d never heard of it).

Those who resorted to this cultivation method over all the various possible paths usually were only after one thing... power.

All of them decided that, rather than ascend to some other realm and start at the bottom, they would try to be on top of everyone here.

The Sect Leader turned to me. “I admit that I haven’t been able to watch all the disciples during this test.” No shit. He had more important things to do. Managing the day to day activities of a sect this large wasn’t easy. “So, how did you keep Elder Demon Skin’s soul inside his prison?”

I pulled out my brush and inkstone that still had a little dried ink left on it. It was a good thing I’d forgotten to clean it in my haste to get shit done.

I added a drop of well water to moisten the dried ink, and brushed it to the right consistency. Once satisfied, I used a few well placed slashes and forcefully ended my extra soul illusion.

My old friend, who was still attempting a mask of facial paralysis, blinked. That was the only thing that gave away his surprise.

“Interesting technique, Little Lin.”

I bowed. “I think so as well, Sect Leader. I used it to confuse the soul inside the statue and I did the only thing I could think of to try and get the soul back inside. Which was to slap it.”

He nodded. “The demonic sect has been more active lately. They even dared to poison me.” He grimaced. “It is every righteous sect’s duty to protect mortals from demonic cultivators. An Elder Demon as strong as Skin here, would have caused havoc throughout the world.”

I nodded. “Speaking of havoc. I have a few problems to report to the Sect Leader, if you have time to listen.”

“After what you’ve done? Of course I do.” He pulled out a very powerful talisman paper and activated it. The world within several yards of us became blurry and muffled. “Speak freely.”

I concisely explained what happened so far with the two birds and the death arrows.

He listened carefully. To be honest, seeing his young face and being able to talk to him again like this almost made me cry... Well, it would have if I wasn’t pissed at all the shit that happened to me!

When I finally finished my report, he took a moment to ponder, stroking his beard. “Little Lin. This does sound suspicious, but I think you’re missing something.”