"Oh? So the Vermillion bird has a mission of its own as well." Lin Wu said as he watched the memories of a jade slip within the memories of the skull god.

"Didn't expect she would be foolish enough to store her own memories like this. And she thought they would stay hidden… Hahaha!" The current vessel of the skull god said.

This vessel was a woman and was holding a jade slip that contained the memories of Hong Feng. She had found this jade slip hidden in one of the temples around the area of the sect.

All these temples were made by the sect's expert formation masters and were enchanted such that they would appear at random times. This was to give them the chance to allow a lucky person to find them.

The temple didn't differentiate between beasts and humans either, and everyone was allowed in it. That was also how the skull god's vessel had managed to find one. The problem was though that the number of temples was unknown.

This became a headache to the skull god, as he not only needed to find the bloodline essence to heal himself, but also find more vessels for himself. He had wanted to go out and find better vessels but was restricted to the area of the sect, which later became the dread coil marsh.

This was actually due to his own fault. Because of the miasma, he had spread back then, the flames of Vermillion bird had cursed the area. The curse was so strong that it was still maintained.

The skull god had spent a long time wearing out that curse, which was also why the dread coil marsh only got worse and worse with time. Back when the vermilion bird cleansed it, the area just looked like it had been scorched by a powerful flame and that it was destroyed.

The skull god continued corrupting the area over the years so that he could finally leave the cursed boundary that had been set by the vermilion bird. Even his vessels could not leave the area once he took over them and he needed to use other people that were often under the command of the vessels to do his work.

That was also how he set up his own temple and became known as a skull god here, too. He gained more followers and let them do his work. But of course, more obstacles arrived in his path, eventually.

The biggest being nothing but the awakening of the three guardian beasts.

"How can this be? The guardian temple needs all of them to awaken at the same time for it to work." The skull god said in bewilderment.

The skull god didn't even know it was possible for just three of the beasts to awaken. In fact, the reason why he was confident in his plans was because he had essentially taken care of the Vermillion bird.

As long as even one of the guardian beasts was suppressed, the others should not have managed to awaken. But now that they had, his problems only increased more.

"Curse them… whoever did this will pay for it one day! I swear to the heavens!" The skull god's vessels said.

The awakening of the guardian beasts served to stopper his progress for many years to come, as he needed to hide most of the time. For over four thousand years, the skull god chose to seal himself and a vessel that he had chosen.

He decided to wait and see what the future would be like. He didn't know if the other guardian beasts would send their followers to figure out about the disappearance of the Vermillion bird, but it never happened.

The skull god spent the four thousand years hiding away and when he finally appeared, he was surprised to find that the world had changed by a lot. No longer were sects at the top, but rather three guardian clans had taken that position.

"Ahahah! Perfect, this works perfectly for me! This is the first time I've seen the sects fall from grace and an independent power taking over the control of the guardian temple." The skull god laughed out loud.

"Seems like I can continue my plan steadily… only thing is I'll still need to stay wary of the people that wander into the area and ensure that my existence is not found out and neither is the Vermillion birds." The skull god decided and gave his vessels the rest of the orders.

Lin Wu then watched on how the organization that the Skull god made rose up. Their main goal was to find the temples of the vermilion bird for now and make sure that no one entered the area of the former Vermillion sect.

They also managed to finally change the environment of the area into what dread coil marsh looked like now over the years. But this came at a cost, of course. Due to being injured, the Skull god couldn't fully control the powers that he gave others.

As a way to entice more followers, he would give them the cultivation methods and skills. So that they could cultivate the shadow Qi that he used. But this was the very thing that limited them as well.

While it allowed the cultivators to gain power rather quickly, it also sent them to their deaths early on as some parts of the cultivation technique came at the cost of their life force.

This was also the reason why he didn't have many followers that had reached a high cultivation base. Over the past two thousand years, he had only managed to gain one follower who had reached the Dao shell realm, and that was the child who Lin Wu and Shirong fought.

Even that cultivator only survived this long because of the many sacrifices that the skull god did, using the vitality of others to replenish this one follower's. But it was also this follower that became his main pawn to control.

"Dayum…. This guy's been playing the long game huh…"