Huge thanks to 19yy as my first ever patron! Chapter 9 – Ocean Flame Palace

As Hai Yun extended his soul tendrils to absorb all the souls in the vicinity he felt his own strength begin to rise. Previously, he had thought he would need to wait till he awakened and reached the Spirit Aura realm, as he had been when he was 16. However after the vengeful souls spirits in the golden flowers had tried to suck out his soul, he felt his soul strength suddenly explode outwards at once.

As if being inside a body had been inhibiting the strength of his soul. As he began to retaliate, he had felt the aura of the efficacious nirvana elixir suddenly burst out, and now he was in the present situation as he absorbed the vengeful spirits with nearly no consequences. No matter how many of them he absorbed, he felt they were only soul fragments and not a single complete soul. It was not very filling.

However, as he continued his rampage he suddenly came across a pond of red lotuses. From these lotuses he could feel a more formidable strength than that of the golden dandylions. Letting go of his ravenous appetite he indulged himself and began to absorb them. These souls were much harder to swallow, as they put up much more of a fight then the golden flowers who had surrendered instantly. Yet they were also more filling, so Hai Yun concentrated all his attention on absorbing them.

However as he was absorbing them he suddenly felt a migraine strike his brain. He winced in pain, however this feeling seemed familiar. He wasn’t too sure about it, so he ignored it and simply continued digesting the red lotuses. However when he had absorbed 3 more, another migraine hit his head.

Not wanting to give up the chance of whatever ‘Almighty Divinity who is my Benevolent Master’ had in store for him he continued like this till all the red lotuses had been devoured. And only then returned to his body.

He was surprised to note that all of his skin which had been withered by the flowers was even healthier than it had been before. However it had a strange red tinge to it. As he was about to get up, the cause of the migraines instantly opened itself before him.

They were, New Memories! His head was swarmed with an overwhelming amount of information.

He saw a grand luxurious palace, sitting atop a golden sea. Inside the water their seemed to be golden flames burning and a bluish-green liquid constantly swirling around. The palace walls were covered in azure dragons and vermillion bird pictures.

The front door had 3 characters engraved on the top in gold lettering against an azure colored screen. Ocean Flame Palace (海洋煙宮).

As he examined the scene he felt it seemed oddly familiar. However he was not sure how. Deciding not to ponder about it, he tried searching through more of his memories. One such fragment showed him a manual. It was called the Ocean Heart Sutra.

As he inspected the manual through his memory he was incomparably stunned. This cultivation sutra was incredibly stronger than anything he had seen before! Even though he had never practiced the strongest Sutra available at the Crystal Ocean Palace, he had still seen it before, however in comparison to this sutra in front of him, it would not even qualify to be mentioned in the same sentence. No the same century!

The complexity off the circulation method was simply ridiculous! It required one to sink into the depths of the ocean to cultivate, repeating this sutra under the pressure of thousands of feet of water was only enough to reach the small success stage of the first section! However what he found strange was that this sutra was meant to create an imbalance in the body.

It required one to awaken a multi attribute physique of Fire, Water, Earth and Death. However one was to only cultivate water and Earth laws causing their physique to break down from a lack of harmony. It was simply suicidal!

Don’t tell me I came across such a great sutra but can’t even use it! Hai Yun was flustered as he frantically read through the entire sutra, but yet found no solution even in the second section. Just as he was about to lose hope he noticed a sentence written at the bottom of the 3rd section.

[This is sutra is only one part of a duo cultivating manual. To avoid being destroyed due to imbalance it is highly recommended that the practitioner of this art form a Dao couple with someone with a Physique of the Fire, Wind and Life attributes. The sutra they should cultivate in is called the Burning Heart Valley Sacred Sutra.]

Burning Heart Valley Sacred Sutra? Hai Yun furrowed his brow before digging through his memories until he found what he was looking for. Indeed this was exactly as mentioned. A sutra meant for someone with a Fire, Wind and Life attribute physique. It was also divided into 3 parts but what he found interesting was that the person who cultivated this sutra would not need a duo cultivation companion! Wouldn’t this mean that he would be depended on whoever cultivated with him but not the other way around!

However, there were still a series of other issues to address. That would be awakening with one of these physiques, and then finding a Dao partner to duo cultivate with him. He was actually not too worried about their reliability, as he had plenty of experience with girls, being the youngest Divine Ranked Alchemist in existence on the continent, he had a plethora of followers. Many included the highly talented daughters of other major powers. They had come in trying to seduce him in order to draw his favor for their sect, but how could you seduce a divine ranked alchemist? He simply took a mind clearing elixir and remained immune to all their drugs and charms, with the end result of him seducing them with his own elixirs. However he would cruelly depart at the last minute, as he did not want to have any obligations to them.

Thus he only needed to find someone with such a physique. However the greater problem would now be explaining this to ‘Almighty Divinity who is my Benevolent Master’.

Just as he finally got up and looked for ‘Almighty Divinity who is my Benevolent Master’ he noticed the spirit of a woman in her early twenties who was staring at him intently. Her face was veiled and she was cloaked in pitch black, but it still could not cover her graceful physique.

Hai Yun cleared his throat. But before he could begin speaking the woman cut in, “What is your connection to the god king Ocean Flame?”

“Ocean Flame?!? Do you mean the palace?” Hai Yun questioned. He did not find it particularly odd this strange woman would know something. From her spirit like appearance it was clear she was another being close to the level of strength of ‘Almighty Divinity who is my Benevolent Master’.

“What Palace?” Si Wang was confused.

“Oh right ‘Almighty Divinity who is my Benevolent Master’, that technique you wanted me to learn, can you compare it to the Ocean Heart Sutra?” Hai Yun was incredibly curious to see what the strange memory fragment was worth. Even though he could tell that this female ghost was powerful, but he was certain that his ‘Almighty Divinity who is my Benevolent master’ would protect him.

“Ocean… Ocean Heart sutra…” ‘Almighty Divinity who is my Benevolent master’ stuttered. “Where the hell did you find out about that!?!?”

“I am not too sure, but it appeared in my head recently,” Hai Yun was delighted. From ‘Almighty Divinity who is my Benevolent master’s reaction this was certainly a good thing.

“You… I spent thousands of years developing a god general ranked sutra suitable for myself to practice, but you, just ate some bloody lotuses and got a God Emperor Sutra!”

Even Si Wang was incomparably shocked by what she heard. Her first reaction was to think that this boy really was the Ocean Flame of the Heaven Defying Antiquity God race. However, Xue Yue still did not seem to believe that, so she assumed he was correct since he had more dealings with that man.

‘Almighty Divinity who is my Benevolent master’ coughed twice to remove the smirk from Hai Yun’s face. “Originally I had planned for you to learn a Water and Death attribute art, but the Ocean Heart sutra might be more suitable for you. However, even though it is highly likely that you will awaken with the appropriate physique for the Ocean Heart Sutra, you still need to find someone who practices the other half… whatever it was called.”

“I believe it is called the .”

“How much information did you get from those lotuses?” ‘Almighty Divinity who is my Benevolent master’ was exasperated.

“A lot,” Hai Yun shrugged.

“You…”

Hai Clan Mansion

Hai Duan sat across the table from Qin Wu slowly sipping his tea. This was already the second time the two had met up in the past 3 days since Hai Yun’s disappearance.

Hai Duan was convinced that Qin Wu had kidnapped Hai Yun and was already aggravated to the point of wanting to fight all out with the Qin clan. It was only that Qin Wu truly looked like he had nothing to do with it, so he restrained himself.

“Qin Wu, let me make myself clear, if I find out you had anything to do with Hai Yun’s disappearance, I will not care for either Elder Nan Gong, or the Hai Clan main branch, I will personally declare that your granddaughter is a widow in front of the entire town! Then let’s see if you can…” Hai Duan paused for a moment in order to calm down, “take over the region” he finished.

Qin Wu sighed exasperatedly, “Brother Hai, if we really did have something to do with Hai Yun’s disappearance my daughter would declare herself a widow! You wouldn’t even need to do it for her”.

“At least she doesn’t have a backstabbing character!” Hai Duan narrowed his eyes.

Qin Wu only sighed again. If it had been anyone else, they might have burst in rage over these accusations, but right now, bursting in rage would only add fuel to the fire so he remained submissive and let Hai Duan take his anger out. He too, was not in a position where he could go all out with the Hai Clan at least not till Qin Cheng was strong enough, so he had to ensure her safety, for even if this branch family was not capable of harming Qin Cheng, the Hai Clan main branch might if things became too intense for Qin Cheng to be brought over to their side.

At the Isle of Wailing Souls

In the previous 3 days, Hai Yun had been absorbing and refining vengeful spirits in an almost crazy manner, attempting to attain more memories. However he never received the boon he had been searching for.

However, he had finally been gifted with a new name for the ‘Almighty Divinity who is my Benevolent master’. From now on he would call him, Xue Yi (雪醫). He would have simply referred to him as master, but Xue Yi refused so this became the alternative as that was what Si Wang had said ‘Almighty Divinity who is my benevolent master’s real name was.

“Xue Yi, do you know what attributes Qin Cheng awakened with?” Hai Yun asked while lying on the grass that had been depleted of all the golden dandelions.

“She has the Fire and Life attributes. Unfortunately she does not have the wind attribute, so she probably won’t be able to practice the Burning Heart Valley Sacred Sutra.” Xue Yi replied.

“Then why were you saying she could be the perfect dual cultivation companion for me?” Hai Yun frowned.

“Originally I did not know you had a Quadruple attribute physique. I only found that out when I saw your soul change. My plan had been to use the water attribute which was already present in your soul and develop a variant death attribute so you would end up with the Sea of Death Dual god physique. The duo cultivating manual that my Dao partner and I had practiced required one person with a Water and Death attribute physique and another with Fire and Life attributes for the best results.” Xue Yi explained.

Hai Yun nodded in approval, indeed that way he could have cultivated with Qin Cheng. But one thing still confused him, “What is a variant death attribute?” he asked.

“A variant attribute is simply a gained attribute. The reason it is called variant, is because your body is not actually capable of training and improving your strength in that attribute, rather a treasure which is capable of growth is implanted into your body allowing you to cultivate with the qi it gathers through an array diagram. Obviously you would be reliant on this treasure and thus, when it reaches perfection, you will no longer be able to improve your level in training that type of qi.”

Hai Yun pondered over this information for a moment. “So can’t we just implant something like that into Qin Cheng so she can gain a Wind attribute?”

“That is only if we can find a treasure capable of letting her practice to the 3rd level of the Burning Heart Valley Sacred Sutra.”

Hai Yun frowned. However he was secretly happy that this method had its own limitations, how heaven defying would it be if people could awaken with 5 or six attributs using treasures? Yet he was also disappointed that he didn’t have a duo cultivation companion. Now where can I find someone with Fire, Wind and Life attributes??? He began to ponder, as he stood up.

While walking to the nearest batch of golden dandelions he slowly released his soul strength and began to encompass them. Ever since he had nearly been devoured by the dandelions earlier, his soul had regained its mobility and he had finally retrieved his soul domain. Now, devouring these vengeful souls was fairly simple, he only needed to surround them with his soul force and squeeze them until thy integrated with his soul.

Of the millions of dandelions which had covered the ground, barely a few hundred were left. He had even depleted 4 pools filled with the red lotuses! While devouring these souls, time seemed to fly by. The only thing on his mind was how to go about finding a girl with those 3 attributes. He would also need to make sure she had substantial talent, as becoming a Dao couple would be a permanent commitment for all parties involved.

Clearly, if things kept heading this way, he would have to break of his engagement with Qin Cheng, as duo cultivation usually required intimate contact between the partners. Thus he would have to marry his Dao partner. When he was going through the people he knew, he suddenly recalled a scene which had occured when he was 14 in his previous life.

…

A young girl was sitting on the floor of his room and refusing to budge for the entire evening. Today was her awakening ceremony. She had a flawless face and was pouting at him with her arms wrapped tightly around his left arm refusing to let go. He could feel blood rushing up to his head as he blushed from being held by her.

She was the only one who could instigate him like this. Her name was Qian Mu (thousand admirations). She was only one year younger than him, and was currently a grandmaster ranked alchemist. Other than him, she was the only other person to reach that level before 20.

It was because of this reason, they were fairly close. Her father was a Divine Ranked alchemist with no affiliation and would frequently wander around the continent. However he visited the Crystal Ocean Alchemy sect frequently for ingredients.

Today Qian Mu was going to awaken, but Hai Yun had holed himself up in his room refusing to show up and continuing to work on his formulas. In response she came to his room and pulled his left arm into her embrace and forcefully sat on the ground pulling him out of his chair. Ensuring that he wouldn’t even try to think of his recipe she would blow into his ear if he tried to turn away.

This scene was particularly important for him, as she was the first person who had ever convinced him to leave his formula table for other business.

Later in the evening when she had finally awoken her profound vein, she had been discovered to have 3 attributes… Fire, Wind and Life…