Chapter 192 — The Brahma Sound Ring (First Update)

Zou Han crumbled away little by little into the air, leaving behind only a few treasures; the poison fan, together with its poisonous mist, had been frozen into icy dregs by the Yin Fire Pearl and weathered away with him. Zuo Yan felt no pang of regret—he had never much liked that poison fan. The treasures left behind, though, were of fine stuff and fine luster.

A pity this was no time to admire them one by one; Zuo Yan swept the whole lot into his ring in a single motion.

Zuo Yan was moved to sigh. What moved him was not the might of the Yin Fire Pearl, but the sudden understanding of why the sect master and the senior uncles loved to keep that saying on their lips: "We are sword cultivators—whatever we want, we take with the sword!"

Battle truly was one of the fastest roads to wealth!

He had killed only two Condensed Meridian cultivators, and already the treasures and spirit stones he had gained made his purse feel swollen to bursting.

With the formidable Yin Fire Pearl to back him and such enormous profit to spur him on, Zuo Yan's eyes went red in an instant.

The way he looked at the other cultivators was the way a man looks at a flock of plump lambs!

So many spirit stones!

Just then a chant of Brahma sound rang out, and within the great formation a golden light blazed up, stabbing straight into the clouds!

Rapture lit Zuo Yan's eyes: the Brahma Sound Ring had been tempered successfully!

The fire-red Brahma Sound Ring had turned wholly gold, without the least trace of copper about it—it looked like a ring of pure gold. Faint lightning crawled along its body. Could it be that the gang thunder from the orb of light had been absorbed by the ring as well? Zuo Yan was astonished, and all the more delighted for it.

Each time the lightning coursed around the ring, the Brahma Sound Ring gave off a thread of chant, now low, now high, but always deep and solemn.

At once the whole aspect of the Heaven Ring Moon Chime Formation changed: a brilliant sun hung high in the sky. Golden, warm light spilled down and dyed every hanging filament gold, until they were like so many threads of gold. The halos upon those filaments turned from cool moonlight to a golden orange.

The former coolness, clear as water, was swept away; the formation now stood bathed in sunlight, and all evil things fled before it!

The Black Wind bandits remaining inside the formation felt something altogether different. Before, they had seemed to stand in a wilderness, night thick as water, weird and sinister. Now a fierce sun blazed overhead—as though they had been flung from a cold, gloomy waste into a scorching desert. Wave upon wave of chant washed over them, and any whose will was the least bit frail would lose their fighting spirit at once.

The Black Wind bandits in the formation were vicious men long used to licking blood from a blade's edge; their wills were not so frail. Even so, they felt the pressure bear down on them in wave after powerful wave.

The old Heaven Ring Moon Chime Formation had kept a man wary, guarding against attack at any moment; this new formation demanded that they circulate their spiritual power without pause, hour upon hour, to fend off those waves of chant. The formation now was far more aggressive!

No wonder Zuo Yan was so elated—it was as though someone had handed him a pillow the very moment he began to nod off!

With the Yin Fire Pearl and this newly transformed formation, his chances against these villains had soared.

Zuo Yan swiftly revised his plan: a moment ago he had meant to kill as many as he could; now not one of them would be let go. Every last one of them was a heap of spirit stones!

These fiends whose hands were steeped in blood—let me deliver them to salvation! Zuo Yan thought, righteous and grave.

Zuo Yan was now like a seasoned hunter, in no hurry to draw in the net he had spread. His consciousness was joined to the little pagoda, and he carefully sensed every shift in the new formation. The Brahma Sound Ring had changed so greatly that he needed to grow used to it all over again.

The Black Wind bandits inside the formation were beginning to panic. Their chief had vanished utterly, and no one knew whether he lived or died. Trapped within the talisman array, they were like a swarm of flies, utterly at a loss.

The pressure of the new formation upon them had grown sharply; the chant seeped in through every gap, and they had to circulate their spiritual power to resist it, their expenditure doubling. They were no ignorant novices—what they feared most was precisely a situation like this, in which they must spend their spiritual power without cease.

On a battlefield, spiritual power is a cultivator's greatest reliance, and any experienced cultivator husbands his expenditure with care.

The little pagoda well deserved its name as a natal treasure: it perceived everything down to the finest detail, and the new changes in the Brahma Sound Ring flickered through Zuo Yan's mind like flowing water. Zuo Yan praised it without thinking—and to his surprise, a surge of gladness and pride came back to him from the little pagoda.

Zuo Yan was first startled, then stunned.

Could it be that the little pagoda truly had feelings and thoughts of its own?

The manner in which the little pagoda had come into being was so uncanny that even now, thinking back, Zuo Yan found too much in it beyond comprehension. But in his eyes the little pagoda was a treasure, born of his own consciousness and bound to his mind. It had often shown a human side, yet Zuo Yan had always taken that for spirit and vitality—it had never once occurred to him that the little pagoda might truly possess a self of its own.

The self-awareness of a treasure is called spirit consciousness.

That pulse of awareness just now, coming from the little pagoda, made Zuo Yan suddenly realize: the little pagoda possessed spirit consciousness!

Heavens! How could that be?

Any treasure that possessed spirit consciousness was, without exception, among the very finest. A natal treasure alone had already made him feel he had stumbled into tremendous luck, as though he had tripped and fallen headlong into a heap of spirit stones.

A natal treasure with spirit consciousness!

Oh!

The sudden happiness set Zuo Yan trembling all over. He stared at the little pagoda with eyes ablaze, looking for all the world as though he wished to stuff it into his mouth! The little pagoda shrank back timidly, its five-story body quivering.

"Come, come, good son, let your old father have a proper look at you!" Zuo Yan beckoned to the little pagoda, drool at the corner of his mouth, his expression indescribably lewd.

The little pagoda could indeed be reckoned half a son to him; its spirit consciousness sprang from his own.

The little pagoda crumpled into a ball, shivering.

After examining it for a long while, he could make nothing of it. Helpless, he had to let the little pagoda go.

He pondered when he might sit down and properly recall how he had refined the little pagoda last time. To picture himself wreathed in radiance, trailing behind him a long and endless string of natal treasures with spirit consciousness—how magnificent that would be!

He would specialize in robbing wandering brigands; whoever dared resist would have every one of his natal treasures hurled down on them in a single hail!

Lost in the fantasy of his own majestic figure sweeping all before him, he suddenly felt something nudge him at the waist. He looked down: it was the little pagoda. Zuo Yan came back to himself and wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth.

The little pagoda was reminding him that the brigands meant to flee.

Flee?

Zuo Yan let out a string of cold chuckles. A moment ago he had still been wary; now the remaining brigands were all, in his eyes, fish upon the chopping block, awaiting his knife.