Chapter 176: The Exorcism

Chapter 176: The Exorcism

The tense atmosphere was suffocating despite no pressure coming from the ghostly hologram.

"Anyway, to level the playing field, I've removed the factor of luck. No heaven-given luck to cheat. So only your mind and power matter here," the ghost declared. He seemed disappointed as he looked at us and wasn't even bothering to hide it.

What was that about? He had just called us an interesting group of people not so long ago.

"What a trashy event for heaven's favorite to find this place. It's kind of ruined my mood," the ghost whined, which seemed highly unsuitable for someone in its position.

Another realization dawned on me: by "heaven's chosen," there was a good chance he meant Hu Jin. What were the chances of there being someone else like that?

Which meant Hu Jin was here!

I looked around, trying to commit everyone's faces to memory. Yet none of them resembled him appearance-wise, and I didn't even sense his Qi signature.

Had he been here all along? Or was some other heaven's favorite?

I closed my eyes and focused entirely on my sensory abilities. With my cousins nearby, I didn't have to worry about a sneak attack.

Hu Jin had only recently become a one-star Qi Gathering, and his talent was even lower than mine. Rising through the ranks would be challenging for him. So even if he could hide his fake and Qi signature, he would still be one of the few here with low cultivation.

However, even that was more complicated. Most of the people on this expedition were stronger cultivators from the younger generation. There were also those like me who had entered through special permission or were related to the higher-ups, all salivating at the thought of gaining the inheritance of an immortal.

Assuming Hu Jin hadn't used a technique to disguise his cultivation level, about three dozen disciples fit the criteria. There was also a chance that Hu Jin had advanced through many stars since his breakthrough—perhaps through some miraculous encounter.

In the end, there was no way to guarantee I could identify the hidden Hu Jin. So, I stopped my efforts and decided to observe everyone's behavior instead. He could hide everything else but not his actions.

As a precaution, I decided it was safer to stay away from everyone.

The ghost said he could temporarily remove whatever made Hu Jin stand out. But I wouldn't survive long if I started taking a ghost's words at face value. Who knew what his real intentions were?

As for my cousins, I was sure Hu Jin hadn't impersonated any of them. That much I could be confident about. But if we stayed together, we'd only drag each other down.

While everyone else was likely searching for some powerful technique, I was here to study and learn new things.

Who wouldn't be interested in the man who achieved immortality? Well, more than one might think. But I didn't care much about powerful techniques—at least not the ones here—because I knew others were much stronger than me and had a better chance of obtaining them.

"Anyway, I'm sure you're all here for the reward. So, have at it," the ghost said, waving its hand. Doors revealed themselves on the dark walls, but that wasn't all—strange doors also began appearing mid-air, opening to dark, unknown spaces. "Pick whichever door you feel like. But if I were you, I'd rush before your peers pick the treasures dry. If you pass the tests, each door will lead to a treasure and an exit from this place"

The disciples rushed in without hesitation, though only a handful of the bravest chose the mid-air doors. My cousins glanced at me, clearly expecting me to join them.

The ghost made a face as if he'd just heard the most ridiculous thing. "You come into a treasure trove, and the thing that excites you most is the guy who put the treasure here?"

"Yes," I answered without hesitation. He clearly had some strange techniques that could tell if I was lying. But I wasn't worried—I was only telling the truth.

"Heh," the ghost chuckled. "With that mindset, you're either going to become an immortal or amount to nothing as a cultivator."

Though he said it jokingly, it felt pretty endearing to have an immortal suggest I could reach his stage of cultivation.

The ghost jumped off the stone coffin and walked toward me with soundless steps. When he was within arm's length, he sat down cross-legged.

"Well, sit down; my life story will be quite a long one. I lived for seven thousand eight hundred and twelve years," he said. I followed his lead, sitting down cross-legged, and began drawing him as he told his story. "Before the epithets that everyone began calling me by and they eventually forgot my name, my real name was Cui Yongnian. I resulted from the union between Emperor Tang Guoliang and a monstrous beast."

A union between a human and a monstrous beast? That was quite rare. Technically possible since monstrous beasts could take a humanoid form at will when they achieved the Nascent Soul Realm. But just because they could turn into humans didn't mean they were into humans that way... It would be like a guy gaining the power to turn into a dolphin and then wanting to have sex with one. Very weird.

Just that situation alone raised a thousand questions, questions I decided to keep to myself. Despite meaning no offense regarding his mother being a bit weird, I knew how it might come off. Did turning into a human make humans attractive to her? Wait, the cultivators who used transformation techniques, were they all secretly furries?

He explained his childhood, though he never went into much detail. His early years were relatively peaceful, and he even had a younger sibling born to the same parents.

Usually, emperors had harems, but his spouse was a Nascent Soul monstrous beast. If he had strayed from the bounds of their marriage, he could have found his entire kingdom destroyed.

Cui Yongnian's life continued normally for decades. That was until his father died, and a couple of centuries later, his mother was killed by some Nascent Soul cultivators searching for resources.

In the end, he didn't seem too sad about his mother's death. But then again, he had over seven thousand years to come to terms with it.

Cui Yongnian never took over his father's empire. Despite his mother's death, he felt he had already spent centuries with her—more time than most mortals spent with their parents. Afterward, he focused on cultivation for a while.

Though many exciting things had happened in his life, they had been washed away and forgotten after thousands of years. He told me he became immortal at seven hundred years old, mostly kept to himself, and died two thousand nine hundred years ago. Obviously, he died from unnatural causes, not a natural death, but he never elaborated on how he died.

"I would have liked to live until the Era of Immortals came. But sadly, I slipped when I was almost there," the ghost said, shaking his head.

"The Era of Immortals?" I raised a questioning brow as I finished writing notes on his story and the details he had provided.

Also, what did he mean by "almost there"? He was nearly three thousand years off. What kind of messed-up time perception did these immortals have?

"Yes, my tomb was supposed to open just a bit before that," he sighed, disappointed. "Though this wasn't the generation I was expecting. I thought I saw an era where many immortals emerged and cultivation entered a golden age like never before. Perhaps I saw it wrong."

An Era of Immortals...