Condensing Spirit Essence

When night fell, Mo Fan slipped quietly up to the rooftop.

The air in the Imperial Capital was even worse than in Magic City. No matter how dark and remote a spot you found yourself in, forget about seeing the full spread of stars. Even the black of night didn't quite look right — always smeared with a sickly yellow haze. Light pollution.

Mo Fan had originally come up here to continue his Meditation, consolidating his Summoning Element, which had only recently advanced to the Star Nebula stage.

Instead, the little Loach Pendant decided to be disagreeable tonight, giving off a peculiar, flickering radiance. That piqued his curiosity no end.

Over the past few days of studying magical civilization, Mo Fan had made a point of asking old Professor Qiu Yuhua about Soul-Capture Vessels.

He remembered what Zhao Manyan had told him: the Remnant Souls and Spirit Essences left behind when a living creature died were invisible to ordinary people and impossible to gather. Only Undead Element Mages possessed the Control to perceive and collect them.

And if Mages of other Elements wanted to gather Remnant Souls or Spirit Essences, they would need to go through a Soul-Capture Vessel forged by Undead Element Mages...

Just what exactly was this little Loach Pendant, anyway? A prized Meditation Magic Weapon *and* a Soul-Capture Vessel, all in one.

Tonight, the little thing's glow was especially strange. Mo Fan decided to send his Mental Intent inside and find out what was going on.

The Loach Pendant housed a complete Earth Sacred Spring — though by now, the spring had been almost entirely absorbed. The reason Yu'ang and the others had been able to sense its presence was that the Sacred Aura the pendant emanated was that of the Earth Sacred Spring itself. The spring was never coming back out; that much was certain. And since the Loach Pendant seemed soul-bound to him, no one could take it away regardless. In short, the Black Church had no hope of ever getting their hands on the Earth Sacred Spring again.

"What's your deal, little guy?" Mo Fan sat on the rooftop, staring at the Loach Pendant with a baffled expression. "It's the middle of the night — what are you doing flashing all that weird green light?"

Since nightfall, the Loach Pendant had been shining with a blue-green radiance, shivering at intervals. If Mo Fan hadn't known beyond all doubt that it was just a pendant, he might have suspected it was alive.

He sent his Mental Intent inside and was startled to discover that the Loach Pendant contained a pocket of void space.

Perhaps his cultivation had been too weak before, his Mental Intent too feeble to truly enter the pendant's inner world. This time, it felt much like the first time he'd used Dimensional Summoning — his Mental Intent drifting through a dimension that didn't belong to this plane at all.

But Mo Fan wasn't alarmed. If a place like the Three-Step Tower could contain vast hidden pocket dimensions, it was hardly strange for the extraordinary little Loach Pendant to hold a small world of its own. Otherwise, where would the Earth Sacred Spring be stored? Where would all those collected souls reside?

His Mental Intent drifted on. The void space wasn't particularly large. As he probed deeper, a crystalline river materialized out of the emptiness.

The aura rising from the water was unmistakably that of the Earth Sacred Spring. Apparently, even a trickle of spring water became a flowing river inside the pendant's void!

Looking closer, Mo Fan noticed blue-green orbs of light drifting above the clear water — like fireflies magnified a hundred times over, each one hovering just above the river's surface.

There were quite a number of them, clustering together to adorn the clear river. It might almost have been beautiful — if he'd known what they actually were.

To put it delicately, everything floating above that river was a Remnant Soul.

To put it plainly — they were all ghosts.

It had started when Mo Fan killed the rabid Gloom Wolf Beast that had attacked Instructor Baiyang. The moment the creature died, its soul had been drawn straight into the Loach Pendant.

After that, every Demon-Beast Mo Fan had killed — the Black Church members included — had quietly turned into specks of glimmering light upon death and drifted silently into the Loach Pendant.

Mo Fan had assumed those worthless Remnant Souls had been consumed as food. Instead, every single one was still here, transformed into frameless blue-green lanterns floating above the water...

He shook his head, bemused. Who would have guessed the Loach Pendant had a hobby of collecting trophies like this?

Fortunately, the blue-green glow soon dimmed. Mo Fan was puzzled, but since he couldn't work out why, he decided not to waste any more time on it.

They were just Remnant Souls, after all. Compared to Spirit Essences — which could be used to craft Stardust Artifacts and Star Nebula Artifacts — the difference was sand versus gold. If the little Loach Pendant wanted to collect them, fine. Nothing wrong with being an ambitious pendant.

Mo Fan put it out of his mind and sank back into his cultivation.

After midnight, the Loach Pendant started acting up again, trembling without end.

Mo Fan opened his eyes, ready to give the little thing a piece of his mind — and stopped cold. The diffuse, scattered blue-green glow had become a dense, concentrated radiance.

His jaw dropped far enough to fit a fist. *What in the—*

A scattered blue-green glow and a condensed one were two entirely different things. The former was worthless as sand — Remnant Souls. The latter was precious as gold: a Spirit Essence.

But how? He hadn't fought anyone. He hadn't killed a single Demon-Beast. So how had a Spirit Essence appeared inside the pendant?

And it was unmistakably genuine.

Mo Fan rushed his Mental Intent inside to investigate. The blue-green Remnant Souls that had been floating above the river — every last one of them — were gone. The entire surface was bare, save for a single point of condensed brilliance: a Spirit Essence, gleaming like moonlight on still water.

Mo Fan wasn't the type to accept a windfall without understanding where it came from. He needed to know the full story before he could feel right about taking it.

This Spirit Essence had appeared far too suddenly. It was exactly like stumbling upon gold in the middle of the street...

Elated as he was, a small, nagging unease refused to leave him alone.

With that worry gnawing at him, Mo Fan stayed up all the way until dawn.

At first light, he knocked on old Professor Qiu Yuhua's door. The professor answered yawning. "Up this early? What is it?"

"Professor, I was just reading a book about Soul-Capture Vessels. It mentioned that beyond gathering Spirit Essences, they have other very special functions. I was wondering if you might know anything about that?" Mo Fan asked.

The professor's eyes lit up as if he'd met a fellow scholar of the highest order. His drowsiness evaporated on the spot. "What book did you find that in? Must be an ancient text. I myself only came across a brief mention in some early records, quite by accident..."

Mo Fan could see the old man struggling to contain his excitement while putting on an air of mystery. He knew the professor had exactly the information he needed. He steered the conversation step by step in the direction he wanted.

Professor Qiu Yuhua lowered his voice as if revealing a lifelong secret. "Legend has it there exists a particular type of Soul-Capture Vessel — one that not only collects Spirit Essences, but actually has an unusual fondness for Remnant Souls. And the reason is..." He paused for effect. "This type of Soul-Capture Vessel can condense those Remnant Souls into a complete Spirit Essence!"

The moment he heard those words, everything lit up inside Mo Fan.

Of course. The Loach Pendant had condensed all those Remnant Souls into a single Spirit Essence.

Sand into gold.