Chapter 297 – Died before it was borned

Wang Lin’s eyes lit up and his body suddenly disappeared inside the restriction flag. However, it was very hard for the green-robed cultivator to notice. After all, the green-robed cultivator was only at the early stage of Soul Formation, while Wang Lin’s divine sense was on the level of a late stage Soul Formation cultivator’s divine sense.

Although the two had the same cultivation level, the difference between their divine senses was too large. This was why Wang Lin was able to detect the green-robed cultivator the moment he appeared but the green robed cultivator wasn’t able to detect Wang Lin until he got closer.

He took one step into the formation before turning around to look at the black fog that was coming at him. The cold look on his face became even colder.

However, just at this moment, Wang Lin’s figure suddenly appeared above the formation, and just as he appeared, he threw out a bell.

The green-robed cultivator’s face suddenly became pale. He never would have thought that Wang Lin was this fast. This pause allowed the bell to cover the green-robed cultivator and trap him inside.

After that, Wang Lin waved his hand. The restriction flag and the bell quickly returned to him. His body disappeared in the air, and when he reappeared, he was on the ground.

“You won’t be able to run away!” Wang Lin plainly said, as if he was talking to himself.

He sat down on the ground and his hand formed various seals that landed on the bell.

That bell suddenly started to shake, which caused it to ring. Most of the ringing sounds remained inside the bell. After a short while, miserable screams came from within it.

After a short period of time, the noise from the bell became even louder. Aside from the ringing of the bell, there were sounds of collisions coming from inside it. The cultivator clearly wasn’t willing to be refined. He was using his sword to attack the bell.

Wang Lin knew that the sword was sharp, and it was unknown whether or not the bell could withstand it. He let out a cold snort and his hand moved even faster. As more and more seals landed on the bell, the ringing became louder and louder, but the sounds from inside the bell became lower and lower.

This bell was a magic treasure from the ancient cultivation world. Its main ability was to trap people and then use a series of seals to refine them. The bell could even refine origin souls, but the requirement was for the user to have a higher cultivation level than the person trapped inside, or else they would suffer from backlash.

After a Soul Formation cultivator forms their origin soul, unless attacked by many people at once, it is hard for them to die in a one on one fight. However, if a late stage Soul Formation cultivator acts, all of that changes.

Of course, if they were already greatly weakened, it is a different story. Just like how back then, Hunchback Meng was greatly weakened and then tricked by Wang Lin. In the end, he died to Hurricane Devil Lord’s golden arm.

As Wang Lin’s seals landed on the bell one by one, the miserable screams gradually weakened before eventually disappearing. Wang Lin kept on creating seals for a while before finally stopping.

His waved his right hand and the bell shrank. It then flew into his hand and he put it away. He wasn’t in a rush to open it because he knew that even though the cultivator had died, he must have set up some sort of retaliation before his death.

The retaliation of a Soul Formation cultivator before death was very scary, so with Wang Lin’s caution, how would he dare to check it? He decided to keep refining for another ten days, half a month, or even longer, until everything has been refined.

This move of Wang Lin’s was very unique!

He stood up. The thunder toad had already turned back into the bronze bracelet and returned to his wrist. He then pondered for a little while. Just as he was about to carefully search this fragment, his expression suddenly changed. He took out the restriction flag to protect himself and quickly sat down after throwing a few pills into his mouth.

The spiritual energy inside his body was rapidly being absorbed by the bronze bracelet. After a long time, it finally stopped and Wang Lin opened his eyes. He threw a few more pills into his mouth and finally recovered all of his spiritual energy.

Wang Lin muttered, “At the start, it was once every six days, but now it’s every four days. Although this thunder toad is useful, keeping it really costs too much spiritual energy. In the future, I will have to pour spiritual energy into the bracelet ahead of time, because if this happens in a fight, it will be dangerous.”

He stood up and flew toward the palace. After finding nothing in the palace, he broadened his search.

The fragment he was on wasn’t really big, but it wasn’t really small either. It was about the size of Zhao. Although he could cover the whole fragment with his divine sense, celestial spiritual energy wasn’t something his divine sense could detect unless he was close by.

Wang Lin spent one month searching this fragment. He found that besides that palace, there was no other building around.

There were many holes in the ground that clearly showed the struggle the celestials went through when the celestial realm fell apart.

One day, Wang Lin arrived at the only other mountain on the fragment. However, the shape of this mountain was very strange. It looked like a big lock.

This mountain was in good shape, but all of the trees on it were long dead. When Wang Lin touched a branch on one of the trees, it immediately turned to dust.

Looking at the many trees on the mountain, Wang Lin bitterly smiled. If only these trees were still alive. Each one of them was a thousand year old tree. Some were even ten thousand year old trees.

If he were to use these trees to make wood carvings, Wang Lin believed that the power of the wood carving would increase several fold. Unfortunately…

Wang Lin was unwilling to give up as he searched around. After checking every tree on the mountain, he helplessly sighed.

On the top of the mountain, Wang Lin found a cave. This cave’s door had already been destroyed and was filled with dust. The place didn’t look well hidden and Wang Lin didn’t expect to find a cave that no one had come to before.

The cave wasn’t very large; it only had seven or eight rooms. Wang Lin checked the cave but found nothing. Someone must have come and emptied it out years ago.

Before entering the cave, Wang Lin was already prepared. Although he had found nothing, he wasn’t disheartened. The reason he came inside the cave was to see if he could find any remains of restrictions.

He wanted to see what the restrictions used by celestials looked like. If he could study some, it would help a lot with reaching 9,999 restrictions on the restriction flag.

After careful inspection, he found that most of the restrictions had disappeared, but this was not true for all of them. He happily found that in one of the rooms, there were some remains of a restriction.

This restriction must not have been very strong. It was used only to seal a door. Although it had already been broken, there is a sliver of it left on the side of the door. Wang Lin eyes lit up and he started studying it.

The celestials’ restrictions were similar to the ancient restrictions Wang Lin knew, but there were still differences. In truth, restrictions were just formations but much more dynamic.

Three days later, Wang Lin left the cave. The sliver of the restriction had already been completely memorized by him.

He came down the mountain. Just as he was about to leave, he suddenly found that all of the trees on the mountain had turned to dust and disappeared.

But now, all of the dust was floating in the air and moved as if it were being controlled.

Wang Lin’s expression remained the same as he slowly flew into the sky. He looked down from above and his expression suddenly turned serious.

Looking at the dust cloud from his position, it seemed to form two words:

“Save me.” Wang Lin frowned.

The dust slowly disappeared. From above, the mountain looked even more like a lock, and the cave looked like the keyhole.

Wang Lin pondered for a bit, but he didn’t go back to check. This place was very strange, so he wasn’t willing to keep exploring.

More importantly, he believed that he wasn’t the first person to notice that something was off about this mountain. If so, why was this mountain still here? Thinking about this, Wang Lin became even more unwilling to check. He slowly backed up and left.

Even if a celestial was locked here, Wang Lin still wasn’t willing to try anything if it involved risking his life.

Wang Lin had already thoroughly searched the fragment over these past few days and didn’t find any more celestial spiritual energy. Thus, he decided to go check out another fragment.

Before he left, he poured spiritual energy into the bronze bracelet. After arriving at the transfer array the green-robed cultivator had used, he pondered a bit before taking out the bell.

The method to leave the fragment according to Wang Lin’s knowledge was to keep flying up until he passes the barrier in the sky. Then he would be returned to the starting point where he could enter a swirl and be randomly placed on another fragment.

But the method this green-robed cultivator had used to appear on this fragment was very strange. He arrived via a transfer array. This made Wang Lin make a bold guess.

Some ancient sect was able to set up a few transfer arrays after entering the celestial realm so many times. These transfer arrays would allow the disciples of that sect to travel between the fragments the sect had been to before.

Wang Lin’s eyes lit up. He threw the bell out before him and started to form more seals. After two more days, Wang Lin estimated that even if this Soul Formation cultivator had set some retaliation after death, it was just about gone by now.

Thinking about this, he waved his right hand and the bell slowly enlarged. With a bang, rainbow-colored smoke came out from the bottom of the bell as it opened.

Wang Lin saw that inside, there was only a bag of holding and a sword. But suddenly, the sword hummed and a ray of sword qi the size of an arm shot out.

Wang Lin sneered. He pointed with his finger and the sword qi disappeared. Along with it was a scream as the last bit of origin soul disappeared.

The green-robed cultivator had placed his origin soul inside the sword in order to attack one last time before death. However, after being refined for so long, his origin soul couldn’t handle it anymore. His last ditch effort was easily stopped by Wang Lin.