<i>What is fire...? ording to my studies, mundane fire is not a physical substance like water. Instead, it is a reflection of something that can’t be seen with either the naked eye or divine sense!</i>
<i>Fire is simr to an aura... a mixture of something illusory and something miraculous!</i>
<i>The only reason you can see it is because of the glow of light that results from its existence!</i>
<i>Multi-colored me is the same.... In that case, a new question arises. What are souls? And why do souls produce multi-colored me...?</i>
By this point Bai Xiaochun was panting, and his eyes were as wide as saucers as he stared at the writing. Although only a portion of it was still visible, even the little bit he could read left himpletely reeling. At the same time, the feeling of enlightenment left him gasping.
“This... this....” He had never imagined that someone would study fire in this way, research it in such detail. Based on how the words were written, it seemed that the person who had left them behind had just been casually writing down their thoughts.
Most importantly, in addition to the waves of shock which pounded at Bai Xiaochun’s heart and mind as he looked at the words, they opened a new door to him. Bybining what he was reading with his current understanding of how to conjure me, he suddenly felt as if he were gaining significant enlightenment.
“That’s right! This is exactly what I’ve experienced when conjuring my own me. Fire... is not a physical substance like water, but rather, a reflection of something else. Or perhaps... a symbol! In many senses, it is illusory, and not material like water is!!” Bai Xiaochun did his best to keep his calm, but it was almost impossible. From what he could tell, the person who had left these words behind was extraordinary, and had almost unparalleled enlightenment regarding the nature of me. In that regard, this person was almost like a deva!
Furthermore, considering that he could already conjure eleven-colored me, this writing left him in even more profound anticipation of conjuring twelve-colored me! Based on this new information, and his own previous research and analysis, he was confident that he could seed!!
Never could Bai Xiaochun have imagined that he would stumble across such good fortune here. Drawing upon his cultivation base, he poured more power into his Heavenspan Dharma Eye and continued reading.
As he did, he continued to reel with shock. And that was especially true when he reached the end of the text and realized that it contained spections about the form for fifteen-colored me. After looking over much of that information, Bai Xiaochun waspletely shaken.
“How is this possible?!?!” Dumbfounded, he stared at the final lines of writing.
<i>Fire can be incredibly hot, and has mystical power. When that heat and that powerbine, they form an outer me, an inner me, and a me heart....</i>
<i>My special augury method has not yet produced the form for fifteen-colored me. However, making the final calctions shouldn’t be difficult. After that... sixteen-colored me and seventeen-colored me shouldn’t be much of a challenge. In fact, I’m even confident that my augury can produce the form for twenty-colored me!</i>
<i>Unfortunately... my cultivation base is too low. Even if I produced the form, it wouldn’t do me any good. I wouldn’t be able to conjure the me.... However, I still want to make the form. I’ll show it to father to finally prove to him that I’m not useless. I </i>am <i>good for something! I’m not interested in fighting with anyone else in the n for position. I just want father... to notice me....</i>
Within those final words, Bai Xiaochun could sense both wild confidence and profound self-deprecation.
“I can’t believe he made his own augury method to produce multi-colored me forms....” Sighing, he rose to his feet and used his Heavenspan Dharma Eye to search the entire hut. After searching the entire ce several times, his anxiety began to mount.
It was obvious that at some point in the past, the entire floor had been covered with notes about me conjuring. However, at some point, most of the notes had been wiped away by some unknown method!
Clearly, they had been erased by a person!
“The form for fifteen-colored me....” Bai Xiaochun thought. There was no way for him to remain unmoved by this development. Furthermore, if Bai Hao did not write the notes, then how did they end up in his residence?!
If Bai Hao wrote them.... then considering the level of his cultivation base, he had obviously achieved astonishing enlightenment of me conjuring. In fact, his abilities far surpassed Bai Xiaochun’s.
“Wait a second, that can’t be right. If Bai Hao was really that good, he could just reveal his skills and achieve a monumental rise in the Bai n. Why would he allow himself to be treated the way he was?” Bai Xiaochun scratched his head in thought for a bit, but couldn’te up with any exnations.
He stood up and began to pace back and forth in the room, and after a long moment passed, his eyes suddenly began to shine brightly.
“Whether or not Bai Hao wrote these notes doesn’t matter. What’s important is that theplete set of notes contains the form for fifteen-colored me. In that case... whoever erased the notes is Bai Hao’s killer, or at least, is connected to the killer!
“Therefore, the killer is likely the one who possesses theplete set of notes....
“If I want to get those notes, I probably don’t have to do anything. The killer or killers wille looking for me to cause trouble. After all, my return has most likely sparked their killing intent. In fact, if I make a stir in the Bai n, it will probably make them elerate their ns....
“In turn, that would give me more clues to follow to get those notes!” Bai Xiaochun’s eyes glittered as he made his decision. Looking down at the remnants of the notes on the floor, he sighed.
“Bai Hao really had things rough. I feel bad for him....” He shook his head. By this point, he was fairly certain that Bai Hao had been the one to write all of the notes.
“However, I still need some confirmation.” Pulling out a jade slip, he sent a message to Li Feng and asked him to secretly start making inquiries about Bai Hao.
Of course, Li Feng didn’t know that Bai Xiaochun was impersonating Bai Hao, and therefore, excitedly set about following orders. As far as he was concerned, this was a good opportunity to show off. Intentionally keeping Zhou Yixing in the dark, he started calling on his ownwork of friends and informants to try to get information.
A few dayster, he told Bai Xiaochun all of the information he had been able to dig up on Bai Hao. When Bai Xiaochun saw it, his eyes shed with anger.
Based on the information he had gleaned from Bai Hao’s bone slips, as well as Bai Xiaochun’s experiences in the n already, he now had a good idea of what type of person Bai Hao had been.
His mother had been a servant girl with no position in the n, whereas his father was the current n chief. In a particrly violent and humiliating incident in which his mother had no control over her own body, Bai Hao was conceived, and became a bastard son of the Bai n.
He had a very low position from the moment he was born. Furthermore, it wasn’t long after he came into the world that his mother was killed. If Bai Hao had possessed sufficienttent talent, things might have turned out differently for him. However, he wasn’t talented when it came to cultivation, and no matter how hard he worked, was never able to excel.
His father’s first wife was none other than Madam Cai, who upied a very high position in the n. In fact, she came from the Cai n, another of the three great ns that were attached to Giant Ghost City.
There was another factor at y. Madam Cai’s son was Bai Hao’s older brother, Bai Qi. He was insufferably proud, and was famous throughout all of Giant Ghost City. He was already in the great circle of Core Formation, and had attracted the attention of the Bai n patriarch, who viewed him as the qilin son of the n, the type which only came along once every few hundred years. In fact, Bai Qi was to represent the Bai n in their attempt to secure the legacy of the Hell-Emperor.
Family like that made Bai Hao’s life even more bitter than it might have been. His father treated him with cold aloofness that made it seem as if they weren’t rted, and apparently didn’t even care whether Bai Hao lived or died.
His father’s first wife hated him, and his older brother waspletely condescending, treating Bai Hao as if he were a servant. Eventually, Bai Hao came to be viewed as the lowest of the low within the n.
Everyone was afraid of getting on Madam Cai and Bai Qi’s bad side, and therefore, not even the servants were willing to have much dealings with Bai Hao. Furthermore, from the time he was in Qi Condensation, his progress had always been indescribably slow.
Thankfully, Bai Hao was the type of person who could deal with all of that. He put on a front of looking weak and cowardly, and always just bowed his head and shivered when people berated him. Eventually, people stopped paying much attention to him. Few people even remembered that he had a hut of his own in the north district.
It had only been recently that he finally broke through into the Foundation Establishment stage. Shortly afterward, he went missing....
By the time Bai Xiaochun finished reading all the information in the jade slip Li Feng had sent to him, his anger was burning hot. He almost couldn’t reconcile the information within the slip with the young man he had seen out in the jungle.
“Who cares if he looked weak and cowardly? If I were in his position, that’s what I would have done to stay alive.... If he had shown any signs of being extraordinary, he would have been a threat, and would definitely have been killed!
“In fact, it was right after he made a cultivation base breakthrough that he died.... And yet, merely having a Foundation Establishment cultivation base doesn’t seem like enough to make him a threat to anyone....” Then he looked down at the ground, and suddenly, came to a realization.