Chapter 43: The Mighty Heavenly Ghost Transformation

Role: Su Yu.
Race: Human.
Bloodline: Unawakened.
Innate Attributes: Root Bone 18 + Crimson Fruit 2 + Sea-Calming Pearl 6, Comprehension 16, Six Senses 15, Karmic Luck 11, Lifespan 19/91 + 20 years from Crimson Fruit.
Qi and Blood: 100 + 2400 points. Belt + 150.
Mana: 100 + 4800 points. Black Water Mysterious Pearl + 300 mana, Crimson Fruit + 1000 mana, Belt + 150.
Spell Damage Bonus: 2400 points.
Sword Control Bonus: 3000 + Golden Turtle Ring 200.
Physique: Dharma Robe + 200, Golden Thunder Crab Paste + 200.
Strength: Dharma Robe + 200, Golden Thunder Crab Paste + 200.
Qi-Flight Speed: 1360 km/h.
Sword Flight Speed: 2000 km + Golden Turtle Ring 200 km/h.
Daoist Techniques: Ziyuan Qi-Refining Art Level 60, Taibai Sword Classic Level 50, Heavenly Ghost Transformation Technique Level 0 (Exquisite).
Spells: Mustard Seed Hiding Technique Level 2, Lesser Heavens Cloud Prohibition Great Spell Level 0, Invisibility Technique Level 2.
Thunder Spells: None.
Divine Powers: Nine Heavens Bone-Forging Art (Supreme).
Sword Mastery Realm: Sword Qi Thunder Sound Initial Mastery.
Sword Control Technique Levels: Entering the Blue Abyss Level 2, Controlling Sword a Thousand Miles Level 2.

"My innate root bone has actually become this high."

The origin of the Sea-Calming Pearl increases by 1 point every month, up to a maximum of +10. It is already at +6 points now. Coupled with his original stats, his innate attributes now reach as high as 26 points, with another 4 points waiting to be added.

This means that in a few months, his innate root bone will reach 30 points, just touching the threshold of a genius.

Even if his comprehension remains at 16 points, a 30-point innate root bone alone is enough for him to be accepted into almost any sect on Blue Mountain Island.

After reviewing these, Su Yu cast his gaze upon the Heavenly Ghost Transformation Technique—

Heavenly Ghost Transformation Technique (Exquisite): Heavenly ghosts are naturally proficient in the five-element flight and escape abilities, transitioning freely between the illusory and the tangible with immense strength. Each level gained increases Qi and Blood by 1000, Mana by 200, Physique by 30, Strength by 50, and Speed by 30. Body of the heavenly ghost, five-element escape techniques, tangible-illusory transformation.

Requirements to reach Level 1: 50,000 cultivation points, 5 points of Daoist merit.

"Just like the exquisite-grade qi-refining mental cultivation method."

Su Yu glanced again at his remaining 41 million cultivation points and 1,301 points of Daoist merit. After a brief contemplation, he decided to upgrade it by ten levels first to observe the effects.

With a thought, a full 1.65 million cultivation points and 50 points of Daoist merit in the experience pool were consumed, and the level of the Heavenly Ghost Transformation Technique rapidly rose, soon reaching Level 10.

Level 10 Heavenly Ghost Transformation: Qi and Blood 10,000, Mana 2,000, Physique 300, Strength 500, Speed 200 km/h, body of the heavenly ghost, five-element escape techniques, tangible-illusory transformation.

Su Yu waited a few seconds out of experience as an invisible fluctuation swept across, and the stats changed:

Level 10 Heavenly Ghost Transformation: Qi and Blood 20,000, Mana 4,000, Physique 600, Strength 1,000, Speed 400 km/h, body of the heavenly ghost, five-element escape techniques, tangible-illusory transformation.

"It really works!"

A wave of joy welled up in his heart. With a single thought, he felt a chilling cold surge from within his body, and then, as if gravity had lost its effect, his entire body grew light and automatically floated into the air.

"Goodness!"

He reached out to check and found that his flesh-and-blood body had transformed into a jet-black heavenly ghost body resembling iron and steel. His arms were lean and withered, his five fingers pitch-black like iron. With a casual wave, a fierce and vicious burst of energy whipped out from his claws, leaving five deep claw marks on the stone wall.

With a thought, he flew forward. When he touched the stone wall, his figure rapidly turned illusory, passing directly through the stone wall and appearing in the water outside the cave.

The heavenly ghost talent allows one to turn the tangible into the illusory and the illusory into the tangible, switching between the two at will.

It also possesses five-element escape techniques, allowing one to move freely through earth and stone.

The body of the heavenly ghost possesses extremely strong resistance against five-element spells, while also mitigating 50% of five-element damage.

"This talent is awesome."

Su Yu shuttled back and forth in the water with a single thought. Dropping downward, he turned tangible into illusory and plunged directly into the silt at the bottom of the water. In the earth, it felt completely like open ground without the slightest sense of lag, and he could clearly sense everything within a ten-meter radius around him.

Stones, silt, plant roots, ores, insects hiding in the mud, and so on could all be seen clearly.

"This ability is just too incredible!"

Su Yu was overjoyed and instantly made up his mind to continue practicing this transformation technique.

Five minutes later, feeling that his mana was about to be exhausted, Su Yu rose from the depths of the earth. The next second, he froze, looking up to see a massive dragon head staring directly at him, its crystal-like pupils filled with curiosity.

"Why have you turned into this look?"

Su Yu hurriedly transformed back to his true form and said:

"A transformation technique I just acquired."

"Oh!"

"So ugly!"

Ao Run raised its head in disdain and flew away.

Su Yu twitched the corner of his mouth, not taking it to heart.

Ugliness didn't matter, as long as it was powerful.

Returning to the immortal cave, Su Yu smacked his lips and muttered to himself:

"This thing is indeed quite strong, but it's not without its flaws."

The transformation technique is merely a secret art, not a bloodline transformation. Therefore, one can neither learn qi-refining mental cultivation methods and sword manuals, nor use flying swords, magical treasures, and various equipment. Pills cannot be consumed either; one can only derive various heavenly ghost talent abilities as the level increases.

Fortunately, precisely because this is merely a secret art, if the heavenly ghost is beaten to destruction, one will not die. It will merely shatter the transformation and revert one to their true form, allowing them to transform again after some time.

"Continue upgrading!"

Determined that the yields of this transformation technique were extremely high, Su Yu did not hesitate to upgrade it further.

5.8 million cultivation points and 100 points of Daoist merit upgraded it to Level 20, deriving one of the five-element thunder spells: he chose the Guishui Divine Thunder.

14.05 million cultivation points and 150 points of Daoist merit upgraded it to Level 30, deriving another five-element thunder spell: this time he chose the Pinhuo Divine Thunder.

And that was where it stopped, as his cultivation points ran out.

Level 30 Heavenly Ghost Transformation: Qi and Blood 60,000, Mana 12,000, Physique 1,800, Strength 3,000, Speed 1,200 km/h, body of the heavenly ghost, five-element escape techniques, tangible-illusory transformation, Guishui Divine Thunder, Pinhuo Divine Thunder.

Guishui Divine Thunder: Gathers the quintessential thunder power of Guishui to transform into divine thunder, one of the five-element thunder spells.
Attributes: Base damage 1,000, casting range 1,000 meters, damage radius 10 meters, mana consumption 300 points, cooldown 5 seconds.
Each level increased adds +100 to base damage, +100 meters to casting range, +1 meter to damage radius, and +10 points to mana consumption.

Pinhuo Divine Thunder: Gathers the fire and thunder power of Pinhuo to transform into divine thunder, one of the five-element thunder spells.
Attributes: Base damage 1,000, casting range 1,000 meters, damage radius 10 meters, mana consumption 300 points, cooldown 5 seconds.
Each level increased adds +100 to base damage, +100 meters to casting range, +1 meter to damage radius, and +10 points to mana consumption.

The derived thunder spell levels match the Heavenly Ghost Transformation level. At Level 30, the damage is 4,000, casting range 4,000 meters, damage radius 40 meters in diameter, mana consumption 700 points, cooldown 5 seconds.

After the golden finger bonus, the damage of the Level 30 transformation is 8,000, casting range 8,000 meters, damage radius 80 meters in diameter.

Its burst is no less inferior to Ziyuan Qi energy, but thunder spells are area-of-effect spells.

Under the golden finger's bonus, his Level 30 Heavenly Ghost Transformation is actually equivalent to a Level 60 Heavenly Ghost Transformation. Its attributes are already extremely powerful, and it can be put to practical use right now.

Su Yu evaluated internally that it should be fairly close to Lan Yiying from the previous minor examination, though still inferior to Ding Lingyu.

With 360,000 Qi and Blood for the Divine General Transformation, he suspected that Ding Lingyu's transformation technique was at least of the Sect-Suppressing grade, two grades higher than the Exquisite grade. Who knows where he managed to get it from.

"I still need to get a Tier 6 flying sword!"

Closing the attribute panel, Su Yu stood up and, with a thought, transformed into his heavenly ghost true form once more.

In a flash, he vanished from inside the house and appeared outside. Looking out, the pitch-black riverbed turned an ash-white color, allowing him to clearly see the water spirits and various plants growing at the bottom.

"Turn tangible into illusory!"

The heavenly ghost turned into a wisp of light smoke and drifted toward the nearby Azure Water Cold Lotus.

He was as elusive as a ghost, his near-transparent body completely inconspicuous in the water. In terms of stealth effectiveness, it was even better than the Level 2 Mustard Seed Hiding Technique and Invisibility Technique.

The light smoke drifted nearby, and with a wave of his hand, a burst of energy flew out, digging up a fully matured Azure Water Cold Lotus along with a large chunk of soil, which he casually stowed into his storage space.

The heavenly ghost avatar cannot use any equipment or magical treasures, meaning the storage items attached to equipment and magical treasures cannot be used. However, the player's initial 20-slot inventory space does not fall under that category and can be used.

The water spirits wandering around had either been eliminated by Ao Run or scared away, leaving the place empty and allowing him to harvest in peace.

This depression grew many Azure Water Cold Lotus plants, but only those over a hundred years old were valuable, with only one meeting the standard out of every twenty or thirty plants.

Fortunately, the baseline number was large, and adding them all up amounted to quite a lot.

Spending a little over two hours touring the entire depression and collecting all the Azure Water Cold Lotus plants that met the age requirement, he obtained a total of 528 plants. At 1 point of guild contribution per plant, doubled for newcomers, it already exceeded a thousand.

Stowing away the final plant, Su Yu prepared to head elsewhere. Just as he flew up from the depression, he saw a Level 74 black carp spirit rushing charging at him.

"Courting death!"

Su Yu raised his hand and unleashed a blast of Guishui Divine Thunder, blowing the black carp spirit into a dizzy spin.

Charging directly into the midst of the Guishui quintessence, he lashed out with both claws, leaving two thick and deep bloody gouges on the black carp spirit's body, slicing through its thick fish scales as easily as tofu.

The black carp spirit angrily turned around to bite, but the heavenly ghost drifted lightly and nimbly onto the fish's back, pressing down with another pair of claws. Sinking his ten fingers deep into its flesh and gripping hard, he forcibly tore a massive chunk of flesh and skin away.

It was simply too nimble; the black carp spirit couldn't reach him at all and could only take a passive beating.

In less than a minute, the fish's body was riddled with a thousand holes by his attacks, missing chunks of flesh here and there. Its thinly scaled belly was forcibly torn open, its internal organs spilling out as it died a miserably tragic death.

The battle concluded. Su Yu evaluated his recent combat performance and shook his head:

"The combat power isn't weak, but the farming efficiency is far too low!"

Using a flying sword could wipe out a whole group in a minute, whereas the heavenly ghost avatar only managed to take down one. The efficiency was simply too low.

Transforming back to his true form, a streak of sword light swept across the air, gathering up several water spirits from not far away.

"Once transformed back to the true form, all abilities of the heavenly ghost transformation cannot be used."

With a few swift strokes of his sword, he eliminated the water spirits, then turned back to summon Ao Run and asked:

"I am heading back. Are you coming with me or staying here?"

"You go back first, I'll return in a bit."

"Alright."

Su Yu summoned the Spiritual Fish Flying Shuttle, surged out of the river surface, and flew straight toward the direction of Thousand Feathers City.

Returning to the city a few hours later, he immediately went to hand over all 528 Azure Water Cold Lotus plants along with some miscellaneous scavenged ores and other spiritual herbs in one go, reaping a total of 1,126 points of guild contribution.

He also sold all the miscellaneous spoils of war, gaining a total of 1 gold and 21 silver.

His guild contribution had already exceeded five thousand, totaling 5,247 points—more than enough to redeem the lowest-tier Tier 6 flying sword.

After carefully inspecting the several Tier 6 flying swords available for redemption in the guild, he hesitated slightly for a moment.

Leaving aside the seven or eight demonic and Buddhist weapons—which were incompatible with his mental cultivation method and completely incapable of unleashing their power—there were four usable immortal and divine weapons in total. Among them, the ones with the best attributes were a divine weapon named Fire Dragon and an immortal weapon named Azure Sparrow.

Fire Dragon (Tier 6 Flying Sword): Divine weapon. Forged from earth-core molten iron mixed with heavenly star divine sand, with the soul of a fire dragon refined into the blade, allowing the wielder to borrow the power of the fire dragon.
Attributes: Attack power 280-340, attack speed 220-280, sword flight speed 240-290, adds 360 fire damage, sword manual bonus 50%. Characteristic: Dragon Transformation.
Dragon Transformation: Channels the fire dragon soul within the flying sword, turning the sword into a fire dragon capable of independent attacks.

Azure Sparrow (Tier 6 Flying Sword): Immortal weapon. Forged by mixing stellar meteorite iron with cold iron soul essence, exceptionally sharp.
Attributes: Attack power 260-310, attack speed 230-260, sword flight speed 240-270, sword manual bonus 50%. Characteristic: Armor Piercing +2, Nimble +2.
Armor Piercing +3: Attacks ignore 20% of the target's defense. (Note: Listed as +2 due to lesser grade variant)
Nimble +2: Flying sword flexibility +20%.

In the Other Shore, flying swords and weapons are classified into immortal weapons, divine weapons, Buddhist weapons, demon weapons, demonic weapons, and evil weapons.

As one can tell from the names, demonic and evil weapons are demonic path flying swords, demon weapons are used by the demon race, Buddhist weapons are for Buddhism, immortal weapons are for Xuanmen (namely the Daoist sect), and divine weapons are of the universal type.

Different flying swords and magical treasures require corresponding mental cultivation methods to unleash 100% of their power. If driven by mismatched heterogeneous mental cultivation methods, their power will be drastically reduced.

Demonic and evil weapons driven by demonic or heterodox mental cultivation methods can unleash full power, whereas Buddhist and Xuanmen mental cultivation methods can only unleash 70%.

Buddhist weapons driven by Buddhist mental cultivation methods can unleash full power, while Xuanmen and heterodox mental cultivation methods can only unleash 90%, and demonic mental cultivation methods can only unleash 70%.

Immortal weapons driven by Xuanmen and heterodox mental cultivation methods can unleash full power, Buddhist mental cultivation methods can only unleash 90%, and demonic mental cultivation methods can only unleash 70%.

Divine weapons are of the universal type, capable of unleashing full power regardless of the mental cultivation method. The Concealing Sun Sword in his hand is a divine weapon.

The Ziyuan Qi-Refining Art practiced by Su Yu is a Xuanmen qi-refining mental cultivation method, suitable for both divine and immortal weapons. Both of these flying swords could be used by him, but choosing which one truly left him a bit conflicted.

The Fire Dragon Sword had better base attributes than the Azure Sparrow, but its attached characteristic was trash.

The attached fire damage was fixed and did not scale with mental cultivation methods or sword mastery realms.

Unlike the Concealing Sun Sword's Radiance Transformation, which provided a 100% damage bonus categorized as flying sword damage and scaled with both sword manuals and sword mastery realms, resulting in an extremely ferocious burst.

The attached spell Dragon Transformation was also rather lackluster; having the flying sword transform into a fire dragon to attack independently—what use was that?

Indeed, it was very powerful after transforming, but during the transformation, he would be short of one flying sword, significantly lowering his overall output.

And as for the Azure Sparrow, its attributes weren't even as high as the Fire Dragon Sword, and its attached characteristics consisted of only two passive traits, neither of which were particularly high.

Normally, Tier 6 flying swords would have +3 for such characteristics, but his luck resulted in +2s all around, making it look somewhat crippled.

Yet no matter how crippled or inferior its attributes were, relatively speaking, it was still more compatible with the Concealing Sun Sword than the Fire Dragon.

Anyway, the grade of the flying sword was right there; Tier 6 flying swords all come with a 50% sword manual bonus, so when amplified, the output wouldn't be too low either.

Making his choice, 5,000 points of guild contribution vanished, exchanged for the Azure Sparrow.

Returning to his residence, he immediately replaced the Ice Soul with the Azure Sparrow. Pointing a finger, two streaks of flying sword light soared out, spinning side by side in the main hall under his meticulous control.

With a thought, one of the sword lights split off, nimbly turning around and intersecting with the Concealing Sun Sword which had circled around.

"Oh?"

"That 'Nimble' attribute is pretty nice!"