Chapter 274 - Immortal Seals and Ancient Arts

Chapter 274: Chapter 274 - Immortal Seals and Ancient Arts

Su Bai’s gaze lingered on the final section of the inheritance.

The cultivation arts were tempting enough, but his attention was drawn first to the part concerning seals.

Every member of the Myriad-Heaven Anomaly Court had been required to study them.

Considering the kind of things the Court dealt with, Su Bai quickly understood why.

There were anomalies that could not be destroyed safely, while others were too poorly understood to risk provoking further. In those situations, sealing the problem first was often the most reliable choice.

The Court had clearly taken that principle seriously.

As Su Bai began reading, his interest quickly deepened.

The sealing inheritance was far broader than he had expected.

It did not teach a single sealing method. Instead, it began from the principles behind restrictions, formation arrays, suppression, isolation, and the manipulation of spiritual pathways.

Even the Immortals had approached those principles differently.

Some used swords as the core of their seals. Others used spears, chains, mirrors, or artifacts specially forged to serve as anchors.

The weapon itself was not the important part.

What mattered was how its position, spiritual structure, and connection to the surrounding formation were used to establish the seal.

Su Bai slowed down.

That immediately gave him an idea.

His Natal Needles.

There were nine of them, and unlike ordinary weapons, they could change shape, dissolve into Qi, return to him, and reform.

’If each needle could eventually serve as a mobile formation anchor...’

Su Bai’s eyes gradually brightened.

A normal formation needed to be established beforehand or built around fixed points.

His needles did not.

If he developed the idea properly, he might be able to scatter them across a battlefield and form a sealing array wherever he wanted.

An enemy could think they were surrounded by nine weapons only to discover that they were already standing inside a formation.

The more Su Bai considered it, the more appealing it became.

He had originally wanted the Natal Needles to become extensions of his own fighting style.

Apparently, they could become considerably more troublesome than that.

Of course, understanding the idea and actually creating such a formation were two completely different matters.

The sealing arts inside the inheritance were Immortal-level knowledge.

Su Bai could read them, but that did not mean he could immediately reproduce everything written inside.

Many formations required levels of control, materials, and cultivation that were completely beyond him.

Still, the principles alone were priceless.

Even if he could only understand a fraction of them, his existing formations and restrictions would improve enormously.

That thought led naturally to Radiant Sky Sect.

Su Bai’s expression became thoughtful.

There were complete defensive arrays recorded within the inheritances, including structures far beyond anything currently protecting the sect.

He obviously could not place an actual Immortal formation around Radiant Sky Sect tomorrow.

The sect probably could not even provide the energy required to activate one.

But the formation did not have to remain unchanged.

If he could simplify the structure while retaining some of its principles, Radiant Sky Sect’s defenses could be strengthened far beyond their current level.

Su Bai smiled slightly.

That alone made the inheritance worth studying.

Just then, another thought struck him.

The sealed Immortal storage rings.

Su Bai immediately returned to the sections dealing with restrictions.

He had been unable to open those rings because the restrictions surrounding them belonged to a system completely beyond his understanding.

That problem had finally changed.

The inheritance did not conveniently contain instructions telling him exactly how to open those particular rings, but it gave him something much more useful.

He could finally understand what he was looking at.

The restrictions were no longer meaningless layers of Immortal power.

Once he properly learned the Court’s sealing principles, he could analyze how those restrictions were constructed, locate their weak points, and eventually dismantle them without simply trying to overpower them.

Su Bai’s mood improved considerably.

He had carried those sealed rings around for some time now.

For all he knew, they contained mountains of treasure. They could also contain several useless robes and a collection of personal belongings.

Considering his luck with strange items, both possibilities seemed equally plausible.

At least now he finally had a way to find out.

Su Bai continued reading.

The deeper he went, the more certain he became that sealing arts would change far more than his ability to open storage rings.

Restrictions could be placed on objects, spiritual energy, movement, techniques, and even specific parts of a formation.

Weapons could become anchors. Multiple seals could overlap. A formation could suppress one thing while leaving everything else untouched.

There were countless possibilities.

Su Bai eventually forced himself to stop imagining combinations.

If he continued, he would spend the rest of the day designing formations he was nowhere near capable of creating.

He still had the other half of the inheritance to examine.

The cultivation arts.

His anticipation returned immediately.

These were methods and techniques preserved by actual Immortals.

Naturally, not everything inside belonged to the Myriad-Heaven Anomaly Court.

Each Immortal had left behind their own personal inheritance as well.

Their cultivation methods, techniques, weapon insights, and other arts differed greatly depending on what they had practiced before entering Fallen-Star Sanctuary.

There were also methods they themselves had collected over the years.

That part made sense to Su Bai.

The Immortals had prepared these jade slips for their reincarnations, but none of them could know what kind of body or spiritual foundation they would possess after being reborn.

A method perfectly suited to their former body might become completely unsuitable in the next life.

Leaving several possible paths behind gave their reincarnated selves choices.

Su Bai quickly realized that this benefited him just as much.

There was enough knowledge here to suit far more than a handful of people.

Some inheritances focused on weapons. Others developed the body, soul, or different forms of Qi. There were insights left behind by cultivators who had spent lifetimes refining a single path.

Su Bai could already imagine what would happen if some of these reached Radiant Sky Sect.

The disciples would probably lose their minds.

Unfortunately, there was another problem.

Some of the techniques belonged specifically to the Myriad-Heaven Anomaly Court.

Su Bai’s excitement cooled slightly.

He had no idea how the Court treated outsiders who practiced its restricted arts.

The Immortals had personally left the inheritance in his possession, so learning those methods himself was defensible enough.

Passing them around the sect was another matter.

Su Bai had no intention of reaching the Immortal Realm someday only to discover that he had accidentally taught an entire lower-realm sect techniques considered secret by one of its major organizations.

That sounded like an unnecessarily complicated way to make enemies.

He began separating the contents mentally.

Anything clearly marked as an internal Court art would remain with him.

The personal techniques and methods independently collected by the Immortals were different. Those could eventually be shared after he examined them properly and determined who they suited.

Fortunately, there was far more outside the Court’s restricted inheritance than Su Bai had feared.

The Immortals had lived for an extremely long time.

Even the knowledge they had gathered casually was enough to make the inheritance astonishing.

Su Bai spent a while reading through insights concerning swords, sabers, spears, body refinement, soul cultivation, Qi circulation, and other paths before finally stopping.

Giving all of this directly to the disciples would still be a terrible idea.

Immortal knowledge was useful.

Immortal explanations were another matter.

Some passages assumed understanding of concepts that no ordinary disciple in Radiant Sky Sect had ever encountered.

Others compressed years of insight into a few sentences because whoever wrote them apparently believed the reader should already understand everything leading up to it.

Su Bai stared at one section for several breaths.

He understood it.

That was precisely why he knew most disciples would not.

His gaze gradually shifted toward the Dao-Shattering Jade.

A faint smile appeared on his face.

He had been wondering how long it would take him to properly organize everything.

Perhaps not as long as he thought.

Su Bai activated the jade.

The world around him seemed to simplify.

Complicated passages separated naturally into smaller ideas. Difficult concepts became easier to compare, while connections between different methods surfaced one after another.

Su Bai pulled the first portion of the inheritance before him again.

If these methods were ever going into the Grand Archive, he wanted even the least talented disciple who qualified to practice them to understand what they were reading.

The strongest disciples would benefit naturally.

Su Bai was more interested in raising everyone else with them.

He began simplifying the first technique.

Explanations that assumed too much were expanded.

Difficult concepts were rewritten using cultivation principles familiar to the current era.

Parts that depended on Immortal-level cultivation were clearly separated instead of being left where some ambitious disciple might attempt them several realms too early.

As Su Bai worked, the pile of things waiting for him no longer seemed irritating.

The sect had spent decades recovering from what it lost during the Great Fissure.

Radiant Sky Sect had survived, but survival had cost it more than people could see from the outside.

Su Bai looked toward the familiar buildings beyond the courtyard.

This was his home.

If he possessed something capable of making it stronger, there was no reason to leave that knowledge gathering dust inside his head or hidden inside a jade slip.

A quiet smile appeared on his face.

He lowered his gaze and continued working.

This time, the inheritance of the Immortals would not remain buried in Fallen-Star Sanctuary.

It would become something Radiant Sky Sect could actually use.