Journey to the End of the Night
Chapter 167 - 167 165 The Mortal World Harbors Both Resentments and Wishes

167: Chapter 165: The Mortal World Harbors Both Resentments and Wishes 167: Chapter 165: The Mortal World Harbors Both Resentments and Wishes Baili An cut off his wide sleeve and wrapped up the stillborn child.

By the side of the lake, he dug a hole to bury the child, and then collected the remains and bones of those eighty-three other children, burying each one properly.

Suddenly, the emerald green bead emitted a lustrous and beautiful jade luster.

Baili An’s heart stirred, and he held up the cool jade bead, observing it closely.

He saw strands upon strands of radiant light entering the center of his brow, without any cold or hostile intent, like a gentle, continuous spring rain pouring into his Sea of Consciousness.

Baili An was somewhat astonished.

With a light stir of intention, shallow ripples appeared on the surface of the still lake, spreading out in a pattern not governed by natural laws.

The ripples were pulled and gently dispersed by Baili An’s consciousness.

This jade bead contained not only the resentful power and cultivation of the drowning woman from the past ten years.

No, that wasn’t right.

The drowning woman was a lowly ghost, and even after amassing souls for ten years, she couldn’t possibly possess the Yin Water Control ability.

The power that flowed into Baili An’s brow and into the Sea of Consciousness from the jade bead was like a clear flowing spring, and it even faintly surpassed the power of the Yin ghosts produced by the Demon Sect’s secret techniques.

Only a Yin ghost with special abilities could wield the superpower of controlling the five elements.

Among all living things, those with the Water Control Ability were extremely rare.

The beautiful Merfolk from the great seas were one such kind.

As for a ghost, it would have to be a Water Ghost with at least thirty years of cultivation to possess even a little Water Control Ability.

And this Water Control had to come from the darkest regions of the land in order to be mastered.

Yet Baili An vaguely felt that the Water Control power within him was not much weaker than those Water Ghosts who had cultivated for a hundred years.

Thought followed by intention, a node of Spiritual Power in the netherworld that was unrelated to the dead began to radiate pure spiritual energy, and threads of the purest Gui Water qi wound around his fingertips, drawing response.

The dew and frost between the leaves in the forest transformed into sparkling drops of water.

As Baili An slowly raised his arms, they defied gravity and floated up, like myriad raindrops ascending the sky, breathtakingly beautiful.

Baili An looked at the scene before him and unconsciously tightened his grip on the jade bead in his palm.

This phenomenon proved that he could not only control the deadly and fierce Yin Water of the dead lake but also the living, gentle water of the world, the Jade Dew and clear springs.

This was known as Gui Yin Water.

How could this be?

Baili An was extremely puzzled.

Undoubtedly, the woman who had just passed away was the genuine drowning woman, otherwise, she wouldn’t have been so easily subdued by him.

Lowly ghosts definitely could not possess the power of Water Control, let alone the Qi of Gui Water, which was something that only Cultivators from the Mortal World could cultivate.

Gui Water in the heavens turns into Jade Dew and Frost, in the ground it becomes a clear spring, it is the water of birth and growth of the spring moon, symbolizing the life of dawn and nourishing all things.

He looked down at the jade bead in his palm, its luster gone, as if all the resentful power within it had already flowed into his body.

Resentful power?

No, that’s not right!

Baili An’s eyes suddenly hardened as he picked up the bead again and again, his expression vaguely moved.

That woman’s leftover bead did indeed carry her ten years of resentful power, but at the moment of her death, when her soul dissipated, the bead’s resentful power unexpectedly turned into the purest force of will.

In the world, out across the seas to Immortal Mountain, only the Power of Merit could change the cosmos and alter Yin and Yang.

It turned out that in the instant the woman willingly submitted to transformation, he had unwittingly completed a ritual of Merit creation.

Using the woman’s leftover jade bead as the medium, he had transformed the resentment within the bead into a force of will.

Then, after burying those eighty-three infants and the stillborn child, the Power of Merit not only changed the nature of the medium but also greatly enhanced the willpower within it.

Baili An had not expected that his unintended actions would yield such a reward.

He glanced at the sword on his waist.

The Autumnwater Sword, given to him by Miss Jiujiu, inherently belonged to water.

Now that he possessed the Water Control Ability, although he couldn’t yet be considered a great Water Control Cultivator, when combined, their power was still formidable.

Unconsciously, aided by the Gui Water Spiritual Power, Baili An had made a breakthrough to become a Third Grade Open Foundation Cultivator.

Upon reflection, he realized that he was only one day’s work away from breaking through to Second Grade Open Foundation.

Even for those talented individuals fostered by the Immortal clans, it was absolutely impossible to make consecutive breakthroughs in such a short period.

Everyone has bottlenecks, and every sea has its shore.

There is a limit to the capacity that a Spirit Inception Cultivator’s body can contain.

It’s impossible to have enough surplus energy to break through another limit right after breaking through one.

But Baili An had a very peculiar feeling.

The Yin Yang Tao Fish inside him turned slowly, and the forces of Yin and Yang met, like the blending of night and extreme day.

Yesterday, when breaking through the corpse demon limit and awakening a new Talent, the power of darkness grew within him.

As the shadow loomed, the light of day, symbolizing Yang, was correspondingly broken, upsetting the balance between Yin and Yang and forming a state of weakness.

Yet this unbalanced state, where one force wanes as the other waxes, a battle between light and dark akin to the natural competition for survival, unexpectedly created a state with no visible limit.

Though it sounded absurd, after breaking through two grades in a row, Baili An found the forces of Yin and Yang balanced out, yet still saw no sign of a bottleneck.

His hollow body was like an abyssal sea, as if it could contain even more rivers.

His arm slowly lowered, the moisture condensed into frost and scattered among the woods.

Baili An gently touched his brow with his finger, the force of will melding with his Sea of Consciousness, leaving only a lingering essence.

“Mother, huh…”

Towards the ghost that preyed on infants, he felt neither sorrow nor anger; initially, he had only viewed her as prey for the little rabbit, hence the hunt.

However, when his sharp fingers pierced her skull, the woman’s extreme sadness and resentment, intense and unrelenting like a raging fire, directly burned into his heart.

The young girl was pregnant before marriage.

The villagers and even her own parents, without seeking the reasons, branded her with the stigma of ‘impurity’.

But who knew that the young girl also had a period of devoted love?

There were no parental orders or matchmaker’s words.

Yet she had a cherished young lord, who truly cared for her and was willing to wait for his return.

In this life, dedicating herself to only one true heart, where was the name of impurity?

With heart and intention pledged, she exchanged vows with him for half a life of hardship and loyalty.

A promise that upon his return, they would share mundane tales and she would don her red bridal gown.

Yet, she never waited for her young general to return.

Beauty and black hair ultimately became but dry bones that could not be united.

Drowned in the nameless lake, she didn’t become a Fierce Ghost due to her parents’ and villagers’ decisive actions, but for her unborn child to open its eyes and see the splendor of the world.

The transient world is full of splendor, like a dream.

In the end, is it the ghost that harms people, or is the human heart harboring an Evil Ghost?

Baili An no longer wanted to delve deeper into this question.

The rabbit in his arms had already fallen asleep.

He found a fat, plump wild carrot in the woods and stuffed it into the rabbit’s embrace.

Seeing it unconsciously hold the thick and juicy carrot tightly with its paws, twitching its ears and continuing to sleep soundly.

His sleeve still wet with corpse water, his fingertips stained with blackened blood, Baili An left the mountain forest that no one returned to under the shelter of his umbrella.