“I need to master the Undying Tendons before I go into that ancestral land. If I can make contact with the third shackle, then my poor little life will be much safer.” Another decision he made was that he needed to perform an elevenfold spirit enhancement on his Eternal Parasol.
Afterward, the parasol looked different. The basic shape was the same, but now it looked like it was made from metal. It was pitch black, and radiated an intense, murderous aura. Furthermore, the ghost face which would appear on its surface looked even more fierce and bizarre!
“It's too bad I'm running so low on souls....” he sighed. If he’d had enough souls, he would have performed elevenfold spirit enhancements on his clothing. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option.
After all, he needed to save up enough souls to try to conjure twelve-colored flame, and even with his clones out secretly collecting souls, and the help of Zhou Yixing and Li Feng, that was still going to be difficult.
He didn’t even have enough Heavenspan River water to buy all of the souls he needed....
Thankfully, Bai Hao’s notes about conjuring twelve-colored flame had been extremely beneficial. In fact, other than his time spent in cultivation recently, he had focused almost completely on researching the formula for twelve-colored flame.
Because he didn’t have enough souls on hand, he didn’t dare to casually perform any experiments. He could only analyze the method mentally, and prepare himself for the moment in which he actually attempted to conjure the flame.
Time passed. Before long, half a month had gone by. Bai Xiaochun’s Undying Live Forever Technique was making progress, but his auguries regarding twelve-colored flame had reached a bit of a bottleneck.
“I think I need to do an experiment.” Taking a deep breath, he pulled out his soulhoarding pagoda and counted how many vengeful souls he had. As it turned out, he had enough for three attempts.
After some thought, he made his decision. After using his mask to cover up the aura of the multi-colored flame, he began conjuring. Vengeful souls flew out one after another, and flames appeared in his palm. Eventually, eleven colors were present, and Bai Xiaochun was starting to get very nervous.
After all, if he failed, it would be a huge waste of resources. Settling his qi and calming his mind, he cautiously began his attempt to conjure twelve-colored flame.
As the masses of vengeful souls poured into the eleven-colored flame, Bai Xiaochun’s expression turned very serious. He also began to work more slowly. At one point, he suddenly began to lose control, and the flame began to flicker. Without any hesitation, he summoned one of his clones, who worked with him to stabilize the flame before he continued.
Utilizing the assistance of his clones was one of the ideas Bai Xiaochun had come up with in his planning. As it turned out, using two clones to help didn’t do any more good than using one clone. However he did it, it was still multitasking, and therefore, using one clone was the best technique.
With the help of his solitary clone, the eleven-colored flame grew stable, and more time passed. Two hours later, he was finished with the first step of the process, and a twelfth color was now visible in the sea of fire that surrounded him.
“Bai Hao was absolutely right. Fire represents something else, and is not a material object....” Feeling very pleased, he took a deep breath and prepared to finish the task at hand. As of this moment, he could easily split the sea of fire into two parts and make two portions of mid-grade soul medicine. Or, he could converge the sea into a single tongue of multi-colored flame!
Never could he have imagined that his first attempt at conjuring twelve-colored flame would turn out to be a success.
“Hahaha! It turns out that Bai Xiaochun really is a genius!” With that, he snapped his hand closed to pull the sea together into the form of a tongue of twelve-colored flame.
However, that was when something unexpected occurred!
Even as the sea of fire began to shrink down, it went completely out of control! Bai Xiaochun’s face fell with fear as a terrifying aura erupted out in all directions.
The shocking detonation of the twelve-colored flame scared Bai Xiaochun so much that he let out a shriek. Any other necromancer, even one in the terrestrial rank, would have been completely incapable of reacting in time. However, because of Bai Xiaochun’s extensive experience with exploding pill furnaces, he was always on guard and ready for situations like this.
Therefore, he reacted with lightning speed. He quickly relaxed his hands and performed an incantation gesture that sent frigid qi shooting out. Almost instantly, both hands were shoving down onto the unstable twelve-colored flame.
As the flame was suppressed, the fire died down, revealing two glittering portions of mid-grade soul medicine.
Anyone else who saw two portions of mid-grade soul medicine would be elated, but Bai Xiaochun was scowling on the verge of tears.
“I didn’t want medicine,” he said, tugging at his hair in despair. “I wanted flame! What happened...?” After thinking back to everything he had done during the process, he couldn’t think of any area where he'd gone wrong.
Why did it end up becoming medicine instead of multi-colored flame? The mere thought of the terrifying power he had sensed in the twelve-colored flame left Bai Xiaochun trembling with residual fear.
“Don’t tell me that I'm going to start experiencing the same kind of accidents with flame conjuring as I did with medicine concocting?” He shivered.
After a long moment passed, he looked at his soulhoarding pagoda and tried to decide whether or not to perform another experiment. After all, that was the only way to truly figure out what he had done wrong.
Gritting his teeth, he produced more vengeful souls and proceeded to conjure another eleven-colored flame. At that point, he hesitated.
“I can’t do it here....” he thought. Eyes turning up in thought, he eventually put his clone and the eleven-colored flame away, and then left with his soulhoarding pagoda. Taking advantage of the darkness of night, he left the north district and made his way to the east district.
“That way, even if an accident occurs, I can still rest at ease....” Clearing his throat, he found an out-of-the-way ornamental rock formation in the east district with a large open cavity inside that he could work in. After setting up a spell formation, he took a deep breath and then pulled out his eleven-colored flame. Then his clone appeared, and he began to conjure the twelfth color in the flame.
It was in the still of night that he used the power of the mask to suppress the pressure of the flame. Not even someone standing directly next to the ornamental rocks would have noticed what was happening, or would have been able to detect the incredible power brewing inside....
Bai Xiaochun was very nervous, and his clone was sweating visibly. As the two of them worked together, things went smoothly for about two hours. Then, a twelfth color appeared within the sea of fire. All he had to do was shrink the sea down into a tongue of flame, and he would be finished. However, at that point, he paused.
“It should work this time, right...?” he thought, blinking a few times as the twelve-colored flame began to shrink down.
That was when unstable fluctuations suddenly sprang up within the sea of fire. Explosive power erupted in a tempest that caused a sensation of deadly crisis to instantly rise up in Bai Xiaochun.
Letting out an involuntary shriek, he tried to adjust the flame to stop the explosion, but the power was even more intense than before. No matter what adjustments he made, nothing did any good, and in fact, rumbling sounds echoed out as wildly destructive flames began to spread out in all directions.