Chapter 23: The Stone Tablet

This enormous black stone tablet was ninety-nine zhang tall, exuding a faint, lofty pressure that could only be faintly sensed within a hundred zhang. On the side facing Ji Ning, there were only two huge, strange characters, while the other side was densely covered with countless strange characters like tiny tadpoles.

"These characters?" Ji Ning observed carefully. "I've never seen such characters before. It seems even the Three Realms don't have them."

He had never seen them, yet he dared to consider them characters.

This was because the characters closely resembled human script, especially the two large ones on the front; Ji Ning could even vaguely guess their meaning.

"Let me probe with my mind." Ji Ning willed it.

His mind immediately enveloped the tablet.

"What?" Ji Ning stared at the tablet in shock. "How is this possible? It can't be. When I probe with my mind, I see nothing but emptiness?"

"Could there be a special restriction on the tablet that blocks the mind?" Ji Ning pondered. "Let me try using heartforce."

Heartforce was ethereal and even more formidable.

Immediately, his true body outside sent a powerful surge of heartforce to envelop the tablet. This made Ji Ning's expression truly change, for he discovered that... even with heartforce probing, there was still nothing but emptiness before him, as if the tablet didn't exist at all.

"This, this..." Ji Ning reached out and touched the tablet. It was cold and rough. "The tablet is clearly right before my eyes, yet even heartforce can't detect it."

"This is no ordinary object."

"It might even be... not of the Three Realms."

This thought immediately flashed through Ji Ning's mind.

The two large characters on the front, the countless dense characters on the back, and the peculiar patterns on the tablet all suggested that some being had forged it! The tablet's pressure was so strong that the being who forged it must have been at least at the level of the leaders of the Daoist and Buddhist sects, perhaps even stronger.

Heartforce couldn't detect the tablet, yet the naked eye could see it and the hand could touch it. Ji Ning had never heard of such a thing; normally, there should be no such oddity in the Three Realms.

Then...

It could only be from the Chaos outside the Three Realms! From ancient times to the present, objects discovered in the Chaos were generally called 'Chaos treasures' and treated as rare materials or curiosities. But if they could be used as magic treasures with power far exceeding innate spirit treasures, they would be considered 'Chaos supreme treasures'.

How Chaos supreme treasures were born was hard to say. The Chaos did indeed give birth to 'Chaos supreme treasures'. But the most terrifying puppets forged by the 'Lord of All Things' in ancient times were no less than Chaos supreme treasures. Thus, the Three Realms had long speculated that some powerful beings among the Chaos races might be able to forge items comparable to Chaos supreme treasures.

"Could this be a Chaos supreme treasure?" This thought flashed through Ji Ning's mind.

Whoosh.

A figure appeared. Ji Ning's true body descended directly, and the avatar merged into the true body. Outside, Ji Ning still left a small avatar formed from divine power.

"Since mind and heartforce can't probe, I'll have to rely on divine power and dharma power." Ji Ning grasped the tablet, gently set it down, and stood it upright in the hall. When he first saw it, he had only thought it was a lucky find by 'Shaoyin Chou', probably not very powerful. But now it seemed the tablet's origins were significant.

If even heartforce and mind couldn't probe it, then probably no other major power in the Three Realms knew of its existence.

"Shaoyin Chou, oh Shaoyin Chou, a mere Celestial Immortal like you actually possessed such a treasure. If I hadn't sought revenge for my mother and my junior apprentice brother Mu Zishuo, I wouldn't have obtained it. This should be a treasure from the Chaos, though I don't know if it's a Chaos supreme treasure." Ji Ning's heart itched. If it were a Chaos supreme treasure, he would be incredibly lucky.

Of course, not everything from the Chaos was good. When Ji Ning and the others had tested the power of the Punishment Heavenly God, they had struck Chaos goldstone. Shennong had found many medicinal herbs in the Chaos, but their value was far less than that of a Chaos supreme treasure.

"Let me try to refine it."

Ji Ning sat cross-legged, his hand on the enormous tablet before him. The tablet was nearly a hundred zhang tall and about ten zhang thick. He immediately channeled his divine power into it.

"Hmm? Not a Chaos supreme treasure?" As soon as his divine power entered, Ji Ning sensed something was off. He was very familiar with the feeling of refining magic treasures and innate spirit treasures.

The divine power flowed into the tablet, but it felt empty—there was nothing to refine.

However, when the divine power touched the two large characters on the front, a wave of information surged into Ji Ning's mind.

"Seventeen." Ji Ning immediately understood the meaning of the two large characters.

"Those two characters mean 'seventeen.' What does that signify? Could there be many such tablets, and this one is number seventeen?" Ji Ning guessed. "And the back has even more characters."

Swoosh!

Ji Ning shifted his position and sat cross-legged on the other side of the tablet. He poured a large amount of divine power into it. The divine power surged through the tablet and soon touched the countless characters on the back. The moment he tried to penetrate them, he felt an invisible resistance. Clearly, forcing the information from all these characters exceeded his capacity.

"Not good." Ji Ning immediately stopped. "The front has only two characters, but the back seems to have millions. Comprehending two characters put little pressure on me, but comprehending over a million at once is far beyond my limits."

The nearly hundred-zhang-tall tablet was densely covered with tiny tadpole-like characters. Ji Ning estimated there were over 1.2 million of them.

"Start from the top, slowly."

Ji Ning began to penetrate with his divine power.

"So slow."

As he penetrated, he felt the strain, but a vast amount of information still flowed into his memory.

"The Eighteen Fiendgods of Taowu..." An ancient technique began to pour in continuously. As Ji Ning's divine power penetrated each character, more and more of the technique entered his mind. Soon, the entire technique was recorded.

"It's actually... a cultivation technique." Ji Ning stared at the tablet in surprise. "And this is only a small part at the top."

The characters on the tablet were divided into seven major sections.

The first section was the Eighteen Fiendgods of Taowu.

"What a formidable technique! It can turn one into eighteen." Ji Ning marveled. "Ordinary fiendgods can produce many avatars, but when an avatar dies, the soul within is also destroyed, causing soul damage. Too much soul damage can even lead to death."

"But this technique, when cultivated to the first level, can perfectly split the soul into eighteen sub-souls. Each sub-soul's power is only one-tenth of the original, but each can live independently. Even if the other seventeen are destroyed, the last one can gradually nurture the others back."

"Cultivated to the second level, all eighteen sub-souls have the same power as the original."

"If cultivated to the third level, the eighteen sub-souls can merge into the original at any time, and the original can split into eighteen avatars. It can also greatly boost the original's power." Ji Ning was amazed.

If this technique were perfected,

Ji Ning could instantly become eighteen Ji Nings. Even when fighting alone, using this technique could greatly enhance his power.

What an heaven-defying technique!

"So Shaoyin Chou had cultivated this technique, but only to the first level." Ji Ning immediately understood. "I thought he had some secret art like Bloodshadow Avatar, but it turns out he had such a profound technique."

The Three Realms also had powerful techniques.

For example, Bloodshadow Avatar: as long as one avatar survived, the others could be revived. But truly powerful experts rarely did this, because each avatar was much weaker, and it was better to have a strong true body. Shaoyin Chou's behavior made others in the Three Realms think he was overly afraid of death, but who knew he possessed such a remarkable technique as the Eighteen Fiendgods of Taowu? He had only reached the first level.

"Where did this technique come from..." Ji Ning marveled. "But mastering this technique is very difficult."

The technique was recorded in detail.

Entering was easy; the first level could be easily achieved.

The second level was a thousand or ten thousand times harder.

The third level was as difficult as reaching the heavens, requiring insight, luck, and more.

...

"Let me look at the second technique."

Ji Ning continued to penetrate with divine power, and the information of the second technique gradually flowed in.

The second technique was called the Nine Interpretations of Insect Beasts.

This was a very magical method for cultivating insect beasts. Ji Ning now understood why Shaoyin Chou could cultivate such powerful insect beasts. In the Three Realms, everyone thought Shaoyin Chou had inherited some legacy, as there were indeed methods for cultivating powerful insect beasts, and Shaoyin Chou's insect beasts weren't too strong, so they didn't attract much attention.

But outsiders didn't know that Shaoyin Chou himself was too weak and had too few materials to cultivate truly powerful ones.

"This requires a lot of time and energy; it's not for me." Ji Ning immediately set it aside.

...

"Let me look at the third technique." Ji Ning found that as he penetrated deeper, the resistance grew stronger. What Ji Ning didn't know was that Shaoyin Chou had only obtained a small part of the first and second techniques; he had never gotten the later ones.

After all, he was only a Celestial Immortal.

Shaoyin Chou regarded this tablet as a supreme treasure, valuing it more than the Town Realm Tower. He hid it carefully. Since he kept a low profile in the Dongxuan Grand World, he hid the tablet there. The Town Realm Tower had been placed in the Grand Xia World, but who would have thought that Ji Ning would end up with the tablet?

...

"Every technique is amazing." Ji Ning felt that his divine power could no longer 'read' effectively. By the fifth technique, he couldn't penetrate at all.

"Let me try with pure Yang dharma power." Unwilling to give up, Ji Ning tried. Pure Yang dharma power surged into the tablet. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh... Ji Ning was astonished to find that pure Yang dharma power penetrated the characters much better than divine power.

"Maybe I can get all seven techniques." Ji Ning's heart filled with anticipation. He even had a feeling that when he obtained all seven techniques, he might learn the origin of the tablet.