Stop grinding, I'm really just a free spirit.

Chapter 21 [Crimson Flame Spirit Summoning Technique]

The innate spiritual light is the foundation of a cultivator's spirit; if it is separated from the body for too long, it will be depleted, and may even damage the foundation. If it were an ordinary cultivator, they would never dare to attempt such a thing. But after careful consideration, he realized that the amount of his spiritual light far exceeded that of ordinary people, so a little depletion should not be a big problem. Moreover, he did not let all of his spiritual light leave his body, but only separated a small strand and placed it in his pupil.

"Try it first, and if it doesn't work, take it back."

He sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and concentrated.

At the center of his brow, a fist-sized ball of innate spiritual light floated silently, radiating a warm white glow. Chen Bai gently touched it with his mind, separating a wisp from it, about one-tenth the size of the whole.

Just the simple step of separating the spiritual light made him break out in a sweat.

The aura is not a physical entity and cannot be separated by hand; it can only be gradually peeled away by intention.

It's like trying to pluck a fine thread from a wad of cotton with two invisible fingers. If you apply too much force, you pluck a whole wad instead of a thread; if you apply too little force, you pluck nothing at all.

After seven or eight attempts, that glimmer of inspiration was finally completely extracted.

Chen Bai carefully guided it along the meridians to his eyes.

The moment the light entered his eyes, his eyeballs suddenly burned, as if splashed with hot oil. He endured the discomfort and, following the path recorded in the method, evenly channeled the light into the pupils of both eyes.

Then comes the most crucial step—engraving the micro-talisman.

This talisman is much simpler in structure than the Qi-gathering talisman, consisting of only two parts: the talisman head and the talisman core. The talisman head is a pictographic pattern resembling an eye, while the talisman core is a simplified ancient seal script character for "to shine".

Chen Bai mentally drew the talisman more than a dozen times until he could draw it completely with his eyes closed before he began to work on it.

On my first attempt, I was only halfway through drawing the talisman when the inspiration trembled slightly, causing the trajectory to deviate a little, and all my previous efforts were in vain.

"Again."

The second time, after finishing the talisman head, he started to draw the talisman core, but it went astray again.

"Again."

The third time, the fourth time, the fifth time...

After trying for the eleventh time, the Illuminating Talisman was finally completely imprinted in the pupil.

Chen Bai's eyes suddenly lit up.

Everything in the cave became clearer than ever before.

The fine textures on the surface of the pearl, the spirit-gathering array patterns carved on the jade platform, and the dust floating in the air—these details that are usually invisible are now clearly visible to the eye.

More importantly, he saw spiritual energy.

It wasn't the vague sensation you get when you enter a meditative state, but a real and tangible "seeing".

A wisp of milky-white spiritual energy flowed through the air, overflowing from the jade platform, spiraling upwards, gathering into a faint cloud of spiritual energy at the top of the cave, before settling back down, forming a complete cycle.

The spiritual energy associated with different zodiac signs also varies slightly in color. Metal is more whitish, Wood is more bluish, Fire is more reddish, Water is more dark, and Earth is more yellowish.

The various colors intertwined, like a colorful river flowing quietly through the cave. The scene was just as he had seen when he used the "spiritual response" before.

"It's done."

Chen Bai grinned.

Although these "spiritual eyes" can only be maintained when there is spiritual light in the pupils, they will become ineffective once the spiritual light is withdrawn.

But in any case, he had already mastered a spell that required spiritual awareness to cast before he even achieved embryonic breathing.

"Disperse."

With a thought, the illuminating talisman in his pupils slowly dissipated, and that wisp of spiritual light returned to his brow along the meridians.

Just as his inspiration returned, he felt a sudden throbbing between his eyebrows.

Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that the returning wisp of spiritual light had actually grown slightly stronger. Although the increase was minuscule, it was indeed a size thicker than when it left.

"This is……"

Chen Bai was stunned for a moment, then he understood.

The act of imprinting talismans with spiritual light outside the body is itself an ultimate form of training.

Just like building muscle, through repeated tearing and repair, the muscle becomes stronger and stronger. The same is true for aura; it is stretched to its limits and precisely manipulated during the process of imprinting the sigil, and naturally grows upon its return.

"This is a pleasant surprise."

He nodded secretly. In the following days, besides his normal daily energy circulation, he would dedicate two hours each day to practicing the Illumination Technique. Initially, he needed about ten failures to carve the seal, but gradually, the number of failures decreased. By the fifth day, he could succeed within three attempts; on the seventh day, twice; and on the tenth day, on the first try.

At the same time, the innate spiritual light between his brows was growing at a visible rate. From its initial fist-sized size, it gradually increased to one and a half fists. Although there was still a qualitative difference between this and true spiritual awareness, the quantitative accumulation was already quite considerable.

The time has come; a month and a half into seclusion.

After mastering the Illumination Technique to the point of complete control, Chen Bai turned his attention to another Daoist technique—the Crimson Flame Spirit Guiding Technique.

He had only skimmed through the jade slip containing this spell before, without looking at it in detail.

Only when I calmed down and studied it carefully did I discover that there was a whole new world to explore within it.

"This Crimson Flame Spirit-Guiding Technique takes its meaning from 'Crimson Ridge guides life, flames bring forth life.' Before cultivating it, one must prepare the soul of a demonic beast and a flame..."

The core of this technique is the concept of "transformation." First, a spirit-controlling talisman is imprinted on the prepared demon beast's soul with spiritual awareness. Then, its form and substance are tempered with flames to process the demon beast's soul. During this process, attention must be paid to controlling the heat. The goal is to gradually infuse the demon beast's soul with incantations and hand seals during the forging process, transforming the demon beast's soul into a pure fire spirit body.

Anyone who practices this technique and maintains continuous breathing can summon a flame-shaped beast spirit, which can quickly recover even if it is scattered.

Ordinary fire-based spells simply involve condensing a ball of flame and throwing it, the power of which depends entirely on the depth of one's internal energy. But this Crimson Flame Spirit-Guiding Technique is unique—it borrows the remnant intelligence of a demon beast's soul, uses true fire to transform its form, and endows it with simple intelligence, enabling it to autonomously track enemies within a range of several dozen feet, thereby causing damage.

"This technique is ingeniously conceived, and simple and inexpensive enough," Chen Bai secretly praised. "Furthermore, the power of the beast spirits depends on the strength of the demon beast's soul. Theoretically, as long as the spiritual consciousness is strong enough, multiple beast spirits can be created to form a large-scale suppression..."

However, to cultivate this Daoist technique, one must prepare the materials in advance. There aren't many requirements for the souls of demonic beasts; whether they are birds and beasts, or fish and crocodiles, as long as they possess basic intelligence, they will work. The flame also has no special requirements; whether it's ordinary fire, [Li Fire], [Bing Fire], [Ding Fire], or even [True Fire] which is "pure in nature and adept at illusion," it will all be effective.

However, he hadn't specifically carried any demon beast souls in his storage bag before going into seclusion, so he obviously couldn't cultivate with them. A hint of helplessness appeared in Chen Bai's eyes. Just as he was about to put down the jade slip in his hand and choose another Dao technique to cultivate, he paused, as if he had suddenly thought of something.

"A demonic beast's soul? And a true fire?" he muttered to himself.