After being reborn, the villain comes with a spoiler tag.

Back in his cave, Huo Yu casually tossed Long Yucheng onto the bed. After confirming that Long Yucheng was merely exhausted of spiritual energy, he focused on researching how to refine the Hundred Soul Banner.

Taking out the materials for making the Hundred Soul Banner from his storage bag, Huo Yu summoned a ball of flame and threw all the materials into it.

According to the jade slip, this step should have been carried out in the sect's weapon-refining room, where there was a continuous and stable supply of earth fire. However, it was somewhat redundant for Huo Yu, who was cultivating the Burning Heaven Technique.

For Huo Yu, the flames were like an extension of his body. He skillfully manipulated the flames in front of him, slowly refining and fusing the materials within. Half an hour later, a seemingly ordinary black flag was born, which was the prototype of the Soul Banner.

The next step, the most crucial one in crafting the Soul Banner, is to inscribe an array onto it using divine sense.

The number of formations directly affects the power of the Soul Banner, while the quality of the raw materials determines the limit of the formations the Soul Banner can withstand.

Huo Yu chose the most common materials for refining the Hundred Soul Banner. Generally speaking, the limit is that it can withstand nine sets of formations. The refined soul banner can hold up to ninety-nine souls, not more than one hundred, hence the name Hundred Soul Banner.

Refining soul banners was not too unfamiliar to Huo Yu. He had already made a prototype of a hundred-soul banner. Although it only had one set of formations engraved on it and could only hold eleven souls at most, it could still be considered a hundred-soul banner.

This time, refining the Hundred Soul Banner was a bit more troublesome than before—mainly because the raw materials for refining the banner were too low-grade. Huo Yu had to control the intensity of his divine sense at a delicate balance point in order to avoid damaging the banner while engraving the array. This placed extremely high demands on the precise control of his divine sense.

When Long Yucheng woke up, Huo Yu was playing with a small black flag in his hand.

This is the second Hundred Soul Banner that Huo Yu has crafted. The first one failed. After inscribing nine sets of formations, Huo Yu felt that there was still room on the banner, so he did not hesitate to inscribe the tenth set of formations.

When the first rune of the tenth array was inscribed, the black soul banner mysteriously burst into flames.

Huo Yu stared at the black flame, pondered for a moment, and then took out materials again to refine a second soul banner.

This time, he knew when to stop and finished carving nine sets of formations before stopping, which resulted in the successful Hundred Soul Banner in his hand.

"Senior Brother Huo?"

Long Yucheng opened his eyes and was greeted by an unfamiliar cave. Startled, he jumped up, but nearly collapsed again due to the depletion of his spiritual energy.

After he got used to the weakness, he noticed Huo Yu standing to the side.

Huo Yu noticed Long Yucheng had just regained consciousness, but he waited for Long Yucheng to speak before slowly putting away the Hundred Soul Banner and turning to look.

Long Yucheng quickly recalled everything that happened before he lost consciousness, and roughly understood why he was in Huo Yu's cave. He once again sincerely thanked him:

"Thank you for saving me, Senior Brother Huo."

Huo Yu nodded indifferently, without saying a word.

Long Yucheng was already used to this. He knew that if he didn't take the initiative to start a conversation, Huo Yu would just stare at him all day without saying a word.

Long Yucheng was about to take his leave and return to his cave, but when he caught a glimpse of the small black flag in Huo Yu's hand, he suddenly changed his mind and asked curiously:

"We haven't congratulated Senior Brother Huo on the completion of his Soul Banner yet. Are you planning to participate in the aptitude test two years from now?"

"Exactly."

Huo Yu nodded, and Long Yucheng's eyes lit up instantly.

"I just learned about the remains of a cultivator from the Soul Refining Peak from the outer disciple's storage bag. If what the jade slip says is true, it should contain a soul banner that stores nearly a hundred souls. I wonder if Senior Brother Huo would be interested in going to explore it together?"

In fact, the information about this cultivator's ruins did not come from the storage bag of the cultivator surnamed Wang, but from the "Record of Spiritual Objects of Chuyun Kingdom" that Long Yucheng had previously redeemed with points from the system.

Although Izumo is a small country, the "Izumo Kingdom Spiritual Objects Record" is priced at a whopping 9,000 points in the shop, so there must be a lot of good stuff in it.

After much persuasion and emotional appeal, Long Yucheng finally convinced the Heavenly Dao Assistant to purchase the "Record of Spiritual Objects of Izumo Kingdom" on credit.

However, Long Yucheng can currently only access information about spiritual objects within a 300-mile radius of the Yellow Spring Sect; the rest will be unlocked after paying 10,000 points.

The extra thousand points were the interest on the debt, which made Long Yucheng curse the system's heartlessness in his heart.

Long Yucheng probed his divine sense into the hard-won "Record of Spiritual Objects of Chuyun Kingdom," only to find that there were not many spiritual object sites around the Yellow Spring Sect, and he gave up on most of them after only reading the descriptions—given the danger of these places, he would be nothing more than a sitting duck for someone at the Qi Refining stage.

The remains of this cultivator from Refining Soul Peak are among the few that are within the target area of ​​Longyu City. According to the Records of Spiritual Objects of Chuyun Kingdom, there are no mechanisms or restrictions inside the cultivator's remains. There is only a very ingenious concealment array outside the cave, which is why other cultivators did not get there first.

The method to break this hidden formation was also recorded on the jade slip, making it easy prey for Long Yucheng.

Long Yucheng originally planned to visit the cultivator's ruins after accepting the mission at the Offering Hall, but the outer disciple interfered, and he couldn't go to the Offering Hall.

This provided a convenient excuse to explain his source of information, so Long Yucheng used it as a pretext to invite Huo Yu to go with him.

Since joining the Qiongshan Sect, Huo Yu has saved him four times and provided countless acts of kindness, big and small. Long Yucheng dislikes owing favors, but he owes Huo Yu far too much, and for now, he can only repay him little by little.

Huo Yu didn't think too much about it. He was also considering where to obtain the living souls needed for the Hundred Soul Banner. Although it was convenient to kill people and extract their souls directly in the outer sect, if he wanted to obtain enough living souls to fill the first Hundred Soul Banner, it would inevitably attract the attention of the Yellow Spring Sect. He didn't want to attract too much attention right now.

Huo Yu readily agreed to Long Yucheng's faster and more discreet approach after a brief consideration. He didn't care at all about the source of Long Yucheng's information.

Considering the qualification test is just around the corner in two years, the two agreed that they should not delay and should set off after Long Yucheng has recovered to his peak condition.

After the discussion was completed, Long Yucheng immediately took his leave, agreeing to contact him again a week later via the Jade Pendant.

He has too many unexplained secrets about him, so he certainly can't take out the recovery elixir he got from the system in front of Huo Yu. Besides, he also needs to check the storage bag of that Wang surname cultivator and take the Crimson Flame Sword back to his cave just in case.

After Long Yucheng left, Huo Yu didn't rest either. He took out the Hundred Soul Banner he had previously refined and carefully examined it with his divine sense.

He personally crafted this Hundred Soul Banner, and under his divine sense, every detail was clearly visible. This banner was essentially a spatial device similar to a storage bag, except that it could only store souls.

Huo Yu had a thought and tried to probe into it with a wisp of his divine sense before severing the connection.

Suddenly, a blurry white, fluffy substance appeared in the Hundred Soul Banner, which then disappeared completely after a short while.

Huo Yu then summoned the hybrid grain dragon, which had been wrapped around his left wrist as a bracelet. Since leaving the Nine Star Secret Realm, it had been listless.

The spiritual energy within the Nine Star Secret Realm is useless to cultivators from the outside world, and the spiritual energy from the outside world is also somewhat difficult for the hybrid grain dragon, a native beast of the Nine Star Secret Realm, to digest.

After the hybrid dragon appeared, it glanced listlessly at the small black flag, and resignedly crawled inside under Huo Yu's command.