Chen Jiu's ambition was something ordinary people could never comprehend; it was the faith he lived by, and for its sake he would stop at nothing.

"Ancestor, what do we do now?" Chen Dongcheng, having hit one wall after another, was out of ideas. Of course, he also knew that before Chen Jiu he did not need many ideas of his own—whatever Chen Jiu said, he need only do.

Chen Jiu mused for a moment, then waved his hand. "Leave him be for now; everything else is a small matter. The original heart-method and martial techniques are what matter most. Let him write first, and once he is done we'll find some pretext to kill him. One grand-uncle in the Cangwu Sect of North Island is enough—we do not need another primordial-uncle-master."

"That's easy enough. This grandson has already set people to investigating. When the time comes, we need only fabricate a result naming him a charlatan of the martial world, and we can execute him with perfect justification. No one will be able to say a word." Chen Dongcheng nodded.

Once Wei Zhao was dead, would the remaining Qiu Lingshan and Ying Ziyu not be his to play with as he pleased? It was merely a matter of waiting a few more days; he had that much patience.

The days passed one after another. Qiu Lingshan and the others devoted themselves to cultivation, while Wei Zhao, besides refining his primordial spirit each day, also found time to write out heart-methods and martial techniques.

Wei Zhao of course knew that Chen Dongcheng and the grand-uncle behind him were waiting for exactly this. Once the heart-methods and martial techniques were fully written out, he would have no further value to them, and the only outcome awaiting him then would be the hound cooked once the hare was caught.

Yet Wei Zhao still did not deliberately hold anything back in this regard. After all, it was not only for Chen Dongcheng and the grand-uncle to see—if he purposely omitted or falsified anything, the ones to suffer would be the disciples of the Cangwu Sect of North Island as a whole. The others were innocent.

Of course, since Wei Zhao dared to do this, he had naturally made corresponding preparations. He was not a fool.

Refining the primordial spirit, transcribing heart-methods and martial techniques—beyond these, Wei Zhao's daily task was to study the Soul-Snatching Hand. Now that the Soul-Snatching Hand had become his most important primordial spirit technique, he had discovered a rather awkward fact: his Soul-Snatching Hand looked impressive, but in truth it was of hardly any use at all...

The former Western Mountain Sect used the Soul-Snatching Hand to draw out a primordial spirit so as to leave the intact body behind for refining into all manner of puppets; as for Jiu Youying, drawing out a primordial spirit was for the sake of primordial-spirit devouring. But what could Wei Zhao do?

First, he had never intended to devour primordial spirits; second, he would not refine bodies into puppets, and once the Soul-Snatching Hand released a primordial spirit, it would naturally return to its body. Seen this way, apart from being used to bluff people as it had against Xue Jianming back then, it had no practical use whatsoever.

After turning it over and over in his mind, Wei Zhao suddenly had a flash of inspiration one day: what if he combined the Soul-Snatching Hand with the jade pendant's space?

One thing was certain: the jade pendant's space could take a person's primordial spirit inside. But there was a minimum precondition—that person had to trust Wei Zhao sufficiently, at the very least a bond like Duanmu Yu's, forged through shared life and death. Anything short of that would not work.

Even if Wei Zhao wished it, it would not work. The precondition was that the other party trust you, that the primordial spirit be willing to follow you.

But what if it was not willing?

Now, with the Soul-Snatching Hand, Wei Zhao could simply force another's primordial spirit over to him, and a primordial spirit itself did not really count as a proper living organism. In theory, even without willingness, it could still be forced into the jade pendant's space.

And once a primordial spirit was confined within the jade pendant's space, it would be Wei Zhao's word that ruled. Unless Wei Zhao nodded, then even if he could not destroy it, he could certainly lock it away for a lifetime—lock it away until it had not a shred of defiance left.

Although imprisonment and devouring were two entirely different things, as far as combat effect went there was essentially no difference. Thus the Soul-Snatching Hand had, as it were, evolved out of thin air into Primordial Spirit Imprisonment—a brand-new ultimate move!

This ingenious notion excited Wei Zhao immensely. Unfortunately, there was no suitable test subject at present. Qiu Lingshan and the others already trusted him absolutely and would willingly enter the jade pendant's space even without the Soul-Snatching Hand, while outsiders could not casually come into this place at the Heaven-Ascending Cliff—except for Chen Dongcheng, who came from time to time to check on things.

Why not use this Vice Sect Master Chen as a test subject?

In the end Wei Zhao restrained this itch that would not sit still. At present he was not yet confident enough to face a Nascent Soul monster, and unless it was absolutely unavoidable, he did not wish to tear all pretense of civility with the man; otherwise, provoking that grand-uncle into showing himself would be hard to clean up.

Half a month later, Wei Zhao's transcription of the heart-methods and martial techniques finally came to a pause, and Chen Dongcheng immediately seized them with impatience. Yet he did not fall out with Wei Zhao on the spot; instead he sent everything Wei Zhao had transcribed straight into Chen Jiu's hands. Whether there were any problems within could only be determined after this ancestor, a Nascent Soul monster, had personally looked them over.

"Not bad. It will do." After saying this, Chen Jiu took the heart-methods and martial techniques Wei Zhao had transcribed and began comparing and studying them word by word, line by line. He greatly looked forward to gleaning some unprecedented gain from them.

Chen Dongcheng, meanwhile, was in excellent spirits and at once went down the mountain to set things in motion. He understood perfectly well that Chen Jiu's "not bad" referred to the heart-methods and martial techniques, while the "it will do" that followed referred to Wei Zhao.

At the Heaven-Ascending Cliff, Xin Yi'an came rushing in in a fluster and, the moment he saw Wei Zhao, hurriedly spilled the warning: "Uncle-Master, trouble! Chen Dongcheng has just publicly declared your identity to be false and is about to move against you!"

"Oh? How did he announce it?" Wei Zhao was not the least bit alarmed; on the contrary, he grew interested. He was quite keen to learn just what evidence the other side had to prove he was a fake uncle-master.

"He says the investigation team has thoroughly checked all the existing disciple registers and sect chronicles of the Cangwu Sect of North Island, and there is no such person as you in any of them—not the faintest trace to be found. So it is basically certain your identity is false. Unless you can produce sufficiently compelling evidence yourself, the matter is settled as of now," Xin Yi'an said anxiously.