Bright Yang Stone

The Bright Yang Stone is an Immortal sect relic made by gathering souls and life force into a concentrated source of Bright Yang power. Immortal branches use such stones to support descent into the Yin Death Region and preserve the Yang state of their members' souls. The same opposition that protects Immortals makes the stone acutely destructive to Su Ming, who deliberately embeds part of one in his body to train himself against Bright Yang.

History

Hidden Dragon Sect's divided safeguard

The stone first becomes the objective of Shen Dong's attack on a Hidden Dragon Sect branch. A defender states that creating one requires ten thousand Immortal souls and that each branch receives only a small piece when it is established. Shen Dong demands the relic because it is strategically important to Immortals rather than simply valuable material. Gu Yuan Hai denies possessing it, explodes his body during the fighting, and uses a storage bag as a diversion. Su Ming, acting under the temporary name “Oriole,” takes that bag while covertly bargaining to delay the attackers. (Chapters 624–626)

Shen Dong correctly infers that the bag is a decoy and that the actual Bright Yang Stone has been hidden. Su Ming had reached much the same conclusion: a loyal defender willing to destroy his own body would be more likely to divide or conceal the sect's essential relic than carry all of it into pursuit. Evil Spirit Sect later reports that it obtained a portion from Gu Yuan Hai. Su Ming follows the remaining clues toward the treasury, less from an initial desire for the unknown stone than from his broader effort to take the sect's resources and understand the Immortals' arrangements. (Chapters 626, 633, 637)

A hostile source forced into Su Ming's body

Interrogation reveals the stone's institutional purpose. Descending Immortals pool life force in it, allowing their souls to remain in a Bright Yang state within the Yin Death Region; it also supports their eventual return. Su Ming reasons that destroying a sect's stone could therefore kill or disable many of its descended members. The explanation comes from a captive whose full candor Su doubts, but the stone's later behavior and the Immortals' campaign to seize it corroborate its role as a shared life-support anchor. (Chapter 633)

Su Ming finds the fist-sized golden portion shining like a sun. Its warmth to ordinary observers is poison to him: his body withers within breaths, death aura melts around it, and direct contact burns his hand and soul. He nevertheless carries it away and spends ten days forcing his Yin Death aura against its Yang presence. His body becomes indistinct, his will wavers, and his cultivation dries up before the stone finally weakens enough to crack. The suppression does not completely convert it; it produces the first signs of a change that Immortals regard as virtually impossible. (Chapters 636–637)

Rather than store the subdued fragment, Su Ming cuts open his chest and forces it into his body. He treats the constant pain as deliberate acclimatization for the day he must leave the Yin Death Region and face Bright Yang directly. Four hours of absorbed death aura seal the wound around it, and his later recovery and cultivation increase strengthen his ability to keep it suppressed. By the time Immortals descend in force, the half-stone within him lets him endure Bright Yang longer than before, but it does not make him immune. (Chapters 637–638, 676)

Di Tian's soul-destroying counterpart

Di Tian later produces a Bright Yang Stone that he refined separately and uses it as a weapon against Su Ming. When crushed, it explodes like a sun; golden radiance gathers toward Su Ming with the stated ability to destroy Yin Death souls. This example confirms the offensive implication of the stone's nature, but it is not identified as the same physical portion embedded in Su Ming. Di Tian destroys his own stone in releasing the attack, while the supplied evidence does not record the later extraction or final conversion of Su Ming's embedded half. (Chapter 681)

Abilities and properties

• Soul and life-force reservoir: A sect gathers the life force of descended Immortals into the stone. Creating a complete stone is said to require ten thousand Immortal souls, while individual branches may hold only pieces. It functions collectively rather than as an ordinary personal cultivation crystal. (Chapters 624, 633)
• Descent and return support: Its Yang field lets Immortals descend into the Yin Death Region with reduced contamination and is described as necessary for returning to the Immortal lands. A cultivator whose soul is not stored in a particular stone can use its presence to descend without staking personal survival on that stone's custody. (Chapters 633, 635)
• Bright Yang radiance: The golden, sunlike light disperses death aura and attacks beings of Yin Death at the level of body, life, and soul. Di Tian's refined example can concentrate that radiance after being shattered. Its effects are asymmetric: ordinary people experience warmth, while Su Ming initially withers almost immediately. (Chapters 636, 681)
• Destruction as a sect-level threat: Because many lives can be gathered in one stone, breaking it may kill a large body of descended Immortals. The exact outcome for every connected soul is inferred by Su Ming from the captive's explanation rather than shown as a full on-page mass death. (Chapter 633)
• Divisibility and concealment: Gu Yuan Hai's actions and Su Ming's reconstruction indicate that a Bright Yang Stone can be split into portions, allowing one piece to serve as bait while another is hidden. Both Evil Spirit Sect and Su Ming ultimately possess portions. (Chapters 626, 633, 637, 676)
• Resistance to Yin transformation: Death aura normally disperses on contact with the stone. Su Ming weakens and cracks a portion only after ten continuous days of suppression at severe cost to his body, will, and cultivation, and even then does not complete the intended transformation into a “Yin Death Stone.” (Chapters 637–638)
• Acclimatization through implantation: Keeping the subdued half inside his body exposes Su Ming continuously to its incompatible force and later helps him withstand Bright Yang longer. The benefit depends on his ongoing suppression and increasing cultivation; the stone remains painful and grants resistance, not immunity or ownership of all Bright Yang power. (Chapters 637–638, 676)

Ownership and custody