An Alchemist's Path to Eternity

As one of the foremost major sects in the Jade Cauldron Domain, Green Pill Valley possessed a third-tier spirit vein of notably high grade. In essence, it was a large, top-grade spirit vein that was channeled into the five peaks that enclosed the Inner Pill Valley before extending outward to dozens of surrounding mountains.

Such wonderful terrain had stirred envy in countless small sects. Yet Green Pill Valley suffered in its own way: The sect housed far too many cultivators. Even with the occasional casualties among Foundation Establishment disciples, their numbers still hovered around a thousand.

Had it only been this, the burden might have been tolerable. Unfortunately, Green Pill Valley also had a large number of Adepts. The sect could allocate only five third-tier top-grade cave residences and ten low-grade ones. With Dan Yangzi and Tao Wan forming their cores in succession, the available cave residences quickly fell short.

Most of the time, several Adepts had to be sent to cultivate in artificial third-tier cave residences within the major immortal cities. This was also why Green Pill Valley felt compelled to join the Frontier War despite its stability—they hoped to seize a third-tier spirit vein in the new domain. The size did not matter; it merely needed to serve as an outpost for the sect.

Even so, Green Pill Valley still arranged a proper, natural third-tier low-grade cave residence for Luo Chen. They even provided several bottles of third-tier pills to support his cultivation before refining the Nascent Soul Pill. From this alone, it was clear that Qing Danzi was determined to refine the Nascent Soul Pill.

Inside the clean and neatly arranged third-tier cave residence, Luo Chen sat cross-legged and formed an unusual series of hand seals. Each hand weaved a completely different pattern.

As he cultivated, spirit energy surged throughout the cave, with azure wood-element energy and crimson fire-element energy faintly rising above the rest.

Wood Ignition was a third-tier cultivation technique that allowed the user to develop wood and fire in tandem. As Luo Chen cultivated, it began to devour the surrounding spirit energy without restraint. His divine consciousness also stirred unceasingly around him as he drew in the spirit energies.

Before he realized it, two hours had passed.

Suddenly, Luo Chen opened his eyes and exhaled a faint wisp of azure smoke. ”With a Golden Core, cultivation is a lot more complex. Still, there is at least one advantage. The efficiency of divine consciousness in transporting spirit energy has increased nearly tenfold.”

But it seemed that he was only saying this to console himself; there was no joy on his face.

With a single thought, a transparent light screen that only he could see descended before him like a falling curtain of water.

[Status Panel]

Name: Luo Chen

Lifespan: 110/400

Spirit Roots: Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth

Realm: Golden Core Stage One (2/100); Archaic Tier Three (20/100)

Achievement Points: 66

[Techniques]

Wood Ignition: Proficient (201/300)

Myriad Path Convergence: Perfection (428/500)

Myriad Beast Sutra: Beginner (15/100)

[Spells]

Third-Tier

Second-Tier

First-Tier

Perfected Mastery Spells (click to view details)

[Alchemy]

Scaled Shift: Perfection (400/500)

Perfected Mastery Alchemy (click to view details)

[Martial Arts]

Cloud-Seizing Divine Claw: Grandmaster (590/1000)

Blazing Fire Miasma: Grandmaster (521/1000)

[Skills]

Third-Tier Alchemist, Second-Tier Healer, First-Tier Formation Master

Third-Tier Pills

Second-Tier Pills

Perfected Mastery Pills (click to view details)

This was his first time fully opening the status panel since forming his core. For that reason, he examined it with particular care.

The first thing he checked was his lifespan. He had formed his core at age one hundred, spent a decade in seclusion stabilizing the realm, and was now exactly one hundred ten years old. Such accomplishments at his age placed him solidly among the prodigies of the cultivation world. Only cultivators with heavenly spirit roots could be considered comparable.

As for now, his lifespan stood at four hundred years. It was a hundred years lower than that of ordinary Adepts, but Luo Chen felt no concern. Ever since his Foundation Establishment days, he had already understood that subsequent minor realm breakthroughs would raise that limit further.

What he did not know was whether the increments would follow the same pattern as they had during the Foundation Establishment Realm. If they were the same, then once he reached Perfected Mastery, his lifespan would reach five hundred years, just like an ordinary Adept. If it exceeded that, then it would be an unexpected boon.

When weighing everything against his lifespan, Luo Chen found his attention drawn to his cultivation technique again. Thanks to his Perfected Mastery in the Yi Wood Medicine King Codex, he had found it rather easy when shifting to the dual wood-and-fire Wood Ignition. The moment he began practicing the new technique, his proficiency immediately increased by fifty points.

After ten years of cultivation in seclusion, he had reached the Proficient level in Wood Ignition. That result counted as a genuine benefit! It was just that the cultivation speed provided by this technique left him somewhat dissatisfied.

Since he’d properly stepped into the first stage of the Golden Core Realm, three months had already passed. These three full months were spent within a third-tier spirit land and aided by a small supply of third-tier cultivation pills, and this had raised his progress by... a single point.

Golden Core Stage One (2/100)

”Dual elements, an incomplete technique, and five spirit roots... Reaching the second stage will probably take thirty years. I’m not sure about the exact difference in spirit power requirements between each stage, but based on past experience and what Qu Xibai and Diwu Qi said, getting to Perfected Mastery under these conditions would likely take... around two thousand years.”

Thirty years between the first and the second stage meant it would take up to two thousand years to reach the peak of the realm. At first glance, the math was not mathing, but cultivation had always worked this way. The intervals between stages were not equal but grew almost exponentially!

Luo Chen understood his own situation well. During Foundation Establishment, his rapid progress had only come because he had repeatedly improved his cultivation environment. And even though he had taken risks others would have avoided at all costs, it had still taken him a good couple of decades.

This two-thousand-year interval wasn’t exactly unfamiliar, either. When he had first reached Foundation Establishment, he had estimated the time needed for Core Formation in the same way. The situation this time was almost identical. But although the number was outright despair-inducing, Luo Chen no longer felt as lost or uncertain as he once had. He understood that many ways existed to increase cultivation speed, and as long as he had direction and the will to act, nothing in this world was truly impossible.

In fact, Luo Chen felt rather pleased. Compared to a heavenly spirit root, his five-element spirit root was twenty times slower. Since a heavenly spirit root would allow one to reach Nascent Soul in two hundred years, then for him, it would naturally require four thousand years, yet he had somehow reduced that number by half.

As for the reason...

”That’s definitely the solid foundation I built. A third-tier physique, all meridians unblocked, all acupoints opened, and formed the core through a supreme method... That’s the only way to reduce the fundamental gap between myself and actual prodigies. Doing everything perfectly. And if I continue to strengthen my foundation throughout the Golden Core Realm... Heh, maybe after I form the Nascent Soul, I may even stand alongside those heavenly spirit roots. Haha....”

Luo Chen suddenly recalled a rumor circulating in the cultivation world. Heavenly spirit root cultivators were said to lose most of their speed advantage once they stepped into the Nascent Soul Realm. The time needed to reach the Divine Transformation Realm was more or less the same regardless of the spirit root. In other words, so long as he managed to form a Nascent Soul, he would no longer suffer a disadvantage in talent once he reached that realm. If this was true, then the true starting point for the five spirit roots might actually be the Nascent Soul Realm.

For a while, Luo Chen’s thoughts carried him way into the future. But then he shook his head. ”Nah, I am thinking too far ahead. Forget about what I do after I get to Nascent Soul; I don’t even have the things I need to get there!”

The conditions for forming the Nascent Soul in two thousand years involved at least a third-tier low-grade spirit land and a stable supply of third-tier low-grade cultivation pills. Those were the most basic requirements. Yet Luo Chen had neither. The third-tier cave residence he currently occupied was merely a temporary arrangement from Green Pill Valley; as for third-tier pills, he was relying on the gifts from his Core Formation Ceremony and the recent supply of Dragon Transformation Pills from Green Pill Valley. The road ahead remained long and heavy.

He breathed out a quiet sigh and resumed examining his status panel. Owing to the revised Myriad Path Convergence, he could now temper his body with the Withering Flourishing Fire. His Archaic physique that had been stagnant for years had finally begun to progress again.

At present, he had reached twenty out of one hundred, an increase of only five points. The pace was slow, yet it was all he could manage for the time being. The cultivation itself was almost unbearable; the process of using the Withering Flourishing Fire to temper the body meant being refined by a fourth-tier fire at every moment. That kind of agony was not something an ordinary cultivator could withstand.

If not for Luo Chen’s willpower he had honed through countless trials, he would never have been able to endure it. Even so, his inexperience led to many mistakes, which left his body injured time and again. Had he not practiced several healing arts, he would have been covered in wounds and on the verge of collapse in no time.

On the bright side, since he had repeatedly used healing arts to heal himself over the span of ten years, he had eventually reached Perfected Mastery in both Organ Realignment and Bone Mending. As they say, every cloud has a silver lining! Moreover, in the system of physical cultivation that he had created, completing nine rounds of blood replacement and reforging every bone and tendon would allow him to step into the fourth tier. The second blood replacement was drawing near; Luo Chen could feel the sheer power contained within his blood. It was heavy like quicksilver and flowed through him like a roaring river. This was merely the strength granted by one single blood replacement, so how would it be after a second one?

After reviewing his cultivation and techniques, Luo Chen had an accurate grasp of his current state. As for spells, there was little worth mentioning. During those decades of seclusion, he had spent his time cultivating and creating new techniques rather than practicing spells. Only the Great Handprint of Primordial Qi was something he occasionally practiced, which had allowed him to raise it to Perfected Mastery. With that attainment, he had easily prevailed over Hong Ling at his Core Formation Ceremony, earning a note of admiration from Jin Buque.

Moreover, his successful Core Formation allowed him to reach Perfected Mastery of Beaded Curtain Lock and Stilling Wind and Waves. As for the Fine Dust Primordial Art that he had created himself, his breakthrough to Golden Core naturally meant that he had mastered it to Beginner level. During the ten years of seclusion that followed, whenever he used his core cultivation technique, it also carried traces of this Core Formation secret art. His understanding of it was getting deeper and deeper, and perhaps, once he reached Perfected Mastery in the future, he would gain new insight into this supreme method he had created.

Luo Chen indulged in the thought for a moment. He let out a quiet laugh and lowered his gaze. Finally, he paused at the skills section. In addition to being a third-tier alchemist and a second-tier healer, a new profession had appeared: formation master. Although it was only at the first tier, it signified that he had officially stepped into the Dao of Formations. Naturally, this was the result of his meticulous study of restrictions, which laid an incredibly solid foundation for formation arts.

”As long as I have the diagrams and materials for low-tier formations, I can set them up. What I’m lacking for the next tier is not knowledge so much as experience and finesse in manipulating the flow of energy through a formation.”

But he had no intention of addressing those shortcomings for now. He lacked the time, and perhaps the talent as well. Most importantly, he really only needed formation skills for one thing: crafting his life-bound enchanted treasure. For any other purpose, he could just ask a formation master.

”Sixty-six achievement points, a new record again!” Luo Chen muttered to himself and closed the status panel.

This review had been a mix of gains and concerns. Although he had made progress, the shortcomings exposed were far more striking. Still, he now had a deeper understanding of his situation and a clear sense of what he needed to pursue next. He needed a third-tier spirit vein, third-tier cultivation pills, and a life-bound enchanted treasure. Only once these three matters were settled could he pursue other things!