Half-Step Ninth Tier
Chen Fan dismissed the two men and then summoned Wang Dafu.
Wang Dafu jogged into the hall, his fat jiggling with each step, and clutched a thick stack of account books in his hand.
"Young Master, as you instructed, most of the confiscated grain belonging to those vampire families has been seized and is being cataloged by household..."
"Guard the gates," Chen Fan interrupted him. "After I leave, keep all four gates tightly shut and allow the entire army to rest and regroup. No matter what happens outside, no troops are allowed to provoke any trouble."
Wang Dafu's expression tightened, and his playful smile vanished, "Young Master, on this journey to Giant Spirit City..."
"He won't die." Chen Fan waved his hand. "Step back."
Having arranged everything, Chen Fan turned and headed towards the lava palace at the bottom level of Red Rock City.
There are exactly three days left until the deadline.
Even against a true Ninth-Tier Domain expert, the combat power of Eighth-Order Late Stage expert is still somewhat insufficient.
He must, within these three days, extract as much spiritual essence as possible from the accumulated spiritual veins of Red Rock City in order to find a way to break the deadlock.
Deep within the underground palace, waves of heat rose.
A crimson river of lava surged between the cracks in the earth. Chen Fan sat cross-legged on a protruding, dark blue rock platform and shattered all the hundreds of boxes of Supreme Fire Spirit Marrow he had looted from the treasure vault with a wave of his hand.
The immense energy transformed into rolling crimson clouds, pouring into his limbs and bones.
Within his Dantian, the Black-and-White Millstone slowly rotated.
However, after two full days and two nights, the raging earth vein Spiritual Power was almost completely devoured, but the bottleneck barrier in his body remained as solid as a rock.
No matter how much energy you ingest, your body is like a full Furnace; excess True Essence will only circulate aimlessly in the meridians and cannot undergo any qualitative change.
"Simply plundering the natural world's treasures is no longer a viable path."
Chen Fan opened his eyes and exhaled a breath of hot, stale air.
This clone cultivates the Way of Life and Death, which blends Water-Fire Totems. Within the Millstone, the Deathly Silence Qi has long been condensed to its extreme, but the True Meaning of Life, representing endless renewal, has always lacked a crucial element.
Without that spark of inspiration, he wouldn't be able to cross the Eighth-Order Peak, let alone touch the threshold of the Ninth-Tier Domain.
Time slipped by unnoticed, and before we knew it, it was dusk on the third day.
There was only one hour left before the Giant Spirit City carriage arrived outside the city of Juling.
Chen Fan exhaled, preparing to abandon his seclusion and get up to leave, when a strange buzzing sound suddenly emanated from within his body.
The towering rock strata at the top of the underground palace seemed to lose their obstructive function at that moment.
A vast yet gentle and mellow milky-white halo descended from nothingness, penetrating through layers of restrictions without hindrance, and landed directly on the top of his head.
This is definitely not some wandering spiritual energy in the world.
It's not even a totem of malevolent energy.
The moment Chen Fan's Divine Thought touched that halo, countless mixed and faint sounds immediately rang in his mind.
A woman was quietly sobbing and praying in front of the stove.
An elderly man, trembling, handed hot soup to his grandson with a sigh.
There were young children laughing as they held coarse grain flatbreads and chewed them heartily.
The heavy will of the people, carrying the everyday life of the city streets, was like a silent spring rain that nourishes all things, pouring into Millstone center of his Dantian without reservation.
Buzz!
The dark, cold Millstone vibrated violently.
The once dry and barren white array eyes suddenly burst forth with dazzling divine light.
Life and death are mutually reinforcing; Yin-Yang coexist!
The Millstone, once dominated by deathly silence, has finally completed the puzzle of life.
The shackles within his body shattered in an instant.
Chen Fan's bones crackled like popping beans, and his surging Qi and Blood and qi suddenly collapsed inward, transforming into solid, gray-red dragon shadows.
His Divine Thought burst forth, and an invisible and intangible power spread out. Centered on him, the gravity, heat, and Void flow within a three-zhang radius were all forcibly brought under his control.
The Domain Embryo!
Without warning, and without any prior indication, he directly stepped into the Half-Step Ninth Tier!
Chen Fan stood up, looked down at his hands, and a deep sense of surprise flashed in his eyes.
He has been hiding in the underground palace for the past few days, not taking a single step out, let alone summoning clouds and rain to save the world. Where did this terrifying vitality of gratitude from the people come from?
With a slight sway, Chen Fan vanished from the original location of the underground palace.
The next moment, he stood high in the sky above Red Rock City, completely concealing his aura, overlooking the entire city.
As dusk settled, the setting sun shone like blood.
But the city, ravaged by war, showed no signs of death or panic.
On the main street, the ruins of the collapsed houses have been cleared away, and thousands of wooden sheds have been neatly erected to provide shelter from the wind and rain.
For the first time ever, a white oil lamp was lit in front of every house on both sides of the street.
Those are Longevity Lamps used for prayer and blessings.
Thousands of lights stretched from the inner city all the way to the barren plains of the outer city, twinkling like stars and converging into a dazzling sea of light.
In front of the newly built porridge stall in the city center, several barbarian guards from the Fire Crow Tribe were carrying bags of Spirit Grains and pouring them into pots, the rich aroma of the rice wafting for miles.
Wang Dafu, with his large pregnant belly, was holding a ruler and sternly scolding several deacons who were trying to cut corners.
"I said, every bowl of porridge must be thick enough to hold a chopstick upright! Anyone who dares to add sand or water to it, I'll chop them up tonight and throw them into the ley lines to feed the fish!"
Further down the street corner, a simple altar had been erected.
On it was a wooden plaque painted with Fire Crow Totem, and around it were piles of wild fruits and dried food offered by mortals.
Tens of thousands of ragged civilians, along with the elderly and children, were kneeling and kowtowing in utmost devotion before the altar.
Chen Fan's Divine Thought slowly descended and clearly landed in front of a mud-brick house that had collapsed halfway.
A sallow-faced, emaciated young woman was trembling as she wiped the dirt off her child's face with the corner of her clothes.
She pulled a steaming hot coarse grain flatbread from her bosom, carefully broke off a large piece, and stuffed it into the child's hand. "Eat up, eat slowly... No need to hide anymore, the soldiers of the Fire Crow Tribe have confiscated all of the Du Family Granaries, we have food to eat, this winter... we won't freeze to death."
The child wolfed down his food, asking indistinctly, "Mommy, aren't they barbaric killers? The thunder was so loud the day before yesterday, I was so scared."
The woman's eyes were red-rimmed. She hugged her child tightly and looked towards the inner city. "They're not barbarians... they're saviors of suffering gods. Eat quickly, and after you finish eating, come with me to kowtow to the city lord and pray to heaven to bless him with a long and healthy life..."
High in the sky, the wind howled.
Chen Fan stood in the void, looking down at the mother and child whose faces were streaked with tears but filled with longing for tomorrow, and remained silent for a long time.
Memories of past lives surged, and the killings and plunder of this life flashed through my mind.
In this Great Wilderness world where great power resides in one's own hands and the strong regard the weak as pigs and dogs, the aftershocks of a casual clash between a few giants can wipe out the lives of tens of thousands of civilians.
Nobody ever cared whether they lived or died.
In sectarian battles, mortals become cannon fodder; when grand formations reverse, mortals become tinder.
His order to Wang Dafu to open the granary and release grain a few days ago was just a casual move, perhaps even a spur-of-the-moment decision. He didn't expect to see the order he was looking forward to disrupted by a few grain merchants' managers.
But it was precisely this casual act of kindness that gave hundreds of thousands of ants struggling in the mud a breath of life.
Where does the hope for survival come from?
It is neither a medicinal herb nor a product of mountains and rivers.
The warmth deep within people's hearts is the most intense and domineering vitality in the world!
Chen Fan looked up at the endless starry sky and let out a long sigh.
"When a dynasty prospers, the people suffer; when a dynasty falls, the people suffer... Throughout the ages, the great path has been a struggle, and the true vitality of life in this mortal world is nothing more than the basic sustenance of all people."
Boom!
Deep within his Sea of Consciousness, the "Myriad Realms Red Dust Scripture," which originated from his original self, suddenly shone with golden light.
The obscure and profound scriptures flowed rapidly through his Divine Soul, and his mind, which had been forcibly restrained by the cultivation technique, was now completely integrated with the surrounding mortal world.
His aura surged once more, and the gray Dao patterns on the Yin-Yang Millstone within his body faintly revealed a sacred, Glazed Crystal light.
Half-Step Ninth Tier!