Cultivating the Immortal Dao, Breaking Through to Void Refinement!
After fleeing the capital, Chen Du did not run blindly.
In his mind were the accounts of the state of the world that Ning Chuan, the body's original owner, had heard growing up. They were enough for him to work out where to go.
The Great Sheng Dynasty was powerful, almost unnaturally so.
A hundred years ago, the Immortal Dao had reigned supreme in the Spirit Martial Realm. The Martial Dao had been no more than an inferior discipline for ordinary mortals to temper their strength.
The highest a martial practitioner could reach was the Sixth-Rank Martial General realm. There was no path beyond it, and at best, they could measure themselves against an immortal cultivator at Foundation Establishment.
But in the span of a mere hundred years, the Martial Dao had suddenly flourished.
Someone had filled in the path beyond the sixth rank and even created a system spanning the fourth, third, and all the way to the first rank. Those with outstanding aptitude had cultivated all the way to become first-rank Martial Immortals.
The fortune of the Martial Dao blazed as though oil had been poured on a fire, spreading across the whole world and leaving the immortal cultivation sects struggling to breathe.
Now, the only one left that could barely contend with the Great Sheng Dynasty was the Spirit Flourishing Sect.
The Spirit Flourishing Sect was exactly where Chen Du was headed.
There was another reason.
After repeatedly sensing his aptitude with a probing method, Chen Du discovered that this body actually did have a trace of a spiritual root.
Its grade was not particularly high, but it was genuinely usable.
He was overjoyed. The path of immortal cultivation was just what he needed.
He disguised himself as a young refugee and traveled for three days among the refugees heading north.
After several more days on the road, he finally arrived at the foot of the Spirit Flourishing Sect's mountain gate.
It was a vast complex of buildings built along the mountainside, its pavilions and towers half-hidden amid clouds and mist.
The mountain gate towered overhead, with the three ancient seal-script characters for "Spirit Flourishing Sect" hanging above it. Spiritual qi swirled around it, lending it a solemn and imposing air that stood in stark contrast to Duke Tianyuan's Estate and its domineering ostentation.
Chen Du blended into the crowd seeking immortality, had his spiritual root tested, and paid respects to the founding patriarch as required.
He was assigned a place among the most ordinary outer sect disciples and given a drab gray disciple's robe and a copy of the most basic Qi-Guiding Art.
He used the Breath-Concealing Technique to suppress himself, revealing not the slightest trace of his Martial Dao cultivation.
To outsiders, he was just a newly admitted menial disciple, as ordinary as could be.
But he knew that the greatest immortal cultivation sect in the Spirit Martial Realm had become his shield, and he could cultivate in peace.
Even Ning Shanyue could not simply trespass through the Spirit Flourishing Sect's mountain gate.
The outer sect disciples lived in a row of simple stone houses, three to a room.
Chen Du shared his room with two boys of humble origins, one named Zhao Qing and the other Li Huan.
They spent their days either working or sitting in meditation to refine qi, and bore no particular hostility toward their taciturn "Junior Brother Ning."
The Qi-Guiding Art Chen Du had been given was pitifully thin, only sixty-odd pages.
It covered only the most rudimentary methods of breathing and guiding qi, teaching how to sense the spiritual qi of heaven and earth, draw it into the dantian, transform it into true essence, and cultivate magical power.
Such cultivation methods were a dime a dozen in immortal cultivation sects, and every outer sect disciple had a copy.
Those with good aptitude could grasp the basics in a month or two, while those with poor aptitude might not find their way in even after three or five years.
But Chen Du did not care about how he was treated.
With a cultivation method this simple, it was easy to grasp the basics.
That night, after Zhao Qing and Li Huan had gone to sleep, he sat cross-legged on his own bunk.
By the moonlight filtering in through the window, he read the Qi-Guiding Art from beginning to end.
Then, [Divine Revelation Reading] went to work once more!
[You begin comprehending the basic immortal cultivation art, the Qi-Guiding Art...]
[Divine Revelation Reading triggered. Martial Arts Creation operates at full capacity. You discover that although this cultivation method is rudimentary, it subtly accords with the fundamentals of how the spiritual qi of heaven and earth circulates. You compare its breathing and qi-guiding routes with the meridian theories in the Martial Canon and quickly find the optimal solution.]
[You have comprehended the Qi-Guiding Art: Qi Refining Chapter. Your qi-gathering efficiency has increased fivefold, and you can automatically establish a spiritual qi cycle within your body, allowing you to continuously refine spiritual qi and cultivate magical power without deliberately guiding it.]
Chen Du continued deriving the subsequent chapters from the Qi Refining Chapter.
[You begin deriving the Foundation Establishment Chapter. With perfected Qi Refining as your foundation, you compress the true essence in your dantian into liquid, increasing your magical power tenfold and your Divine Sense tenfold. Using the experience of liquefying true essence in the Martial Canon as a reference, you derive the Foundation Establishment Chapter. You can establish your foundation in a hundred days, with a stable Dao foundation and magical power far purer than that of others at the same level.]
[You continue deriving the Core Formation Chapter. With condensing liquid into a core as its essence, you derive the Core Formation Chapter. Your magical power increases tenfold once more, and your Divine Sense increases tenfold. Your golden core is like a hen's egg and can independently draw in and expel the spiritual qi of heaven and earth in an endless cycle.]
[You continue deriving the Nascent Soul Chapter. With transforming the golden core into an infant as its guiding principle, you incorporate the method of visualizing a dharma form from the Martial Canon. Your magical power and Divine Sense increase tenfold, and you derive the Nascent Soul Chapter. Your Nascent Soul can leave your body and roam a thousand miles; though your body remains seated, your spirit has already reached the nine heavens.]
The night grew ever deeper, and the wind whimpered outside the stone house.
[You continue deriving the Deification Chapter. With transforming the Nascent Soul into a divine spirit as its foundation, you derive the Deification Chapter. Your spirit merges with heaven and earth, and your magical power and Divine Sense increase tenfold. With a thought, winds and clouds change; with another, mountains and seas are calmed.]
[You continue deriving the Void Refinement Chapter. With roaming the great void in spirit and merging your Dao with heaven and earth as its ultimate goal, you derive the Void Refinement Chapter. You seek truth within the void and refine the false into the true; a mere gesture can draw upon the power of the stars.]
[Void Refinement Chapter derivation complete.]
Chen Du's eyes flew open, his chest heaving and cold sweat streaming down his forehead.
The spiritual root within his body was growing slightly warm.
Outside the window, dawn was approaching, and Zhao Qing and Li Huan were still asleep.
His fingers trembled slightly, but his eyes shone with an intense light.
How could this still be called the Qi-Guiding Art? In his hands, it had clearly become a ladder to heaven, leading straight to Void Refinement.
And all this had taken just one night.
Chen Du left the bunks in the stone house to Zhao Qing and Li Huan.
The outer sect disciples' daily duties were simple: carry water, chop firewood, tend the spiritual fields, and listen to instructors teach the most basic knowledge of cultivation.
Chen Du attended every time and did every bit of work required of him, but he never stood out.
He knew how serious his situation was. If people learned that a newly admitted outer sect disciple had broken through from having no cultivation at all to Void Refinement in a few short days,
Never mind that the Spirit Flourishing Sect would treat him as a monster—that old bastard from Duke Tianyuan's Estate would be the first to come knocking to kill him.
To avoid attracting attention, he chose to make his breakthroughs late at night.
Each night at the hour of the rat, after Zhao Qing and Li Huan were sound asleep, Chen Du slipped silently out of the stone house and into the depths of the Spirit Flourishing Sect's back mountain.
The back mountain was full of remote caves and cliffs. He went to a different place each time to avoid leaving traces.
After choosing a spot, he first laid down a thin aura-concealing restriction, then circulated the chapters of the Qi-Guiding Art he had derived.
The outer sect disciples of the Spirit Flourishing Sect had limited perception, and the mountain forest at night blocked most Divine Sense probing, but Chen Du still was not reassured.
Before each breakthrough, he always made sure there was no one within several miles.
Only after confirming that all was clear did he dare ease his suppression a little and stir the spiritual power within his body.
Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul, Deification, Void Refinement... six realms.
He advanced one realm a night, proceeding with great care.
Each time he broke through, he kept the heavenly phenomena to a bare minimum.
When he formed his core, its radiance should have shot into the sky, but he forcibly contained the golden core's light within his dantian. Only a few wisps of extremely faint luminous mist escaped, as inconspicuous as the mountain fog at night.
He shifted his Nascent Soul's emergence from his body to the darkest hour before dawn.
The infant-shaped spirit appeared above his head for only half a breath before he drew it back, without disturbing so much as a night bird.
On the sixth night, he reached Void Refinement.
At that moment, he sat amid a pile of rocks beneath a cliff.
The magical power within him was like a hundred rivers flowing into the sea, and also like an unseen flower blooming in the void.
The spiritual qi of heaven and earth surged in from every direction, swirled within ten feet of him, then silently merged into his meridians and soul.
In the distance, lights still dotted the area around the Spirit Flourishing Sect's main hall. The sect elders were either cultivating in seclusion or discussing the Dao, and not one of them noticed.
An outer sect menial had, right under their noses, firmly reached the sixth realm of immortal cultivation in this world!
Chen Du opened his eyes and breathed out a mouthful of turbid air.
He looked down at his hands. They were still thin, and wood shavings from the firewood he had chopped that day remained beneath his nails.
But within him, Void Refinement magical power surged like the sea. The Martial Canon and his immortal cultivation method slowly merged in his meridians, forming a strange yet harmonious cycle of dual cultivation.
He clenched his fist, then released it, suppressing his entire aura once more to the level of an ordinary outer sect disciple.