"Ah?" Meng Chong was stunned.
Fei Si narrowed his eyes into slits. "There's something behind your words. What do you mean? Could it be that you summoned those three demonic cultivators?"
"Bullshit!" Sun Lie cursed outright. "You're overthinking it, understand?"
He shifted his gaze to Meng Chong. "Don't you find it strange now?"
Meng Chong froze for a moment, then slapped his forehead. "Oh, right! Old Sun, you said before that I couldn't leave the Purple Sun Furnace casually. Otherwise, with the external pressure reduced and no medicinal ingredients to replenish me, my essence, qi, and spirit would leak away wildly without end, and I'd eventually become useless."
"But I clearly already ran out and stopped the pill refinement, yet nothing is leaking away wildly."
Sun Lie smiled. "Of course I lied to you."
Meng Chong: "Ah?"
Sun Lie said, "The Human Pill Technique is a demonic cultivator's pill-refining method. How could we, dignified orthodox cultivators, possibly know it?"
Meng Chong: "Ah?"
Sun Lie revealed, "True Power Dispersion has to start with you yourself. You possess Superior Grade aptitude within the cultivation world. That is the best key."
Meng Chong: "You mean my Raging Thunder Rush?"
Sun Lie nodded. "That's right."
"Raging Thunder Rush is a Superior Grade immortal aptitude, one in a million among cultivators—far from ordinary!"
"However, I discovered that you haven't truly mastered this talent. What a pity. It's like a batch of precious medicinal herbs concealing exceptional medicinal properties, yet never being put to use. What a terrible waste!"
"As long as you truly bring out this aptitude, you can rapidly disperse your power. Half a day might not be enough, but one day will definitely suffice."
"That was why I set up this situation: to make you fall into a desperate predicament."
"In desperation, if you can devote yourself wholeheartedly, free of distracting thoughts, abandoning everything and charging forward without fear, you can awaken your extraordinary talent!"
Meng Chong: "Ah?"
The talented youth blinked repeatedly, then suddenly thought of something and asked directly, "So, Old Sun, when you had me smeared with honey and cumin, that really was a joke?"
Sun Lie slapped his thigh and burst into laughter. "Of course! It wasn't as though I lied to you!"
Fei Si frowned. "Young Master Meng Chong possesses Superior Grade immortal aptitude and is the City Lord's own grandson, yet you treated him as food to be roasted? You even set up a scheme? Why are you so certain this could awaken his immortal aptitude?"
Sun Lie shot Fei Si a glance and disparaged him. "Are you a master pill refiner? What do you know?"
"All things beneath heaven can be regarded as medicinal ingredients."
"People are the same. In a person, human nature is medicinal nature. As long as human nature is fully stimulated, medicinal nature is stimulated as well."
"Before using people to refine medicine, those of the demonic path usually inflict great torment upon them, filling their hearts with pain, hatred, fury, grief, and all sorts of emotions. That is also done to stimulate medicinal nature."
After explaining, Sun Lie asked Meng Chong again, "Have you ever considered why your immortal aptitude was not some other kind, but specifically Raging Thunder Rush?"
Meng Chong: "Ah?"
Sun Lie shook his head. "You simply took it for luck. But that isn't so! Immortal aptitude is not merely heaven and earth's favor—it is also closely tied to the cultivator himself."
"It is precisely because you are brave and fearless by nature, dislike complexity and favor simplicity, and go straight ahead without detours, that you possess such aptitude."
"Aptitude and nature reflect one another; they are each other's surface and inner core."
"Therefore, as long as your nature is fully stimulated, with a few pill-refining methods to assist it, your aptitude can be awakened."
"The medicinal ingredients in that pill furnace were all carefully prepared by me. They were not without purpose."
Fei Si narrowed his eyes. A sharp glint flashed through the slits, and by this point, he understood and had guessed Sun Lie's arrangement.
Sun Lie looked at Meng Chong. "Making you enter the Purple Sun Furnace, using the Human Pill Technique, and smearing you with honey and cumin were all merely smokescreens."
"I originally intended to disguise it as falling drunkenly asleep during the refinement process, then roasting you for a long time. That would make you misjudge the situation and believe yourself trapped in desperate straits."
"I meant to use that to force you and awaken the nature buried in your bones."
"Once you broke out of the pill furnace, disregarded my earlier threats, and overturned the immense pressure I had created for you, your nature would erupt."
"When your nature erupts, aided by pill qi and mixed with your escaping mana, it will not only draw forth your Raging Thunder Rush aptitude, but its power will surge more than tenfold."
Sun Lie let out a long sigh as he spoke.
"Adversity reveals one's courage; life and death reveal one's true colors."
"If you want to see a person's true nature clearly, look at his choices and conduct at critical moments such as life and death."
Meng Chong said, "So that's how it was."
He suddenly understood.
Previously, his Raging Thunder Rush aptitude had always worked only intermittently.
"Just now, all I wanted was to kill that demonic cultivator! At that critical moment, Raging Thunder Rush erupted, giving me a huge surprise. I thought I was pretty lucky."
"I was even wondering why this time Raging Bolt had become so powerful."
"I never expected it to be thanks to you, Old Sun!"
Sun Lie smiled. "I never imagined demonic cultivators would raid Purple Sun Villa at such a moment."
"At that time, my life hung by a thread, yet you disregarded your own life and death and broke out of the pill furnace to save me."
"I'll remember this favor, kid!"
Sun Lie gave Meng Chong a thumbs-up.
After this incident, he found Meng Chong immensely pleasing to the eye.
Meng Chong puffed out his chest and raised his head. "My surname is Meng. The Meng Clan is one of the foremost great clans in the Southern Bean Immortal Kingdom. How could I shrink back in battle? How could I sit and watch a comrade be killed?"
"To be honest, I didn't think much at all. I threw all your earlier warnings, Old Sun, to the back of my mind."
"At that time, my heart was filled with rage. I wanted nothing more than to smash that demonic cultivator into scraps with one punch, so I charged out directly."
Sun Lie praised him. "That is precisely the awakening of one's nature."
"In my view, Meng Chong, with Superior Grade immortal aptitude like yours, there is no need for you to compete for any Mechanism Art inheritance. Among the hundred arts of cultivation, Mechanism Art simply does not suit you."
"The cultivation techniques suited to you are those that let you charge headlong and gallop freely."
Fei Si coughed and hastily interrupted Sun Lie.
Sun Lie was belittling the City Lord's decision, so as a subordinate, Fei Si naturally had to defend it.
Fei Si said, "The Three Sects Forefathers was a great expert of the Void Refinement Stage, and he possessed more than one immortal palace. It is merely that the Magma Immortal Palace is an immortal city of mechanisms and contains an inheritance of Mechanism Art."
"In truth, according to the intelligence gathered by the City Lord and his deductions, although the Magma Immortal Palace's inheritance focuses on Mechanism Art, it definitely contains more than that."
"Through his own extraordinary encounters, the Three Sects Forefathers cultivated three paths concurrently, something rarely seen in the world. It is said that in his later years, he created a marvelous method for cultivating all three paths together, and the Magma Immortal Palace was arranged precisely during those later years."
"The Five Elements Qi Rhythm Art transmitted by the Dharma Transmission Bell leaves one wanting more. Though it is a Daoist cultivation technique, it also carries the flavor and spirit of Buddhist and demonic paths. After studying the technique, the City Lord deduced that there are likely two other cultivation techniques to complement it, corresponding to the other two dantian."
"Tell me, if one used the Three Sects' Marvelous Method to cultivate and establish one's foundation, how deep and solid would that cultivation foundation be? In all the world, how many Foundation Establishment methods cultivate all Three Dantian together?"
Before you continue