Time flowed like water, and seven days passed in the blink of an eye.
Night had fallen. A waning moon hung high, and dark clouds packed the sky, obscuring nearly all its dim light.
On the mountaintop, Lin Sheng sat cross-legged with his eyes closed.
He remained as motionless as a statue, without even the faintest rise and fall of breathing.
Nine clusters of brilliant light shot toward the dark sky around him, like stars shedding a warm glow.
Time trickled by until several hours had passed.
Only then did the stars hanging high in the sky begin to dim. They slowly descended, merging into a single cluster along the way before sinking into the human-shaped statue seated on the mountaintop.
Lin Sheng slowly opened his eyes, a sharp gleam flashing within them.
He took the simple Star Map from his robes and studied it. After the time it took an incense stick to burn, he put it away, a smile appearing on his face.
"As expected, with my current mental strength, even after splitting my mind, I can easily remain unsheathed for an hour. At the limit, I can even manage two hours."
"But the Heavenly Lock Soul Siphon Origin Method really is harder to cultivate than I imagined. Seven days of arduous cultivation produced decent results, but the progress wasn't obvious."
He had already cultivated Tang Chong's simplified version of this secret art to perfection, but the Origin Method had another level beyond that: divine refinement.
The fact that Tang Chong had chosen to remove this First Realm outright showed how difficult divine refinement was. Yet after cultivating it himself, he clearly felt that he had still underestimated its difficulty.
Even with his current mental strength, a conservative estimate placed the time needed to reach divine refinement at