Beauty's Profound Grace, Bloodline Link!

After the mysterious pattern appeared,

Nine Netherworld took Lu Chen's hand and lightly drew a cut across it.

A slit instantly opened on Lu Chen's fingertip, and a streak of scarlet blood flowed out before shooting toward the pattern burning with Purple Flame.

Sizzle, sizzle.

As the blood touched the Purple Flame pattern, clouds of white mist immediately rose. Yet it was not burned away. Instead, it merged into the pattern and slowly flowed through it, occupying half of the Purple Flame pattern.

A grave look flashed through Nine Netherworld's eyes. Her hand seals shifted, and purple light flickered between her brows. A drop of dark-purple blood shot out, surrounded by what seemed to be tiny purple flames.

That drop of dark-purple blood also fused into the purple pattern, occupying the other half.

Buzz!

The two drops of blood each occupied half of the Purple Flame pattern. Then, the pattern slowly began to turn, and as it rotated, the two drops of blood came into contact.

Bang!

The instant they touched, Lu Chen and Nine Netherworld's bodies both shook violently. An inexplicable connection appeared deep within their hearts, and the two drops of essence blood completely merged.

Immediately afterward, the mysterious pattern erupted with dazzling radiance. Purple Flame surged up and directly set the pattern ablaze.

Two drops of dark-red essence blood shot out from the Purple Flame, striking Lu Chen's Glabella and Nine Netherworld's forehead.

As the Purple Flame churned, a Purple Flame mark seemed to emerge before finally sinking deep into the bodies of the man and bird.

The moment the Purple Flame mark entered their bodies, a wondrous feeling surged into their hearts. It was an exceptionally strange sensation, as though their lives and deaths were bound together.

At that moment, Lu Chen's expression instantly softened, and the purple glow in his eyes quietly faded. For some reason, the Undying Fire in his sea of qi suddenly became docile, as though it had encountered its true master!

Clarity returned to Lu Chen's gaze. Before he could thank Nine Netherworld, he instantly sat cross-legged on the ground. Within his sea of qi, countless waves swept in and tightly wrapped around the Undying Fire.

Then, a mysterious vortex the size of a bowl appeared at the center of his sea of qi, and the waves drove the Undying Fire toward it.

The Undying Fire seemed unwilling, but it could not resist its master's command and was slowly pushed into the mysterious vortex.

Boom!

At that very moment, Lu Chen's eyes flew open. Purple flames rose all over his body, yet they did not harm him in the slightest. Countless spiritual energies between heaven and earth stirred, then surged toward him in a frenzy!

The Undying Fire had been successfully devoured!

Lu Chen opened his mouth and inhaled as the cultivation technique within him began to circulate. He merely gave the evolved Flame Mantra a slight push.

Countless streams of spiritual energy rushed in like a tidal wave, forming terrifying surges around him. The surrounding spiritual energy was so dense that it condensed into drops of milky-white liquid, which he swallowed into his body like a whale, vanishing without a trace.

Watching from the side, Nine Netherworld's face was filled with disbelief. She muttered, "It really can evolve. And judging by this, it might not even be inferior to my clan's sacred scripture. What kind of monster little brother have I taken in..."

A moment later,

The surging spiritual energy around him faded away,

Lu Chen swallowed the final wisp of spiritual liquid, then slowly exhaled a breath of stale air. His body suddenly shook, a sharp glint flashed in his eyes, and an even more powerful aura erupted from him!

A Divine Soul no larger than a palm slowly rose into the air, then sat cross-legged atop his head.

The moment this Divine Soul appeared, Lu Chen's body trembled. The world before his eyes seemed to change, and an unfamiliar feeling gradually became one of intimacy...

If the world had once felt foreign to Lu Chen, then now, it seemed that an extraordinarily wondrous connection had been formed between him and heaven and earth.

This was the Heaven Merging Realm!

Not only could his Divine Soul briefly leave his body, but from now on, every movement he made could merge with heaven and earth, allowing him to draw upon the vast spiritual energy between heaven and earth. His combat strength had increased tremendously.

"Lu Chen, how many layers of amplification can your cultivation technique reach now?"

Seeing that Lu Chen had finished his breakthrough, Nine Netherworld asked curiously from the side.

As everyone knew, in the Great Thousand World, the key to judging whether a cultivation technique was powerful lay in how many layers of spiritual energy amplification it could achieve.

Lu Chen merely smiled without answering. He turned his palm, and a streak of purple spiritual energy appeared within it. Then, with a thought, the docile purple spiritual energy in his palm began to vibrate violently.

One layer! Two layers! Three layers...

Ten layers! Eleven layers! Twelve layers!...

Twenty layers! Twenty-one layers!...

Very quickly, the spiritual energy amplification broke through the fifty-layer threshold.

At this point, its spiritual energy amplification had clearly exceeded the scope of ordinary divine techniques.

After all, even a high-grade God Grade spiritual technique only had fifty layers of amplification.

When that strand of spiritual energy reached one hundred layers of amplification, the trembling in Lu Chen's palm became increasingly violent, and only then did the spiritual energy show faint signs of slipping out of his control.

Thus, Lu Chen calmly withdrew the spiritual energy.

By then, Nine Netherworld could have fit a large duck egg in her mouth. She muttered, "One hundred layers, one hundred layers, one hundred layers, one hundred layers..."

"That's the standard of an Ancient Divine Technique!"

Nine Netherworld immediately let out a pained cry, her tone full of regret.

"Why? Why couldn't I have encountered this cultivation technique sooner?"

"If I'd known, I should have switched to cultivating this Flame Mantra too."

"Unfortunately, I've already formed my Supreme Sea. Unless I destroy my cultivation and start over, I can never switch to another cultivation technique again."

Facing Nine Netherworld's regretful expression, Lu Chen kindly reminded her, "Sister Nine Netherworld, you've forgotten that if you hadn't evolved into a Nine Netherworld Sparrow, you couldn't have obtained the Undying Fire. And without the Undying Fire, the Flame Mantra could never have evolved to such a level."

"Who asked you? Can't I even think about it?"

Nine Netherworld glared at him fiercely and said in a huff.

In the month he had spent with Nine Netherworld, this was the first time Lu Chen had seen her so flustered, and he could not help but laugh.

Still, it was only natural. After all, this was an Ancient Divine Technique that, according to legend, only the Five Great Ancient Clans could cultivate!

For a low-grade Mortal Grade cultivation technique to evolve into an Ancient Divine Technique—if word got out, no one would believe it.

However, if Nine Netherworld had not helped him this time, he could not have refined the Undying Fire so easily.

Thinking of this, and recalling how the Undying Fire had suddenly become as docile as a lamb, Lu Chen could not help asking, "Sister Nine Netherworld, how did you help me just now? Why did I suddenly feel the Undying Fire's resistance vanish?"

In truth, before refining the Undying Fire this time, he had also run a simulation and exchanged for the Flame Mantra cultivation technique. However, the simulator had not explained the process of refining the Undying Fire in detail.

It had only said: Nine deaths and one life; with Nine Netherworld's aid, he escaped danger.

Nine Netherworld rolled her eyes at him and said with exasperation, "You finally asked. I thought you'd cultivated an Ancient Divine Technique and gotten so carried away that you forgot about your sister..."

"How could that be? I'll never forget Sister Nine Netherworld's kindness for the rest of my life."

Lu Chen blinked and said with a smile.

Nine Netherworld glanced at him and said flatly, "Whether you like it or not, we're now completely bound together. The reason I was able to help you just now was because I formed a Bloodline Link with you!"

"A Bloodline Link?"

Lu Chen looked utterly stunned.

A high-grade Mortal Grade technique has five layers of amplification. Each Spirit Grade rank adds five layers, each God Grade rank adds ten layers, and an Ancient Divine Technique has one hundred layers.

The original work only mentioned Spirit Grade and Mortal Grade. It never explained the later ones, so perhaps the author himself forgot. This was an additional setting introduced later by the author.