Plucking Scales and Letting Blood

The Hot Spring halfway up the mountain.

Bai Yujun lay soaking in the comfortable hot spring, savoring the moment. Flowering trees, a waterfall, mist, and white egrets surrounded her; steam curled through the bright sunshine, turning the place into a fairyland. This scenery was far lovelier than the extravagant Huaqing Pool of Daming Palace back then. Its only flaw was the lack of orioles and swallows to serve wine and pour tea.

"A bottleneck... It won't be easy to cross. I need to eat another medium Earth Vein Dragon Qi."

Bai Yujun had encountered a bottleneck.

Her cultivation was stuck at Deity Transformation Stage Perfection, already at the critical threshold. She was only a tiny step away; once she crossed it, the sea would be vast and the sky limitless for her to roam, and she would become one of this world's great powers.

It seemed close, but it was actually far too slow. Who could guarantee they could reach Great Ascension Stage Perfection within seven hundred years?

The further one advanced in cultivation, the slower breakthroughs became. Even if she broke through to the Great Ascension Stage, there were still the middle stage, late stage, and perfection realms ahead. Heaven knew how many centuries those would take. If she failed to reach perfection before transforming into a dragon and the lightning tribulation arrived, she might as well prepare to reincarnate again.

"I've eaten everything I can eat. What's left won't be easy to get."

She pursed her cherry lips, feeling gloomy.

She lay in the water with only her head exposed, staring blankly at the colorful flowering trees in the valley overhead.

She had eaten all the dragon veins of Anti-Dragon, as well as those of the Northern Lands wastelands. What remained could not be eaten carelessly. For example,