The Grotto-Heaven World and the Spirit Bamboo Mountain Dao Field had both gotten on the right track, and Jiang Yun temporarily had no other pressing matters at hand.
Over the years, he had established two offices, constantly recruited personnel, and mobilized the living beings within his sphere of influence to carry out various construction projects. After all this effort, he now had far more than ten million living beings working under him.
All he needed to do was provide the rights to use knowledge such as formations and divine abilities, and a large group of people would help him earn Merit and Fortune. Although each person only shared a few strands of merit with him, once their numbers accumulated, it became no small amount.
He could set aside his work for now, so Jiang Yun began to focus on his cultivation.
During the last lecture at Purplecloud Palace, he had advanced several times in rapid succession before listening to the Dao so he could keep pace with the others. As a result, his originally solid foundation had begun to grow somewhat unstable.
For the sake of his future development, he had spent a long time tempering his physical body, refining his magic power and primordial spirit. Coupled with the several lectures he had attended along the way, which had allowed him to review what he had learned, gain new understanding, and organize his own Dao techniques, his foundation had now been reinforced to the utmost degree.
After being refined, his magic power had become even purer and moved as easily as his own limbs. Compared with before, a single strand of his current magic power could easily shatter ten strands of his former magic power.
His primordial spirit had originally been like an inflated paper-thin fatty: it looked large, but was mostly flab. When activated, it was as difficult to control as a motorcycle without engine oil, and at crucial moments, it could not exert its strength. After a long period of refinement, his primordial spirit had gradually become more solid and its strength had greatly increased. Although it appeared somewhat smaller, both the divine abilities cast through it and the magic treasures controlled with it had become far more powerful.
The same was true of his physical body. Back then, he had used three Spirit Pearls roughly, bringing three of the five qi within his body to perfection in a short time. The growth of the five qi had greatly strengthened his body, but it had also caused his control over his entire body to decline sharply, and his command of his strength had become much worse than before.
He had spent considerable time carefully honing his control over his physical body. At the same time, he had not forgotten to continue slowly nourishing it with the five qi. Although the five qi had yet to reach perfection, he could still cultivate the Star Body Refinement Method with the help of Star Power and continue strengthening his body.
Now, after years of uninterrupted cultivation, all those previous problems had been resolved. His physical body had even reached the Grand Unity Golden Immortal Perfection Realm through tempering with star power. Jiang Yun also decided to search for the whereabouts of the other two Spirit Pearls.
After making arrangements for the work at Pengxuan Grotto-Heaven and Spirit Bamboo Mountain over the coming period, he set off alone on his journey to find the Spirit Pearls.
According to the results of the divination Daoist Jieyin had performed for him back then, the Wood Spirit Pearl was in the North Sea, while the Fire Spirit Pearl was near the Immortal Volcano in the south.
Spirit Bamboo Mountain lay to the northwest of Mount Sumeru. Judging by its geographical location, it was relatively close to the Western Sea and the North Sea, whereas the southern volcanoes were on the opposite end of the continent and required crossing the entire Western World to reach. Thus, he decided to search for the Wood Spirit Pearl in the nearby North Sea first.
The northern lands had originally been the headquarters of the fierce beasts.
Later, during the Fierce Beast Tribulation, the Hundred Races of Primordial Desolation slaughtered the fierce beasts and protected the Primordial Desolation World, launching an all-out attack into the north.
After the great battle between the two sides, the northern lands were left in utter devastation. Moreover, after many fierce beasts died, the miasma and resentment transformed from the Demon God Grudges within their corpses polluted the world, turning the land both dangerous and desolate. On top of that, some fierce beasts that had escaped the slaughter hid there. The land had consequently become the place abandoned by both gods and demons that it was today. Other than a few fugitives, no living beings would come here!
Jiang Yun's route to the North Sea would be shortest if he crossed the northern lands. To him, the miasma and resentment along the way were nothing. He carried the Twelve-grade Pure World White Lotus, which was perfectly suited to purifying the miasma and resentment along the road and restoring peace and purity to Heaven and Earth!
Thus, after leaving Spirit Bamboo Mountain, he continued as he had before: repairing the earth veins, purifying filth, and eliminating fierce beasts. His own merit and fortune grew increasingly profound.
He did not venture deep into the northern lands. Instead, he followed the region along the northwestern border and arrived at the North Sea.
Fortunately, he had passed through the northern borderlands, so he did not encounter any particularly powerful fierce beasts along the way. The journey went fairly smoothly, which was probably also due to the protection of fortune operating unseen.
As soon as he entered the North Sea, Jiang Yun took out the three Spirit Pearls and used the Dao Derivation Disk to perform a deduction. Following the connection between their auras, he calculated the direction he needed to travel.
Following the guidance, he turned northeast. As he continued onward, he went deeper and deeper into the center of the North Sea.
The farther inward he went, the more living beings he discovered. Quite a few dragon-like creatures even appeared among them. This must be the outskirts of the Northern Sea Dragon Palace.
After the battle between the Three Innate Races, the dragon race had withdrawn to the Four Seas. Most of its elite guarded the Eyes of the Four Seas to prevent the waters from running wild. The Eyes of the Four Seas were all in the outer seas, far from the Primordial Desolation Continent. To avoid severing their connection with the Primordial Desolation Continent, the dragons had established the Four Great Dragon Palaces in the inner seas. They had selected several members of the Golden Dragon Race to serve as Dragon Kings of the palaces, manage the aquatic races in the inner seas, and gather various pieces of news from the Primordial Desolation.
At this time, the Dragon King of the Northern Sea was Ao Shun of the Golden Dragon Race. Because of the Heavenly Karma produced by the battle between the Three Innate Races, shackles had formed within the bloodline of the dragon race. The new generation of dragons cultivated slowly, and their cultivation bottlenecks had also become more solid and difficult to shake.
Ao Shun had entered Golden Immortal Perfection more than a hundred thousand years ago. He had remained trapped by the shackles in his bloodline ever since, unable to break through to the Grand Unity Realm.
When he was young, he had naively believed that he was a favored child of fate and that he would certainly break through mere bloodline shackles. Yet after wasting so many years at the Golden Immortal Realm without making the slightest progress, almost none of his former ambition remained.
That day, Ao Shun was in the Dragon Palace, eating delicacies, drinking Nectar and Jade Dew, and enjoying the graceful dance of the Snail Maidens and Clam Maidens. He was living in carefree luxury when a crab general entered from outside and reported that a cultivator with great divine abilities had arrived outside the Dragon Palace and requested an audience with the Dragon King.
The visitor was Jiang Yun, who had come to the North Sea in search of the Wood Spirit Pearl. Earlier, he had followed the direction indicated by his deduction and ventured deep into the North Sea, only to discover at the end that his route passed directly through the territory of the Northern Sea Dragon Palace.
He had no choice but to pay a visit to the Dragon King of the North Sea and then act according to the circumstances.
When he arrived at the Northern Sea Dragon Palace, he announced himself as Yun Yazhi. The shrimp soldiers and crab generals naturally went to report his arrival. Before long, Dragon King Ao Shun came to the entrance to welcome him.
Ao Shun sized up Jiang Yun and sensed the other's powerful aura, which far surpassed his own cultivation. He was somewhat surprised, but he did not panic. As a member of the dragon race, one of the Three Innate Races, he cultivated the Nine Transformations of the True Dragon created by Ancestor Dragon, giving him an extremely powerful physical body. Although he was only at Golden Immortal Perfection, his formidable physical body, which surpassed his cultivation realm, and his treasured trump card meant that he could fully contend with an ordinary Grand Unity Golden Immortal cultivator.
"Dragon King, I am Yun Yazhi. Greetings!"
After the two exchanged greetings, Ao Shun saw that Jiang Yun was courteous and friendly and did not appear to be looking for trouble, so he welcomed him into the Dragon Palace.
After they had taken their seats, Ao Shun asked, "May I ask which immortal mountain you hail from, Daoist, and what brings you to my Northern Sea Dragon Palace?"
"I am the master of Mount Sumeru in the Western World and the first disciple under Daoist Jieyin. I recently came to the North Sea to travel and happened to pass by the Dragon Palace, so I thought I would come in and pay the Dragon King a visit."
Jiang Yun did not rush to reveal his purpose. Instead, he chatted with Ao Shun for a while, first sounding each other out and building a little rapport.
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