"I'm rich, I'm rich, but I don't know how to spend it..."
In the Shelter Grotto-Heaven, Li Yang's bizarre, earworm of a song had been heard frequently these past few days. It had nearly driven the Taiji Diagram to bang its head against a wall.
"Little Mage, please stop singing. You sing all day, from morning to night. Aren't you tired of it?"
Li Yang seemed to take its advice. The singing stopped, replaced by muttering and hand seals as he fully refined the Solar True Fire and Lunar True Water into the grotto-heaven's sun and moon.
As the sun and moon rose, the Grand Formation of Celestial Stars completed its latest round of debugging, and the bizarre singing started up again.
"Master! Help me!"
The Taiji Diagram had always considered itself a chatterbox, but it had realized it couldn't hold a candle to Little Mage. This was torture.
If it hadn't needed to stay here and help Li Yang conceal his fate from the heavens and protect his path, it would have run off long ago.
And Li Yang?
He was genuinely delighted.
Never mind all the knowledge he'd gained. Just the sheer quantity of materials alone was beyond anything someone at his level could have gathered, let alone so much of it.
Two months had passed since Grand Master left. It had taken all this time to fully refine the sun and moon, and the Grand Formation of Celestial Stars had only just finished its adjustments.
Watching the sun and moon rise, he saw that the formation, which had been shattered by the Heavenly Punishment and weakened, had not only recovered, but its power had increased by tens of thousands of times.
Watching Chaos Qi pour down and transform into vast amounts of Pure Qi, Turbid Qi, spiritual energy, and Star Power, Li Yang was overjoyed.
With such a massive volume of energy being transformed, the rapid increase in spiritual energy within his little grotto-heaven was a minor benefit. The greatest reward was that the Core Planet and the Circulating Star Dou were continually expanding.
In the blink of an eye, they had grown by a whole size.
As they grew, the formation's power continued to increase. This amplification was truly astonishing.
"My avatars are transforming too. Those at the Origin Immortal Stage are advancing toward the True Immortal Stage. Some of those at Return to Dao are already on the verge of reaching Origin Immortal, while my Refining Void avatars are rising rapidly as well. They're not far from Return to Dao."
Although he had lost most of his avatars—countless hundreds of millions—there were still plenty left, more than a billion.
Unfortunately, while the Heavenly Punishment hadn't destroyed them completely, it had still taken half a year to repair them. Now they were in a phase of rapid growth after their restoration.
"Got it. With these avatars, taking care of things outside will be easy."
During this time, his injuries and the damage to his avatars had left him without a clear enough sense of the changes in the outside world.
As a result, he'd had no choice but to endure his injuries and repair an Origin Immortal-stage Golden Pill avatar to hold down the fort at the Thatched Cottage. It had left him very uneasy.
Now things were better. He had enough avatars again, and his confidence had soared.
Then Li Yang turned his gaze toward the Pill Cauldron in the Core Planet.
Although the Pill Cauldron had been repaired quite a bit, it still had many cracks. But that was just what he needed to upgrade it.
After all, even as a Top-grade Magic Treasure, the Pill Cauldron had been this powerful as the formation's core. What would it be like as a Houtian Spiritual Treasure?
With that in mind, Li Yang prepared to refine the Pill Cauldron into a Spiritual Treasure.
"Wait, Little Mage, aren't you going to heal your injuries?"
The Taiji Diagram was stunned. It couldn't understand—was refining a treasure really so important right now?
Just look at him. He coughed up blood now and then, and Immortal Blood seeped from all those wounds on his body from time to time. Did he really not care?
"What's there to worry about? I'm not going to die, and there's no rush."
He had the Work-Life Balance trait. He needed plenty of time to rest, so why hurry?
Wouldn't it be better to let Late Bloomer stack up ten thousand years or so, build up three or four dozen months of rest, and only then heal his injuries?
It was just a little pain. He could bear it!
But the Taiji Diagram didn't know that. It just thought Little Mage's way of doing things was far too reckless. He wanted the treasure more than his life!
"Little Mage, doesn't your body hurt? If you really can't take it, you could at least eat a Nine-Turn Golden Pill."
Li Yang glanced at the Taiji Diagram and shook his head. "It hurts a lot, but this is my cultivation. I'm enjoying it."
The Taiji Diagram fell silent.
It couldn't make sense of Little Mage's approach.
He liked pain so much. Could his future Great Dao revolve around pain?
Wasn't that a crooked path, a demonic way?
But it couldn't persuade Li Yang at all. It could only watch over him helplessly, making sure he didn't stray down the wrong path.
Everything else was left entirely to Li Yang.
And so the Taiji Diagram's days were spent watching Li Yang refine treasures, read books, look at the Immortal Blood he'd coughed up, look at his wounds, and occasionally show off his loud, clear singing voice.
"I don't understand. I can't make sense of any of it!"
The Taiji Diagram was on the verge of breaking down. It had no idea what Li Yang was trying to do.
How could he make it all seem so leisurely?
As time passed, Li Yang's injuries didn't change much, but the grotto-heaven kept changing more and more.
The stars grew larger and larger. The biggest now had a diameter of three hundred meters, while even the smallest was a zhang across. As for the Core Planet, its diameter had already exceeded three thousand li, and the entire grotto-heaven had grown more than a hundredfold.
Never mind anything else—Chaos Qi was now surging more and more vigorously, and even the spiritual energy produced by its transformation was growing higher in quality.
Unfortunately, because the formation's core wasn't an Innate Spiritual Treasure or an Innate Spiritual Root, the spiritual energy it produced only had a trace of innate properties, which soon faded away.
Even so, the spiritual energy inside the grotto-heaven was still incredibly dense. It condensed into liquid in the air, and spiritual rain fell on the Core Planet almost every day. The Spiritual Medicines growing there were thriving at an astonishing rate.
It was a flourishing scene, with all life bursting forth.
The Pill Cauldron in the Core Planet was also changing little by little as Li Yang refined it.
Now, it was completely free of cracks, and Spiritual Light burst from it. It looked ready to advance to a Houtian Spiritual Treasure at any moment.
That day, Li Yang put down the book in his hands and looked toward the Pill Cauldron.
"The time has come. The final step."
Li Yang tossed a great deal of materials into the air, then drew on the power of the Circulating Star Dou he had stored up during this time and hurled it at the Pill Cauldron.
Then endless spiritual energy ignited, scorching the Pill Cauldron until it glowed red.
"Yin-Yang Power, gather!"
With a hand seal, the Yin-Yang Power that the sun and moon had stored up during this time surged toward the inside of the Pill Cauldron, where it formed a tiny Taiji Diagram that spun without end.
Next, Li Yang took out a jade bottle covered in layer upon layer of seals. Inside was the Chaos Qi he had painstakingly collected.
He gritted his teeth and drew it out, sending it straight into the Pill Cauldron.
"Hiss!"
Although this Chaos Qi was the gentler kind found in the Inner Chaos, it still had the power to corrode and return all things to Chaos. In an instant, only a thin layer of the Pill Cauldron remained.
But Li Yang stayed unmoved. He poured in a vast amount of materials, spiritual energy, and the like, then drove countless restrictions and runes into the Pill Cauldron.
The Chaos Qi gradually merged with these materials. One restriction and rune after another linked together, forming a vast Pill Cauldron structure.
At the center of the Pill Cauldron, the Yin-Yang fish that had been spinning without pause absorbed a trace of Chaos Qi and underwent an inexplicable change.
For a brief moment, the Taiji Diagram seemed to realize something and cried out in alarm.
"Wait, you're using the method for refining a Nine-Turn Golden Pill to refine a Spiritual Treasure?!
And you're almost done?
And that Yin-Yang fish—why does it feel like a knockoff of me?
What kind of monster are you?"
Li Yang ignored the Taiji Diagram's outburst. At this final step, all his attention was focused on the task at hand.
"Blood sacrifice, now!"
Li Yang coughed up blood. The fresh Immortal Blood, containing the lightning glimmer of Purple Firmament Divine Thunder and an aura of destruction, instantly fused into the Pill Cauldron.
"Boom!"
A beam of golden light shot into the sky.
A Houtian Spiritual Treasure.
Complete!
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