Advancement, Spirit Transformation Stage

At the core of the Purgatory Sulfur Plane, within the central formation of the Incense Divinity Path, time seemed to have lost all meaning.

Benjamin's consciousness was not wholly absorbed in tempering his cultivation. Instead, it often sank into his mindscape, lingering within that towering Great Dao Library, as though carved from white jade.

At this moment, his consciousness sat cross-legged before the Great Dao Library, holding a cyan notebook that felt warm and smooth to the touch.

The notebook's material differed from most of the tomes in the library that recorded divine abilities and cultivation arts. It appeared far plainer.

There was no title on its cover, only a faint line of ink that seemed ready to disperse at any moment: Miscellaneous Records on Seeking the Dao: Realm Explanations.

This was neither a cultivation method nor a heaven-shaking secret art. It was more like an unknown senior's idle reflections and retracing of the path he had walked.

Yet Benjamin read it with great relish, because the notebook explored the essential origins of every realm a cultivator passed through.

Combining the book's contents with what he had seen and heard, Benjamin's thoughts rose and fell with its words.

"The desire for immortality is the beginning of the Dao path."

The notebook made its meaning clear from the opening.

It believed that the creation and division of every major realm along the path of Cultivation had not originally been driven by the desire for power capable of destroying heaven and earth, but by living beings' most simple and fervent yearning for "eternal life."

The earliest "Qi Refining," or by its even older name, "Qi Refining," began when ancient sages discovered that there existed in heaven and earth a kind of qi—Spirit Energy—that could nourish life, slow aging, and grant extraordinary power.