Beasts, I Need You to Help Me Cultivate

Each "divine rune" was like a chain of divine metal, coiling above the golden Bitter Sea. It was the primordial form condensed from life essence.

After opening the Bitter Sea, cultivators could offer up their divine runes and shape them into various weapons, which could be released from the body to slay enemies and were more effective than the runes themselves.

A rare few cultivators weren't afraid of complexity or profundity. They repeatedly tempered their divine runes and offered them up in the shape of cauldrons, bells, towers, and the like, allowing them to wield all kinds of mysterious powers.

In the later stages, these artifacts might undergo unexpected changes, weaving the traces of the Dao within them and gaining power beyond measure.

Of course, the odds of this happening were extremely low. Only cultivators with extraordinary talent and immense strength might have such an opportunity.

The more intricate and profound an artifact forged from primordial divine runes was, the greater its power.

Cauldrons, bells, and towers, for example, were relatively more likely to have the traces of the Dao woven within them.

Of course, the more complex an artifact was, the harder it was to shape. One could spend endless energy and time without even tempering it into an outline, all while wasting the years away.

And even if one succeeded by sheer luck, after enduring hardship and reaching the later stages, it was still difficult to reap any rewards.

Above Li Qingxu's Bitter Sea, his artifact had only a vague outline. It had yet to take shape and was no bigger than a palm.

Generally speaking, an artifact could be forged in each of the four realms: the Bitter Sea, Life Spring, Divine Bridge, and Other Shore.

But the most powerful artifact was forged by combining all four realms.

This was the so-called late-blooming masterpiece. Once successful, one could use One Weapon Breaks Ten Thousand Techniques, and when I bloom, all other flowers wither.

The more profound and complex an artifact was, the harder it was to shape. Such artifacts contained the "Dao" and "principles" of Heaven and Earth.

Li Qingxu wasn't in a hurry. While in the Wheel Sea Secret Realm, he only needed to focus on tempering it.

Moreover, the resources on Earth were nowhere near enough to reforge his former protective Dao Artifact and bring it back into the world.

The material for Jidao was especially troublesome.

However, as long as he gained the recognition of the Universe Origin Will and received the infusion of laws bestowed by the universe's will, forging an artifact wouldn't be a problem.

Since the Supreme Rule had allowed him to enter, he should also be able to receive an infusion of the universe's laws.

As for the Laws of Time and Space, he had a way to deal with them.

He could study the Laws of Space through the Void Emperor and the Laws of Time through Nine Secrets: Xing.

A night passed, and the sun rose on the horizon.

Atop a hill, Li Qingxu opened his eyes. A beam of divine light shot out and blasted a large tree ahead of him to pieces.

"Sure enough, I still need to combine cultivation with battle. Just sitting in meditation won't let my cultivation improve this quickly."

He could clearly sense that in a little while, he would be able to break through to the Life Spring Realm.

He had no idea where he was in this remote mountain wilderness. It seemed he had gotten lost.

The only thing he had with him was a phone.

But it had been destroyed in his fight with the Black Gold Ape.

Without a map or navigation, all he could do now was head in one direction.

After walking through the mountain wilderness for several hours, the outline of a county town gradually appeared before him around noon.

"I finally found one."

Li Qingxu stood atop a tree and looked at the small town in the distance, a hint of joy in his eyes.

Then he lightly tapped his toe against the branch. His figure shot forward and vanished from sight.

After another half hour of racing at full speed, he reached the county town.

Along this hundred-kilometer stretch, he had killed only a few dozen monsters, nearly all of them Beast Soldiers.

They hadn't even given him a chance to warm up.

But the county town was different.

In their long war with humanity, the monsters had discovered that if they lived in open, desolate areas without cover,

human armies and martial artists could lock onto them from a distance and attack from afar with heavy sniper rifles, missiles, and other weapons.

But in urban areas, buildings stood packed together.

As long as the monsters hid in densely built-up areas, sniper rifles had little chance of hitting them unless the snipers entered the city themselves.

And once human troops entered the city and fought the monsters in the streets, the monsters would have a huge advantage.

Densely built-up areas were the monsters' heaven.

"Beasts, I need you to help me cultivate!"

Li Qingxu took a step forward. With a boom, the concrete ground shattered beneath his foot.

His figure was like a streak of Golden Flowing Light, leaving behind a succession of illusory afterimages.

Not far ahead of him stood at least fifty bovine monsters.

The most conspicuous was a five-meter-tall monster with gleaming fur that resembled a rhinoceros.

"Roar!"

In an instant, roars echoed throughout the area.

As the days passed, Li Qingxu settled down in the county town.

The countless monsters within it were in for a miserable time.

Li Qingxu was like a slaughtering machine that never ran out of strength. As soon as the morning sun rose, he would roam the town, killing every monster he encountered.

He only cared about killing. He didn't even look at the valuable parts of their corpses.

At dusk, he would casually pick a high-rise building, sit cross-legged on its rooftop, and absorb the universe's energy.

On his first day in the county town, he killed nearly five hundred monsters, including quite a few Intermediate Beast Generals.

Early the next morning, Li Qingxu woke from his cultivation and leaped from a twenty-story building.

With a deafening crash as he landed, the monster horde immediately began to roar.

His white training clothes had long since been stained crimson with monster blood, making him look as if he were wearing a suit of blood-soaked armor!

"Captain, I think I saw Li Qingxu!"

"He's fighting a group of monsters!"

The four members of the Eagle Predator Squad were taking a temporary rest on the roof of a high-rise in the county town.

One of the squad members held a pair of binoculars, keeping watch and looking for high-level monsters.

"Who? Li Qingxu?"

Hearing the name, Xiao Qi was clearly taken aback.

Then he took out his own binoculars and looked toward the street the squad member had mentioned.

"It really is him!"

Shock filled Xiao Qi's eyes.

A Warrior Level martial artist had come alone from the Supply Base to a county town hundreds of kilometers away, where he was fighting a group of Beast Soldiers.

And he wasn't wearing combat gear. He was barehanded and had no supplies.

If anyone told him that, he probably wouldn't believe it.

"Wait!"

Xiao Qi immediately noticed something was wrong.

Those monsters weren't all Beast Soldiers. The two at the head were clearly Bloodthirsty Tanks, Intermediate Beast Generals!

Li Qingxu wasn't a Warrior Level martial artist at all. He was an eighteen-year-old Intermediate Battle General.

At that moment, he finally understood why the supervisor had felt comfortable letting Li Qingxu enter the Wilderness Zone alone.

In his field of vision, Li Qingxu, clad in blood-soaked clothes, moved like a Death God through a hundred-strong monster horde.

The street was so narrow, yet not one of the hundred monsters had managed to hit him.

Several times, Xiao Qi had been sure that Li Qingxu was about to be struck, but each time he dodged just past the monsters' attacks, so close that they only brushed the edge of his clothes.

He could even counterattack in the brief gaps between dodges. With a single punch, he blew a monster's head apart.

The scene was utterly gruesome. One after another, the monsters' heads burst like red fireworks across the street.