The mountain where Li Daoming lived had no idle visitors, but there were a few empty caves. Fang Yang simply cleaned one up and moved right in.
"Ten-pull!"
"Another!"
"Keep going!"
This was the first time in Fang Yang's life he'd ever been so flush with cash. In the blink of an eye, he'd squandered three thousand Fate Points.
Looking back on his time on Earth, he'd worked himself to the bone for years just to earn a little over a hundred Fate Points, and even then he'd needed the first-pull guarantee to get a green card.
Now, after taking a half-step Great Expert as his master, he'd received three thousand Fate Points outright. It was a leap straight into the heavens.
The Card Pool brimmed with wondrous phenomena, conjuring all manner of miraculous things before they crumbled and reformed.
Fang Yang wanted to put on the air of a carefree tycoon, but his curiosity got the better of him. He stared intently at the Card Pool, hoping to spot some kind of pattern.
The final tally was in!
Three ten-pulls.
Sixteen white, nine green, three blue, and two purple!
"Not bad."
Fang Yang wasn't too disappointed. He started looking over the cards.
He skipped past the sixteen white cards.
He even spotted the original underwear of a well-known 3D female character, as well as things like Lazy Goat's head fur.
White cards had nothing supernatural about them. Their value was practically zero.
Of the nine green cards, seven were poor quality. Quite a few were martial arts manuals from low-martial worlds, completely useless to him.
Only two cards were somewhat interesting:
[Ice Scorpion Left Arm Bone (Green)] [Description: A Soul Bone produced upon the death of a sixty-thousand-year-old Ice Scorpion from the Douluo World. It contains the Ice Scorpion Clan's Ice Burst Technique.] [Three Tomoe Sharingan (Green)] [Description: The eyes of an Uchiha Clan jōnin from the Naruto World. Ready to use once inserted.]
Fang Yang felt a little troubled.
These cards were actually quite good. If he were in a world without magic, or even one with only low-level magic, he certainly wouldn't have looked down on green cards. He might even have treasured them as priceless.
But Shrouding the Heavens was a vast world.
Even setting aside its prequel, Perfect World, and its sequel, the Sacred Ruins Era, just this broken world, where even Supremes could live only a little over ten thousand years—
It was no place where low-mystic worlds like Douluo and Naruto could hope to measure up.
Rather than getting these green cards, he'd prefer to get more [Mortal Body Origin (Green)] and test whether hundreds of cards could stack up to a Divine Body.
Fang Yang put the two cards away.
After all, he'd spent Fate Points to draw them.
He could study them later, when he had some free time.
[Heavenly Dew (Blue)] [Description: Sweet dew bestowed by the heavens of the World of Dragon Talisman. It can be used to heal injuries, aid cultivation, repair magical artifacts, and more. It is nearly all-purpose.] [Immortal Spirit Qi (Blue)] [Description: Qi of longevity born in the God Realm of the Douluo World. It can sustain deities in eternal life, but its effects diminish as a living being's life essence grows stronger.] [Mysterious Yellow Flame (Blue)] [Description: The twenty-third-ranked flame on the Exotic Flame Ranking of the Battle Through the Heavens World. A subterranean fire formed over ten thousand years within the earth's veins, resembling both rock and flame, with tangible form and substance.]
Fang Yang was quite satisfied with these three blue cards. At last, they weren't as useless as the green cards.
Of the three, Heavenly Dew was the most valuable and versatile.
When manifested, it formed a ball of water containing roughly a thousand drops, its surface tinged with the deep blue of the sky.
Fang Yang took out a drop and placed it on the tip of his tongue.
A cool sensation swept through his body at once. Energy settled into his meridians and acupoints, its power far surpassing the same volume of Pure Source.
And that was only its most ordinary effect.
Under his keen spiritual sense, Heavenly Dew wasn't merely condensed energy. It also contained the laws of heaven and earth, and could improve one's constitution and enhance one's comprehension.
However, this effect was extremely weak.
Even if he drank the entire ball of dew, it wouldn't do much for Fang Yang as he was now.
As for Immortal Spirit Qi and Mysterious Yellow Flame, the former was a weakened version of Immortal Elixir, while he still had to carefully consider whether to refine the latter.
Fang Yang set them aside for the moment and looked at the two most important purple cards.
[Soul Gold Bead (Purple)] [Description: Produced in the Grand Primordial World, this soul crystal was refined from the essence of twenty million souls. Refining it can strengthen the foundation of one's soul.] [Mysterious Yellow Qi (Purple)] [Description: A creation born when the universe first opened. It comes in two colors, black and yellow, and consists of forty-nine strands. It can be used to forge divine weapons.]
"Worth it!"
Only then did Fang Yang breathe a sigh of relief.
He'd spent a full three thousand Fate Points. At last, he'd gotten something good.
The Soul Gold Bead had only one purpose: to strengthen the foundation of one's soul. It could also be used to mend injuries to the Primordial Spirit.
Fang Yang had no idea just how powerful his Primordial Spirit would become after refining the Soul Gold Bead.
But judging by the fact that the Replica of the Supreme Emperor Sword and the Soul Gold Bead were both purple cards, he estimated it could make him leap forward, granting him a soul on par with a cultivator of the Immortal Platform Realm.
Why were Immortal Platform cultivators faster at comprehending cultivation arts and better at understanding the laws of heaven and earth than Dao Palace cultivators?
If not because of their Primordial Spirits, could it be because of their physical bodies?
Fang Yang manifested the [Soul Gold Bead (Purple)]. A haze of purple mist swirled away, revealing a perfectly round, golden, glittering bead.
This was a spiritual treasure refined from the souls of twenty million living beings.
Power had no inherent righteousness or wickedness.
Besides, Fang Yang wasn't the one who'd refined the Soul Gold Bead, so he felt not the slightest pang of guilt.
Fang Yang cautiously reached out with his spiritual sense and touched the Soul Gold Bead. In an instant, a vast, pure spiritual force surged along his spiritual sense and poured into his sea of consciousness.
Wonderful!
Utterly blissful!
It was Fang Yang's first time experiencing such a sensation. His life before this suddenly seemed completely devoid of fun.
Cultivation was, at its core, a process of gradually growing stronger.
Growing from weak to strong brought a pleasure far surpassing the joys of sex or the craving for food.
The more talented a person was, the more keenly they could feel this intense pleasure, driving them to strive harder and charge forward without pause.
The more useless a person was, the more meaningless cultivation seemed to them, until they gave up and let themselves rot.
In just one short hour,
the Soul Gold Bead had turned Fang Yang's sea of consciousness from a puddle into a small pond. His spiritual sense had grown dozens of times stronger in both quality and power.
Even so, the Soul Gold Bead had barely been consumed at all. Its reduction in size was almost impossible to see with the naked eye.
"Not even one-thousandth!"
Only after using his spiritual sense did Fang Yang notice the Soul Gold Bead had shrunk by the tiniest amount.
"Catch up to the Yaoguang Holy Son in ten years?"
"Why would I need ten?"
Fang Yang recalled the goal his martial uncle, Li Daoqing, had set for him.
The Yaoguang Holy Son cultivated the Indestructible Heavenly Art and devoured many Wang Physiques and Demon Fetuses. The stronger he became, the more formidable he grew.
By the Four Extremities Secret Realm, he might not have much of an edge over Ji Haoyue or the Golden-Winged Little Peng King. They might even be evenly matched.
"How many Fate Points would becoming the Yaoguang Holy Son bring me?"
"If I became the Holy Lord of Yaoguang..."
Fang Yang hurriedly put a stop to this treacherous thought.
The Holy Lord of Yaoguang was his martial uncle. The Yaoguang Holy Son, by contrast, was merely a fellow disciple in name—an outsider with no real connection to him.
Besides, he wasn't even a Holy Son yet, and he was already thinking about how many Fate Points he'd get from becoming the Holy Lord. That was getting ahead of himself.
"From today on, I'll focus all my efforts on refining the Soul Gold Bead."
Sharpening the axe wouldn't delay the work of chopping wood.
Once his Primordial Spirit grew stronger, cultivating the Yaoguang Scripture would bring twice the results with half the effort.
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