Six Years Forging a Sword! A Thirty-Three-Year-Old Soul Elder!

Six years—neither long nor short.

To the ordinary residents of Nuoding City, those six years were merely the cycle from one spring to the next. A few shops in the city had changed owners, the children in the streets had grown taller, and the roof tiles of the City Lord's Mansion had been renovated once.

Life was plain and uneventful, with nothing earth-shattering taking place.

But for Lan Tian, these six years had been the most important period since his transmigration.

Over those six years, he had hardly ever left Nuoding City for more than three days.

His daily routine was as fixed as marks carved into stone: tending to the Nine Heart Begonia at dawn, opening the clinic and seeing patients in the morning, heading to the Soul Hunting Forest for combat training in the afternoon, returning at dusk to tend to the Nine Heart Begonia again, then taking medicinal baths and meditating after nightfall. Not a single day changed.

The clinic's business grew better and better. His reputation as the chief physician had firmly taken root, and whenever the city guard or the City Lord's Mansion encountered difficult injuries, they sent the patients straight to him.

His reputation gradually spread beyond Nuoding City to several nearby towns.

From time to time, wealthy merchants or hunters from other regions came specifically to seek his treatment. Naturally, their consultation fees were much higher than those of locals, allowing his savings to steadily grow.

Over the six years, he made three more trips to the underground market in Heaven Dou City. Each time, he managed to pick up some good items: high-year medicinal herbs, rare herb seeds, and several pieces of Whale Rubber of varying ages.

Though he never again encountered a divine treasure on the level of Nine Heart Begonia seeds, the resources he had accumulated still amounted to a considerable fortune.

Most importantly, his cultivation had not been interrupted for a single day.

After six years of steady accumulation, he finally crossed the threshold of rank thirty this morning.

Lan Tian sat cross-legged in the backyard. His Blue Silver Grass martial soul unfurled around him, two yellow soul rings slowly revolving as the phantom of a third ring condensed above them.

His Soul Power was like a reservoir that had long been gathering water before its gates finally opened, surging and churning as it stabilized at a new height.

Rank-thirty Soul Elder.

He slowly opened his eyes and looked at his hands. Feeling the Soul Power within him—nearly twice as robust as it had been at twenty-three—he let out a long breath of stale air.

He was thirty-three.

From breaking through rank ten at twenty-five to stepping into the Soul Elder threshold at thirty-three, he had spent eight years in total.

During those eight years, his cultivation speed had indeed slowed year by year, just as he had expected. At first, he gained a rank every three months; later, it became one rank every half year. In the end, it took more than a year to slowly grind his way from rank twenty-nine to rank thirty.

Every step had been difficult, but none of them had been in vain.

He rose and stretched. Six years of training had elevated his physique to another level compared to when he was twenty-seven.

His four Weighted Rings had long since been replaced with ones weighing three hundred jin each. Wearing them now barely felt like a burden.

Both his explosive power and reaction speed were at their peak. Even without relying on soul skills, he feared no opponent of the same rank in a pure martial arts fight.

But more important than his physique was the matter currently occupying his mind.

His third soul ring.

He had not been careless in choosing his first two soul rings. The first had been four-hundred-year Blue Silver Grass, and the second nine-hundred-year Blue Silver Grass. Those two life-attribute soul rings, both sharing the same origin, had laid an exceptionally solid foundation for him.

As for the third ring—the crucial turning point that would determine his future path—he could not possibly settle for just anything.

For a Soul Elder, the upper limit of a third soul ring far exceeded a hundred years. Thousand-year soul rings were the standard configuration for Soul Elders.

Given his current physical strength, along with the dual endurance provided by Endless Life and Spring of Vegetation, absorbing a same-origin plant soul ring between two and three thousand years old should not be much of a problem.

Furthermore, absorbing a higher-year soul ring would grant a greater increase in Soul Power and reduce the time he needed to spend cultivating bitterly.

The key was finding a target good enough—one that fit his life-attribute path and could bring a qualitative leap to his Blue Silver Grass martial soul.

He absolutely could not be careless with his third soul ring.

He was getting older, and after reaching Soul Elder, his cultivation speed would only become slower than before.

If he casually chose some mediocre soul ring and wasted such a precious opportunity for advancement, the road ahead would only grow narrower.

So, he had to choose the most suitable, most powerful thousand-year soul ring—one that best aligned with his future path—and squeeze every last bit of value from it.

With that in mind, he turned and walked toward the densest patch of Blue Silver Grass in the center of the yard.

The Nine Heart Begonia was planted there.

After six years of Lan Tian's meticulous care, it was no longer the tiny seedling the size of a fingernail it had once been.

Its stem had grown to waist height, jade-green and translucent throughout. Nine heart-shaped leaves spread out layer by layer from its upper stalk, each as large as an adult's palm. Against their emerald base, the pinkish-white hues were so rich that they looked as though they had been painted on with a pigment-dipped brush, glimmering with a soft, warm luster beneath the sunlight.

The entire begonia exuded dense life energy. Simply standing beside it made the Soul Power flowing through his meridians feel noticeably smoother than usual.

He crouched and gently touched one of its largest leaves. The pulse of life beneath his fingertips was steady and powerful.

After six years of catalysis and nurturing, he had forcibly raised the Nine Heart Begonia's age to nearly a hundred years.

For a plant, a hundred years was merely the lowest tier among soul beasts. But for a legendary divine treasure like the Nine Heart Begonia, a century of accumulation had already given it considerable spirituality.

The life energy contained within its leaves was so dense it was nearly tangible. Picking just one leaf for use in medicine would multiply the potency of ordinary medicinal herbs several times over.

But he had no intention of making it his third soul ring.

A hundred years was far too low.

The Nine Heart Begonia naturally grew at an extremely slow pace. Even with him repeatedly catalyzing it using Spring of Vegetation and Endless Life, it had taken six years to reach nearly a hundred years.

To raise it to a thousand years or beyond would require at least several more decades, perhaps even longer.

If he absorbed a hundred-year Nine Heart Begonia as his third soul ring, its effects would certainly surpass those of an ordinary thousand-year soul ring. But it would undoubtedly mean prematurely killing an unparalleled divine treasure still in its growth phase, wasting the heights it might one day attain.

His current physique and meridian strength could fully withstand the pressure of a soul ring over two thousand years old.

The potential window for his third ring only came once. He had to choose a target with a higher age and better quality.

The Nine Heart Begonia was worth cultivating for longer. He would wait until it had truly matured before considering its soul ring, rather than acting in haste now.

"Wait a little longer. There's no rush."

He gently patted the thickest section of the Nine Heart Begonia's stem, then stood and took two steps back. His gaze swept across the flourishing Blue Silver Grass filling the yard. "You should grow a little more too. Once I find a third soul ring truly worthy of me, I'll come back and decide what to do with you. The longer you're cultivated, the better. Besides, my future advancement will only get slower. Perhaps by the time I reach level forty, with the help of my third soul skill, you'll have grown to several thousand years—or even ten thousand years. Then, you can become my fourth soul ring."

The Nine Heart Begonia's leaves trembled softly, as if responding to his words.

Lan Tian turned and returned to the house, taking out the map of Sunset Forest that he had been drawing for six years and spreading it across the table.

It was densely marked with countless circles, crosses, and symbols. Over the past six years, he had updated it every time he returned from searching Sunset Forest. By now, more than half of the outer regions had been labeled "searched, no results."

There were not many unexplored areas left.

If he continued narrowing down the area through elimination, then after at most two or three more deep searches, the location of the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well might finally come to light.

Around that legendary wonderland grew countless rare flowers and strange herbs of high age. Any one of them would be enough to serve as top-tier material for a thousand-year soul ring.

He folded the map and placed it into his storage ring, then walked to the entrance and pushed open the clinic door.

Sunlight poured in, shining on the signboard that had hung on the door for years: "As long as you're not dead, I can basically cure you."

He was ready to set out.