Merit Generator

In merely a few tens of thousands of years, Yuan Jie had completed the Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formation.

With a flick of his finger, Yuan Jie unleashed a concentrated strand of World Dao Power that thundered forth and poured directly into the formation's core, completely activating the Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formation.

In an instant, the innate earth meridians deep within the vast mountains underwent earth-shaking changes. Countless unfathomable formation patterns emerged from the depths of the earth meridians, shimmering with brilliant, flowing light.

They instantly connected Heaven and Earth, drawing upon the Dao rhythm of the entire realm and perfectly merging with the vast, majestic power of the earth meridians, becoming one.

At that moment, the Chaos Qi pouring into this land from the boundless void suddenly increased severalfold, surging in like a rushing river. The Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formation rapidly refined and transformed it, while within the formation's core, a supreme vision of primordial chaos opening, Yin-Yang dividing, and Heaven and Earth being born faintly emerged.

The power transformed by the formation split into three portions. One portion of the Chaos Qi continued to follow the old method, entirely transforming into Innate Spiritual Qi and Dao Rhyme Spiritual Essence. It slowly flowed along the main branches of the earth meridians before erupting from spiritual nodes throughout the land, spreading between the mountains and nourishing the vegetation and living beings of this realm.

The vast majority of the remaining Chaos Qi, however, was transformed by the formation's supreme power into Heaven-Earth Origin Force.

Part of this Origin Force was entirely absorbed by the damaged earth meridians, rapidly replenishing their losses and repairing the wounds to their origins, making them increasingly robust and stable. The other part was carefully stored within the formation core, accumulating over time for future use.

"Good! Very good!"

His divine sense spread across the entire formation through the Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formation. Clearly sensing its efficiency in drawing in and refining Chaos Qi, Yuan Jie revealed a satisfied expression and slowly nodded.

At this moment, he had merely activated the Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formation and allowed it to operate on its own, yet its speed in drawing in and transforming Chaos Qi had already surpassed that of these earth meridians at their peak, when the Western Earth-Meridian Network still existed.

If he personally took action and pushed the Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formation to its limit, its power could likely increase severalfold, and its efficiency in drawing in and refining Chaos Qi would naturally accelerate by several times as well.

Although he had important matters to attend to and could not remain here forever, Yuan Ling was cultivating experts above the Taiyi Golden Immortal realm.

Once they had cultivated a sufficient number of utterly loyal Taiyi Golden Immortal cultivators, they could be assigned to take turns guarding this place and presiding over the formation. Even if they could not fully unleash the Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formation's utmost power, bringing out seventy or eighty percent of its strength would be no difficult task.

This way, not only would he no longer need to worry about outside enemies breaking in and stealing the Innate Spiritual Treasures that served as the formation foundations suppressing the Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formation, but it would also serve an even more important purpose: drawing in and transforming more Chaos Qi to help him earn more merit.

"Rumble!" Just as Yuan Jie was lost in thought, a thunderous sound echoed from somewhere beyond perception.

Yuan Jie immediately came back to himself. Raising his eyes, he looked through the endless void and saw immense amounts of merit gathering above the Ninth Heaven before descending directly upon him. All of it flowed into the Merit Golden Wheel within his sea of consciousness, enlarging it once more. The merit radiance upon the Merit Golden Wheel grew increasingly dense, while its Great Dao aura became ever more steady and profound.

Moreover, Yuan Jie vaguely sensed that this merit was not a one-time reward. This one-time portion was merely the Heavenly Dao's reward for his establishment of the Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formation.

In the future, so long as the Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formation continuously drew in and transformed more Chaos Qi through the boundless void, he would be able to obtain merit without end.

As for how much merit he could receive, that depended on how much Chaos Qi the Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formation could draw in and transform. At the same time, it depended on how he used the transformed Heaven-Earth Origin Force.

If he refined it himself or used it to cultivate the experts under his command, the merit he could gain would certainly be greatly reduced.

But if it were used to mend the deficiencies of Heaven and Earth, or transformed into Innate Spiritual Qi and Dao Rhyme Spiritual Essence to spread throughout the world—then the merit gained would not be discounted.

Having grasped the key to it all, Yuan Jie nodded in satisfaction once more. Unable to suppress the joy in his heart, his delight showed plainly on his face.

This Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formation truly was an endlessly productive merit generator.

Although a single Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formation could not generate much merit in each yuanhui, what about several hundred yuanhui? Several thousand yuanhui?

Although setting up just one Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formation would not yield much merit, what if they set up several hundred? Several thousand?

By then, they might no longer need to keep working. They could simply lie back and collect merit.

After rejoicing for a while, Yuan Jie gradually restrained his surging emotions, suppressed his wild thoughts and fantasies, and returned to his usual calm composure.

Even if he could lie back and collect merit, that was still something for an unknown time in the future. For now, he still had to work hard if he wanted any chance of lying back and collecting merit later.

Moreover, with their current reserves, arranging two hundred Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formations would be relatively easy. It was merely a matter of time.

But several thousand? That would be extraordinarily difficult!

The most critical issue was that they simply did not possess so many spare Innate Spiritual Treasures and Innate Spiritual Roots to use as formation foundations.

Since the four of them had begun traveling through the Primordial World, they had encountered constant opportunities. They had gained especially richly from the Yinyang Grotto-Heaven, Yingzhou Immortal Island, and the many Three Clans Battlefields.

Yet even so, all the Innate Spiritual Treasures and Innate Spiritual Roots in the hands of the four of them combined numbered only a little over two hundred.

Not to mention that their High-Grade Innate Spiritual Treasures and Supreme-Grade Innate Spiritual Treasures were the foundations upon which they stood, capable of greatly enhancing their combat strength.

The Primordial World was inherently a place where the weak were prey to the strong and strength was revered. Naturally, they could not use these treasured trump cards to set up formations and weaken themselves for nothing.

After carefully calculating it all, the Innate Spiritual Treasures and Innate Spiritual Roots they could use as formation foundations to arrange the Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formation amounted to only a little over two hundred in total.

Once they used them to arrange more than two hundred Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formations, if they did not acquire more Innate Spiritual Treasures or Innate Spiritual Roots,

then if they wished to continue arranging Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formations, they could only settle for the next best option: spending effort to refine Postnatal Spiritual Treasures or slowly cultivate Postnatal Spiritual Roots to serve as formation foundations.

However, if Postnatal Spiritual Treasures and Postnatal Spiritual Roots were used as formation foundations, they would either need to be of higher quality, or the Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formation's power would certainly decline considerably. This was because, when it came to connecting with and drawing upon the Great Dao of Heaven and Earth, postnatal treasures were far inferior to innate treasures.

Furthermore, neither refining Postnatal Spiritual Treasures nor cultivating Postnatal Spiritual Roots could be accomplished from nothing. Both required vast amounts of resources and a considerable amount of time.

Although they possessed quite a few resources, that depended on whom they were compared with. If compared to the former Primordial Three Clans, they likely did not even possess a fraction of what one of those clans had. It was simply not enough to refine sufficient Postnatal Spiritual Treasures and cultivate sufficient Postnatal Spiritual Roots to arrange several thousand Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formations.

With the resources in their hands, it would already be quite good if they could arrange several hundred Heaven-Earth Origin-Returning Formations!