A First Glimpse of the Gateway

"Not a True Lord?"

Shen Yuan's words exploded in the Maine Coon's heart like a thunderclap that split heaven and earth.

Almost instinctively, the Maine Coon wanted to refute him.

"How could that be! I clearly saw those void rifts that tore demons apart, that flying sword which shattered the Bronze Head, Iron Arms Divine Ability through sword intent alone, and those storage rings made so casually.

He is definitely a True Lord."

The Maine Coon's thoughts suddenly stalled, and an even bolder possibility flashed through its mind.

"He is not a True Lord, but an expert above the True Lords!"

Once that thought surfaced, countless others surged forth like a rising tide.

"That's right! True Lords before the era of spiritual energy depletion were powerful, but three thousand years have already passed since the last great age of cultivation.

After such a long span of time, even True Lords would be nearing the end of their lifespans. They could never possess vitality as perfect as the gentleman's, without the slightest trace of decay.

Moreover, the current environment is still far from the Spirit Tide's peak recovery. It simply cannot support a True Lord descending into the present world. The incomplete heavens and earth are especially deadly poison to True Lords on the verge of entering the Dao-Integration Realm.

In such an environment, only experts above the True Lords could possibly walk the world freely, even casually wielding flying swords and creating storage artifacts."

"A Dao Lord of the Dao-Integration Realm? Or an exiled immortal who has ascended to the Immortal Realm?"

At that moment, not a trace of hostility toward Shen Yuan remained in the Maine Coon's heart. There was only wholehearted admiration.

It lowered its head and replied respectfully,

"Yes, sir!"

Shen Yuan had never imagined that the Maine Coon would concoct so much on its own. At that moment, he was fully focused on making a second storage ring.

The storage ring he had tossed to the Maine Coon earlier had merely been payment for materials, as well as a practice piece.

Only after initially figuring out how to control the Pot-Heaven Divine Ability did Shen Yuan begin seriously crafting this second storage ring.

During the process, Shen Yuan discovered that so long as his divine sense was sufficient, the space opened by the Pot-Heaven Divine Ability had virtually no upper limit. What truly limited the size of a storage ring was the quality of the spirit wood itself.

The better the spirit wood, the larger the storage ring it could produce.

But that did not mean that just any spirit material could be used to make a storage ring.

To open a space with a spirit material, it first had to meet two necessary conditions.

The first was that the spirit material itself needed sufficient mass to support a stable space.

If a piece of spirit wood was only the size of a grain of rice, its mass would be too small. The spiritual energy and special properties it possessed could not be fully brought into play, and it would be unable to open a stable space.

The second condition was that the spirit material used to open storage space had to at least possess the concept of a spatial structure.

The water bottles, porcelain bottles, matchboxes, and similar items Shen Yuan had used before all possessed ordinary storage-space structures. Spirit materials were naturally no exception.

Although the circular shape of a storage ring had no conventional storage function, it still possessed the concept of a spatial structure.

Furthermore, storage rings used materials more economically and were easier to carry. That was why most storage artifacts in the cultivation world were storage rings.

Shen Yuan was making storage artifacts for convenient trade and use. Naturally, he would not take some other path and make bizarrely shaped storage artifacts. Storage rings were naturally the best choice.

His fingertips were like blades as they lightly carved the ring. For this second storage ring, Shen Yuan did not choose to directly open a space with the Pot-Heaven Divine Ability. Instead, he used his divine sense to follow the rhythms of space, tracing lines upon the crude ring.

Patterns like auspicious clouds emerged across the storage ring's surface. Though these patterns could not increase the storage space's size, they could refine its internal form to a certain extent and strengthen its stability.

As the last fleck of wood shavings fell away, an ancient-style ring patterned with clouds appeared in Shen Yuan's palm.

Compared to the Maine Coon's ring, this storage ring finally possessed a hint of the appearance a magical artifact ought to have. Combined with the mind-clearing fragrance emitted by the Cloudfloat Purple Sandalwood, it carried a fresh and elegant charm.

Turning the storage ring over in his hand, Shen Yuan extended his divine sense into it and saw that it contained roughly three cubic meters of space.

For low-grade spirit wood like Cloudfloat Purple Sandalwood, this already counted as pushing the material's properties to their utmost limit.

If it were handed to an artifact refiner, the Void Stones consumed merely to etch the spatial formation would be tens of millions of times more valuable than the Cloudfloat Purple Sandalwood itself. Not to mention that it was still unknown whether the cultivation world could even find such a master artifact refiner today.

Under such circumstances, the storage ring Shen Yuan had made was naturally even more valuable.

He casually put the storage ring on his hand, then picked up the third piece of Cloudfloat Purple Sandalwood and stored it inside. He did not choose to begin crafting it immediately.

Today was his first time truly opening space with a spirit material as its foundation, and it was entirely different from the Space Grenades Shen Yuan had casually made before.

Space Grenades required no consideration for spatial stability. All he needed to do was forcibly open space and predict when it would collapse. There was not the slightest technical difficulty to it.

But opening a spirit-material space had allowed Shen Yuan to truly touch upon the mysteries of the spatial level.

As his divine sense expanded without limit, every rhythm of space and every faint tremor could be reflected upon the storage ring he created, causing entirely different changes in the form and stability of its internal space.

This experience of combining divine sense with space was something other low-level cultivators could never experience.

Only then did Shen Yuan truly glimpse the tip of the iceberg of the Earthly Fiend Divine Ability.

Countless thoughts churned in his heart. The next moment, Shen Yuan sensed that the emerald gourd formed from the seed of the Pot-Heaven Divine Ability on his right hand had dimmed somewhat, and a great deal of information surged into his mind along with that change.

Closing his eyes slightly, Shen Yuan sat quietly before the stone table, sensing the information flooding into his mind.

The courtyard was utterly silent. An invisible spatial ripple seemed to spread soundlessly outward from Shen Yuan's body.

Bai Xue, in Shen Yuan's arms, instantly had her fur stand on end. Her large heterochromatic eyes were filled with terror, yet she did not even dare move, afraid that she might disturb Shen Yuan's current enlightenment.

The Maine Coon, having reached the Qi-Refining Realm, also lay prostrate upon the ground, not daring to breathe too loudly.

It could clearly sense that the surrounding environment was changing, and it could guess that the source of those changes was the unfathomable gentleman before it. Yet it had no way of knowing what those changes truly were.

When the ripples of spatial fluctuations enveloped the entire courtyard, Shen Yuan finally awakened from his momentary epiphany.

When he opened his eyes again, the courtyard looked no different from usual. Yet in Shen Yuan's eyes, the entire courtyard seemed to have become an indivisible whole upon the spatial level.

Combining that with the great amount of information in his mind, Shen Yuan finally came to his own conclusion.

"The Pot-Heaven Divine Ability has finally given me a first glimpse of the gateway."

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