Life Orb

"This humble Daoist will not let you suffer a loss either. I have a scripture, the Profound Life Wondrous Cloud Formula, which can be cultivated to the Taiyi Golden Immortal realm. How about exchanging it for your treasure?"

Queen Bee's expression shifted uncertainly. Red Cloud had struck a sore spot—she truly had never refined the Life Orb.

Queen Bee had possessed the Life Orb for tens of thousands of years, yet no matter what methods she used, she could not refine this treasure. She could only wear it as an ornament.

The Life Orb was an innate spiritual treasure. Though it was a low-grade innate spiritual treasure, its spirituality far surpassed that of other magical treasures. Only a Great Luo could forcibly refine it.

Red Cloud did not know how Queen Bee had obtained the Life Orb, but it presumably had not chosen her as its master. Otherwise, Queen Bee would not have remained unable to refine it.

Considering Red Cloud's offer, Queen Bee gritted her teeth and made up her mind. "Do you truly have a scripture that can be cultivated to the Taiyi Golden Immortal realm? You're not lying to me?!"

To Queen Bee, trading a spiritual treasure she could not use for a scripture that could be cultivated to the Taiyi Golden Immortal realm was absolutely worthwhile, provided it was genuine.

A spiritual treasure was ultimately an external possession, while the Great Dao was something real and tangible. Queen Bee was currently a Golden Immortal, but without a cultivation method, her cultivation had never broken through.

If she had a cultivation method that could reach the Taiyi Golden Immortal realm, Queen Bee's achievements would rise even higher.

"Just look at the Merit Halo behind my head, and you should know that I am a man of my word."

Red Cloud said with a smile. Then, with a lift of his hand, a jade booklet appeared, bearing the words Profound Life Wondrous Cloud Formula.

Queen Bee gritted her teeth. "Fine, I believe you. I hope you are not deceiving me. Otherwise, even if I must exhaust every citizen of Amber City, I will still kill you."

Red Cloud merely smiled without replying.

Seeing Red Cloud's reaction, Queen Bee's heart sank. She clenched her teeth, removed the Life Orb, and tossed it toward him.

Without Queen Bee's magical power suppressing it, the Life Orb swiftly flew to Red Cloud's side, circled him once, and then landed directly in his hand.

Red Cloud sent his magical power into the Life Orb. The Life Orb did not resist, and he refined it with ease.

Queen Bee's face darkened at the sight, and bitterness filled her heart. The spiritual treasure she had begged and pleaded with to no avail had actually opened itself to someone else.

"Take this scripture. This humble Daoist is leaving!"

Red Cloud tossed the Profound Life Wondrous Cloud Formula to Queen Bee, then transformed into a streak of red light and vanished.

Queen Bee's gaze flickered, but after some thought, she ultimately did not stop Red Cloud. Leaving aside his merit, she was not confident she could keep him based on strength alone.

Looking at the Profound Life Wondrous Cloud Formula in her hand, Queen Bee probed it with her primordial spirit, and a torrent surged into her mind.

After receiving the inheritance of the Profound Life Wondrous Cloud Formula, Queen Bee breathed a sigh of relief. Red Cloud had not deceived her. The Profound Life Wondrous Cloud Formula truly was a Taiyi Golden Immortal-level cultivation method.

Having obtained the Life Orb, Red Cloud did not linger. Riding an auspicious cloud, he swiftly departed from this sea of flowers.

Obtaining an innate spiritual treasure without a fight was worthwhile for Red Cloud.

Although a Taiyi Golden Immortal-level cultivation method was precious, it was not all that precious to Red Cloud. After all, a cultivation method could be passed down countless times.

A streak of red light swept across the heavens. As Red Cloud refined the Life Orb, he flew toward Buzhou Mountain.

While in Amber City, Red Cloud had only refined it superficially. After all, Amber City was Queen Bee's territory, and he had to guard against her turning hostile, so he could not focus wholeheartedly on refining it.

After fully refining the Life Orb, he discovered that it possessed twelve innate restrictions. It was a top-tier low-grade innate spiritual treasure, on the same level as the Jade Dew Bottle.

The Life Orb's abilities were also extraordinary. It could autonomously generate life force and heal injuries to one's Dao body.

Furthermore, the Life Orb could sense the rhythms of life, making it exceptionally effective in assisting body cultivation.

All things possessed their own unique rhythms of life, and each rhythm was one of a kind. The higher one's level of life, the stronger its rhythm of life.

Changes in the rhythms of life were most evident in body cultivation. After Red Cloud's research, he developed the most suitable method of body cultivation, increasing cultivation speed by 300%.

The Life Orb was also outstanding in cultivating spiritual herbs. The life force it generated was a great tonic for spiritual herbs, accelerating their growth, and it was effective on the spiritual root Cold Jade Tree as well.

With the Life Orb working alongside the Yi-Wood Pot, the Cold Jade Tree, which once bore fruit only once every three hundred years, now bore fruit in merely thirty years. Its growth rate had increased tenfold.

For this reason, Red Cloud refined an acquired spiritual treasure named the Hundred Herbs Diagram, incorporating the Life Orb and Yi-Wood Pot within it to automatically replenish life force and Yi-Wood Divine Water.

Red Cloud planted the spiritual herbs he had collected over the years, along with the Cold Jade Tree, inside it. Watered by life force and Yi-Wood Divine Water, the output of spiritual herbs increased greatly.

Watching the spiritual herbs ripen rapidly, Red Cloud felt an itch in his heart. He took out a pill furnace and began refining pills.

One spiritual herb after another was thrown into the pill furnace.

Whenever Red Cloud refined pills, he continuously summarized his experiences—successes, failures, the medicinal properties of every category of spiritual herb, their processing methods, condensation methods, and more—all of which he recorded in the Illustrated Record of Literary Fortune.

The Illustrated Record of Literary Fortune was a merit spiritual treasure that used the fortune of the Literary Dao as its medium. The more knowledge and principles it recorded, the more Literary Dao fortune it occupied.

The Literary Dao was an Acquired Great Dao, spread throughout heaven and earth and hidden within all things—heaven and earth, stars, rivers, and more.

If Red Cloud wished to attain the Dao through the Literary Dao, he needed to uncover the Literary Dao hidden throughout heaven and earth and organize it into a path reaching the heavens. Only then could he attain the Primordial Saint through the Literary Dao.

Therefore, Red Cloud needed to become broadly learned, transforming all he had studied, known, and contemplated into the foundation of the Literary Dao.

The principles of the Alchemy Dao were also part of the Literary Dao. Studying the Alchemy Dao and organizing it into writing likewise counted as Literary Dao cultivation.

Thinking of the theories of traditional Chinese medicine from his previous life, Red Cloud also matched them against the properties of the spiritual herbs while refining pills. The Literary Dao accumulated through understanding and practice.

Red Cloud distinguished the hundred herbs and understood medicinal principles, which greatly aided his cultivation of the Alchemy Dao. Sovereign, minister, assistant, and envoy—learning was boundless, leaving one to pursue it bitterly in the endless sea of knowledge.

To identify the medicinal properties of the hundred herbs, Red Cloud used the Life Orb to explore the rhythms of life within the spiritual herbs, seeking the patterns of those rhythms and thereby discerning the medicinal principles of the hundred herbs.

Every spiritual herb possessed a different rhythm of life. Different kinds of spiritual herbs, as well as different individual plants of the same kind, had rhythms of life that were alike in some ways and different in others.

These rhythms were exceedingly chaotic, like static on an old television screen. Yet Red Cloud tirelessly experimented, summarized, and deduced their common traits.

In his previous life, medicinal herbs had four properties—warm, hot, cool, and cold.

This was also one direction for organizing and deducing them.

With the massive amount of data accumulated in the Illustrated Record of Literary Fortune, no essence could remain hidden under deduction.

Through practice in batch after batch of pill refinement, knowledge of the Alchemy Dao and the medicinal principles of spiritual herbs gradually became clear.

The Life Orb absorbed the rhythms of life from the hundred herbs, and traces of wonder appeared. The life force generated by the orb became even more powerful, carrying the vigorous resilience of the hundred herbs.

Before he knew it, several thousand years had passed.

Red Cloud had flown an unknown number of tens of thousands of miles. Seated upon an auspicious cloud, Dao charm swirled around him, and his aura seemed to merge with heaven and earth as one, reaching the realm of Unity of Heaven and Man.

Over the past several thousand years, his exploration of the rhythms of life in the hundred herbs became a torrent at this moment, crashing into Red Cloud's heart.

Each rhythm of life was like a faint spark. They flowed, collided, fused...