A Grass Nest is Better Than a Golden or Silver Cave

A millennium later, Zhu Yin woke from his enlightenment. His cultivation at the Taiyi Golden Immortal realm was thoroughly stabilized, and his magical power, divine sense, physical body, and divine powers all underwent an all-around enhancement.

Zhunti said from above:

"The tribulation of thirty thousand years is about to arrive. Jieyin and I are heading to Purple Cloud Palace to listen to the Dao. Cultivate properly and await our return."

Zhu Yin watched his two mentors depart and returned alone to Immaculate Hall.

A Farewell to Self

Sitting cross-legged in his room, Zhu Yin wore a solemn expression.

The vows he made during the lightning tribulation that day—everyone thought he was bidding farewell to "himself of the Low-Grade Spiritual Root," and even Zhunti and Jieyin believed this.

Only Zhu Yin knew that he was making a complete farewell to his "past self" of Netherworld Bamboo.

The Hardships of the Past

The "infinite sorrow and bitterness" contained within the bitter bamboo would plunge any living creature into despair and ultimately lead them to suicide.

Only by enduring it could one see their true nature and attain the true Pure Dao.

When Zhu Yin devoured the bitter bamboo, affected by this wave of sorrow and bitterness, he dreamed back to his past life...

In that lifetime, he was an ordinary person:

His parents died early, his girlfriend cheated on him, he was scammed, involved in a car accident, disabled, tricked into marriage, lost a second wife, lost his child in middle age, and lived a lonely old age... a series of life tragedies.

Just as he was preparing to commit suicide, a flash of clarity struck him, and he suddenly awakened, shattering the illusion, breaking free from the sorrow and bitterness, and attaining complete enlightenment.

Because of this, he was able to completely devour the origin of the bitter bamboo, transforming from the Netherworld Bamboo into the Pure Bamboo.

Pioneering the Great Freedom Dao

Due to his past-life experiences, his understanding of the "Pure Dao" soared rapidly, running parallel to the "Vitality Great Dao."

Yet if he could not determine the primary and secondary, the Great Dao would become unbalanced.

He ultimately chose to fuse the two Great Daos, creating an entirely new kind of Dao:

The Great Freedom Dao!

My heart is free, and my vitality is boundless.

My heart is free, and my purity is boundless.

If the heart is free, wind and rain are also beautiful;

If the heart is restless, the sun and moon are also evil.

Six Thousand Years of Seclusion

Zhu Yin spent six thousand years in seclusion.

In the first three thousand years, he reshaped himself.

In the last three thousand years, he reshaped his Dao.

The present him had completely become the embodiment of the Pure Bamboo, no longer just a spiritual root of the past, but a truly new-born existence.

Six-Purities Bamboo

Zhu Yin retrieved a treasure from his embrace.

That was the Six-Purities Bamboo he had refined while devouring the bitter bamboo.

Being both spiritual bamboos, he and the bitter bamboo shared a blood connection, and he quickly refined it into a spiritual treasure embryo.

The first three thousand years were spent refining the embryo, and the last three thousand years were spent nurturing it, until it finally emerged during the second transformation lightning tribulation, recognized by the Heavenly Dao as his companion spiritual treasure.

Today, it was already a High-Grade Innate Spiritual Treasure, possessing thirty-six Innate Dao Restrictions!

The reason he was able to accomplish this was because he had seized a loophole where the Heavenly Dao was not yet complete. If anyone were to try again in the future, what awaited them would no longer be rewards, but divine retribution.

The three major divine powers that Zhu Yin had cultivated finally began to take shape.

The first was the Great Freedom Seal, which he evolved using the phantom image of Mount Sumeru. This seal not only retained its original might, but also fused the heaviness and stability of the earth, pushing his power to an even higher level.

The second was the Great Freedom Divine Light, formed by the fusion of the light of purity and the vitality divine light. If the divine light rotated forward, it could purify all things in the world and make all vitality burst forth; if it reversed, it could cause vegetation to wither and all living beings to fade, which could be called utterly terrifying.

The third was the Great Freedom Nirvana Art, inspired by the concept of "dead trees springing back to life." Once successfully cultivated, even if the physical body was obliterated, the Dao heart collapsed, and the primordial spirit shattered, as long as that "free will" still existed, he could still be reborn and return!

Although this art had just been created and was currently only at the introductory stage, its power was already astonishing. How far it could go in the future depended entirely on Zhu Yin's fortune on the Great Dao.

Zhu Yin put away his distracting thoughts, sat cross-legged in Immaculate Hall, and utilized the light of wisdom from the Supreme Bodhi Seed to spend a millennium in seclusion, properly digesting his gains.

A millennium later, Zhu Yin stepped out of his seclusion grounds and arrived at the spiritual field.

This spiritual field was vibrant, lush with greenery, and rich in spiritual Qi. Aside from quite a few innate spiritual herbs, there were also two precious spiritual root seedlings.

He had originally planted more than a dozen fruit pits, and only these two survived while the rest completely perished, but he was not discouraged. Cultivating spiritual roots was inherently extremely difficult, and it was normal even if not a single one grew. That he managed to get two could already be considered extremely good luck.

Moreover, during this period, he had been in seclusion, and it was the Golden-Clothed Boy and the White-Clothed Boy who followed the methods he instructed, day after day irrigating, loosening the soil, and fertilizing. He himself had hardly intervened, and being able to survive two was already a pleasant surprise.

One was the Postnatal High-Grade Astral Fruit Tree, which took three thousand years to bear thirty-six fruits containing astral essence that could nourish the primordial spirit and enhance magical power; the other was the Postnatal Medium-Grade Purplegold Grape Tree, which bore twelve fruits every fifteen hundred years and could strengthen the physical body.

He carefully stored away these spiritual plants, took a batch of spiritual soil from Mount Sumeru, bid farewell to the two boy attendants, and strode away on a beam of light.

Spirit Platform Mountain.

The spiritual Qi within the mountain was abundant, and the vegetation was full of vitality. Although it could not compare to the fairy-land-like Mount Sumeru, it could still be considered a top-tier good place in the western region.

Opening the mountain-guarding grand array, Zhu Yin rode down on blue light, returning to his own Dao field.

Looking at the familiar mountain scenery and sniffing the familiar aura, the corners of his mouth curved into a smile. No matter how wonderful Mount Sumeru was, it could not compare to the sense of belonging of Spirit Platform Mountain.

A grass nest is better than a golden or silver cave.

He did not use magic to clean, but instead did it himself, making a broom out of spiritual bamboo to sweep the courtyard in person. What he did not expect was that the moment he started, merit descended from the heavens, and that broom actually turned into a Low-Grade Merit Spiritual Treasure!

This left Zhu Yin both startled and delighted, and he hurriedly struck while the iron was hot, making an axe and a hoe as well. As a result, these two items also received the recognition of the Heavenly Dao, transforming into Medium-Grade Merit Spiritual Treasures.

He recalled that when he had first undergone transformation in the past, he had also tried to emulate transmigrator seniors by refining magic treasures to seek merit, only to end up with nothing. Now he finally understood... the Heavenly Dao did not recognize things crafted with magical power; only items painstakingly polished and created with one's own hands had the possibility of earning merit.

And in the Primordial World, almost no one realized this. After all, the spirit race relied primarily on magical power, ordinary beasts lacked intelligence, and the human race had not yet been born, so naturally no one would manually craft these small objects.

He had stumbled into it by accident and exploited a loophole of the Heavenly Dao, but this sort of thing could not be done too much. Once Hongjun harmonized with the Dao in the future, this "loophole" would also be patched. He could only say that he had run into a good timing.

These three merit spiritual treasures each had miraculous effects:

Broom: Can sweep away inner demons, purify the spirit, and also break certain spells.

Hoe: Can improve the soil of the spiritual field, even more effective than ordinary spiritual springs, suitable for spiritual plant cultivation.

Axe: An offensive sharp weapon, extremely sharp and astonishing in force, and killing enemies will not incur karmic entanglements!

Zhu Yin did not stash these treasures away, instead truly using them to clean, reclaim land, and farm. He felt that the value of a treasure lay in its usage; leaving it unused was a waste.

He sprinkled the spiritual soil into the herb garden, opened up a new spiritual field with the merit hoe, and then carefully planted those spiritual herbs and the two spiritual roots, watering them with spiritual springs and scattering spiritual fertilizer.

After handling all this, he even moved the spiritual lake that he used to raise the bitter bamboo over, merging it with the spiritual spring in the mountain to elevate the spiritual Qi of the entire Spirit Platform Mountain.

With the earth veins restored, spiritual energy abundant, and coupled with the spiritual lake, spiritual roots, and his own spiritual charm, Spirit Platform Mountain was not far from the grade of a Grotto-heaven Blessed Land.