[Sixth Ring: External Avatar.]
After Yin Ming finished transforming Gourd Continent, he entered the Scavenger Gourd.
He awakened a sliver of the dormant split-soul consciousness within the Shapeshifting Wood, synchronizing it with his main body's consciousness. His body immediately transformed into a tree.
This was not his first time controlling an External Avatar, so he felt not the slightest discomfort. Fifty dark brown roots came alive and plunged into a World Origin Crystal beside him, drawing out its energy.
"Crack! Crack-crack!!"
A millstone-sized World Origin Crystal split with cracks, and surging energy flowed through the roots into the Shapeshifting Wood.
A World Origin Crystal contained the most refined and essential extraordinary energy of a plane. It could be said that only planes with World Origin Crystals possessed vitality. Once a plane could no longer produce World Origin Crystals, it would become a plane carcass and be repurposed as waste by the Abyss.
By absorbing World Origin Crystals, one could grow to the Third Ring without cultivating any cultivation technique.
Yet no faction would use such precious resources to raise trash, unless it could graze like a cow and produce milk, creating even greater value.
"Rumble!!"
Yin Ming's qi and blood circulated within him, producing rolling thunderous roars. He used the Eight-Nine Mystical Art's True Blood to form a mysterious radiance.
A humanoid phantom emerged from the Shapeshifting Wood's Tree Heart. It was the imprint left behind when the avatar had been refined. The auras of the main body and avatar linked as one, allowing the Magic Plant, which had already grown to its limit, to fuse all the World Origin Crystal energy it had absorbed into its tree body.
In an instant, every leaf began to fall and all the bark peeled away. An unceasing vitality was gestating