Mutated Locust

At this moment, traces of biting by foreign pests had already appeared on quite a few rice stalks in the spirit field.

I haven't come in a few days, and these foreign pests are already showing signs of a slight outbreak. This is a good chance to test my Lightning Arts.

Along with the enhancement of his spiritual awareness, Dong Lin was already able to initially utilize the projection of spiritual awareness outward to scout the surroundings.

Originally, back in the early Qi Refining stage, he could only sense roughly within five meters around his body, and it was not of much use.

Yet upon advancing to the mid Qi Refining stage, his spiritual awareness suddenly improved to a range of fifty meters.

This provided tremendous help for Dong Lin in scouting out the foreign pests in the spirit field.

This breakthrough in cultivation realm clearly just expanded my dantian's capacity by a fold, but I never expected my divine sense to increase quite a bit along with it.

I've heard that when the divine sense realm steps into the Spirit Awakening Late Stage, the divine sense can lock onto enemies from several hundred meters away.

Super-long-range killing? To truly achieve killing a man from a hundred paces and leaving no trace for a thousand miles!

Just a moment later, Dong Lin discovered a foreign pest hiding amongst the crops.

It was a mutated locust, its entire body covered in a layer of glaze-like cyan-gold shell, its mouthparts glinting with a trace of icy light under the refraction of the sunlight.

Dong Lin cautiously and slowly approached, spiritual power circulating within his body. "Lightning Strike!"

Dong Lin locked on with his divine sense, and thunder plasma crackled at his fingertips the instant the thought crossed his mind.

In an instant, the high temperature generated by the lightning melted an opening through the shell of the mutated locust.

If one were to look inward through this locust's carapace at this moment, they would discover that the interior of this locust had already completely carbonized, dead beyond all doubt.

One had to know that these mutated locusts were proper Low-Tier Spirit Insects, possessing the destructive power that Qi Refining stage cultivators should have.

The defense of their carapace was comparable to ordinary mortal metal shields, impervious to swords and unharmed by water and fire.

These minuscule foreign pests, especially those like locusts possessing wings, all had formidable speed.

Ordinary Qi Refining stage cultivators could generally only drive away these foreign pests located in the fields, and were unable to annihilate them.

The defense and speed of these foreign pests made it very difficult for cultivators' spells to hit them.

Even if they happened to graze a tiny portion of the leftover might of a spell, it was still hard to breach the defense of the foreign pests.

Generally, dealing with these small foreign pests involved either laying out a large-scale control and trapping spell array,

or using control-type spells to drastically slow down the speed of these foreign pests.

Yet Qi Refining stage cultivators rarely specialized in cultivating a binding and control-type spell.

They usually began by cultivating basic Five Elements spells that matched their own spiritual roots.

Consequently, these foreign pests in the fields were hard to eliminate and began to gradually multiply within the spirit field.

However, this never troubled Dong Lin.

Lightning-attribute spells, with their cheat-like speed and might, claimed the crown among all kinds of spells.

This was also why disciples who practiced lightning-attribute spells were generally top-tier prodigies.

Ordinary cultivators were completely unable to step across the threshold of lightning arts cultivation.

The threshold of this gateway placed extremely high demands on talent.

In the world of cultivation, a person's talent often determined their upper limit, determining how far they could ultimately walk when relying solely on step-by-step cultivation without heavenly treasures or heaven-defying opportunities.

Merely a preliminary trial of his skills allowed Dong Lin to witness where the might of the Lightning Arts lay.

Dong Lin couldn't help clicking his tongue in amazement. The might of this spell turns out to be so immense?

He picked up the carapace of the foreign pest that had a small hole melted into it, and bent it a few times.

With such a tough carapace, was it instantly pierced by just a bolt of lightning casually cast by me?

Dong Lin gained a further understanding of the might of his own spells.

The spirit rice had only just begun to grow, so the foreign pests it attracted were not many, which was also related to the environment within the sect.

Among the spirit farmers planting spirit fields within the sect, there was no lack of bigwigs at the Foundation Establishment realm or even higher realms.

They would regularly clear out the foreign pests within the spirit field, and even within a certain surrounding range.

As for dealing with these low-tier foreign pests, given their strength, it was naturally as easy as taking candy from a baby.

Normally, it was extremely difficult for these pests to mutate and spiritualize into spirit insects.

It was precisely because the spiritual energy within the Heavenly Sect Mountains was rich that it birthed a large batch of mutated spirit beasts and spirit insects.

With the sect bigwigs' regular pest removal, the ecology within the sect's spirit fields was considered passable.

Basically, large-scale insect plagues would not appear, and such small-scale groups of several were left for the disciples to resolve themselves.

This both tempered the disciples and conserved the sect's strength, serving two purposes at once.

Dong Lin carefully patrolled the spirit field once and discovered three different foreign pests.

With the aid of the Lightning Arts, he easily eliminated the three pests.

Dong Lin collected the carapaces from these foreign pests; these carapaces were incomparably tough and at a glance were quite valuable materials.

Dong Lin intended to find time to ask at the market square how much these foreign pest carapaces were worth.

Having tended to the spirit field, Dong Lin returned to the spirit chamber.

It is time to properly study this Dao Xuan Heart Sutra.

Ever since Chief Xuan had handed this inner sect heart sutra to him, various matters had piled up.

Dong Lin had not yet spared the time to cultivate this core secret art of the Heavenly Sect.

The Dao Xuan Heart Sutra was the foundational sect technique created and passed down by the founding master of the Profound Dao Celestial Sect.

This technique specialized in cultivating the divine sense, and upon entering the threshold of this technique, one could vastly strengthen the power of the divine sense.

In the course of an immortal cultivator's practice, the most important thing was the divine sense.

Only by possessing a sufficiently powerful divine sense perception could one effortlessly guide spiritual energy into the body, scour the meridians, and nourish the dantian.

Thus advancing one's cultivation by leaps and bounds and attaining the Great Dao.

It could be said that the strength or weakness of divine sense power often determined the strength or weakness of a Qi Refining practitioner's actual combat capability.

Most of those battle geniuses capable of fighting opponents of a higher realm

relied precisely on their solid foundations and indispensable, extraordinary, and powerful divine sense power,

enabling them to seize the initiative in battle and catch their opponent's flaws, thereby securing overall victory in one fell swoop.

This Dao Xuan Heart Sutra was profound of the profound, completely different from ordinary Qi Refining manuals.

Heart and Dao merge, profound and connecting the azure underworld.

Myriad techniques return to the heart, the heart has no external realms.

Qi sinks to the dantian, spirit condenses in the violet court.

No birth no destruction, immaculate and undefiled.

This heart sutra was divided into three realms.

Corresponding to the initial mastery, great mastery, and perfection of the technique.

They were respectively Heart Realm, Spirit Realm, and Immaculate.

Cultivating it to the very end was comparable to the Innate Immaculate Saint Body, impervious to all techniques and untouched by all thoughts.

Yet merely the requirement to enter the threshold was extremely difficult.

It required the practitioner to take the heart as the pivot, subdue the restless mind and wild thoughts, and have divine intent harmonize with the Dao of heaven and earth.

Upon entering the threshold, one would possess the subtle and indescribable ability of faintly sensing heavenly secrets.

Once cultivated to great mastery, one would open up the heart-spirit Violet Mansion.

This was equivalent to opening up the Sea of Consciousness in advance.

The Sea of Consciousness was generally standard equipment for Golden Core cultivators.

Usually, after cultivators formed their own Creation Golden Core, they would then smoothly open up the Sea of Consciousness.

From then on, the divine sense capacity would embrace all rivers, and the perception range of divine intent would cover dozens of miles.

Discerning all things, a Golden Core True Person could alter the heavens with a single thought, terrifying and awe-inspiring.

Yet this Dao Xuan Heart Sutra was capable of giving the sect's prodigies a chance to open up the Sea of Consciousness in advance.

However, the difficulty involved was well-known.

For anyone to successfully cross realms and open up the Sea of Consciousness while in the Foundation Establishment Late Stage was as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns, and they were invariably heaven-defying talents possessing Nascent Soul potential.