At that moment, Long Xuan finally understood that Gu refinement did not have to rigidly follow convention. The materials did not have to be insects either; he could add materials ordinary people would never dare imagine.
This greatly raised the ceiling of the Gu path.
Inspired by ox eyes, Long Xuan quickly thought of eagle eyes as well. Eagle eyes could also magnify objects and were even sharper, able to see prey ten kilometers away as though it were right nearby.
If he added eagle eyes to the Gu Recipe, perhaps it would grant him Thousand-Mile Sight.
When he wrote down the words "eagle eyes," the progress on the Gu Recipe changed again instead of disappearing. This proved that he had succeeded once more...
What followed was a long period of grinding away at Gu Recipes. Every day, aside from hiding at home and working on Gu Recipes, Long Xuan went to Far Western Market to gather the materials listed on them, picking up bargains along the way and amassing wealth like mad.
He had already realized that the cost of the second Gu Insect would likely be astronomical.
This was one drawback of his cheat ability.
After all, many Gu Recipes used the same materials.
So how could the cheat ability tell which Gu Recipe the incomplete recipe written by Long Xuan belonged to?
Therefore, the cheat ability judged based on the Gu Recipe requiring the greatest number of materials.
The number of materials recorded in each Gu Recipe varied. Some required only a few, perhaps nine materials to form a Gu, while others required thousands or even tens of thousands.
In this world, a Gu Insect's quality was determined by the quality of its Spirit Insects. How powerful an ability a Gu Insect could carry depended entirely on the number of Spirit Insects.
The strength of a Gu Insect depended on quality; among those of the same quality, it depended on the number of materials.
But this was not absolute. A Gu Insect with more materials did not necessarily mean it was stronger than one with fewer materials, and such cases were quite common.
This was because the Heavenly Dao's standards for judging strength differed from humanity's. For instance, the Illumination Technique of the Glow Gu seemed weak to the Heavenly Dao, but after someone developed it further, was it still weak?
Moreover, Gu Insects could be practical or impractical, combat-oriented or non-combat-oriented.
There were plenty of examples of Gu Insects refined from over ten thousand materials that carried useless support abilities and possessed no combat power at all.
In ancient times, Heaven and Earth Spiritual Power was abundant, and Spirit Insects covered the land. People could research Gu Recipes without counting the cost. The Gu Recipes of that era were each longer than the last, stretching beyond all bounds.
Legend had it that some Gu Recipes were an entire book, with materials numbering in the hundreds of millions. No Gu-refining vessel could possibly hold them all.
When refining such Gu, one could only use mountains, rivers, and basins as vessels, or even use heaven and earth themselves as the vessel.
When the Gu was completed, heaven and earth would suddenly change, strange phenomena would descend, and scenes of utter terror would unfold.
The Gu Insects created from such lengthy Gu Recipes all possessed the might to destroy heaven and earth; some could even carry the power of space and time.
So if the cheat ability judged by the greatest number of materials, then the number of materials in Long Xuan's created Gu Recipes could be anything. Even progress displays with seven digits after the decimal point were possible.
But humans generally shared one trait: greed.
Even knowing full well that a lengthy Gu Recipe would consume enormous amounts of time and resources, and that the Gu Insect refined might not even be stronger than one made with fewer materials,
Long Xuan still gritted his teeth and persisted in pursuit of perfection.
At this point, he did not dare imagine how many Spirit Stones this seemingly somewhat lengthy Gu Recipe would cost him.
Fortunately, the reputation of the Cockroach Gu he had developed had already begun to spread.
When Li Erniu dueled his mortal enemy, he used a fight-injuries-with-injuries style and successfully slew his foe.
At the same time, his enemy's final strike pierced straight through his heart, yet Li Erniu stubbornly refused to die.
This incident caused quite a sensation, and the Cockroach Gu became completely famous after that battle—so famous that it was blazing hot.
Overnight, the Cockroach Gu became widely known, thoroughly opening up its market. Every day, an endless stream of people came to trade for it.
If Long Xuan had not feared others discovering his secret of having a one-hundred-percent success rate in Gu refinement, he truly would have liked to sell them without limit every day.
By selling Cockroach Gu, occasionally picking up bargains at street stalls, and occasionally finding bargains at gambling-stone shops, he earned enough to fill bowls and overflow basins. It was enough to support the consumption of his second Gu Recipe.
Of course, he completed every transaction in disguise, covering his face and posing as a different identity each time.
Although the market had rules forbidding murder and robbery, and one would not be targeted so long as one did not carry valuable treasures, his naturally cautious nature still made him decide to play it safe.
Time flowed on, and before he knew it, two years had passed. He was still the same—at the Early Spirit-Gathering Stage. His cultivation had barely grown at all, and he had become completely numb to it.
Fortunately, he could live forever. If aptitude was lacking, time could make up for it.
Long Xuan believed that sooner or later, he would stand atop the world. He remained quite optimistic about his future.
Speaking of longevity, although his cultivation aptitude was astonishingly poor, he was a peerless genius when it came to cultivating life-nourishing techniques.
In just two short years, he broke through two levels in succession and cultivated the Scripture of Longevity to the twelfth level, gaining two hundred years of lifespan in one leap.
Thus, even after two years had passed, he still looked like a boy under eighteen, frighteningly young.
With his total lifespan increased, the time it took him to mature naturally had to be extended in the same proportion. This troubled him greatly.
As for researching the new Gu Recipe, since he had not spent his time deducing the Scripture of Longevity, after grinding at it for two years, he had finally completed it.
Although he had long been mentally prepared for the possibility that the Gu Recipe would require many materials, the appearance of a recipe containing over three thousand materials still gave him quite a fright.
Other Rogue Cultivators generally used only dozens of materials to refine Gu, with even the more extravagant ones using merely a few hundred. His thousands of materials were simply terrifying in number.
A Gu Recipe with thousands of materials contained many expensive High-grade Spirit Insects. The Gu-refining cost alone was astronomical.
A rough estimate put it at several million Spirit Stones. The price was outrageously high.
Over the years, he had frequently visited the market, using his cheat ability to dig up countless treasures and selling an unknown number of Cockroach Gu. Only by scraping and gathering from all directions had he finally collected enough Spirit Stones for a single set of materials.
But this round of Gu refinement had also basically emptied all his assets, sending him back to square one overnight.
Long Xuan's heart ached terribly.
After spending such an immense sum and such a long time, if the completed Gu did not carry a good Illusion Technique, his mentality would truly collapse.
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