Old Long

Long Xuan's imagination continued to run wild...

Before long, he looked out the window again and magnified the distance. Once the landscape outside was enlarged, he had, in a roundabout way, gained Thousand-Mile Sight.

His Gu Recipe actually contained a great many eagle eyes, so even without using this ability, his normal vision could already see extremely, extremely far. It could already be considered a lesser Thousand-Mile Sight.

Once Thousand-Mile Sight combined with magnifying vision, seeing ten thousand miles away would be nothing strange. However, to see that far, his Eye Gu would probably need to increase its growth further, or undergo a metamorphosis.

A metamorphosis was equivalent to a Gu cultivator advancing in rank.

As Gu cultivators continuously advanced, their Gu insects naturally had to keep pace with them and advance as well, lest they be eliminated.

However, Gu insect advancement and Gu cultivator advancement were entirely different systems, so one was called advancement while the other was called metamorphosis.

Gu insect metamorphosis relied entirely on eating. Every Gu insect had different conditions for completing a metamorphosis. Gu insects did not know what they needed to eat in order to metamorphose; Gu cultivators had to research and explore it for them.

Moreover, there was far more than one thing that could satisfy a Gu insect's metamorphosis conditions. Every Gu insect had countless metamorphosis paths. Some paths were strong, while others were weak. Choosing which path to take was also something a Gu cultivator had to ponder carefully.

In short, Gu insect metamorphosis depended on eating. They might eat other Gu insects, solid materials, or even artificial items such as pills.

If they ate the wrong thing, then even after ten thousand years, they could forget about completing a metamorphosis. But if they ate the right thing, they could complete it swiftly, even metamorphosing several times in succession within a short period. Their advancement speed was far faster than that of Gu cultivators.

It was precisely because of this trait that even Gu cultivators with very high cultivation could raise Gu insects matching their own realm in an extremely short time.

If a Gu cultivator's realms were the Spirit Gathering Stage, Marrow Cleansing Stage, Spiritual Sea Stage, Spirit Severing Stage...

Then Gu insect metamorphoses were Mortal Gu, Spirit Gu, Unusual Gu, Variant Gu...

They corresponded one-to-one with Gu cultivator realms.

At present, Long Xuan had yet to find a way for the Eye of Heavenly Secrets to metamorphose. But he was still far from the Marrow Cleansing Stage, so there was no need to rush such matters at all.

He absolutely could not think of using Spirit Gathering Stage cultivation to directly raise a Variant Gu. It could be done, but once too great a disparity appeared between master and servant, the consequences were obvious without needing to think about them. Either the servant would turn against the master, or the Gu insect would backlash against him.

Thus, Long Xuan had not begun researching the Eye of Heavenly Secrets' metamorphosis path. His foremost task right now was to continue developing the Eye of Heavenly Secrets' abilities.

At first, Long Xuan had not thought much of farsight. What was so great about seeing far away? It could not harm an enemy. But when he looked down at the ground, he completely lost his composure.

Although he did not yet possess true x-ray vision, he suddenly discovered that Thousand-Mile Sight could actually work together with his cheat ability.

His cheat ability could ignore obstructions. For example, a Spirit Insect wrapped within a fossil.

His eyes clearly could not see the Spirit Insect, his vision completely blocked by the thick stone shell, yet he could still clearly see the progress deep within the fossil.

It was precisely because his cheat ability had this trait that, enhanced by Thousand-Mile Sight, he could actually see progress indicators far beneath the ground.

Although he had no idea what those things with progress indicators actually were, this discovery immediately made his breathing quicken. He could no longer sit still.

What did this ability mean?

It meant he could find underground Spirit Stone Veins, metal veins, Fossil Ore Veins... and perhaps even ancient tombs.

This was simply immeasurable wealth, immeasurable opportunities.

"I'm rich! Completely rich!"

Long Xuan paced rapidly back and forth around the room in excitement, unable to stop himself from nearly bursting into laughter.

"Calm down, calm down. Do not rejoice too wildly or grieve too deeply."

Long Xuan slowly calmed his excited emotions and continued developing his Eye Gu's abilities.

The abilities he had thought of so far all leaned toward support. He wanted offensive abilities, preferably forbidden moves.

Long Xuan's mind spun for a moment, and he soon thought again: since the Eye Gu's ability was to see the microscopic world, even molecules and atoms...

Could he create things by using soul power to alter the arrangement of atoms and molecules?

Could he use soul power to strip away or add electrons outside an atom's nucleus, alter the number of protons within the nucleus, and transform one substance into another?

Long Xuan drew a sharp breath, utterly stunned. Clearly, even he had been frightened by his own bold idea.

If his soul power were strong enough—strong enough to manipulate the microscopic world—could he become a creator? His imagination was about to explode.

He did not know. He did not know whether his idea was feasible.

He only felt that the idea was far too terrifying, terrifying enough to make one's hair stand on end.

This was not merely the power to create all things. If he used this power on an enemy, directly destroying the enemy's DNA, or simply turning the entire person into something else, Long Xuan felt chills crawl down his spine just thinking about it.

Unfortunately, his soul power was insufficient. He simply could not conduct experiments in manipulating the microscopic world.

Even if this wild idea of his truly worked, there was no way he could accomplish it in the short term.

To truly develop such power, his soul power would probably need to be unimaginably terrifying. As far as he knew, even becoming a Gu King might not grant such powerful soul power.

Furthermore, even if this wild idea truly became reality, he would probably only be able to create ordinary things.

Spirit herbs, spirit pills, Spirit Stone... most treasures contained spiritual power. The heavenly materials and earthly treasures of this world contained far more immaterial things than spiritual power alone. How could he possibly create them merely by manipulating the microscopic world?

So even if he truly developed this ability, he would probably still need to personally search for most cultivation resources. He absolutely could not create them simply by manipulating the microscopic world.

Living things were even less possible. Spirit Insect, Gu insects, and spirit beasts were not things he could conjure. Souls, spiritual power, lifespan—which of these could be created by manipulating atoms?

Thinking of so many limitations, he gradually calmed down. This move might perhaps grant him the ability to turn stone into gold, but becoming a creator was something he should not even dream of.

Since he could not research this ability in the short term, Long Xuan stopped thinking about it.

As a new species of Gu appearing in this world for the first time, its inventor had the right to name it.

After pondering for a moment, Long Xuan named it the Eye of Heavenly Secrets. He thought the name was not bad.

After naming the Eye Gu, his eyes shifted. Taking advantage of the Eye of Heavenly Secrets' ability to see a thousand miles away, he looked toward Old Long's residence...

Inside a crude thatched hut, a burly old man sat cross-legged on a straw mat. Before him floated an alchemy furnace, suspended in midair through his soul power.

A cluster of purple flames burned beneath the furnace, radiating scorching heat.

He controlled the purple flames beneath the alchemy furnace, burning them here and there. The heat alternated between strong and weak, and before long, all the materials in the furnace had burned into ash.

"Damn it! I failed again!"

"Just three materials! Just those three materials! I'm only one step from the gate, so why can't I cross it?"

"It's already been ten years! These three materials have ground me down for ten years. Damn it!"

"The Hundred Flower Pill is the spirit pill with the strongest medicinal effect for increasing Spirit Gathering Stage cultivation, without equal! As long as I complete this incomplete Hundred Flower Pill formula, the Long Family's strength will rise another step. But why can't I take this one final step?"

"Was this failure caused by the wrong materials, or by the success rate?" The old man roared in a towering rage, his emotions violently agitated.

On a table not far from him lay an ancient pill formula, exuding an antique aura and clearly aged by many years.

However, this ancient formula was incomplete, missing one corner. By sheer coincidence, the missing portion contained the three most important ingredients—the most valuable primary materials, none of which could be absent.

And by another sheer coincidence, Long Xuan, from an immense distance away, saw the entire formula clearly. It was truly careless. How could a pill formula be left lying around so casually?

Yet the old man knew nothing of this. His Alchemy and pill formula had been secretly learned by another, yet he remained unaware, still roaring away.

Long Xuan peered over with shifty eyes while muttering, "No wonder this Old Long never leaves that shabby thatched hut. So he's been in seclusion, repairing an incomplete formula all this time."

Though that incomplete formula lacked only three materials, Long Xuan had often ground away at Gu formulas himself and knew the struggle well. For ordinary people, those three materials might take an entire lifetime to complete.

The number three might be small, but there were simply too many types of spirit herbs in this world to count. Even randomly combining three at a time produced countless possible combinations.

To complete an incomplete formula, others had to continuously refine pills. Not only was it time-consuming and laborious, they might not even be able to determine whether the pill refinement had failed because the materials were wrong or because their handling had been improper.

After all, pill refinement had an extremely high failure rate in any world.

The greatest difficulty was that testing a pill formula required capital. Every failed experiment meant wasting a furnace's worth of materials.

One or two furnaces might be manageable, but if failures continued without end, even a household with mountains of gold and silver would eventually be drained dry.

Completing an incomplete formula was a bottomless pit. Even emptying one's entire fortune might not produce any result.

And this incomplete formula happened to lack the first three, most expensive primary materials. He needed to use the most precious materials for repeated experiments, and the exorbitant cost invisibly made completing the formula even harder.

Yet what others could not do, Long Xuan could, could he not?

He had already figured out more than three thousand materials for the Eye of Heavenly Secrets. Could he still be stumped by these mere three ingredients?

He did not need to spend time, effort, and resources conducting experiments to complete the formula. It even cost him nothing, so he felt no pressure whatsoever using all kinds of expensive materials.

These three materials were a piece of cake to him. What was more, since the pill formula was called the Hundred Flower Pill, its ingredients were certainly related to flowers. Once the spirit herb grade was further restricted, the scope had already been greatly narrowed.