At first, Qing Danzi pinned his hopes on alchemy. He wanted to refine a pill that could improve his aptitude.
In the Divine Treasure Space, pills like that were plentiful. But this world had never seen one. After all, every world had different plants and materials. Something commonplace in one world could be precious beyond measure in another.
Qing Danzi tried countless materials. He even secretly committed the horrifying act of refining pills from human beings. Every attempt failed.
Just when the blow had left him feeling that his path of cultivation had come to an end, he discovered by chance that his Qi-Devouring Firebirds had grown stronger.
A normal Qi-Devouring Firebird lived about ten years. Because he used their spiritual flames so heavily, the ones he kept tended to die sooner. Some lasted five years; others died after only three.
He did treasure his Qi-Devouring Firebirds and generally used them in rotation. He simply refined pills too often for that to be enough.
He needed vast amounts of materials for his experiments, and materials did not appear out of thin air. So he had to refine pills to trade for them. Before long, he had become the hardest-working alchemist in the world, refining pills almost every day.
For the Qi-Devouring Firebirds, it was like being thrown into a gu-breeding jar. The less gifted ones all died. The survivors endured wave after wave of spiritual energy washing over them until special individuals emerged. They used spiritual energy more efficiently and lived longer, too.
Qing Danzi belatedly realized that he had been using Qi-Devouring Firebird number 202 for twenty years!
He realized the answer had been right under his nose. He had not tested every material after all. At the very least, he had never used a Qi-Devouring Firebird as an