Breakthrough, Exposed

Chen Mo retracted the Kunpeng Wings and silently opened his status panel.

Name: Chen Mo

Race: Human

Cultivation: One-Star Dou Master

Host Level: lv1 (29/100)

Bound Goddess: Die, Favorability (29). Once favorability reaches 100, you may become cultivation partners.

Cultivation Art: Supreme Primordial Chaos Art

Skill: Kunpeng Wings (Upgradeable)

Bloodline: Ordinary

Favorability Coins: 6

Chen Mo's heart stirred. His favorability was already at 29, and only a day had passed. At this rate, it would only take a few days before he could win the beauty's heart.

Chen Mo glanced at his inventory again.

He still had two Incense Stick's Worth of Enlightenment Time.

Since they could not light a fire during the day, Chen Mo and Die ate sashimi in the morning before he began cultivating.

Chen Mo closed his eyes and sat cross-legged, his consciousness sinking into that god-tier cultivation art.

Supreme Primordial Chaos Art.

It had evolved from a Sage contemplating chaos.

It could turn a person into a reflection of flowers in a mirror and the moon in water. The moon hung high in the sky, its reflection visible in the water, yet impossible to grasp.

Once this art was mastered, no one could restrain its practitioner. They could act as they pleased, and every thought and movement contained the principles of heaven and earth.

This cultivation art was divided into nine stages.

The first stage.

Chen Mo began cultivating according to the first-stage mantra.

At his lower abdomen, his vortex spun rapidly. The Dou Qi between heaven and earth surged madly into Chen Mo's body along with the vortex's rotation, passing through his meridians before merging into the vortex.

After more than a dozen circulation cycles, afternoon arrived. Chen Mo suddenly opened his eyes.

"Are you done cultivating?" Die, who had been boredly drawing circles on the ground with a twig, immediately sprang to her feet when she finally saw him move, her voice full of excitement.

"Not yet," Chen Mo replied.

"Oh." Die pouted and sat back down in disappointment.

He had hit a snag.

If Chen Mo's vortex were compared to a water vat, then every bit of Dou Qi he absorbed was like a ladleful of water.

His cultivation speed was simply too fast.

Chen Mo could not help marveling at the power of the Supreme Primordial Chaos Art.

Only a few hours had passed.

But cultivating too quickly naturally led to a snag.

Based on the thousands of fantasy novels Chen Mo had read.

He roughly understood that he had encountered a bottleneck.

Chen Mo could not help drawing in a breath. How long had it been since he broke through to One-Star Dou Master? Was he about to break through again?

According to the experience he had gained from novels, breaking through a bottleneck depended first on personal talent and second on background and resources.

Those two were easy enough to understand.

Beyond that, there was one more possibility: enlightenment.

Enlightenment was something that could only be encountered by chance and could not be sought. It depended entirely on one's opportunity and fortune.

But that was for ordinary people.

Chen Mo had cheats.

Chen Mo quickly used one Incense Stick's Worth of Enlightenment Time.

In an instant, a wondrous feeling descended from above.

His mind became clearer than ever before, and countless flashes of inspiration flickered wildly through his thoughts.

It was like an unclogged canal, merely waiting for the water to flow through.

He did not need to cultivate deliberately. The Supreme Primordial Chaos Art had already begun circulating within his body, while the slowly drifting Dou Qi around him now poured into Chen Mo's body like a rushing stream.

He was only a One-Star Dou Master. His vortex was not large, and the Dou Qi within him could not be called abundant, yet it now felt like surging rivers, flowing without end and growing at a visible rate.

At the same time, between heaven and earth.

Incomparably dense energy from heaven and earth suddenly flooded into the canyon cave.

If a Dou Emperor expert had been present, they would certainly have noticed that even a Dou Ling breaking through could not draw in such dense energy from heaven and earth.

This was dangerous.

Chen Mo's expression darkened slightly.

He had never imagined that the Supreme Primordial Chaos Art would be so powerful. Merely its first stage had made his body seem like a black hole, endlessly devouring the energy around him.

Such a huge disturbance would definitely attract the attention of those searching for Die.

It seemed he had to speed things up.

Chen Mo pushed the first stage of the Supreme Primordial Chaos Art to its limit.

Time trickled by.

Far away.

A Middle-Aged Man searching for the Snake-Woman in the portrait suddenly turned his gaze toward a canyon not far from him.

There, vast waves of energy from heaven and earth were pouring into the canyon.

The Middle-Aged Man raised a brow, put away the portrait, and sprinted wildly toward the canyon.

At the same time, another squad had also noticed this strange phenomenon.

"Almost there, almost there, it's coming!"

Although Chen Mo had already pushed the Supreme Primordial Chaos Art to its limit, he still instinctively urged it with all his strength under these circumstances.

A moment later.

Chen Mo seemed to hear a faint sound within his body, as though something had been pierced.

The Dou Qi that had been constrained instantly began surging anew like floodwaters bursting through a dam. Yet the amount of Dou Qi his vortex could contain had grown a full circle larger than before.

Two-Star Dou Master—just like that, he had suddenly broken through.

The bottleneck that normal cultivators would have faced had instantly become nothing more than decoration after one bout of enlightenment.

"W-What are you doing?"

Chen Mo suddenly scooped her up around the waist. Before her mind could react, her head had already fallen into his embrace. With his hands tightly supporting her hips and beneath her arms, Die panicked, and her heartbeat quickened uncontrollably.

Die's Snake Tail was very long, so Chen Mo could only carry her in a princess carry.

Ding! Favorability +1. Obtained one Favorability Coin. Intimacy bonus triggered. Obtained Yellow-Rank Intermediate Skill—Mystic Thunder Palm.

"???"

Chen Mo had no time to wonder about it. He only said to Die, "We need to leave. This place has been exposed."

With that, he accelerated out of the canyon cave.

"Kid, put down that Snake-Woman!" A rough voice rang out from not far outside the canyon.

Die's expression changed. They were after her again.

Boom!

A pair of golden wings about half a meter long shot out from Chen Mo's back.

Without hesitation, Chen Mo held Die and soared into the sky. Although he flew somewhat unsteadily, he could not care about that now.

According to the system's prompt, that man was a Da Dou Shi. Chen Mo was no match for him.

"A Dou King? Please spare my life, Senior! I failed to recognize your greatness!"

The moment the Middle-Aged Man saw Chen Mo spread those golden wings, he was so frightened that he dropped to his knees and desperately begged for mercy.

When no response came for a long while, the Middle-Aged Man looked up and saw that Chen Mo and Die had long since vanished.

The Middle-Aged Man froze, then quickly realized that Chen Mo was no Dou King at all, but possessed a rare flying skill.

"Fuck, you dare fool me!" Filled with rage, the Middle-Aged Man gave chase.

Amid the yellow sands.

A Mercenary squad was heading toward the canyon when a piercing sound suddenly rang out overhead. One Mercenary cried out, "B-Boss, someone's in the sky."

"It's the Snake-Woman from the portrait," another Mercenary said, recognizing the person they had been searching for.

"It really is that Snake-Woman!" The Mercenary Captain was a Sinister Man around thirty years old, with the cultivation of a Four-Star Dou Master.

"Dou Qi wings! Boss, what do we do? That person seems to be a Dou King."

"No, those aren't Dou Qi wings. Fire the arrows!"