In a quiet chamber of the Tide Listening Pavilion on Jade Conch Island, Han Li sat cross-legged, his brow tightly furrowed. A strand of dark silver fiend qi wound around his fingertips like a spirit snake, radiating pure energy edged with a biting chill. Within his body, the cracks in the phantom of his shattered golden core were closing imperceptibly under the nourishment of the fiend qi. His cultivation had stabilized at the peak of the foundation establishment early stage, but returning to the golden core realm, let alone advancing beyond it, still felt like a dark road strewn with obstacles.
Though powerful, the Profound Fiend Asura Art tempered his body with fiend qi and left him steeped in savage malice, harboring considerable dangers. Worse, he now found himself in the unfamiliar waters of the Chaotic Star Sea. From the scraps of information he had pieced together, the region's dominant power, the Star Palace, seemed deeply hostile to demonic, ghostly, and other sinister cultivation arts, even openly suppressing them. If his pure Profound Yin Fiend Qi were discovered, he might become the target of every arrow.
"My cultivation is hard to restore, and my circumstances are worrying..." Han Li sighed softly and took out a jade slip he had just purchased at the market, the Star Sea Records. He immersed his spiritual sense in it, hoping to learn more about this region's cultivation systems and taboos. Besides descriptions of the various powers, local sights, and strange phenomena, the jade slip occasionally mentioned the Star Palace's reverence for the "radiant righteous path." Against evil cultivators who cultivated through slaughter or the devouring of living beings, it often struck with the force of thunder, wiping them out.
As he browsed, a miscellaneous note about "heavenly treasures" at the end of the jade