"Senior Azure Dragon, could you come down for a moment?"
Ye Fei called up toward the clouds overhead.
"What is it?"
As soon as the words fell, Azure Dragon appeared before Ye Fei.
"Senior, does each Spiritual Root Cleansing take longer and cause more pain than the last?"
Ye Fei voiced the question on his mind.
"Indeed."
"Are you already finding it hard to endure?"
Azure Dragon asked with a smile.
"Yes. I'm afraid I won't be able to withstand the pain of the next Spiritual Root Cleansing."
Ye Fei flushed and answered honestly.
He had only undergone four cleansings, yet he already couldn't endure any more. It was rather embarrassing.
"Haha!"
"That's only natural. Without tremendous perseverance, no one can complete eighty-one spiritual root cleansings."
"The only way to lessen the pain is through Body Tempering."
"Body Tempering has nine realms. Each realm will help you successfully complete nine spiritual root cleansings."
"Here are the cultivation formulas and methods for the nine body refinement realms."
Azure Dragon laughed heartily. He had anticipated this long ago.
With that, he touched a finger of his right hand to Ye Fei's brow, and the cultivation formulas for the nine body refinement realms appeared in Ye Fei's mind.
"Are the nine body refinement realms easy to cultivate?"
Rather than immediately examining the formulas, Ye Fei asked curiously.
"They are extremely difficult. You need vast quantities of heavenly treasures and pills, and even those cannot guarantee success."
"But to complete eighty-one spiritual root cleansings, you must complete all nine body refinement realms."
"So you must walk the path of Body Tempering whether you wish to or not. Otherwise, with your aptitude, even Foundation Establishment will likely be beyond your reach."
Azure Dragon glanced at Ye Fei and shook his head as he explained.
"Senior, do you know which heavenly treasures and pills I need?"
Ye Fei's heart sank at the explanation, but he still asked.
If even Foundation Establishment was beyond his reach, how could he have the face to return and see Ye Canglong?
So, as long as a sliver of hope remained, Ye Fei would do everything he could to seize it.
"All I know is the Body Refinement Pharmacopoeia, something passed down through the inherited memories of our Azure Dragon Clan."
"Too much time has passed. I don't know what the things recorded in it are called now, or whether any have ceased to exist."
"I'll pass all of it on to you now. Whether you can put it to use will depend on your fortune."
As he spoke, Azure Dragon once again touched a finger of his right hand to Ye Fei's brow.
A wealth of information then appeared in Ye Fei's mind.
After passing both things on to Ye Fei, Azure Dragon vanished in a flash and returned above the clouds.
"The nine body refinement realms."
"The Body Refinement Pharmacopoeia."
Ye Fei murmured the words as the information Azure Dragon had passed on flashed through his mind.
The nine body refinement realms were divided into the upper four realms and the lower five realms.
The upper four were Skin Refinement, Flesh Refinement, Bone Refinement, and Sinew Refinement.
The lower five were Meridian Opening, Golden Marrow, Body Forging, Golden Body, and Dao Body.
Each Body Tempering realm corresponded to a cultivation realm.
They ranged from Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, and Nascent Soul in the Human Realm to Spirit Transformation, Void Spirit, Integration, Mahayana, and Tribulation Transcendence in the Spirit Realm.
"This isn't just Body Tempering. It's clearly cultivating two systems at once."
After reading through everything, Ye Fei couldn't help smiling bitterly.
No wonder Azure Dragon had said that only one such person could emerge in an entire world.
As far as Ye Fei was concerned, even one was too many.
This was far more than difficult-it was simply impossible.
With his current knowledge, he couldn't recognize even a single medicinal ingredient recorded in the Body Refinement Pharmacopoeia.
"Since I can't manage it now, I'll have to set it aside and raise my cultivation a little first."
After weighing the pros and cons, Ye Fei cast aside his tangled thoughts, took out two Spirit Stones, and began cultivating.
Following his fourth spiritual root cleansing, Ye Fei's cultivation speed had clearly increased again.
At first, he could only consume four Spirit Stones a day. Now, he could consume eight.
His cultivation speed had doubled.
Ye Fei reckoned that even if this speed couldn't match that of a cultivator with four spiritual roots, it wasn't far behind.
He had no shortage of cultivation resources at present, nor was there a bottleneck holding him back.
Thus, Ye Fei did not leave the Azure Dragon Sword for the next two months.
He remained inside until his cultivation reached the middle stage of the Qi Refining Sixth Layer. Only when he encountered another bottleneck did he stop.
Over those two months, he consumed a total of four hundred and fifty Spirit Stones, reducing his supply by a third in one stroke.
Of course, he hadn't spent those entire two months cultivating.
Between cultivation sessions, he still tended the Herb Garden.
Over nearly three months, his Herb Garden yielded another three harvests.
By now, the medicinal ingredients inside the Azure Dragon Sword had piled up like a small mountain, and he had accumulated quite a few seeds as well.
Aside from that, Ye Fei had also barely managed to master the third sword of the Nine Leaning Luo Swords-Sweeping the Four Directions.
Though powerful, this third sword consumed an enormous amount of true qi.
With his reserves at the middle stage of the Qi Refining Sixth Layer, a single strike would consume sixty percent.
Clearly, he could only keep it as a trump card to save his life.
After ending his cultivation, Ye Fei took out the Black Disc magic treasure.
Once he had claimed it with a drop of blood and refined it, he left the Azure Dragon Sword with a thought.
By now, Demon Beasts had long since devoured Liu Yihong's corpse, leaving not even a bone behind.
Looking at the empty boulder, Ye Fei couldn't help sighing.
He couldn't be blamed for being ruthless. Had he not possessed the Azure Dragon Sword back then, his fate would have differed little from Liu Yihong's.
After a moment of reflection, Ye Fei summoned the Black Disc and sprang onto it with a push of his toes.
After a few attempts, he slowly rose into the air and flew southwest.
"This really does feel good."
Watching the scenery race past beneath him, Ye Fei felt rather pleased with himself.
This was his first time flying on a magic artifact, and it felt completely different from riding someone else's flying sword.
Fortunately, the flying disc consumed far less true qi than a flying sword. Otherwise, Ye Fei's reserves wouldn't have carried him very far at all.
Even so, Ye Fei stopped after flying just over two hundred li.
"Those two hundred li used up sixty percent of my true qi."
After landing, Ye Fei gave a bitter smile and put away the disc.
This was also why he had never refined Liu Yishan's flying sword.
With the amount of true qi he had possessed then, he probably wouldn't have been able to keep going after flying a few dozen li.
Without a flying magic treasure to aid him, Ye Fei's pace slowed considerably.
It took him two days and some asking around before he finally reached Qingyuan Town.
Qingyuan Town stood where Green Pine Mountain met the Divine Feather Plains.
Though only a town, it was bustling and spanned over two li, making it somewhat larger than an ordinary small town.
The people in town were all cultivators. Mortals were rarely seen.
Because of its unusual location, the low-level cultivators in the surrounding area came here to trade for things they needed.
That spared them the trouble of traveling to large cities.
After all, few cultivators below Foundation Establishment could sustain flight on a magic artifact for long.
A round trip to a major cultivation city took two or three months, wasting a great deal of time.
Moreover, it was easy to encounter danger along the way, making the gains hardly worth the losses.
Thus, Qingyuan Town had become the only cultivator market within several hundred li.
It was different from a bustling mortal marketplace.
Although many cultivators ran stalls on either side of the streets, they all sat cross-legged with their eyes closed in meditation. None called out to advertise their wares.
Apart from these individual stalls, there were also one or two shops every zhang or so, selling all manner of cultivation necessities.
There were even merchant associations that had opened branches here.
After spending a quarter of an hour walking through all of Qingyuan Town, Ye Fei stopped in front of a shop.
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