"Now that I've opened my [Bitter Sea], I might as well ride this momentum and cultivate my [Life Spring] too."
She saw that the piece of divine source had shrunk to the size of a marble.
Luo Yue decided that, having started, she might as well see it through and advance through two stages at once.
Following the method deduced by the Yellow River Chart and Lo Shu, she began excavating a [Life Spring] within the [Bitter Sea] world of Cold River Reflecting the Moon.
The Sea of Bitterness Secret Realm, the starting point of cultivation, lay within the dantian and was divided into four minor realms: Bitter Sea-Life Spring-Divine Bridge-Other Shore.
At the Bitter Sea stage, cultivators opened a sea of life within their dantian and began gathering spiritual power. They could wield basic divine patterns to control magical treasures, but could not truly fly.
At the Life Spring stage, a life spring welled up within the Bitter Sea. So long as this wellspring of divine power never ran dry, their magic power would be inexhaustible. The divine power flowing from the life spring allowed them to ride divine light, soar through the heavens, and burrow through the earth. Even traveling a thousand miles through the air posed no difficulty.
At the Divine Bridge stage, cultivators built a divine bridge over their Bitter Sea and could begin employing Heaven and Earth Dao-Pattern Mysticism.
At the Other Shore stage, they crossed the divine bridge to reach the far end of the Sea of Bitterness. Their bodies underwent nine transformations, leaving the mortal sphere behind.
Luo Yue, however, had only just opened her Bitter Sea.
Only by opening the Wheel of Life and letting the divine spring flow freely could cultivators acquire a source of power, wielding all manner of Mystic Arts and Divine Abilities with unfathomable might. This was a crucial step in a cultivator's transformation.
Radiance flickered from the divine source, pouring out without end. It shed a gentle glow, its sacred light continuously sinking into Luo Yue's body.
By now, a layer of pure white radiance covered the entire courtyard. Spiritual energy hung thick in the air, hazy mist curled about, and Luo Yue sat quietly cross-legged on the bed.
As she refined it, the divine source, originally the size of a longan, began shrinking before her eyes.
This substance had formed from the vital essence of heaven and earth at the beginning of creation-the most primordial essence of all. Its radiance lit the entire courtyard as brightly as day.
After an unknown length of time, rumbling arose within Luo Yue's Bitter Sea. The boundless, bitterly cold glaciers let out a tremendous roar that reverberated through heaven and earth. They seemed on the verge of collapse, their thunderous rumbling deafening.
At that very moment, a powerful aura erupted, shaking the entire courtyard. An icy blaze of divine light burst out of the Cold River Reflecting the Moon Vision and through Luo Yue's body, enveloping her completely.
Luo Yue's little face was deathly pale, and a layer of white frost had covered her body at some point.
Now she began to panic.
The Cold River Reflecting the Moon Vision within her Bitter Sea had actually undergone an aberrant change. The once-boundless glaciers collapsed like avalanches, and even the bone-chilling ice moon overhead began to sway precariously, as though it might plunge down at any moment!
"This girl is far too bold. Refining divine source and opening her Bitter Sea without anyone standing guard-and she even intends to cultivate her life spring in the same attempt..."
In the darkness of night, an unknown, powerful divine sense swept across the courtyard. Seeing Luo Yue's deathly pale little face on the bed, its owner could not help feeling secretly alarmed.
A greedy snake sought to swallow an elephant. A fist-sized piece of divine source was worth five hundred thousand jin of pure source, enough to match an entire sect's wealth. It could sustain a group of cultivators all the way to the ninth heaven of the Dragon Transformation or even the Immortal Platform Realm without difficulty.
For someone without any cultivation to rashly refine divine source, it was enough to make their body explode ten thousand times over!
"Even with a divine body's unique constitution, absorbing such a large piece of divine source without exploding should be impossible. This little girl is hiding quite a secret." The man in the shadows watched quietly, making no rash move.
He was certain that some extraordinary treasure within Luo Yue's body was helping her, so nothing would go wrong for the moment.
At the same time, he wanted to see where the little girl's limits lay.
"Cold River Reflecting the Moon. Such a Bitter Sea Vision is quite rare. Nine thousand years ago, a Divine King from the Central Plains cultivated this Vision."
Watching the faint silhouettes of the cold moon and glaciers emerging behind the little girl, the man in the shadows nodded, then sighed inwardly. Unfortunately, that Divine King from the Central Plains had been born at the wrong time, encountering Gai Jiuyou, who had been invincible nine thousand years ago...
While these thoughts flashed through his mind, Luo Yue's face below grew increasingly pale.
Terrifying cold poured out of her body, enveloping almost the entire courtyard. White frost gradually formed over the surrounding buildings, turning the courtyard into a little world of ice and snow.
Luo Yue herself was almost frozen into an ice sculpture...
The bone-piercing chill threatened to freeze even Luo Yue's divine soul, while the sight within her Bitter Sea made her heart pound with fear.
The vast, boundless glaciers split beneath an invisible force. Enormous chunks of Mystic Ice collided and fell through the air above the Bitter Sea, producing deafening crashes and sending towering waves of ice surging up.
The cool, luminous Cold Moon hanging high above the cold river also began shaking violently. Its clear radiance flickered erratically, presenting the terrifying sight of a moon teetering on the brink of toppling and crashing down.
The entire Bitter Sea world of [Cold River Reflecting the Moon] Vision seemed to have reached the verge of collapse.
The piercing cold recoiled against Luo Yue herself. Thick white frost covered her tiny body, her little face was pale as paper, and ice crystals clung to her lashes. Even her thoughts seemed about to freeze, growing sluggish.
"I've really gone too far this time."
Luo Yue did not know whether to laugh or cry.
Though the Yellow River Chart and Lo Shu were astonishingly effective, her own cultivation was too weak. Using them to deduce and fuse the two ancient scriptures had already pushed her to her limits.
Then she had forcibly refined such a vast quantity of divine source, hoping to ascend to heaven in a single step by opening her Bitter Sea and breaking through to the Life Spring stage. The immense energy and profound Dao Principles had finally exceeded what she could withstand, triggering a terrible backlash from her Vision.
If that ice moon truly fell, her Bitter Sea and even her Dao foundation would suffer devastating damage.
At this hair's-breadth moment!
"Hmph!"
A low, aged snort seemed to pierce space, sounding directly in the depths of Luo Yue's sea of consciousness with an indescribable majesty.
In the next instant, a withered yet utterly steady hand, formed entirely from divine sense, ignored the intervening space and pointed straight at her brow!
The hand had no physical substance, yet it radiated divine soul power as vast and deep as an abyss. Profound Dao patterns flowed around its fingertip, carrying an intent that could suppress heaven and earth and smooth away chaos.
Buzzz-
The instant the fingertip touched the ice crystals on Luo Yue's brow, a gentle yet immense power surged into her!
This power was incomparably pure, but it did not simply pour divine power into her.
Instead, it was like a seasoned master craftsman, using supreme divine consciousness and a profound understanding of the Great Dao Laws to forcibly intervene in Luo Yue's collapsing Bitter Sea Vision, ordering, guiding, and... suppressing it!
Rumble-boom!
With the intrusion of this outside divine sense, the violently quaking glacial world within Luo Yue's Bitter Sea seemed to be forcibly caught beneath an invisible giant hand,
pressed still.
The fractured glaciers stopped collapsing. An invisible force supported the enormous ice blocks, slowly lowering them into the cold river.
The cold moon on the verge of falling also jolted sharply. Its cracks closed in an instant, and its swaying form was forcibly steadied. Once more, it hung high above the cold river, its cool moonlight more stable and brilliant than ever, as though an invisible hand held it firmly in place, anchoring it!
An even more astonishing change followed.
At the center of that vast, deathly cold river, now forcibly stabilized, a dazzling silver-blue point of light suddenly appeared.
Immediately afterward, a wellspring of cold, pure divine power, brimming with immense vitality, erupted thunderously, like an earth vein that had been suppressed for hundreds of millions of years finally finding an outlet.
Hiss-!
This was no longer the crashing roar of fracturing glaciers, but the stirring sound of a divine spring gushing forth.
The divine power pouring out was not scorching hot. It carried the extreme cold unique to the Divine King Body, yet brimmed with vigorous life.
This newborn life spring was no ordinary trickling stream. Its opening was deep, and what surged out was no longer simple liquid divine power, but divine power in a state between liquid and solid, glittering with deep-blue starlight.
Like profoundly compressed liquid Mystic Ice, it contained terrifying energy, yet gathered above the spring's opening to form a small ice-soul cold lake, its surface calm as a mirror.
From the brink of collapse to stability, and then the emergence of the [Life Spring], the entire Bitter Sea Vision had transformed in less than a single second!
"Phew..."
Luo Yue opened her eyes and drew a deep breath.
As her icy-blue eyes opened and closed, moon shadows seemed to drift in the depths of her pupils, above a tranquil cold lake.
The frost covering her body rapidly melted. Warmth dispelled the bone-piercing cold, and a trace of color returned to her pale little face, making one want to release a long breath of relief, as though an immense burden had been lifted.
The divine source in her hand had long since been exhausted, leaving only a trace of coolness in her palm.
She immediately looked inward at her Bitter Sea. Seeing the stabilized Vision, and especially the [Life Spring] gushing cold springwater above the glaciers, she was filled with lingering fear.
Had that unknown mighty figure not intervened, the consequences would truly have been unimaginable.
She must never act so recklessly again.