Over the next few days, Jiang Zhu began trying to guide the vital essence hidden within his Wheel of Life to break open his Bitter Sea.
An ordinary person's Wheel of Life was a patch of soil. Once a seed was planted there, careful tending and cultivation would let it take root and sprout, revealing vigorous life.
Jiang Zhu sensed something strange and prompted the Demon-Refining Pot to release more precious blood, until the wellspring of divine power within his Wheel of Life began to boil.
Boom!
In a daze, Jiang Zhu saw a pitch-black Bitter Sea. It was utterly calm, without a single ripple, and looked lifeless.
Vital essence could only linger above the Bitter Sea. The sea itself remained barren and still, without the slightest pulse of life.
The Bitter Sea was opened!
The newly opened Bitter Sea was only the size of a soybean. Its divine radiance was contained within, and nothing about its outward appearance seemed extraordinary.
Suddenly, Jiang Zhu felt the Demon-Refining Pot in his mind stir. It traveled down the great dragon of his spine and entered his Bitter Sea.
The newborn Bitter Sea was too small, but the Demon-Refining Pot forced its way in bit by bit, stretching it to the size of a fist. Vital essence streamed endlessly from his Wheel of Life, stabilizing the expanded Bitter Sea.
The Demon-Refining Pot shook within the ink-black Bitter Sea, as though stretching its body. A stream of precious blood trickled from its mouth like a brook and fell into the sea.
The Bitter Sea, which had just been the size of an infant's fist, expanded again until it was as large as a human head, with dense vital essence swirling around it.
Jiang Zhu was left dumbstruck by the series of changes. A moment ago, he had nearly thought his newborn Bitter Sea would burst from being stretched too far. Had the Demon-Refining Pot decided its home was too cramped and renovated it for him?
He watched, entranced, for a good while before stopping. He still had important work to do.
Thanks to the Demon-Refining Pot's movements, a passage had already been opened between Jiang Zhu's Bitter Sea and Wheel of Life. Vast quantities of vital essence were surging through it!
He hesitated no longer. The profound truths of the Dao Scripture flowed through his mind, and the vigorous vital essence above his Bitter Sea surged. The boundless divine energy within the precious blood was unleashed, quantity giving rise to quality as it finally gathered into a Life Divine Spring and rushed into his Bitter Sea.
Carving out a Life Spring's opening in the barren Bitter Sea, connecting it to the Wheel of Life, and allowing the Divine Spring to bubble forth-this was the second realm of the Sea of Bitterness: the Life Spring.
Divine fluid bubbled from the Life Spring, and divine radiance shot out of the Bitter Sea straight into the sky.
Divine light flashed through Jiang Zhu's eyes. The Life Spring was formed!
He had broken through two realms in a single day, and boundless joy filled his heart. He had originally thought that merely opening his Bitter Sea would be good enough. Now, with the help of the Demon-Refining Pot and the precious blood, he had actually reached the Life Spring Realm. This far exceeded his expectations.
Looking within himself, he found that his Bitter Sea had abruptly expanded from the size of a human head into a small pond. A Life Spring erupted with rays of divine light, while dense vital essence swirled above the Bitter Sea, with Divine Markings drifting through it.
Only upon reaching this stage did cultivators possess a source of power, allowing them to wield all manner of mystical arts and divine abilities with unfathomable might. This was a crucial step in a cultivator's transformation. As long as the wellspring of divine power never ran dry, their magical power would be inexhaustible.
In fact, the Divine Rainbow cultivators rode was the divine radiance pouring from their own Life Springs. After reaching the Life Spring Realm, they could ride that rainbow, soar through the skies and burrow through the earth, wielding countless exquisite mystical arts.
Of course, that did not work on Earth. Earth suppressed the Great Dao, so one had to reach the second secret realm before being able to fly.
After opening his Life Spring, his body was strengthened once more. Even without using divine power, a single swipe of Jiang Zhu's claw now carried tens of thousands of jin of force. He could easily lift a fully grown elephant.
Moreover, his body was now filled with surging divine power. Killing a Bitter Sea cultivator would be as easy for him as crushing an ant.
After calming his joyful emotions, he still had one important task to attend to.
Forging a weapon!
The Shrouding Method, also known as the secret realm cultivation method, was rooted in the "using the body as a seed" cultivation method created by the Desolate Heavenly Emperor, a Dao Ancestor-level figure of this world.
Later, he reflected that those who learned from him would live, while those who merely resembled him would die. Thus, he removed the cultivation methods for the sixth and seventh secret realms, leaving only those for the five secret realms: Sea of Bitterness, Dao Palace, Four Extremes, Dragon Transformation, and Immortal Platform.
This cultivation method borrowed nothing from the external Dao, seeking only the internal Dao. Even if a Heaven and Earth Upheaval occurred, it could still preserve one's combat strength.
Furthermore, by removing the cultivation methods for the sixth and seventh secret realms, the Desolate Heavenly Emperor ensured that each person sought a different internal Dao and unearthed it in a different way. In theory, this method could even produce more than one Immortal Emperor-in other words, more than one Dao Ancestor-level figure.
During the Mythological Era, the order in which the secret realms were cultivated was not fixed. Some had even become sages by cultivating a single secret realm.
By the time the secret realm method had been passed down to the present, cultivators had come to follow an established sequence, beginning with the Sea of Bitterness Secret Realm and ending with the Immortal Platform Secret Realm.
Cultivating the secret realm method also caused Divine Markings to emerge within the body, condensed from vital essence.
Cultivators could forge these Divine Markings into various shapes, such as sabers or swords, and send them out of their bodies to kill enemies. They were more powerful than Divine Markings alone.
A few individuals, undaunted by complexity and profundity, repeatedly tempered their Divine Markings and refined them into cauldrons, bells, or pagodas, enabling them to wield all manner of mysterious powers.
Legend held that the weapons an exceedingly small number of cultivators refined from Divine Markings could undergo unexpected changes in the later stages. "Traces of the Dao" would intertwine within those weapons, granting them unfathomable power.
But the chances of this were very low, and the difficulty was immense. Only extraordinarily gifted and exceptionally powerful cultivators might encounter such fortune.
Tempering raw Divine Markings into a weapon was extremely important to cultivators. Everyone took it seriously, because it formed the foundation of their future ability to control objects.
Within Jiang Zhu's newly opened Bitter Sea, twenty Divine Markings drifted overhead.
Each minor stage of the secret realm method produced Divine Markings within the body for forging weapons. Some people forged a weapon at every minor stage, while others followed the path of One Weapon Breaks Ten Thousand Techniques.
They tempered all their Divine Markings into a single weapon, making it incomparably powerful. Of course, this was also more difficult, so most people still chose to forge multiple weapons.
What sort of weapon should he forge?
Jiang Zhu fell into deep thought. A cauldron, like Ye Fan? But he already had the Demon-Refining Pot, whose base was shaped like a cauldron.
In that case, the Demon-Refining Pot already incorporated the shapes of a cauldron, pot, and pagoda, so none of those needed consideration.
The Demon-Refining Pot also had a refining function, making a furnace feel somewhat redundant.
That left only the bell among such formidable weapons as bells, cauldrons, pagodas, and furnaces.
A bell wasn't bad. In future battles, he could march up carrying a bell and deliver it to his opponent-a gift whose name sounded just like sending someone to their grave. What a sight... And he'd even arrive with his own background music.
Bells ranked among the most difficult weapons to forge. First, he had to construct its form in his mind, then gather the Divine Markings together and temper them into shape. Once they were shaped, he still had to inscribe Dao Patterns...
Yet when he actually tried it, the process proved difficult beyond measure. Merely gathering the twenty Divine Markings together took a long time, and after finally fusing them into one, he could make no further progress.
No matter how he tried, he could not even hammer them into shape, let alone inscribe Dao Patterns. In the end, he only managed to fuse the twenty Divine Markings into a rectangular block. Refining a formidable weapon was difficult indeed.
Jiang Zhu was in no hurry, though. Weapon refining in the world of Shrouding the Heavens was all about making a brick fly through sheer brute force.
Once he found suitable material for his sole weapon, he could mold it into the shape he wanted, drive the Divine Markings into it, then let lightning strike it and use it to smash people. The more lightning strikes it took and the more people it smashed, the stronger it would become. So for now, as long as he could use the Divine Markings to smash people, their shape did not matter.
Before you continue