Splash-
Ao Ding reached out and slapped the rippling water.
Amber light slowly spread with the wisps of mist, revealing the bathing pool's true appearance.
The crescent-shaped pool, paved with white jade, continuously received divine water from the waterfall above, transforming it into dense, pure spiritual energy of heaven and earth.
"What an enormous hot spring-no wonder those bees and ants refused to give this place up, despite all the restrictions the Xuanjia Dharma Realm imposed on them."
After dealing with the Golden-Peng Pheasant, Sun Chen immediately took the documents to the ruler. Giving them no chance whatsoever to stall, he packed Ao Ding off to the hidden treasury's bathing pool that very night.
Ao Ding plunged in, immersing his entire body in the spring. Endless primordial energy of heaven and earth pressed into his Dantian through every limb and bone.
He needed neither breathing exercises nor cultivation practice. Spiritual energy nourished Ao Ding’s body in an unending stream. Simply soaking in the water, he could feel his magical power growing and his vital essence replenishing.
Only under this nourishment did Ao Ding truly experience the marvels of the "True Person's eye."
So all this time-I've been cultivating with a mountain on my back!
Without his left eye dragging him down, Ao Ding experienced what it felt like to be an ordinary cultivator for the first time.
Light as a swallow, nimble and unencumbered.
He no longer needed to exhaust himself every day, going straight to sleep after opening his eye three times...
And without the hindrance of his fleshly body or the limits of his magical power and cultivation realm, Ao Ding could use his left eye without restraint.
Golden-azure spiritual light shone as Ao Ding looked through the bathing pool and saw densely packed innate cloud-script spiritual patterns.
Hundreds of millions of talismans clustered into formations, constructing the foundations of the Xuanjia Dharma Realm. This realm stretched eighty thousand li across. Its foundation was a never-exhausted, nine-colored divine spring. A stream of watery light drawn from that spring became a waterfall descending three thousand zhang from the sky, caught below in a bathing pool-where Ao Ding now was.
Under his left eye's scrutiny, the mysteries of those formations and talismans lay completely exposed.
"The Mysterious Jia Spiritual Treasury-at its heart, it's a sect residence fashioned by the Golden Court Sect."
While cultivating in the Seven Spirits Sect, Ao Ding had heard of the ways of the four sects of the Central Wasteland.
The Guangfa Sect expounded Daoist arts, the Jade Cauldron Sect excelled in the Dao of Alchemy, the Purple Sun Sect transmitted the Dao and virtue, and the Golden Court Sect opened spiritual realms.
Ao Ding turned his left eye toward the sky. High above this eighty-thousand-li Dharma Realm, a talisman shone with the halo of a solar disc.
"To lift this 'Golden Court Three-Mountain Suppression Talisman' and refine this Dharma Realm Spirit Land would probably require magical power at the Light Joining or Divine Illumination level, wouldn't it?"
After watching a while longer, Ao Ding turned his gaze to the divine spring.
"Was protecting this divine spring the reason they planted an immortal tree and opened a Dharma Realm here?"
He widened his eye, studying Sun Chen beside the divine spring.
After sending Ao Ding inside, Sun Chen had also entered the Mysterious Jia Spiritual Treasury. He now stood beside the Nine-Element Divine Spring.
Just as Ao Ding had surmised, this Xuanjia Immortal Tree and the Spirit-Realm Dharma Realm formed around it were barriers the Golden Court Sect used to protect this innate spiritual spring.
Three thousand years ago, he had accompanied a fellow Daoist of the Golden Court Sect here to fetch divine water, learning this place's secret.
The old Daoist formed hand seals, chanting under his breath. A Golden Jade Bowl resting by the spiritual spring swiftly flew into its source. Then, with considerable difficulty and effort, the bowl scooped a mouthful of innate Nine-Element True Water from the spring.
This divine water was Ninefold Essence Divine Water, formed from a strand of Great Simplicity Qi that had fallen here when the True Realm was first opened.
Sun Chen drank the true water. Some color returned to his face, and the dimming, decaying immortal light around his body eased somewhat. But his allotted lifespan had ended and his Dao foundation had been destroyed. Even if the divine water alleviated his condition a little, it could not truly prolong his life.
"Fortunately, some of my magical power has returned. Before my Liberation by Violence, I can teach Ao Ding better-perhaps I could take him around a demon kingdom? Let him see more of those demon courts' methods, lest he cause some scandal over a romance between human and demon in the future."
With that thought, Sun Chen turned his gaze to meet that "extremely impolite" stare.
"Boy, stop looking! Focus on recuperating! In cultivation practice, cultivation comes before practice. And that cultivation means tending and mending yourself, not advancing."
He had to nurture his innate qi and replenish the vital essence depleted after birth, thereby attaining an innate state without leakage.
"And another thing-the True Person's eye is far too overbearing. Look at someone with that Dharma eye, and if they have a bad temper, they'll come straight over and beat you up."
Even Sun Chen felt a prickling sense of danger, as though needles were digging into his back, under that eye's gaze. Several times, he had wanted to strike back.
The gaze immediately withdrew, crestfallen.
Ao Ding closed his eyes and concentrated on circulating the Golden Light Method in the hot spring.
A pale golden halo flowed over his body, gradually turning pure gold.
In just a quarter of an hour, his magical power doubled.
"I only just entered the Qi-Seeding Upper Realm last time, and now-I'm probably approaching the Ultimate Realm already."
Splash-
Suddenly, ripples disturbed the bathing pool's balance. Ao Ding opened his eyes and looked a short distance away.
Lu Xiu was playing and swimming underwater.
"Ah-Brother Ao, you're awake?" Lu Xiu asked with a smile. "I didn't disturb you, did I?"
"No." After a pause, Ao Ding asked, "Have you learned the cultivation method Senior Sun taught you?"
Lu Xiu would neither marry the princess nor seek payment, and he wanted no longevity medicine either. Seeing that he had an affinity for immortality, Sun Chen had decided to give him a helping hand and brought him to cultivate in the hidden treasury. But his comprehension was somewhat poor. He had been unable to memorize the "Nine-Aperture Exquisite One-Qi Art" Sun Chen taught him, delaying his entry into the bathing pool.
"I barely managed to memorize it, but... I haven't tried it yet."
"Just practice here. I'll stand guard for you." Ao Ding examined Lu Xiu with his left eye, taking in every pathway along which internal force and true qi circulated through his body.
Lu Xiu readily agreed and began circulating the "Nine-Aperture Exquisite One-Qi Art" under Ao Ding's gaze.
According to Sun Chen, this was a preparatory art for the Jade Cauldron Sect's orthodox method, allowing Lu Xiu to continue cultivating without impediment after joining the Heavenly Stone Sect.
Masses of true qi surged into his Dantian, coiling together into a Dao embryo.
With nine apertures and eight openings, this was the Great Dao qi seed Lu Xiu had formed for himself.
Seeing that Lu Xiu had made no mistakes, Ao Ding stirred the rippling water and leisurely nourished his body and refined his qi beside him.
After quite some time, Lu Xiu opened his eyes.
"Brother Ao, have I succeeded?"
"Yes, you have. The initial stage of Qi-Seeding-after two days of adjustment, you can enter the Connection Realm. We cultivators divide each realm into four stages: initial, proficient, upper, and ultimate. The initial stage is the adjustment period after breaking through into any realm. Whenever you reach a new realm, there's always a period of settling in. Once you pass that period, you move from the initial stage to the proficient stage. In theory, the proficient stage has the most people in any realm."
Ao Ding swam over to Lu Xiu and explained with a smile, "Think of cultivation as a journey. The initial stage is when you've finished running the previous leg and are out of breath, needing rest and recuperation. The Connection Realm is when you're walking this leg of the journey, but can't see its end. When you see the finish, glimpse the mysteries of the next realm, and begin sprinting along the latter half of the road, that's the Upper Realm."
The Connection Realm meant settling into a realm, unable to see the next stretch of road.
The Upper Realm meant having seen the next stretch and begun sprinting toward the next realm.
"As for the Ultimate Realm, that's when you've sprinted to the end, completed your preparations, and can break through at any moment."
There was essentially no difference between someone on their first day at the Ultimate Realm and someone who had spent three years there. One prerequisite for the Ultimate Realm was being filled to capacity with magical power.
"The ultimate stage is merely a transitional stage for attempting to reach the next realm. Generally, cultivators spend two or three days, or three to five years, at this stage of full completion before attempting to break through to the next realm. That's why ultimate-stage cultivators are the rarest in the cultivation world."
Lu Xiu nodded and added, "Because they're all busy trying to break through?"
"Right. Ultimate Realm cultivators generally don't show themselves. They're all busy breaking through. If they succeed, they reach the initial stage of the next realm. If they fail, they stay at the Ultimate Realm and keep trying. Or their attainment drops back to the Upper Realm-and worse still, they may suffer cultivation deviation and die, their Dao extinguished."
After some thought, Ao Ding added, "Once you reach the Ultimate Realm, you generally shouldn't run around. An Ultimate Realm cultivator's magical power and attainment are the greatest within their realm, but they're also the easiest to kill. All you need is to find a way to give them a push, induce them to break through during battle, and then suffer cultivation deviation..."
This was another reason Ultimate Realm cultivators seldom appeared in public.
The slightest carelessness could trigger a tribulation, leaving them dead and their Dao extinguished.
"So I'm at the initial stage now?" The youth looked at his palm as beads of moisture slowly slid down his fair skin.
"I don't feel any different from before."
"You'd already used thousand-year-old spirit medicine to transform your meridians and cleanse your marrow, making your true qi innate and free of leakage-what difference could there be? Broadly speaking, once you've adjusted over the next few days, you can enter the Connection Realm, advance to the Upper Realm, and start working toward a breakthrough at the Ultimate Realm."
"So that means..." Lu Xiu rubbed his downy chin. "When I entered the innate level of martial arts before, I was equivalent to the Mystic Gang Realm?"
"Equivalent?" Ao Ding scoffed. "So-called innate martial artists are no better than the Golden-Peng Pheasant. Their spiritual apertures remain unopened and their true nature is benighted. They rely entirely on brute strength to throw their weight around. Didn't it die outright after a few spells from me?"
He pointed at Lu Xiu's Dantian and said with a smile, "The most important thing in the Seed Qi Realm is nurturing the seed of Dao qi. This qi seed is the beginning of our spiritual aperture, the root of our Great Dao."
During his years in the Seven Spirits Sect, Ao Ding had heard many outer disciples describe the cultivation of martial artists in the martial world.
Rumor had it that the pinnacle of martial cultivation allowed one to step through heaven's gate in a single stride, reach the Jade Tower Realm, and attain the body of a martial immortal.
But martial artists only opened the "bridge between heaven and earth" and comprehended the mysterious aperture upon reaching the Jade Tower Realm. Before that, even with perfect, leakless true qi, they were merely ordinary mortals.
"The true aperture is what separates us from mortal flesh. Once the true aperture opens, objects possess spirituality, and so do demons. It's the foundation of the immortal Dao. Without an open true aperture, demons remain ignorant and benighted, just like that Golden-Peng Pheasant."
There were so many Beauty Ants in the Jiaxia Kingdom, yet the entire kingdom's strength fell far short of the Golden-Peng Pheasant's. But because their spiritual apertures were open, their intelligence far surpassed its.
Only half understanding, Lu Xiu silently committed Ao Ding's words to memory.
In any case-I've truly entered the Dao and opened my aperture now, haven't I?
Just then, a figure suddenly appeared in the hazy mist, followed by a sweet, delicate voice.
"Young masters, is the bathwater to your liking? Would you like me to help you bathe?"
At the voice, Ao Ding sensed something amiss.
The eldest princess?
Why is she here?
Before he could think further, Lu Xiu screamed beside him.
"Why aren't you wearing any clothes?!"
Frightened, Lu Xiu hurriedly ducked underwater to hide.
Ao Ding looked up and saw the eldest princess approaching stark naked, carrying bathing implements.
His expression changed, and he hastily stopped her. "Your Highness, come no closer! Leave at once. Neither of us needs your service."
Ao Ding had seen far too many of the eldest princess's little schemes during his six years in the Seven Spirits Sect.
His left eye glared, its divine might shaking heaven and earth.
The eldest princess saw only a flash of heavenly light and fled in panic.
Lu Xiu swam back from the deeper water. Seeing Ao Ding beside him, his expression unchanged, he could not help saying admiringly:
"To face beauty without a change of expression-Brother Ao, your skill at cultivating composure is truly impressive."
"Beauty?"
What beauty is there in a giant ant even bigger than I am?
Ao Ding shook his head. "All right, hurry up and cultivate-we can only stay here for one night."
Sun Chen heard Lu Xiu's scream from beside the divine spring.
He opened his eyes, glanced toward the crescent-shaped bathing pool, and silently shook his head before closing his eyes again.
The seductions of spirits and demons could be considered a required lesson for cultivators.
In the True Realm of Mountains and Seas, the immortal sects flourished, while the demon courts ruled with an iron hand. All spirits living within the immortal sects' territories who could not seek refuge with the demon courts naturally had to submit and curry favor with the six sects. All the more so for an unusual breed like the Beauty Ants, which had been created and trained as servants by the Jade Cauldron Sect in the first place.
"Not bad. Those two youngsters have some self-control. They haven't let demonic charms beguile away their primal yang."
Closing his eyes, he leisurely continued nourishing his qi.
Then, the next morning, a ray of sunlight illuminated the innate divine spring, its radiance flowing down the waterfall into the bathing pool.
Something stirred in Sun Chen's heart. He suddenly opened his eyes and looked toward the pool.
The thin mist had dispersed. Amid the swirling purple clouds of sunrise, a rainbow hung behind Ao Ding, shining brilliantly.
"Good, good-the Ultimate Realm! Qi-Seeding brought to completion! Faster than I expected!"
His figure flashed, and he immediately appeared beside Ao Ding and Lu Xiu.
Without taking his eyes off Ao Ding, he quickly told Lu Xiu:
"Just watch. Everyone who reaches the Ultimate Realm will suddenly gain insight through spiritual perception and come to know the mysteries of advancement. This is a wonder bestowed by heaven."
Spiritual perception? Sudden insight? Bestowed by heaven?
Lu Xiu scratched his head in confusion, silently committing Sun Chen's words to memory.
Soon, Ao Ding finished his practice and opened his eyes. Before Sun Chen could ask anything, he directly requested, "Senior, Brother Lu. I've realized how to break through. I need to practice Mysterious Gang beneath the Xuanjia Tree. Please help me."
Sun Chen said joyfully, "Of course, of course!"
The Upper Realm was about advancing toward the next realm.
The Ultimate Realm stage was for figuring out how to break through.
Wang Weilong, oh, Wang Weilong...
You really did the right thing suppressing this boy for six years!
Advancing in a single rush, entering the Upper Realm, reaching the Ultimate Realm, and breaking into Mysterious Gang. With this momentum—he might well charge into the Mystic Gang Thoroughfare Realm within this very month!
Before you continue