Parting and Setting Up the Dao Field

Outside Heaven Dou City.

After more than two years, Chen Mo and the other four had returned to this place, which meant that Chen Mo had traveled across the entire Douluo Continent.

Although he still hadn't found the materials to refine the Foundation Establishment Pill, Chen Mo had no regrets. With the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well there, he figured it would only be a few months before he could start refining the pill.

Chen Mo was in quite a pleasant mood.

Dugu Yan's feelings, however, were somewhat complicated. Though she had finally returned home, she was reluctant to part and felt regretful.

She had listened to her grandfather Dugu Bo and approached Chen Mo, but unfortunately, Chen Mo had no such interest in her.

Chen Mo only wanted a physical relationship, not an emotional one.

Dugu Yan was no promiscuous woman. Spoiled by Dugu Bo, she actually had something of a princess complex, and she was rather headstrong.

So Chen Mo hadn't gotten involved with her. After all, Dugu Bo was still helping him guard his garden; it wouldn't be right to treat the man's granddaughter like that.

Of course, Chen Mo had taught her a few things. The Life Nourishing Realm of the Blood Refiner System was quite good for laying a foundation.

Unlike Lin Yaodong, Dugu Yan had, in the end, brought resources to the table, so Chen Mo hadn't put her through too many tests.

Within days of her joining him, Chen Mo had taught her the Seven Forms of the Martial God, and she took medicinal baths with him and the others every day.

As for cultivation methods and the like, Chen Mo hadn't passed any on to her. He had only taught her some visualization methods to increase her spiritual power.

And when it came to being a Soul Master, Chen Mo's level wasn't even as high as hers, so naturally he couldn't teach her much.

In Heaven Dou City, Dugu Yan was saying goodbye to Chen Mo and the others.

Reluctant to part, Dugu Yan said to them, "Brother Chen, Brother Yaodong, Little Sister Little Mo, Little Sister Xiao Wu, I'm going home. Remember to come see me sometime."

Lin Yaodong wasn't a man of many words. He said just two: "Take care."

Chen Mo smiled and said, "Don't worry, Sister Yanyan. I'll definitely come visit you."

Xiao Wu chattered away as well. "Sister Yanyan, if anyone dares bully you, tell Xiao Wu. Xiao Wu will beat him up for you."

Dugu Yan looked at Chen Mo. "Brother Chen Mo, don't you have anything you want to say to me?"

Chen Mo thought for a moment, then said, "Until we meet again."

Dugu Yan gave Chen Mo a faintly resentful look. He clearly knew what she meant, yet insisted on pretending he didn't.

Oh, forget it. He and I belong to two different worlds in the end.

Just as Dugu Yan turned to leave, Chen Mo called her back.

Chen Mo said, "Yanyan, wait. Take these. You've followed me for more than two years, and with these things, your time won't have been wasted. Also, give your grandfather my regards. Tell him I've already fulfilled his request."

Chen Mo took several jade slips out of his Martial Soul space.

Among them was a fragmentary fifth-tier cultivation method from a xuanhuan world, Myriad Poison Body, which could only be cultivated up to the third tier.

Even so, it was enough to dominate a region on the Douluo Continent.

The other jade slips contained knowledge of medicinal herbs and poisons from various worlds. He believed they would be of great help to her clan.

Dugu Yan looked at the jade slips Chen Mo had handed her. She knew what they were: probably a cultivation method like the one Lin Yaodong practiced, and one very well suited to her.

Of course, this also meant that their destined connection had run its course, and there was no longer any possibility between them.

These things were a sort of severance payment. There was no chance of Dugu Yan continuing to follow Chen Mo after this. Otherwise, even if Chen Mo were to pass a cultivation method on to her, he would have placed a restriction on her.

That had always been Chen Mo's principle: the Dao was not to be passed on lightly.

If Chen Mo really gave someone a cultivation method, it meant that their destined connection had run its course. From then on, they would be strangers, and whatever that person did afterward would have nothing to do with him.

Dugu Yan looked at the things before her with a complicated expression. For a while, she didn't know whether she should accept them.

As Dugu Yan hesitated, Chen Mo's voice reached her again.

"If it's not in your fate, don't force it. Go with what comes and spare yourself the suffering. Let it go. Take these things and go where you belong. Our path isn't suited to you. You have a world of your own; you don't need to live for anyone else. You are yourself.

"You have your path to walk, and we have ours. Let's part here."

With that, Chen Mo pressed the things into Dugu Yan's hands.

Ignoring his little sister Chen Mo and his pet Xiao Wu as they bared their fangs and brandished their claws, he forcibly stuffed them both back into the carriage.

Lin Yaodong merely sighed, then drove the carriage slowly away.

Dugu Yan didn't know how long it was before she came to her senses. She put the things away in her Soul Tool, then returned home with a forlorn expression.

When Dugu Bo learned what had happened, he could only sigh.

In the end, it simply wasn't meant to be!

He then comforted his granddaughter and studied the cultivation method Chen Mo had left behind, along with the various kinds of knowledge concerning poisons.

The Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well.

After parting with Dugu Yan, Chen Mo and the other three came here. Dugu Bo had learned that Chen Mo and the others would soon be returning, and he had already left.

Chen Mo intended to turn this place into his Dao field.

Chen Mo first checked on the spirit herbs he had planted. They were growing very well. He had been a little worried that they wouldn't take to the local soil and climate, but it seemed he had worried too much.

Some of the spirit herbs were already ready for use, while others needed more time. The latest to mature would take another six months.

The timing was just right. When it came to preparing medicines and the like, Chen Mo was absolutely at the king level in both theory and practice. There was no other reason: practice made perfect.

Pill refinement was another matter. Chen Mo said he had thoroughly mastered the theory, but when it came to actually doing it, he was like a maiden stepping into a bridal sedan chair-it was his first time.

Chen Mo also needed to try refining some simple, beginner-level pills first. After all, he had planted only seven of the ten batches of seeds two years ago, which meant he had only seven chances.

Otherwise, he would have to wait another two or three years.

Chen Mo said, "Little Dong, you all can repair the cabin first. We'll be staying here for a long time. I'm going to prepare a few things."

Lin Yaodong nodded to show he understood and walked over to the cabin Dugu Bo had once used to rest.

By the time the sun was about to set, the original cabin had been enlarged who knew how many times over. Everyone understood that this would be their home for some time to come, so they had to make it spacious and comfortable.

None of them were ordinary people; they were all extraordinary beings, so naturally their efficiency at work was beyond anything ordinary people could match.

By the time Chen Mo returned, he had already set up an array for early warning. As long as anyone came nearby, Chen Mo would be able to detect them.

This would be Chen Mo's Dao field and base of operations, so certain protective measures were indispensable.

Once everything was in place, Chen Mo was confident that even if the former owner, Dugu Bo, returned, he wouldn't be able to get in. He would have to launch a frontal assault and wear down the arrays for three to five days before he could enter.

Over the next nearly month, everyone worked with great enthusiasm to build their new home.

Coming to the Sunset Forest was like coming home for Xiao Wu. She had beaten down and subdued the Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts in several territories near the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well.

Now Xiao Wu had turned into a foreman, directing more than a dozen Ten-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts to do all kinds of hard, exhausting labor. She was having a wonderful time.

Lin Yaodong had it a little rougher. The Soul Beasts could handle coarse labor well enough, but all the fine work still fell to him alone.

One moment he was a carpenter, the next a mason, and then a fitter...

Chen Mo himself had it no easier. He was constantly busy refining the command flags and various array implements he needed, and he even pulled his sister Chen Mo in as a helper to refine some simple implements.

Chen Mo and her brother Chen Mo were the only two Immortal Cultivators, so only the two of them could do this work.

As everyone toiled through those hard, busy days, everything slowly began to take shape.

The outermost layer had originally been a natural poisonous miasma. Chen Mo hadn't made many changes to it, merely adding dozens of illusion arrays, dozens of trapping arrays, over a hundred killing arrays, and several hundred defensive arrays.

Next came the second line of defense, at the boundary between the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well's area of influence and the natural poisonous miasma.

Adapting to the terrain, Chen Mo set up several hundred each of various arrays, large and small. Altogether, there were probably only a little over three thousand arrays.

Even if Chen Mo himself worked at wearing them down day and night without stopping, it would take him three to five days, and that was assuming no one controlled the arrays to counterattack.

Though Chen Mo had also set up more than two thousand arrays in the third line of defense, nearly half were Spirit Gathering Arrays, Spirit Guiding Arrays, and the like, which helped the spirit herbs grow better.

The rest were defensive arrays, a small number of illusion arrays, and other functional arrays.

This area had also changed the most, taking on an entirely different appearance. Chen Mo had collected many of the original spirit herbs that were over ten thousand years old, and most of the herbs remaining were under ten thousand years old.

Chen Mo had now laid out the area, dividing it into several hundred neat spirit fields, each established on a support point of a spirit vein.

It was precisely those spirit vein support points that sustained the operation of the arrays.

Using the divided spirit fields, Chen Mo and his sister redistributed and replanted the various spirit herbs so they could grow better.

The original arrangement of the spirit herbs had really pained Chen Mo to look at. There had been no order at all: cold, water, wood, poison, fire and earth attributes... In short, all kinds of spirit herbs had been growing wild in a chaotic jumble.

If the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well's effects hadn't been powerful enough, never mind growing-just staying alive would have been a miracle.

Now that Chen Mo had sorted them out, the spirit herbs' growth was becoming increasingly promising.

The main purpose of this line of defense was to protect those precious spirit herbs, not to fight enemies.

For fighting enemies, he would mainly have to rely on the first and second lines of defense.

As for the final line of defense, which was also the most central and crucial one, Chen Mo had used the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well as the array core and set up nearly a thousand arrays within a hundred zhang. Every inch of ground was filled with deadly peril. Anyone who entered without a special token refined by Chen Mo would be ruthlessly strangled to death by the arrays.

What Chen Mo valued most was the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well's ability to accelerate the growth of spirit herbs. Once he reached Foundation Establishment, he would have the strength to use the well to set up an even stronger acceleration array. Then, the medicinal potency of the spirit herbs could increase in a single day as much as it normally would in a year, without any trouble.

It was practically a weakened version of the Heaven Wielding Bottle.