Chapter 400 Breakthrough
Lu Xuan possesses the ability of a Beast Spirit Walker. However, this ability isn't particularly powerful. In the world of Game of Thrones, it's considered formidable. But in the world of cultivation, Lu Xuan cannot forcibly possess most sentient beings. Therefore, it's essentially a useless skill.
This tribe deep in the mountains possesses an ability far more powerful than Lu Xuan's Beast Spirit Walker. They can fully control all the abilities of a summoned beast. This method is undeniably formidable.
However, Lu Xuan noticed that not everyone was qualified to become a Beast Spirit Master. Their tribe's shaman would examine the children, ultimately selecting those with a special spiritual root to be nurtured from a young age. They would learn the secret arts of spirit control. When they turned sixteen, the entire village would gather to capture a spirit beast for them and hold a Beast Spirit Ceremony.
Lu Xuan had carefully studied this process. They extracted all the essence and even the spiritual power from a spirit beast. The resulting corpse was even beyond edible value. All the purification was drained, and then it was placed in a large cauldron and sealed for forty-nine days.
Those large cauldrons were covered with runes from another system. Their purpose was to gradually erode the consciousness of the spirit beasts while preserving all their spiritual power. Afterward, their essence was sealed within the bodies of chosen youths. These youths had all prepared beforehand; their cultivation techniques and the runes on their bodies ensured perfect fusion with the essence.
Meanwhile, although that essence was alive, its consciousness had been obliterated, leaving it only able to be manipulated by the host. The entire process, from gathering spiritual energy to circulating it, was completed in one step. From beginning to end, it only took two months to create a cultivator at the sixth level of Qi Refining.
If one could obtain the essence of an even more powerful demonic beast, it would be entirely possible to directly become a cultivator at the twelfth level of Qi Refining, or even the Foundation Establishment level. If those cultivators who could never establish their foundation knew this, they would be green with envy.
"What use would you have for this? With your cultivation level, even if you sealed the essence of Black Mountain into your body, it wouldn't have much effect. It would even interfere with your own cultivation. Even if you really obtained the essence of a dragon-level spirit beast, most people simply couldn't withstand it. Those who could withstand it wouldn't need to use it. Therefore, this thing can only be used by low-level cultivators who have no hope of advancement."
"No, you don't understand. We can broaden our thinking. Let's apply this method to other areas. For example, weapon crafting. Think about it, using that secret method to extract the essence of a living spirit beast. Then, while preserving its vitality, we erase its consciousness. What is that? It's a kind of self-healing living battery."
"Battery?" Hongyu clearly couldn't understand this concept.
"It's a kind of energy storage facility. Think about it, these spirits still have their instincts and can actively absorb the surrounding spiritual energy to restore themselves. If we put it in a magic weapon, we will soon obtain a magic weapon that does not require consumption. Even if you exhaust all your spiritual energy, you can still activate the magic weapon to release an attack or defense with just a thought. Wouldn't that add a special trump card?"
"What you're saying makes some sense. But that kind of secret technique seals the essence of a spirit beast within a human body. Although the two are different, they are both physical bodies. What you're doing is sealing the essence within a magical artifact; those are two completely different concepts."
“That’s right, that’s the difficulty of this idea. But it’s normal to have difficulties. When it comes to cultivation, there’s never a smooth journey. When we encounter problems, we solve them. How can we cultivators be bound by difficulties?”
"Interesting. Shall we give it a try?"
This trial lasted for ten years. After reaching the Golden Core stage, Lu Xuan increasingly understood the true meaning of the saying "Cultivation knows no time." As his cultivation level increased and his lifespan grew, the problems he encountered became increasingly difficult. Often, even a single doubt required ten or even several decades to resolve.
Of course, this was also because Lu Xuan knew that this world had limitations and could not be further improved. Therefore, he focused all his efforts on horizontal research. But in any case, ten years passed in a flash. Lu Xuan finally gained something.
The essence of a spirit needs a compatible physical body to survive. Especially for a spirit that has been eroded or even destroyed, without a physical body, its spiritual energy will quickly dissipate and it will disappear completely.
Lu Xuan had previously noticed that the bronze cauldrons used in the tribe to obliterate the spirits and consciousness of magical beasts possessed a nourishing effect on the spirits. Even though the consciousness was obliterated, the spirit's spiritual power and supernatural abilities remained undamaged for forty-nine days.
Based on this special technique for crafting magical artifacts, he created a completely new magical artifact.
In the valley where the two lived in seclusion, Hongyu looked at the bracelet Lu Xuan had made and asked:
"Is this your result? What effect does it have?"
"This is the first successful sample. As for its effectiveness, we'll find out once we try it."
As he spoke, Lu Xuan put the bracelet on his left wrist. Then, he bent his arm and aimed a crimson gem on the bracelet at a rock in front of him. Without circulating his spiritual power, he simply focused his mind. A beam of red light shot out, cleaving the thick stone pillar in half at its waist. The break was smooth as jade, like a finely crafted work of art.
The spirit sealed within the bracelet is a strange serpent from a deep mountain swamp. Its species is unknown, its intelligence equivalent to that of an ordinary wild beast. However, it possesses an extremely powerful supernatural ability. Between its eyes on its forehead is a red gem. The serpent can emit a red ray through this gem.
The ray wasn't some kind of high-temperature supernatural power, but rather possessed a unique disintegration effect. This supernatural power was immense. After testing it, Lu Xuan discovered that its attack was comparable to the supernatural powers of some Foundation Establishment stage cultivators.
However, it cannot be sustained for long; once this thing has been charged up, it can only use two of these red rays.
To this end, Lu Xuan searched the entire area surrounding the swamp and found four more of these strange snakes. However, this time, Lu Xuan didn't kill them to make them magical artifacts; instead, he kept them in captivity. He planned to nurture them and see if he could advance their evolution. He even gave them a name: Crimson Crystal Snakes.
The experiment was quite successful. Lu Xuan successfully developed this special magical artifact. Afterwards, he gave the artifact to Hongyu.
The two had cultivated together for many years, their relationship more like a collaboration. Lu Xuan was hundreds of years old and had been with countless women. Hongyu was a woman far beyond cultivation. Their relationship was purely one of dual cultivation.
However, their solo travels over the years had subtly altered their feelings for each other. Hongyu took the bracelet, played with it for a moment, and then put it on her wrist. She smiled gently at Lu Xuan. In that instant, Lu Xuan felt a strange change occur in Hongyu before him.
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Chapter 401 Changes in the Laws
Hongyu broke through. There was no sudden enlightenment, nor a thrilling battle. She simply traveled with Lu Xuan, enjoying the scenery, and eventually retired to the mountains. Nearly twenty years of living together had made her forget the bottleneck she was facing.
Strangely enough, when she forgot about the bottleneck, it seemed to disappear. She naturally broke through to the Golden Core realm, becoming a Golden Core cultivator like Lu Xuan. At this point, their cultivation journey in this world had essentially come to an end.
Lu Xuan could never enter any of the gates of this world. Hong Yu's personality was similar to hers; she also disliked being bound by anything. Therefore, it was time to consider the future.
In the realm of spiritual cultivation, cause and effect have always been extremely obscure, yet they are unavoidable and inescapable issues. Any matter involving cause and effect will never be simple.
Even Lu Xuan himself wasn't entirely untouched by karma. In a world of cultivation, the most valued things are lineage and inheritance. Lu Xuan guessed that this was why he couldn't establish his own lineage in this world. Because the spiritual energy of this world had already been completely divided up. If a new lineage appeared, an old one would inevitably perish.
Therefore, Lu Xuan did not establish a sect or pass on his teachings. However, this was not a safe approach. At least not for what Lu Xuan was about to do.
Having traversed so many worlds, Lu Xuan had never attempted to take anyone with him. Even in the Game of Thrones world, he was theoretically capable of storing people in the imaginary dimension. However, there was an unsolvable problem: he couldn't control his time travels. Each of his time travels occurred after his own death. For a long time, Lu Xuan believed that death was a prerequisite for his time travels.
However, after reaching the Golden Core stage, Lu Xuan began to vaguely realize that this was not the case. The reason he always transmigrated after dying was because his lifespan was too short.
After reaching the Golden Core stage, Lu Xuan could vaguely sense the source of the power of transmigration within his body. It was uncontrollable and extremely indistinct, yet undeniably present. Moreover, as time passed, that power was steadily accumulating.
So Lu Xuan made a guess: if he could live long enough for that power to accumulate completely, he should be able to time travel alive. Before that, this wasn't a simple problem. Lu Xuan could roughly calculate that accumulating the power for time travel would take at least three hundred years. And before that, Lu Xuan's lifespan had never exceeded three hundred years.
But things are different now. He has achieved the Golden Core stage and his lifespan is over five hundred years. This limitation no longer applies. That's why Lu Xuan started considering this issue. First, there's the lifespan of the person who was taken away. To travel with Lu Xuan, they would need at least three hundred years of lifespan. Now, Hongyu has broken through to the Golden Core stage, so the lifespan issue no longer exists.
Inside the cave, apart from the twin sisters, the rest were all demons and ghosts, whose lifespans were inherently longer than humans. There wasn't much to worry about. If they wished, Lu Xuan would naturally take them all with him.
Then there's another problem. In the Game of Thrones universe, Lu Xuan set up a coordinate system in the imaginary space. However, that coordinate system could only illuminate a very small area, and apart from Lu Xuan himself, he had no way of controlling where anyone else appeared.
In a world devoid of time, if Lu Xuan were to draw someone in, there's a 99% chance they'd be lost in the Dark Territory. Even if Lu Xuan could find them quickly, the person might already feel as if a hundred or a thousand years had passed, their mind utterly broken. Therefore, Lu Xuan dared not take the risk.
However, in this world, the imaginary space has made a breakthrough. Lu Xuan successfully set up the Yin-Yang laws within it, allowing it to begin evolving into a normal small world. Having taken the most crucial step, Lu Xuan naturally wanted more. He wanted the imaginary space to be able to store living beings.
This is not simple; the most important thing is to avoid this cause and effect. Lu Xuan doesn't know what will happen when he leaves this world. The previous worlds had no problems because their power levels were too low.