The door to the alchemy chamber remained shut for a full three years. On a certain day three years later, when Han Li emerged calmly, all the demon cores had been transformed into various precious elixirs.
For the first two years, Han Li naturally devoted all his time to refining pills primarily using fifth-grade demon cores as the main ingredient.
Although these pills no longer had any significant effect on him now, any single one of them would have driven a Foundation Establishment cultivator into ecstatic, dream-craved possession.
Through refining these pills, Han Li managed to advance his alchemy skills by another level. After all, even a genuine alchemy master wouldn’t have the opportunity to squander so many demon cores for practice. For an ordinary alchemist, being able to use thirty or forty demon cores in their lifetime would already be considered remarkable.
Even though the refining methods for each type of pill had slight differences, there were always some common aspects that Han Li could draw upon. As a result, after refining these numerous precious pills, his alchemy skills were forcibly elevated to a level even higher than that of the legendary alchemy masters. Consequently, when he later used sixth and seventh-grade demon cores, his success rate naturally increased significantly. This brought Han Li immense relief! Otherwise, given the rarity of sixth and seventh-grade pills, even Han Li would have been reluctant to waste them lightly.
After completing the alchemy, Han Li rested for a month. During this time, he frequently visited the insect rooms to check on both the tri-colored Gold Devouring Beetles and the original, unevolved ones.
While in the alchemy chamber, he had the puppets take turns feeding both types of Gold Devouring Beetles with the leaf-spreading Rainbow Skirt Grass. However, a piece of terrible news emerged: although the tri-colored Gold Devouring Beetles still consumed the grass, it seemed to have lost its special effect of agitating and exciting them. After eating it, they showed no abnormal changes at all.
Initially, Han Li thought it might be because the time was too short or the number of beetles too large, making the grass’s effects not obvious. Suspicious, he isolated several hundred tri-colored Gold Devouring Beetles and specifically fed them this grass to observe any behavioral changes. But after several feedings, these beetles remained as before, showing no unusual reactions.
This left Han Li quite frustrated. He could now confirm that the Rainbow Skirt Grass had truly lost its miraculous effect of promoting reproduction and advancement in the evolved Gold Devouring Beetles.
Although he didn’t understand the reason behind it, there was no doubt that he had lost the method to rapidly reproduce and advance the tri-colored Gold Devouring Beetles. These beetles were now a finite resource, decreasing with each loss!
Now he had no choice but to revert to the old method, having the puppets concentrate on feeding the Rainbow Skirt Grass to the unevolved gold and silver beetles.
These beetles were becoming increasingly agitated, indicating that their next reproduction cycle was not far off. After handling all this, Han Li finally settled his mind and entered the seclusion chamber.
He planned to first cultivate the eighth level of the Azure Essence Sword Art with the assistance of various elixirs, aiming to break through to the mid Core Formation stage.
Sitting cross-legged on a meditation mat in the chamber, Han Li retrieved a pre-prepared medicine bottle from his storage pouch. He poured out a longan-like pill glowing with red light, brought it to his mouth with one hand, and swallowed it.
Feeling the pill’s warmth beginning to emanate from his abdomen, Han Li silently recited the eighth-level sword art mantra and slowly closed his eyes.
Han Li devoted himself wholeheartedly to cultivating the sword art and his spiritual power within the cave abode, and time passed unnoticed.
The process of continuously taking pills and refining their energy into spiritual power was extremely monotonous and dull. Fortunately, Han Li was single-mindedly focused on mastering the technique to gain self-preservation abilities, which kept him from feeling too disheartened.
Fifteen or sixteen years passed in the blink of an eye. Han Li finally broke through the bottleneck to the mid Core Formation stage and mastered the eighth level of the Azure Essence Sword Art.
Despite his excitement, he wasn’t in a hurry to leave seclusion immediately. Since he still had more than half of his pills left, he naturally wouldn’t stop refining them. Thus, having just entered the mid Core Formation stage, Han Li forced himself to calm down and continued cultivating the ninth level of the sword art.
The ninth level was naturally several times more difficult than the previous one.
Spring turned to winter, autumn gave way to summer, and year after year passed while the door to the seclusion chamber remained tightly shut. A thick layer of dust began to cover everything within the cave abode, as if the place was gradually becoming an ancient tomb ruin!
It was a calm morning in the sea near the Misty Sea. Some early-rising seabirds circled low over the water, occasionally letting out sharp cries. The surroundings were entirely peaceful.
But moments later, a glimmer of light suddenly flashed on the distant horizon, followed by several green and red streaks of light shooting toward the Misty Sea like lightning.
After a while, the figures within the distant light became clear: three female and two male cultivators were desperately fleeing in this direction. Among them, except for a middle-aged man around forty years old who was at the early Foundation Establishment stage, the other four were all Qi Condensation cultivators, extremely young, ranging from seventeen or eighteen to twenty-three or twenty-four years old! These individuals flew anxiously toward here while constantly looking back, as if something were chasing them.
In the blink of an eye, they reached the vicinity of the Misty Sea.
“Uncle Sun! There’s a patch of sea mist ahead. Let’s rest inside for a moment! Otherwise, we’ll collapse before those things even catch up to us,” a yellow-robed girl of about fifteen or sixteen said breathlessly to the middle-aged man.
This girl had a round face, large dark eyes, and a chubby, baby-faced appearance that made her look very pretty and adorable. But now, she was drenched in sweat, her face pale, clearly on the verge of exhausting her spiritual power.
“This…”
The middle-aged man was taken aback. He glanced at the other three young men and women and saw that although they were in slightly better condition, it wasn’t by much.
“Alright, let’s rest in the mist to recover some spiritual power, then leave immediately. Even if we’ve put some distance between us and those things, they’ll keep chasing us relentlessly. We must be cautious. If we’re caught, we’re definitely dead,” the middle-aged cultivator hesitated, glanced back again, and reluctantly agreed.
This immediately brought looks of relief to the young men and women’s faces.
Their cultivation was truly shallow; being able to fly continuously to this point was already a struggle. Even though they knew stopping was extremely dangerous, they had no other choice.
They changed direction and flew into the misty sea.
“This sea mist is really thick. Maybe if we stay here, we can hide from those things!” a brawny young man in his twenties exclaimed in pleasant surprise shortly after entering the mist.
“Don’t fantasize. Although I don’t know how they’re tracking us so closely, it’s definitely not something a bit of sea mist can deceive. Everyone, fly lower and see if there are any reefs or similar places to land. Meditating will help us recover spiritual power faster,” the middle-aged cultivator retorted bluntly, making the brawny youth blush slightly before leading the way downward. The others naturally followed closely behind.
“Eh! There’s an island here!” moments later, the yellow-robed girl suddenly exclaimed in surprise.
Before she even finished speaking, the others had also clearly seen the island obscured by the thick mist and couldn’t help but look at each other in surprise.
“There won’t be any other demon beasts here, will there?” a plain-looking young female cultivator in a blue dress asked fearfully.
“There probably isn’t such a coincidence, and besides, we have no choice. Let’s hurry to the island to recover some spiritual power!” the middle-aged man initially hesitated but then made up his mind.
Seeing this, the others said no more and gently landed on the small island together.
“That area seems to have good spiritual energy. Let’s meditate there!” the middle-aged man, upon landing, released his spiritual sense to survey the island and finally pointed in delight toward a certain direction.
He was pointing toward the island’s only small mountain range. Hearing this, the young men and women felt their spirits lift.
Then, without another word, the middle-aged cultivator led the way flying over. The other four young cultivators hurriedly followed. Now, every bit of recovered spiritual power could mean the difference between life and death, so they naturally wouldn’t pass up this rare spiritual-rich land.
After a short while, they arrived at the lush green small mountain range. They casually found a low hill, each holding a spirit stone in both hands, and eagerly sat cross-legged to meditate, absorbing the rich spiritual energy nearby.
Tai Sui Yellow Amulet Paper FuLu Taoist Love Talisman Traditional Chinese Spiritual Charm Attracting Love Protecting Marriage