Chapter 82: Ruthlessly Abandoned, Second-Tier Alchemist

Across the myriad islands of the Ten Thousand Stars Sea, landmasses were scattered like pieces on a celestial chessboard—some large, some small, some brimming with spiritual energy, and others utterly barren. In those places where the flow of spiritual energy was thin, the islands served as the very foundation of the mortal world within the cultivation realm.

Thousand Kings Island was just such a place.

Situated on the far western frontier of the Ten Thousand Stars Sea, the surrounding isles—both great and small—were likewise starved of spiritual power, dry and depleted. It was said that billions of mortal creatures eked out their lives here, and every so often, the sects of the surrounding seas would come to the island to test the inhabitants for spiritual roots.

As a sanctuary for mortals, Thousand Kings Island did not lie on any spirit ship’s major route. The latter half of the journey would have to be completed on foot—or, rather, by one’s own means. Shen Lian had chosen this particular route because along the way, there was an island called Yushan Island where spirit ships made port.

Thirty thousand miles southeast of Yushan lay a place known as the Black Jiao Abyss, where the shallowest waters ran more than thirty thousand fathoms deep.

Anyone who’d ever had to dispose of a corpse knew: if you wanted to hide something well, you had to choose the right place.

Shen Lian intended to cast the Five Elements Mountain into the Black Jiao Abyss. Few islands dotted this region, and fewer still were the cultivators who passed by.

The Five Elements Mountain was valuable, yes, but his own life was far more so.

Once he became an artificer, he could always seek out new spiritual materials and forge another life-bound artifact. When he eventually attained the Nascent Soul stage, would a mere five-colored stone still matter to him?

It wasn’t even a loss; with two thousand spirit stones, he’d leveraged at least four hundred thousand worth of resources—a fortune by any measure.

The journey from Black Whale Island to Yushan Island would take over two months. This wasn’t because the spirit ship was slow, but because it stopped at every island along the way, and each stop cost time.

Shen Lian had considered flying on his own, but in the end, he thought better of it; the road was simply too perilous. How could it compare to the security of having a False Core master aboard?

In his cabin on the spirit ship, Shen Lian sat cross-legged on a meditation cushion. Beneath his robe, a Soul Manifestation Talisman adhered to his chest, and Ten Thousand Mile Swift Talismans were affixed to his legs and feet.

Every twelve hours, a sweep of divine sense would pass through the ship, and he would feel its faint ripple—a passive resonance he could not avoid.

This was the divine sense of the False Core master overseeing the spirit ship.

On any high-grade spirit ship traversing the Ten Thousand Stars Sea, the overseeing cultivator was almost always at the False Core stage. As for true Core Formation masters, they had no time for such trifles, preferring instead to cultivate in seclusion. False Core cultivators were the primary enforcers and travelers for every Core Formation-level sect.

While refining spirit stones, Shen Lian took inventory of the various spiritual goods he’d purchased.

Before his departure, he’d left nearly a hundred thousand lower-grade spirit stones—earned in Black Whale City—right there in the city. Only a little over two thousand stones remained in his storage bracelet.

Even so, there were many things he had yet to acquire.

For instance, a second-tier spirit beast. Because Pei Huoyu had provided dozens of blood pills, Shen Lian had struck that from his must-buy list.

For alchemy, he’d focused on materials for Gathering Essence Pills and True Essence Pills—both used to enhance cultivation. These second-tier pills required one main second-tier herb and a dozen or so first-tier herbs as auxiliaries. Each set of ingredients cost roughly two thousand three hundred spirit stones.

Unlike first-tier pills, a furnace of second-tier pills would yield fewer than ten, counting both good and mediocre quality.

A bottle containing a single low-grade Gathering Essence Pill sold for about four hundred fifty spirit stones.

Of course, the value of these pills was justified by their efficacy: refining a single Gathering Essence Pill produced as much spiritual power as two or three months of cultivation in a spirit stone-rich environment.

Any cultivator aspiring to Core Formation or higher would hardly be content with passively absorbing the world’s spiritual energy. Instead, they would push themselves to the very limit that their bodies could endure, accumulating spiritual power as quickly as possible, breaking through bottlenecks in the Foundation Establishment stage, and saving time to polish their future Core Formation.

Shen Lian bought eight sets of ingredients for each of the two main pills.

It took five to ten days to fully refine a single pill, and afterwards, a period of rest was needed to allow the medicinal power to be completely absorbed. A cultivator could not cultivate ceaselessly day and night; the body simply could not withstand it.

No one could continuously refine pills without taking time to recuperate.

Estimating the time required, Shen Lian calculated that, allowing for pill crafting, talisman inscription, and spell practice, he would consume one pill every twenty days—eighteen per year.

He was not greedy; assuming each furnace produced eight pills, that was one hundred twenty-eight Gathering Essence and True Essence Pills in total—enough for seven or eight years of cultivation in the mortal world.

If he ran out after seven or eight years, he would deal with the problem then. Perhaps he would move again after just three or five years.

He alternated between the two types of pills to avoid developing resistance.

In addition to pills for cultivation, he also bought materials for Replenishing Spirit Pills, but could not find the herbs required to restore spiritual consciousness.

The remaining purchases were mostly materials for talisman crafting.

He bought three pieces of Profound Jade Marrow, each worth five thousand spirit stones, to make powerful jade talismans. Jade marrow had a wide range of uses beyond talismans: it could be used to print talisman treasures, help Foundation Establishment cultivators nurture their spiritual power, and ease the bottleneck between the sixth and seventh layers of Foundation Establishment.

He also procured a bottle of high-grade second-tier spiritual ink, worth thirty-six hundred spirit stones—enough for only five uses.

He could not help but think that, in the future, he might as well bleed his black ox and the white, well-fed Three Thousand to make spiritual ink for sale.

He had not managed to acquire True Thunder Liquid for the Ninety-Nine Heavens Thunder Talisman Array, so he continued working on the Heavenly Gang Earth Fiend Thunder Fire Talisman Array instead.

Among the second-tier talisman arrays he inherited, the Ninety-Nine Heavens Thunder and the Heavenly Gang Thunder Fire were the most offensive.

This time in Black Whale City, he also bought a large batch of poisons, supplementing what remained from his earlier visit to Yunmeng Market.

He was considering assembling a fully poisonous talisman array—one that would reduce his enemies to dust and foul blood, with no need for restraint.

The spirit ship sped along, leaving Black Whale City and heading northwest. Its first stop was Yuanshan Island, where it docked for three days.

An hour before the spirit ship was set to depart, Shen Lian hurried ashore to sell off some Joy Pills. By the time the ship set sail, he returned with forty-three hundred spirit stones.

Once the ship was airborne and flying smoothly, Shen Lian settled down and pressed a jade slip to his forehead.

This was the cultivation method of the Five Elements Interdiction.

He coveted this technique, which Pei Huoyu practiced. It was rooted in the five elements, using cycles of power to suppress opponents, causing their spiritual power to stagnate and disrupting their spellcasting.

In a duel between cultivators, if spiritual power stalled or a spell was interrupted, the slower party might as well have delivered their head to their opponent.

Two months later, the spirit ship docked at Yushan Island.

A few days after that,

On the dark, heavy sea, a black spirit boat hovered just above the water’s surface.

The waves here were low and the air oppressive.

Standing atop the spirit boat, Shen Lian held the Five Elements Mountain in his hand, having already erased all traces of his own presence from it.

Bubbles rose as Three Thousand leaped from beneath the waves.

“Remember this place?” Shen Lian asked.

Three Thousand nodded, and Shen Lian stored him in his beast bracelet.

With a flick of his wrist, he let the Five Elements Mountain fall into the murky depths.

Why was he abandoning it here? He felt a bit embarrassed by his own reasoning.

This place was remote and the water unfathomably deep. He figured he might have the chance to retrieve it someday.

After all, it was a precious treasure. If not for the involvement of a Nascent Soul patriarch, he would never have discarded it.

If Bian Qingyun could even borrow soul gu worms—such rare spirit insects—could Patriarch Ziyang so easily let a Foundation Establishment cultivator abscond with a five-colored stone he had obtained at great effort?

After all this time refining it, Shen Lian had detected nothing unusual about the five-colored stone aside from its spirituality.

But didn’t Pei Huoyu seem perfectly normal until he was critically wounded?

Nascent Soul monsters lived for three thousand years—one among countless cultivators, possessing immeasurable experience. Whether or not he was scaring himself, Shen Lian could not afford any recklessness.

What if Pei Huoyu’s objective was precisely what the old monster Ziyang intended?

Some things simply could not be revisited.

As long as he had his Stability Panel, all else could be cast aside.

…

The spirit boat kicked up a spray before disappearing into the distance.

This craft was chosen from his spoils, a standard wooden vessel for the Foundation Establishment stage.

Otherwise, Shen Lian would not have used it.

Even so, he inscribed a second-tier Water Purification Talisman to thoroughly cleanse the vessel of any lingering traces, giving it a well-worn, newly aged appearance.

After disposing of the Five Elements Mountain, he returned to Yushan Island and began his journey westward.

Traveling west, the spiritual energy in the air grew ever thinner, and cultivators became sparser and weaker. Even the fish and shrimp beneath the waves grew smaller.

He passed by more and more islands where mortals had built towns.

The cultivation world had an unspoken rule: cultivators were not to wantonly slaughter mortals.

Even in the wars between cultivator clans, the victors would not exterminate the defeated clan’s mortal kin; they would only eliminate those with power.

The bolder simply absorbed the defeated mortals into their own clans. After a few decades of assimilation, they would have a fresh batch of clan members.

The more cautious would confine them, assigning a few hopeless cultivators to watch over them for decades, quietly eliminating any mortals with spiritual roots. Once that generation died out, the old feuds faded.

Large-scale massacres of mortals were the work of demon cultivators.

On some of these islands, Shen Lian stopped to make notes—he might need this information in the future.

More than twenty days later,

The massive silhouette of an island appeared on the horizon.

Thousand Kings Island—at last.

Its outline resembled an unbroken mountain range lying across the ocean, the two ends merging seamlessly with the sky and sea.

Countless small fortune boats and fishing vessels dotted the waters.

“Immortal!”

“Immortal!”

As Shen Lian guided his spirit boat across the waves, figures on the distant ships fell to their knees.

He did not pause; these mortals, though kneeling, showed no surprise at his presence.

Clearly, the mortals of Thousand Kings Island were accustomed to seeing cultivators.

…

One day later.

Pongzhou City.

Shen Lian sat crouched in a private room at a tavern, sipping wine.

After a few rounds, he had grasped the situation on Thousand Kings Island.

Several major cultivation sects had divided the island among themselves, each area governed by an officer sent from a different sect.

Pongzhou was the capital of the Pong Kingdom, and a seventh-layer Qi Refining cultivator served as the resident immortal official.

A lavish palace—more magnificent than the royal residence—had been built for him, and every few days, groups of beautiful, water-spirited maidens were sent to the palace for his enjoyment.

It was a life of wine and song, feasting and revelry, a new bride every night—enviable, indeed…

The island’s spiritual energy was depleted, and there were no famed mountains or rivers.

Ultimately, Shen Lian chose to seclude himself in Huayang Prefecture, under the jurisdiction of the Pong Kingdom—a region of many mountains and sparse population.

…

Mount Jiuhua.

Stability Peak.

In truth, it was just a nondescript hill nestled among the surrounding mountains.

He chose this peak because beneath it lay a hollow cavern, more than two hundred fathoms deep—a natural, secure cave dwelling.

The black ox, along with the black-horned ant colony, dug out chambers within the cave for cultivation, talisman crafting, pill refining, and a spirit beast room.

He even had a small pool excavated for Three Thousand.

Following his usual custom, Shen Lian set up his arrays and talismans. His new home was complete.

The black-horned ants continued tunneling, establishing nests around the cave and building outposts for surveillance.

With everything in order, Shen Lian’s life of seclusion officially began.

The aim of this retreat was to hone all his skills and become a Foundation Establishment cultivator equally adept in both offense and defense.

A day later.

Sitting cross-legged in his cultivation room, Shen Lian’s eyes opened—spiritual light flashed.

[Shen Lian: Foundation Establishment, First Layer]
[Five Element Roots: Fire 100, Earth 31, Metal 31, Wood 31, Water 31]
[Fire Divine Ability: Celestial Fire Domain]
[Spiritual Sense: Six Hundred and Ten Fathoms]
[Alchemist: First-Tier High Grade (1/10,000), cannot advance]
—Expand—
[Comprehension Points: 17,826]
[Divine Insight Points: 0]

With a single thought, ten thousand comprehension points vanished. Waves rippled through the sea of his spiritual sense, as though a gentle breeze had stirred the surface of a tranquil lake.

From the depths, specks of glimmering dust emerged, transforming into the mysteries of pillcraft, then manifesting as tangible words.

“Mystic Condensation Pill Method… Clear Void Life Pill… Crimson Cloud Pill…”

“Ten-Thousand Essence Pill, capable of refining the bloodlines of spirit beasts.”

“Jade Bodhi Pill… Ninefold Return Pill, aids in refining spiritual power…”

…

“Gold Origin Pill, Wood Origin Pill, Water Origin Pill…”

…

“Soul Nurturing Pill… Face-Preserving Pill… Spirit Beast Pill…”