Thinking about that scene, where the enemy carefully laid out a plan to trap the Tree Person clone, and before they could even feel proud, the Tree Person clone unleashed a terrifying self-destruction.
And because of this self-destruction, not only did the enemy suffer heavy losses on their own side, but they didn’t even get a single strand of the Tree Person clone left behind.
Just imagining that self-defeating scene left Qi Ping feeling just one word: Awesome!
In this messed-up world, he finally had a way to move about outside with confidence.
However, to achieve this, he needed a self-destruction technique that was almost impossible to interrupt, one that could completely destroy everything about the Tree Person clone itself, and ideally, also possess terrifying power.
Sure, destroying yourself is easy, but destroying yourself completely while unleashing immense power is the real challenge.
After testing all the data on the Tree Person clone, Qi Ping immediately began researching self-destruction techniques.
First, Qi Ping found three related spells:
“Self-Destruction Technique!” – A spell for self-destruction using the Qi Sea and Dantian.
“Burning Blood Technique!” – A spell that burns blood and potential to enhance combat power.
“Crippling Palm!” – A spell with extremely strong destructive power against the physical body.
“Using the ‘Self-Destruction Technique’ as the foundation, enhancing its power with the ‘Burning Blood Technique,’ and then using the force of the ‘Crippling Palm’ to destroy everything that cannot be burned.”
Cultivation knows no time.
Five years passed in the blink of an eye.
“Foundation Establishment cultivation isn’t easy!”
For five years, Qi Ping had been continuously refining [Scorching Sun Blue Spirit Honey], which had been fused with solar essence, to improve his cultivation. But even now, he was still far from the middle stage of Foundation Establishment.
“Moreover, the effect of the Scorching Sun Blue Spirit Honey is steadily decreasing, and my body’s resistance to the Blue Moon Fruit is getting stronger and stronger.”
To deal with this resistance issue, Qi Ping had even started cultivating a low-tier second-grade [Cold Pool Grass].
Unfortunately, this herb is ice-attributed, making it more suitable for water and ice-attribute cultivators. Qi Ping gave it a try, but using it for cultivation was like putting in twice the effort for half the result.
After the failure with the Cold Pool Grass, Qi Ping retrieved the three second-grade spiritual seeds he had obtained from that old Foundation Establishment cultivator named He Dao Ren.
Through cultivation and experimentation, Qi Ping identified the varieties of these three seeds.
They were: low-tier second-grade [Water Glass Flower], low-tier second-grade [Earth Dragon Root], and mid-tier second-grade [Blood Blaze Robe]!
Qi Ping was especially thrilled by the existence of the Blood Blaze Robe!
The Blood Blaze Robe is a rather famous mid-tier second-grade spiritual herb. It has a very strong purifying and enhancing effect on fire-attributed spiritual energy and can effectively unlock the potential of a fire-attribute constitution!
This meant that once he cultivated it, both Qi Ping’s and Crow Crow’s bloodline potential and spiritual power intensity could skyrocket!
At the very least, Crow Crow’s next transformation was practically guaranteed to succeed!
With the [Blood Blaze Robe] and [Potential Activation] working together, combined with the massive amounts of solar power and the sun essence from the Scorching Sun Wood that Crow Crow had already absorbed, this transformation would definitely bring a huge surprise.
Unfortunately, this Blood Blaze Robe could not reproduce on its own, meaning there was only one plant available to use!
So Qi Ping planned to cultivate it to the limit that [Plant Growth] could achieve before using it.
But that still left Qi Ping without a suitable spiritual herb to improve his own cultivation level.
“The resources needed for Foundation Establishment cultivation are truly immense!”
“No wonder those Foundation Establishment cultivators might not even break through once in a hundred or two hundred years!”
Qi Ping also increasingly realized that the difficulty of cultivation, as hard as reaching the heavens, was not just an empty saying.
This also explained why, despite so many Qi Condensation cultivators and mortals in the Qingtian Domain giving birth to so many cultivation prodigies each year, Foundation Establishment cultivators were still not numerous, and Golden Core cultivators were even rarer.
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It turned out that what was never truly precious were the geniuses, but the resources!
To sum it up in one sentence: Without money or background, why bother cultivating?
In times like these, you either had to be an unparalleled prodigy, attracting the power of heaven and earth and the force of destiny to pour into your body to rapidly increase your cultivation through extraordinary enlightenment.
Or you had to become a demonic cultivator, devouring flesh and blood, refining elite blood meals, and walking the path of the strange and aberrant.
It was then that Qi Ping suddenly remembered reading something in an ancient text, though he didn’t know if it was true. It was said that in the ancient era, lost to time, every corner of heaven and earth was filled with dense spiritual energy.
Back then, almost everyone could practice the Dao, and there was no need to compete for precious spiritual objects to cultivate. That was the true golden age of the cultivation world.
But as the cultivation world progressed to today, spiritual veins have become increasingly rare and precious, and the probability of heavenly spiritual objects appearing is far lower than in ancient times.
This has led the focus of cultivation to shift from creating techniques, discussing the Dao, and pioneering cultivation paths to competing for resources, forming the clearly stratified cultivation world of today.
“If that’s true, then the cultivation environment of our world is only going to get worse, isn’t it?”
Qi Ping also clearly sensed that the spiritual energy in the Cloudmist Mountain Range seemed a bit weaker than before, and this issue existed throughout the entire mountain range, not just in one place.
Although the decrease wasn’t too much, the problem was definitely there.
But the Cloudmist Mountain Range itself hadn’t been damaged. Qi Ping had checked the flow of the underground spiritual veins and found no damage. Under these circumstances, the spiritual energy shouldn’t be weakening; if anything, it should be growing stronger over time due to the veins being nurtured!
How strange!
After discovering this problem, he couldn’t help but feel grateful that he had built his current territory. As long as he nurtured it well, it could continue to support his cultivation.
His desire to acquire spiritual herbs and improve his territory also grew stronger.
“I can’t delay the search for spiritual herbs to increase my cultivation any longer!”
With a limited lifespan, breakthroughs need to happen sooner rather than later.
“It’s also time for the Tree Person clone to go out, perform tasks, and look for resources.”
After so many years of research, Qi Ping had long since developed a self-destruction technique that met his requirements: the [True Understanding Self-Destruction]!
Generally speaking, a cultivator using an ordinary self-destruction technique would already pose a deadly threat to cultivators of the same level. But Qi Ping’s [True Understanding Self-Destruction] could destroy and burn up everything about the Tree Person clone in an extremely short time, unleashing terrifying power!
To get this spell to a state he was satisfied with, Qi Ping had already self-destructed three Tree Person clones.
The power of that last one was such that even Qi Ping’s main body would probably be reduced to dust if he went.
After the self-destruction was complete, there were no traces left at the scene either.
During these five years, besides the [True Understanding Self-Destruction], Qi Ping had also made tremendous progress in other areas.
The [Golden Flame Art] was cultivated to perfection.
While his formation mastery was still at the mid-tier second-grade level, his proficiency and the number of formations he had mastered had increased considerably.
Most importantly, the number of Armor Bees had been cultivated to two thousand!
Remember, back when there were only two or three hundred Armor Bees, they could form a battle formation to restrain an ordinary early Foundation Establishment cultivator.
Now, not only had their numbers reached two thousand, but they were also equipped with the low-tier second-grade [All-Heaven Armor Bee Formation] that Qi Ping had developed!
With this group of Armor Bees assisting the Tree Person clone, the clone’s combat effectiveness while out in the world was sufficiently guaranteed.
