With the lesson from last time still fresh in mind, Ye Qingxuan was much more cautious this time.
He didn’t rashly make a move on this Green Demon tribe.
Instead, he first surveyed the surrounding area to make sure there were no other Green Demon tribes or powerful beings nearby.
Then, he set up several array disks around the tribe and activated them, laying down a fourth-tier concealment formation that enveloped the entire Green Demon tribe.
The moment the formation rose, it instantly alerted the whole tribe.
The three Foundation Establishment Green Demons stationed in the tribe, sensing something wrong, immediately flew up into the air above the settlement, their faces dark as they stared at the formation now covering them.
One of them threw a probing attack at the formation barrier, but it had no effect whatsoever.
Seeing this, his heart sank. He scanned his surroundings and spoke in a low voice:
“May I ask which esteemed elder has graced our Mo River Tribe with their presence? Please, show yourself!”
Up above the tribe, Ye Qingxuan heard the Green Demon’s words but did not reply.
Though the Green Demon race and humanity were not the same, and their languages differed,
once one set foot on the path of cultivation, all spoken words could be interpreted as Dao sounds, so cultivators never faced communication barriers.
Afraid of unexpected complications, Ye Qingxuan didn’t want to drag this out.
He extended one hand, palm open, and the spirit-artifact-level Towning Boundary Tower materialized in his grip.
In a low, soft voice, he intoned:
“Suppress the Realm!”
Instantly, a massive phantom image of a pagoda appeared above the Mo River Tribe. The Towning Boundary Tower in Ye Qingxuan’s hand rapidly expanded, merging with that phantom.
An overwhelming suppressive force radiated from the now-solid pagoda and, under Ye Qingxuan’s control, swept down toward the tribe below.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
The three Foundation Establishment Green Demons, who had been hovering in midair, were instantly slammed down, crashing heavily into the ground.
The very earth beneath the entire Mo River Tribe sank considerably under the weight of that suppressive force.
In an instant, every Green Demon in the tribe—including the three Foundation Establishment ones—had their souls obliterated and their bodies shattered by that crushing power.
Seeing this, Ye Qingxuan paused for a moment.
He quietly tucked back into his storage the handful of nuclear explosion pills he had just pulled out.
He had underestimated the power of his Minor Divine Ability · Suppress the Realm.
This ability wasn’t limited to just suppression—the force of Suppress the Realm targeted not only space but also the cultivator’s physical body and soul.
Its offensive capabilities were far from negligible.
Even though it was merely a seed of the Suppress the Realm divine ability, when paired with its complementary artifact, the Towning Boundary Tower, the resulting burst of power was astonishing.
Seeing that the Green Demons below had been completely wiped out, Ye Qingxuan snapped out of his daze and quickly withdrew the Suppress the Realm ability.
If he kept the pressure on any longer, their bodies would have been ground completely into dust.
Without rushing to dispel the concealment formation, Ye Qingxuan first cleaned up the battlefield and took stock of his gains.
During the cultivation process, Green Demons constantly absorbed energy, causing their physical bodies to evolve continuously.
This was precisely why both the flesh and the cultivation origins of Green Demons could be sacrificed in exchange for feedback from the Earth Profound Realm’s original source.
After extracting the cultivation origins from all the Green Demon cultivators,
Ye Qingxuan’s haul consisted of three Foundation Establishment Green Demon corpses, three Foundation Establishment cultivation origins,
as well as eighty-six Qi Refining Green Demon corpses and eighty-six Qi Refining cultivation origins.
As for the other Green Demons—those without any cultivation at all—their utility was too low, so Ye Qingxuan simply left them behind.
On top of these gains, he also destroyed the tribe’s second-tier demonic vein, netting a fair amount of low-grade demon stones and a second-tier demonic vein source.
In the hands of the higher-ups of the Earth Profound Realm, low-grade demon stones and demonic vein sources could be completely purified and converted into spirit stones and spirit vein sources.
But Ye Qingxuan, constrained by his current cultivation, couldn’t employ many of the methods from his Earth Immortal inheritance—he simply wasn’t capable of doing the same.
Still, with the fifth-tier Grotto-Heaven Purification Grand Formation, Ye Qingxuan could grind down both the demon stones and the demonic vein sources, extracting a portion of second-tier origin energy for the Qingxuan Grotto-Heaven to absorb, thereby accelerating its growth.
Admittedly, this process would waste a great deal of energy, making it impossible to fully convert all the power within the demon stones and vein sources.
But at least he could still put them to use, and Ye Qingxuan was content with that.
Second-tier origin energy was far inferior to the direct feedback from the Earth Profound Realm, but absorbing it could still enhance energy conversion efficiency and reduce the time needed for the Grotto-Heaven to transform that origin—so it wasn’t too much of a loss.
As for the Qi Refining and Foundation Establishment Green Demon corpses and cultivation origins,
Ye Qingxuan could similarly use the fifth-tier Grotto-Heaven Purification Grand Formation to convert them into first-tier and second-tier origin energy for the Qingxuan Grotto-Heaven to absorb, further transforming it into the Grotto-Heaven’s own origin.
Alternatively, he could also use the connection between the Qingxuan Grotto-Heaven and the Earth Profound Realm to set up a small sacrificial formation, offering the Green Demon corpses and cultivation origins to the Earth Profound Realm in exchange for origin energy to boost his own cultivation.
However, the origin energy returned from sacrificing Green Demons below Golden Core wouldn’t do much for his current level of cultivation.
So Ye Qingxuan planned to convert all Green Demons below Golden Core into origin energy,
letting the Qingxuan Grotto-Heaven absorb it to shorten the time needed for its growth.
Only when he hunted Green Demons at Golden Core and above would he consider sacrificing them to the Earth Profound Realm to raise his own cultivation.
In truth, demon stones and demonic vein sources could also be sacrificed to the Earth Profound Realm for world origin.
But for some reason, directly sacrificing them yielded such a pitiful amount of world origin—the kind that could directly boost cultivation—that it was barely worth mentioning.
That’s why basically no cultivator ever bothered to sacrifice demon stones or demonic vein sources for such negligible returns.
Ye Qingxuan didn’t know the exact reason either.
He guessed that the energy within cultivators from another realm contained something that the Earth Profound Realm needed.
And with that “something,” converting and extracting world origin from Green Demon corpses and cultivation origins required far less loss.
That was why sacrificing the corpses and cultivation origins of Green Demons from another realm yielded so much more world origin in return.
As for pure energy sources like demon stones and demonic vein sources, while they could also be converted into world origin,
the lack of that “something” meant a huge loss during the conversion process.
That was likely what caused this disparity.
Even the origin energy that Ye Qingxuan’s Qingxuan Grotto-Heaven fed back to him during each advancement—
though it looked like a lot, enough to push him up nearly two minor cultivation levels each time—
came at a cost. To advance the Grotto-Heaven, he had planted massive amounts of spiritual herbs and integrated enormous quantities of spirit ores.
Add to that the spirit veins he later merged, plus the constant absorption of chaotic and void energy by the Grotto-Heaven itself,
and only then did he scrape together the world origin needed for the Qingxuan Grotto-Heaven’s advancement.
That just goes to show how inefficient it is to convert pure energy into world origin.
With all those resources poured in, and with Ye Qingxuan being the master of the Qingxuan Grotto-Heaven,
only then was there enough origin feedback to boost his cultivation during each advancement.
If even Ye Qingxuan—the Grotto-Heaven’s master—was in this position, then what about other cultivators with no connection to the Earth Profound Realm?
Of course, this was still just his speculation.
But Ye Qingxuan felt it was probably close to the truth—energy within cultivators from another realm must contain something more beneficial to a world than mere foreign energy.
As for cultivators from this realm? Anything present in a cultivator’s body, the world already had in abundance.
So sacrificing cultivators from this world yielded no feedback whatsoever.
