Three days later, Ye Qingxuan encountered no bottlenecks whatsoever.
He merged his consciousness into his golden core, activating his spiritual energy. He had actually already fulfilled this requirement long ago, back when he used his Immortal Soul to merge his consciousness with the source of his essence, energy, and spirit.
So, once Ye Qingxuan’s cultivation reached the peak of the Golden Core Realm, his cultivation naturally broke through to the early stage of the Nascent Soul Realm.
The moment he broke through to the Nascent Soul Realm, the origin energy he’d obtained from sacrificing the Green Demon corpse was rapidly consumed, transforming into a massive surge of spiritual power that merged into Ye Qingxuan’s nascent soul prototype.
With the support of this vast spiritual power, Ye Qingxuan’s nascent soul took shape in an instant.
In Ye Qingxuan’s dantian, the golden core that had originally been wrapped in the World Diagram’s sub-diagram had now transformed into a three-inch-tall nascent soul.
The nascent soul in his dantian was surrounded by a chaotic, primal color, draped in a Dao diagram shimmering with the flow of the Dao’s principles.
This Dao diagram was none other than the sub-diagram condensed from the origin of his life-bound treasure, the World Diagram.
Ye Qingxuan continuously absorbed spiritual energy from the outside world, converting it into his own spiritual power, which his nascent soul devoured to stabilize his cultivation.
Most of the spiritual power devoured by the nascent soul was directly converted by Ye Qingxuan’s spiritual roots. A small portion, however, came from the World Diagram’s sub-diagram, which absorbed external spiritual energy and converted it into spiritual power for the nascent soul to absorb.
His life-bound treasure, the World Diagram, functioned like an additional spiritual root that had appeared out of thin air, accelerating Ye Qingxuan’s cultivation speed.
This was one of the advantages of refining a life-bound treasure.
As the nascent soul inhaled and exhaled spiritual power, it continuously refined and purified his spiritual energy. This purified spiritual energy was then circulated back through Ye Qingxuan’s entire body via the nascent soul.
His physical body began to continuously absorb this more refined spiritual energy, undergoing a transformation as his cells rapidly evolved.
Not only that, but his bones, tempered by Nascent Soul-level spiritual power, gradually became as white as jade, emitting a gentle, soft glow. Even his meridians turned crystal clear, their flexibility and width greatly improved.
The breakthrough in cultivation and the transformation of his body meant that Ye Qingxuan’s rate of absorbing external spiritual energy would surge once again.
Although advancing to a higher realm couldn’t directly change how fast a cultivator’s spiritual roots converted energy, the physical transformation greatly increased the rate at which they could absorb spiritual energy. High-density spiritual energy could be compressed deep within the body, condensing several strands of spiritual energy into one.
This indirectly improved the efficiency of the spiritual roots’ conversion.
So, even with the same four-element spiritual root talent, the amount of spiritual power a Nascent Soul cultivator could convert in a year was naturally incomparable to what a Golden Core cultivator could achieve.
After Ye Qingxuan’s breakthrough, the true body of the World Diagram, which was perfecting itself within the origin of the Qingxuan Cave Heaven Paradise and devouring energy to grow, seemed to shatter its shackles, its grade directly rising to the spirit treasure level—and even breaking through to the mid-grade spirit treasure level.
After being promoted to mid-grade spirit treasure, the Dao resonance on the World Diagram became even richer. The mountains and rivers depicted on it seemed to come alive, faintly revealing the embryonic forms of various elemental mysteries and rules.
After his cultivation breakthrough, Ye Qingxuan didn’t immediately leave seclusion.
There was still much he needed to do.
First, he had to raise his proficiency in the Four Arts of Cultivation, with the art of formations being his top priority.
If he wanted to build a city in the lower realm of Xuanmu Realm to withstand attacks from the Green Demons, formations were absolutely essential.
Although the market within the Xuantian Sect sold formation plates of the sixth rank, without a corresponding level of formation mastery, he wouldn’t be able to fully replicate the grand formation, and its power would inevitably be reduced.
Moreover, once his formation mastery reached the sixth rank, he could refine the city components directly within the Qingxuan Cave Heaven Paradise, inscribing formations onto them. Then, he could have his avatar take the components directly to the Xuanmu Realm, speeding up the city’s construction.
After making his plans, Ye Qingxuan entered seclusion once more.
Over the next three years, he raised his mastery of formations and artifact refinement to the sixth rank.
Since he was going to build a city in the Xuanmu Realm, he naturally wanted to achieve the highest possible quality.
Raising his artifact refinement to the sixth rank meant the city components he refined would be of a higher grade.
Unfortunately, Ye Qingxuan was only at the early Nascent Soul stage, and the Qingxuan Cave Heaven Paradise was still at the third rank. Even as a sixth-rank artifact refiner, his current crafting ability only reached the level of mid-grade spirit treasures, and the quality wasn’t particularly good.
Upper-grade spirit treasures and top-grade spirit treasures were commonly used by cultivators at the Spirit Transformation realm. Refining them naturally required Spirit Transformation-level power.
Ye Qingxuan was only at the early Nascent Soul stage. Even with the support of the Qingxuan Cave Heaven Paradise, it was still only a third-rank realm.
Though a cave heaven paradise was vast, as a separate minor world, most of its power was used to sustain its own operation. So, the power it could lend to Ye Qingxuan was limited.
With his early Nascent Soul cultivation and the support of the third-rank Qingxuan Cave Heaven Paradise, it was already quite impressive that he could barely step across the threshold of a sixth-rank artifact refiner.
Even if the quality of an upper-grade spirit treasure was subpar, it was still far more powerful than a mid-grade spirit treasure. So, Ye Qingxuan was satisfied.
After raising his formation and artifact refinement skills to the sixth rank, Ye Qingxuan didn’t continue improving his alchemy or talisman skills. He decided to first forge the city components and build the city in the Xuanmu Realm. Only then would he slowly work on raising his alchemy and talisman mastery.
As for the city’s layout, Ye Qingxuan already had a clear goal.
Inside the city, he planned to arrange a Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams pattern, combining them into a sixth-rank Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams Guardian Grand Formation.
On the city walls, he planned to set up a sixth-rank offensive killing formation.
With one formation for offense and one for defense, they could better establish a foothold in the Xuanmu Realm.
If he used the killing formation well, it might even bring him considerable gains the first time it was deployed.
At this thought, an uncontrollable smile appeared on Ye Qingxuan’s face.
But then, as he smiled, his expression froze.
A moment later, he bitterly patted his forehead.
The problem was that he had already used up the small amount of sixth-rank materials he had on hand for refining upper-grade spirit treasures.
The sixth-rank materials in his inventory had been acquired sporadically through his business, the Tianfu Shop.
According to current market prices, even a single cube of the lowest quality sixth-rank material cost 600 high-grade spirit stones.
If he built the entire city from sixth-rank materials, the cost would be astronomical—he might very well go bankrupt.
After hesitating for a moment, Ye Qingxuan set aside this wildly unrealistic idea.
“Forget it. A city built from third- and fourth-rank materials will do just fine.”
