Chapter 254: Perfection in the Yan Huo Shen Mu Gong, Refreshing the Xu Tu Spirit Body

Chapter 254: Perfection in the Yan Huo Shen Mu Gong, Refreshing the Xu Tu Spirit Body

Ling Yan Peak

"Gu!"

Accompanied by the cry of a eagle, two giant eagles with a wingspan of fifty feet landed outside the cave mansion.

Chu Ning leaped off the back of a Golden Thunder Eagle and reached out to pat its lowered head.

"Big Jin, Little Jin, I'll be sequestered for a few days. Don't think about going out; just stay in the spirit beast room."

As if understanding Chu Ning's words, the two Golden Thunder Eagles called out, "Gu," and then followed him into the cave mansion.

Chu Ning shook his head secretly. These Golden Thunder Eagles were growing up fast. In the past fifteen years, the two eagles had reached the peak of a third-grade demon beast.

It wouldn't be long before they advanced to the fourth grade.

On the other hand, the Iron Rock Beast was still a third-grade demon beast and showed no signs of advancing anytime soon.

Of course, this had a lot to do with the fact that the Golden Thunder Eagles started as second-grade demon beasts.

The rapid advancement of the Golden Thunder Eagles even made Ling Xiao Bai, the little guy, a bit jealous.

However, the faster the eagles advanced, the more minor troubles they caused.

First of all, they had enormous appetites.

Unlike Ling Xiao Bai, who only needed to eat a spirit fruit from time to time, the Golden Thunder Eagles were carnivores.

They needed to feed on spirit beasts or demon beasts almost every day.

Initially, Chu Ning would only get some from Ling Beast Peak, but later on, he just let the eagles hunt for themselves.

And every now and then, Chu Ning would accompany them on their hunts.

Fortunately, many cultivators in the sect now knew that the eagles were tamed by Chu Ning, so no one would mistakenly harm them.

The fact that Chu Ning was able to hatch and raise the Golden Thunder Eagles had indeed surprised Qi Guangshou of Ling Beast Peak.

Chu Ning didn't tell him about the Xuan Ming Jue, though.

He just said that he kept using the hatching technique, trying for a long time, and eventually succeeded.

It was unclear if Qi Guangshou believed him or simply didn't want to probe further, but he didn't ask any more questions.

Instead, he later exchanged some cultivation methods with Chu Ning.

He even occasionally arranged for disciples from Ling Beast Peak to send some low-grade demon beasts for the eagles to eat.

Chu Ning locked up the Golden Thunder Eagles and Ling Xiao Bai to prevent them from causing trouble while he was sequestered, as he needed to be in isolation for a considerable amount of time.

Then he entered the courtyard where he cultivated spiritual plants.

He sat directly under the purple phoenix cedar tree, which was about fifty feet tall, and extended his spiritual sense into it before starting to cultivate the Refining God Technique.

Immediately, strands of wood essence qi flowed out and were refined by Chu Ning.

Under Chu Ning's magic and Ling Xiao Bai's nurturing, this purple phoenix cedar tree bore fruit five years ago.

And Chu Ning began to borrow the wood essence qi to strengthen his spiritual sense.

At this moment, after cultivating the Refining God Technique and adjusting his spiritual sense to its optimal state, Chu Ning took out several pieces of medium-grade spirit stones.

This was Chu Ning's habit when he was about to break through. Although he preferred to use pills to enhance his cultivation during his daily practice, he still preferred to absorb the pure spiritual energy from spirit stones during breakthroughs.

With several medium-grade spirit stones by his side, Chu Ning looked at the proficiency levels in his mind:

【Yan Huo Shen Mu Gong (High-grade Xuan level), Fourth Layer (39950/40000)】

【Nine Transforming Body Refining Art, Second Volume, First Layer (14145/45000)】

【Refining God Technique, Fourth Layer (33161/64000)】

In the past fifteen years, Chu Ning had focused most of his time and energy on cultivating the Yan Huo Shen Mu Gong, hence the rapid improvement in his qi refining.

At this moment, he was close to perfecting the fourth layer of the Yan Huo Shen Mu Gong, which was why he had prepared to sequester himself for a short period.

He was determined to break through to the perfection of the fourth layer in one go!

Although his progress in body refining and spiritual sense cultivation was not as fast as in qi refining, his strength had still increased significantly after more than ten years of cultivation.

In the Nine Transforming Body Refining Art, the second volume, and the first layer, when the proficiency reached 10,000, the first transformation was completed.

And the changes it brought to Chu Ning were extremely noticeable.

At this moment, Chu Ning looked even younger than he did fifteen years ago.

This was obviously due to the extension of his lifespan.

Although completing this first transformation didn't grant Chu Ning any new abilities, he had discovered that his five divine abilities—the Heaven Punishing Fist, the Thunderous Step, the Yuan Condensing Slash, the Soul Shattering Strike, and the Undying Golden Body—had all increased in power.

Evidently, the claim that with each transformation, one's divine abilities would increase by a fraction, and lifespan would extend by a tenth, was not an empty promise.

In terms of the Refining God Technique, he had already completed half of the fourth layer's proficiency.

Chu Ning's spiritual sense could now be projected up to four thousand and two hundred zhang away.

At this stage, increasing the range of one's spiritual sense became increasingly difficult, and extending it by even a few hundred zhang was no easy feat.

As for the Spirit Division Technique, Chu Ning was already able to create ninety-nine spiritual projections.

After more than ten years of cultivation, Chu Ning's strength had risen to a whole new level.

And now, what Chu Ning wanted to do was to see if, as he suspected, perfecting the fourth layer of the Yan Huo Shen Mu Gong would allow him to refresh his cultivation spirit body, granting him one with earth attributes.

After all, this would determine the direction of his future cultivation.

Holding several medium-grade spirit stones in his hand, Chu Ning activated the Yan Huo Shen Mu Gong and began absorbing the spiritual energy from the spirit stones at a startling rate.

One by one, the spirit stones were depleted.

And day by day, time passed.

After ten days of unmoving cultivation in the chamber, Chu Ning finally opened his eyes with a slight smile on his face.

Without any pause, Chu Ning had completed the final 50 points of proficiency in one go, perfecting the fourth layer of the Yan Huo Shen Mu Gong.

And at this moment, he immediately checked his cultivation proficiency:

【Yan Huo Shen Mu Gong (High-grade Xuan level), Fourth Layer (40000/40000)】

【Nine Transforming Body Refining Art, Second Volume, First Layer (14145/45000)】

【Fire gives birth to Earth, detecting that the host possesses an Earth Spirit Root.】

【Talent Refresh, Reward Talent "Xu Tu Spirit Body":

1. Significantly enhances the perception of Earth-attribute spiritual energy, increasing the speed of cultivating Earth-style techniques and spells; can be combined with Yin Wood Spirit Body and Wu Fire Spirit Body, making it equally effective for cultivating Wood-Fire-Earth triple attribute techniques and spells.

2. When using Earth-attribute defensive spells, defense is doubled.

3. Hidden Talent: After forming an Elixir, there is a 50% chance of refreshing the "Array Dao Spirit Body."

"Xu Tu Spirit Body! It's indeed an Earth-attribute spirit body!"

Chu Ning was delighted as he read the system's prompt.

This meant that his preparations over the years had not been in vain.

Whether it was the Five Elements Chaos Formula, his pursuit of the qualification to enter the Golden Spirit Species Spirit Domain, or his preparation of related pills and medicinal ingredients, it had all been worth it.

As for the talents associated with the "Xu Tu Spirit Body," they also satisfied Chu Ning greatly.

First of all, the talent for cultivating Earth-attribute techniques and spells was a given.

On top of the offensive boost from his Fire-attribute spells, he now also had a defensive boost from the Earth attribute.

Moreover, what surprised Chu Ning a little was that the "Array Dao Spirit Body," which was obviously a talent related to array techniques, had become a hidden talent.

There was a certain probability that it would refresh after forming a dan.

Chu Ning had speculated about this before. After refreshing the related spirit bodies for inscription, pill refining, and artifact crafting, there was a chance that he could refresh the array-related spirit body talent.

However, Chu Ning's guess was that, similar to before, after awakening the Earth-attribute spirit body and cultivating it to the next layer, there might be a chance to refresh it.

But now, the system's refresh mechanism had come early.

He didn't have to wait until he perfected his cultivation of the technique to refresh his talent.

"The Five Elements Chaos Formula also has four layers. I definitely won't be able to cultivate it to the first layer of perfection before forming a dan.

If I successfully form a dan, and then cultivate the Five Elements Chaos Formula to the first layer of perfection in the future, what will this talent refresh be like then?"

Chu Ning wondered to himself, then couldn't help but smile at his own thoughts.

He was thinking about what would happen after cultivating the Five Elements Chaos Formula, even though he hadn't officially started cultivating it yet.

With this in mind, Chu Ning took out a jade slip from his storage bag.

It was the replica he had made of the Five Elements Chaos Formula.

In fact, Chu Ning had already comprehended this formula countless times before.

However, now that he was about to officially start cultivating it, he naturally wanted to understand it thoroughly once again.

For two consecutive days, Chu Ning spent his time outside of cultivating in the room, feeding Ling Xiao Bai and the two Golden Thunder Eagles.

The rest of the time, he spent comprehending the Five Elements Chaos Formula.

It was only on the third day that Chu Ning sat down cross-legged in the cultivation room, ready to officially begin his cultivation.

This technique required the simultaneous cultivation of at least three attributes, and Chu Ning naturally chose to cultivate Wood, Fire, and Earth attributes.

At this moment, as he operated the cultivation technique of the Five Elements Chaos Formula, Chu Ning soon felt that along with the infusion of spiritual energy, within his dantian, in addition to the extremely pure Wood-Fire dual-attribute spiritual power, a faint thread of Earth-attribute spiritual power was born.

And in Chu Ning's dantian, two liquid spiritual power masses of different sizes were formed.

The larger one was naturally the Wood-Fire dual-attribute spiritual power, while the smaller one, almost imperceptible, was the Earth-attribute spiritual power.

At the same time, as Chu Ning continued to cultivate, the Wood-Fire attribute spiritual power began to convert a strand of Earth-attribute spiritual power, which soon merged with the Earth-attribute spiritual energy that had been introduced into his body.

The large Wood-Fire attribute spiritual power mass was imperceptibly shrinking.

However, the Earth-attribute spiritual power mass was visibly growing.

Time passed, and after a day of such cultivation, Chu Ning exited his cultivation state and checked his proficiency, his eyes lighting up at what he saw.

【Five Elements Chaos Formula (Middle-grade Celestial Tier), First Layer (3/50,000)】

【Nine Transforming Body Refining Art, Second Volume, First Layer (14,145/45,000)】

【Refining God Technique, Fourth Layer (33,161/64,000)】

"This Five Elements Chaos Formula really is a Celestial Tier technique!"

When Chu Ning had first obtained the Five Elements Chaos Formula, Liu Zhaolin had mentioned that it was a Celestial Tier technique.

The previous cultivator in the sect, Shen Bai, had also referred to it as such, but at the time, it had been placed among Earth Tier techniques to give pseudo-spirit root disciples a chance to cultivate it.

Later, the jade slip Chu Ning obtained from Wolong Valley, left by the elder of the sect, had also emphasized that it was a Celestial Tier technique.

And now, Chu Ning had no more doubts.

The system had determined that the Five Elements Chaos Formula was indeed a Celestial Tier technique, and even a middle-grade one at that.

Techniques of this tier were extremely rare in the entire cultivation world.

It was worth noting that the other Celestial Tier techniques in the Nine Splendor Sect were only lower-grade.

After a moment of delight, Chu Ning became thoughtful again.

"This conversion of spiritual power is somewhat similar to when I cultivated the Yan Huo Shen Mu Gong.

The spiritual power has to go through a process of transformation and tempering before it can truly achieve a fusion of the three attributes.

However, if it continues at this speed, it will take at least a year or two to complete the conversion of spiritual power, which is too slow!"

Chu Ning thought to himself as he took out a jade bottle from his storage bag and poured out an earth-yellow pill, swallowing it.

Before this, since Chu Ning had predicted that he would refresh his Earth-attribute cultivation spirit body, and that he would cultivate the Five Elements Chaos Formula, he had naturally made some preparations.

Several years ago, Chu Ning had already researched and created an Earth-attribute intermediate upper-grade pill based on the sect's inherited pill formula.

And after refining a furnace and spiritually refining it, the pill had reached the standard of a high-grade lower-grade pill.

The growth of his Earth-attribute power was indeed significantly faster.

Subsequently, Chu Ning took a pill every three days.

After a month of this routine...

【Five Elements Chaos Formula (Middle-grade Celestial Tier), First Layer (200/50,000)】

Chu Ning checked his proficiency and sensed the state of his spiritual power. He now had a rough estimate of his cultivation progress.

"With each pill, my proficiency increases by around 18 points.

However, it takes about three days for me to refine and absorb it.

And now, only one-fifth of the process of tempering and converting my spiritual power has been completed."

Chu Ning now had a rough estimate in mind. When the Five Elements Chaos Formula reached a proficiency of 1,000, the tempering and conversion of his spiritual power should be complete.

At his current rate, it would take about four more months to reach that milestone.

Of course, this was assuming he had enough pills.

But now, Chu Ning had run out of pills.

Since he hadn't officially refreshed his Earth-attribute spirit body before, he hadn't chosen to refine too many of these pills.

Now that he knew how to quickly supplement his Earth-attribute spiritual power and speed up the conversion process, he naturally wanted to shorten this timeframe.

Time was equally precious to Chu Ning.

Sixteen years had passed since the discovery of the Golden Spirit Species Spirit Domain.

The spirit domain had fully formed, but the small space within it was still unstable.

According to the assessments of the Nascent Soul cultivators from the Cloudsoar Alliance, this space would stabilize and open up fully in a few years.

Time was not on Chu Ning's side.

After emerging from his month-long seclusion, Chu Ning left his cave mansion.

He summoned the two Golden Thunder Eagles, who had been cooped up in the spirit beast room for over a month, and leaped into the air, landing on Xiao Jin's back.

Then, he commanded the two eagles to fly towards Nine Splendid Peak.

The moment Chu Ning confirmed the effectiveness of the pill a month ago, he immediately sent a message to Wang Ping, asking him to get the necessary materials for pill refining from the Pill Refining Pavilion.

When Wang Ping reported a shortage of a certain spirit herb, he also posted a related gathering mission on the Mission Hall's board.

Since Chu Ning was now ready to refine pills, he first went to the Mission Hall to collect the required spirit herbs.

The Golden Thunder Eagles were incredibly fast, and it only took a short while before they arrived above Nine Splendid Peak.

Without landing the eagles, Chu Ning jumped down from the air.

However, he had already been recognized by some cultivators on Nine Splendid Peak.

As soon as Chu Ning landed, many cultivators bowed to him.

"Brother Chu!"

"Uncle Chu!"

Chu Ning smiled and returned their greetings, then entered the Mission Hall.

At this moment, some of the younger disciples looked at him curiously and asked their companions, "Who is this senior? Why is everyone being so polite to him?"

"You don't recognize him? Oh, that's right, you hadn't joined the sect yet when the competition with the Great Roaming Sect took place.

Uncle Chu has been secluding himself in his cave mansion in recent years, so it's no surprise you don't know him."

Indeed, in these years, the Nine Splendid Sect had developed rapidly and recruited many new disciples.

These Qi Refining disciples had never met Chu Ning before.

Some of the older disciples then began to tell the younger ones about Chu Ning and the competition he had with the Great Roaming Sect over twenty years ago.

The young Qi Refining disciples listened with awe on their faces.

At this moment, another young disciple asked, "But I heard that over ten years ago, there was a Senior Li Qun at Honghu Lake.

Along with other Core Formation elders of the sect, he crushed two demonic cultivator sects and killed countless demon cultivators.

Between Senior Chu and Senior Li, who is more powerful?"

The young disciple's question left the older Qi Refining disciples speechless.

In fact, they had the same question years ago.

As for the Core Formation cultivators, they exchanged meaningful glances and smiled mysteriously, saying, "They're both powerful! Both are powerful!"

Within the Nine Splendid Sect, many Core Formation cultivators knew that Li Qun was actually Chu Ning.

However, they rarely mentioned it to the younger disciples.

At this moment, Chu Ning had already collected the spirit herbs he needed from the Mission Hall and was leaving.

"Greetings, Uncle Chu!"

Once again, the young disciples bowed to Chu Ning, their eyes shining with admiration.

Chu Ning smiled at them and didn't say much.

He leaped into the air and landed on the back of the Golden Thunder Eagle, then flew directly towards the Pill Refining Pavilion.

Upon arriving at the Pill Refining Pavilion, Chu Ning waved at the two eagles, indicating that they could go hunting on their own.

"Gu!" "Gu!"

The two Golden Thunder Eagles let out cheerful cries and sped off like lightning towards the depths of the Nine Splendid Mountains.

Chu Ning entered the Pill Refining Pavilion and sensed the surroundings briefly before flashing into the cultivation field behind the pavilion.

At this moment, several Pill Refining Masters were gathered in the field, observing a few elders who were demonstrating their pill refining techniques.

"Brother Chu!" "Uncle Chu!"

The disciples greeted Chu Ning one after another.

Compared to the Mission Hall, there were more disciples here who recognized him.

Even the younger disciples knew who he was.

Chu Ning acknowledged everyone and then walked up to Ling Cang, who was standing at the front.

"Uncle Ling," Chu Ning said with a slight bow.

Ling Cang turned and looked at Chu Ning, and his eyes widened slightly in surprise.

"You've already reached the Fake Pill Stage!" he exclaimed.

(End of Chapter)

Chapter end