Chapter 2240: Refinement Main, Heaven Specialty
“Knowledge obtained from theory always feels shallow, one needs practice to understand it completely.” Fang Yuan muttered to himself.
Understanding that all things had the same point of origin was one matter, putting it into practice was another.
Fang Yuan completely comprehended the essence of killer moves like divine concealment and ghostly concealment, but he had done so through refinement path. Because of the limitation of theft path attainment level, he could not modify ghostly concealment yet.
He had the ability to create refinement path killer moves similar to divine concealment and ghostly concealment, although it would be a difficult process and the price to pay would be great.
During this period where the three venerables contested, if Fang Yuan invested a lot of his time and energy into creating a top tier refinement path killer move, it would be too risky.
The timing and opportunity did not allow Fang Yuan to do so.
However, the refinement path resource points of the five regions and two heavens had a lot of value to him as references.
After Fang Yuan simplified them and took out the true core, he would be able to modify them into mature passive killer moves that could be used to develop the immortal aperture.
Basically, these passive killer moves were very rare among killer moves, they had great value.
The most common ones were defensive methods.
Song Yi Shi’s pride came from this reason.
Duke Long only had one of such a move too, it was called nine dragons protection.
As far as Fang Yuan knew, Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable created no more than five of such killer moves like divine concealment and ghostly concealment in his life.
The creation of a killer move starts with the use of multiple Gu worms by a predecessor to gain experience gradually. The Gu cultivation predecessors took reference to the innate abilities of the living beings in the five regions and two heavens to rapidly establish the foundation of killer moves.
Until today, the Gu cultivators had already hit the limit of this world.
For example, Duke Long created the dragonman race, Lang Ya land spirit created an artificial secluded domain, Spectral Soul Demon Venerable created soul beasts, he turned all sorts of soul path killer moves into dao marks that were carved onto soul beasts to grant them innate abilities.
All of these accomplishments showed that Gu cultivators had already rivaled the natural world, they were able to grasp the profundity of heaven and earth.
And Limitless Demon Venerable went one step further.
He made an arrangement in Crazed Demon Cave, breaking the world boundary to create a hole and even making brand new heaven path dao marks. He had surpassed the entire Gu cultivator world singlehandedly.
This was the first time Fang Yuan was refining the refinement path dao marks of the outside world.
With his supreme grandmaster attainment level and manual practice, Fang Yuan gained a lot of insight.
To conclude —
The five regions and two heavens had a vast number of refinement path dao marks, but they were not evenly distributed, some places were dense while others were sparse. These refinement path dao marks were very stable and hard to change, normally speaking, their growth was extremely slow and needed a lot of time to accumulate.
These refinement path dao marks could be seen as the basis of the entire world’s refinement path foundation.
On this foundation, a large number of beasts, plants, and lifeless Gu materials were produced and nurtured.
These beasts and plants were related to refinement path, they were refinement path resources.
Normally speaking, in places with dense refinement path dao marks, the relevant resources would also be more abundant and high quality. In places with sparse refinement path dao marks, there would be fewer refinement path resources and of lower quality.
The refinement path dao marks and resources had a deep influence on each other. For example, the coral group that Fang Yuan saw earlier was a refinement path resource point, the source was an immemorial sunken fish that died thousands of years ago, its refinement path dao marks scattered in the surroundings and a portion was left behind in that location.
The dao marks that Fang Yuan refined here were the refinement path foundation of the world.
Refinement path resources were not included in this.
The natural dao marks that Fang Yuan refined were like a huge spider web. As long as Fang Yuan was in range, he would be able to sense all refinement path activities within the web.
This was the so-called refinement path sensation.
Fang Yuan had a vague sensation of the refinement path resources, he could also sense the refinement path activities of Gu cultivators.
In places with dense refinement path dao marks, the sensation would be more intense, stable, and clearer. For example, he would be able to find small-scale ordinary refinement path Gu materials.
Conversely, if the refinement path dao marks were sparse, the refinement path sensation would be weaker. In those regions, Fang Yuan would only be able to sense refinement path immortal materials.
If there was a hole in the spider web, or if a Gu Immortal refined Gu in their immortal aperture, Fang Yuan would not sense anything.
Using the refinement path dao marks that he refined, Fang Yuan could influence everything in that range, he could interfere with the living beings as well as the natural environment.
For example, he could help Song Yi Shi cultivate, strengthen refinement path resource points like the coral group, or even create a top tier refinement path passive killer move (like spaceless tunnel) that could exist indefinitely.
Simply using refinement path dao marks to amplify his own strength was only the most basic use.
“From the angle of refinement path, in the entire Gu cultivation world, the five regions and two heavens are just a giant immortal material. This immortal material comprises everything, it has dao marks of all paths.”
“Even though I became a refinement path venerable, I can only refine a portion of this huge immortal material. This is true for Giant Sun Immortal Venerable, Star Constellation Immortal Venerable, and all other venerables.”
“Owning a portion of heaven and earth, this is what a Dao Lord entails!”
“The other venerables are only able to become the Lord of one Dao, but I am different.”
Fang Yuan’s sovereign immortal body had non-conflicting dao marks, he cultivated all paths. The other venerables could do one main path and one specialty path at best, their main path would become their venerable path, while their specialty path would be used to fight and compete.
In theory, Fang Yuan could cultivate all the paths and become a venerable of all paths!
This was the intention of Spectral Soul Demon Venerable when he spent all his effort to refine sovereign immortal fetus Gu.
Fang Yuan had incomparable potential, the limit of his growth was unimaginable.
“The other venerables also know this, the only reason why they did not kill me is because I displayed incredible battle strength in Crazed Demon Cave, Giant Sun Immortal Venerable and Star Constellation Immortal Venerable knew that the price to kill me was too great, they could not take the backlash.”
Fang Yuan did not continue to refine dao marks.
He decided to stop for now.
Even though Heavenly Essence Treasure Imperial Lotus had bloomed again in the sovereign immortal aperture and gave him nearly a hundred immortal essence beads again.
Even though he had all sorts of refinement path methods to raise his refinement efficiency by many times, far surpassing the venerables.
This was obvious.
Refinement path most excelled in this aspect.
In terms of refinement path, he far surpassed the other two venerables, this was the advantage of refinement path to begin with.
“However, I cannot display my advantage now, it will overly agitate those venerables.” Fang Yuan thought to himself.
Once he used his advantage, the two venerables would move.
Although they felt that they had some advantage, if they saw that Fang Yuan’s dao mark refinement speed was so fast, they would not sit still, they would have to come and stop him.
Fang Yuan was not afraid of getting attacked by them.
After all, he had enough immortal essence reserves now, although the quantity was not high, the two venerables could not kill him in a short time, as they fought, Heavenly Essence Treasure Imperial Lotus would gradually accumulate an advantage for Fang Yuan.
But there was no point in going this far!
Most importantly, it would cause Fang Yuan’s secret to be exposed, the existence of obscured heavenly secret, the loss was not worth the gain.
Blindly using one’s advantage was the biggest trap in life.
Fang Yuan knew deeply that assessing the situation was most important.
“Next, I need to refine dao marks with a slower speed, my efficiency should be around the same level as the two venerables, but I need to stop multiple times to pretend that I am out of immortal essence. Of course, I cannot be overly weak, otherwise, they will want to work together to get rid of me.”
Fang Yuan had a good grasp of this situation, he knew what to do.
He had abundant life experience after all.
Especially in the five hundred years of his previous life, all sorts of failure, pain, and losses became the valuable foundation that supported him.
“Keeping a low profile while profiting greatly! By the time I expose this secret, I am sure the two venerables will not be able to keep their cool.”
Fang Yuan activated Cooking Luck Pot to inspect his luck again.
His luck still resembled a furnace.
Fang Yuan had inspected this many times already, he had some guesses about it.
This was caused by his status as a refinement path venerable, his luck’s appearance was stabilized and would not change for a period of time.
The furnace was still quite crude, it had cracks remaining.
But from the vast number of cracks, two or three of them had mended.
This was because the sovereign immortal aperture had already completed the first earth vein, the second one was on the way. It had also completed the first water vein.
These were all helping to stabilize his foundation.
And compared to the past, there was a huge change on the surface of the furnace, there was a lotus flower pattern.
The lotus flower pattern was clearly referring to rank nine Heavenly Essence Treasure Imperial Lotus. It showed how significant this Immortal Gu was to Fang Yuan!
The lotus flower pattern went one round around the outer layer of the furnace, it extended to the bottom and turned into several lotus roots.
These lotus roots went deep into the bottom of the furnace and burned together with the firewood that represented immortal essence.
Compared to the weak fire earlier, the furnace was fully lit now, the flames expanded by several times, showing great growth.
There was no lid on the furnace, the scene inside could be seen.
The immortal crane cloud that symbolized heaven form and the green lotus cloud that was Heavenly Essence Treasure Imperial Lotus were both gone now.
Instead, there was a piece of blue-white ice, symbolizing the truthful floating ice. The blue-white ice was heated in the furnace, slowly melting and generating a beautiful halo.
At the top of the furnace, there was a large amount of reddish brown sand dust, floating like a cloud.
The reddish brown sand dust condensed into one lump and slowly went into the furnace.
It was easily melted and infused into the furnace, fixing the cracks and slowly making the furnace smoother from its crude state.
“This should be referencing my action of refining natural dao marks. If I go all out on this, the sand dust will pour down rapidly and block my opening of my furnace, it can even put out the fire at the bottom. Excessive progress is not good, this shows the terrible outcome of facing two venerables’ suppression at the same time.”
Fang Yuan had used luck inspection many times, he was able to reference the phenomena he saw to actual events that were happening more easily.
Even though rank eight Cooking Luck Pot was too low in rank and did not suit the current Fang Yuan, it still displayed the profundity of luck path, reminding Fang Yuan that the most important variables to him now were refining dao marks and also heaven path development!
“The refinement of dao marks can progress slowly, but I also need to unseal the truthful floating ice in secret. Right now, immortal essence is not my burden, it is my advantage instead. I need to use all my immortal essence and convert my resources into foundation and strength.”
Venerables all had one main and one specialty path.
Fang Yuan had planned from long ago to use refinement path as his main, and heaven path as his specialty.
Refinement path was his main cultivation, but refinement path itself was weak in the fighting aspect.
This was a publicly known fact.
In this situation, Fang Yuan needed another path to support his battle strength. This path should have few cultivators, for example, painting path. That would allow him to catch enemies off-guard and prevent them from having precaution against him.
Even though there were many paths in existence, Fang Yuan did not have many choices, looking at his situation, heaven path was the best choice!
There were almost no heaven path cultivators, the criteria was too hard to achieve.
Heaven path itself was very special and had extraordinary potential, its might was also unrivaled.
Refinement path as main, heaven path as specialty.
This was Fang Yuan’s current cultivation plan.
The Heaven Refining Demon Venerable title that Giant Sun Immortal Venerable and Star Constellation Immortal Venerable gave to Fang Yuan was truly appropriate.