This time Yang Chen was determined to stop people from discovering any tracks, so he placed all of the objects on which other people could plant their spiritual awareness into the Achievement Ring, then he used his spiritual awareness to wrap around his body tightly, not leaking even a trace of his presence. Not to mention someone at the foundation stage, even if it was a JieDan expert, as long as his spiritual awareness did not surpass Yang Chen’s, finding Yang Chen was not an easy task.
When he was concealed like this and following behind an enemy, the enemy would be like a deaf and blind man. In any case, even if someone looked with the naked eye or scanned with spiritual awareness, apart from finding a huge pile of spirit beasts, they would find nothing else. They wanted to find any trace of Yang Chen, but even if some signs of him existed, they were thoroughly hidden.
This kind of thing made those people feel dismay, but at the same time they also became fearful. After keeping watch for Yang Chen for half a year, they initially believed that, even if Yang Chen possessed some remarkable ability, he would not be able to leave through their net of surveillance, whether the net was formed by accident or on purpose. Who could have thought that half a year’s time would actually provide time for Yang Chen to mature? At the very least his strength had already grown enough to kill a middle JieDan stage cultivator who was travelling with them.
If Yang Chen kept on appearing and disappearing unpredictably…
Thinking this, they all clearly understood what kind of big trouble they had provoked. Nevertheless, under these circumstances they all didn’t have any better option than grouping together to look for Yang Chen and kill him.
Only Yang Chen was not so foolish to wait for them while they were searching for him together, he had already fled far away. Currently the most important goal to him was to find an extremely secure place where he could refine and absorb the Geocentric Flame and increase his strength. As for the matter of revenge, that could wait for later.
The place within the Immortal Falling Well which provided Yang Chen with the greatest sense of security, was only one: That small cave where he had previously fused with the will of the XianTai Stage. Even the Li Lou Village didn’t provide a greater sense of security than this. Yang Chen clearly understood about the cruelty of competition among cultivators. He would certainly not put his life in other people’s hands, where he would have to depend on someone to enforce these, not particularly strict, rules to restrain people.
This time, Yang Chen hurried to the cave which he had sealed last time in less than ten days. Furthermore, this time Yang Chen did not remove the boulder from the cave’s mouth, but directly used an evasion technique to enter the small cave. He carefully released a trace of his red colored killing intent to cover up the cave. By doing this, he would not have to worry about disturbances from spirit beasts.
Taking more precautions, Yang Chen even took out the lid of the Medicine Garden’s bottle, the Seven Step Enchanting Deadly Spell. Even if Elder Wu suddenly burst into the cave, this spell formation was capable of trapping him for a very long time. In any case, there was also an underground spirit vein he could use for replenishment here, so Yang Chen didn’t need to worry about exhausting his spirit power.
After properly making all of these preparations, Yang Chen once again sat down on the obsidian jade mat, took out the Profound Spirit Furnace and started studying it. Yang Chen could tell that the grade of the Profound Spirit Furnace, which had absorbed the Geocentric Flame, had increased by at least two grades even without a thorough examination, just by looking at the change in its shape.
Brilliant lights and vibrant colors could be seen on top of the furnace with a decorative design resembling a flame. The more Yang Chen looked at it, the more he became fond of it. He couldn’t help but use the Heaven and Earth Treasure Raising Secrets to warm up the furnace once.
Suddenly he noticed a faint movement, a dark red colored flame quickly welled up inside the Profound Spirit Furnace. During this time, Yang Chen used the peels of the Profound Yang Fruits which he had eaten during the past several days and threw them into the furnace. In a short period of time, the peels turned into a thick and dense liquid. Under the control of Yang Chen’s Spiritual Awareness, it kept on changing forms and shape incessantly, but not even the slightest mark of being burned appeared.
The geocentric flame was worthy of being called the most suitable flame for pill concocting masters within this mortal world. Any kind of medicine or herb, as long as the pill concocting master did not crazily increase the temperature, would only liquify and not burn. Naturally, this was only one of the reasons why the Geocentric Flame was suitable for pill concocting, the most important reason was that the Geocentric Flame was capable of purifying or even refining the impurities within herbs, according to the requirements of the one who is controlling the flame.
It could almost be said, that as long as one had the Geocentric Flame, one could immediately rise by one grade as a pill concocting master. Just using this property of the flame was enough to obtain one additional pill refining. Currently Yang Chen could already achieve two refinings by his own methods, by possessing the Geocentric Flame, Yang Chen could already say that he had already achieved the level of a Third Grade Pill Concocting Master.
Of course, reaching the level was just one thing, his Spirit Power was still the limiting factor, Yang Chen was still not able to refine a large number of high level pills because he was stranded at his current cultivation. But even so, a low level pill that has been refined three times was still enough to make people drool.
Peels of Thousand Year matured Profound Yang Fruits together with some supplement drugs was the recipe of yang qi pills. The yang qi pills were very low levelled pills, so when using the base herb together with some supplemental herbs, as long as they had adequate medicinal strength, it was already good enough; the recipe didn’t have to be followed too closely.
This was Yang Chen’s first time using the Geocentric Flame in both of his lifetimes. He controlled the flame very carefully, purifying all of the ingredients once at first, concluding the first refining. Soon afterwards, he produced the pill in accordance with the traditional recipe, concluding the second refining. After that, Yang Chen continued to refine it for the third time. Even if it was just for the yang qi pill, Yang Chen specifically used the skills within the Greatest Supreme Elder’s Pill Concocting Method, regardless of whether it was for purifying the pill or collecting it, he did all of them in accordance with the methods left behind by Greatest Supreme Elder.
After everything was completed properly, out of the ingredients originally meant for a hundred yang qi pills, only ten yang qi pills were produced, but these ten yang qi pills were all third grade pills.
Refining a pill thrice could even change the nature of the pill, this was the reason why third grade pill concocting masters all received so much popularity. However, these ten third grade pills within Yang Chen’s hand were all refined in accordance with the Greatest Supreme Elder’s technique, so their quality was even higher than normal third grade pills. Even Yang Chen himself would hate to eat them. All of these pills were very good items, which could save someone’s life at a most crucial time.
Just this little point was enough to make the Profound Spirit Furnace a heavenly treasure in Yang Chen’s eyes, not to mention that he still wanted to refine and absorb the Geocentric Flame, for which he would require the assistance of the furnace.
Yang Chen’s purpose for refining these yang qi pill were finding out about the nature of the Geocentric Flame as well as familiarizing himself with the Greatest Supreme Elder’s pill concocting methods and to test the Profound Spirit Furnace. If he wanted to absorb the Geocentric Flame, the first thing was naturally to familiarize himself with the characteristics of the Geocentric Flame. Since the Geocentric Flame was known as the most suitable flame for pill concocters in this world, it was necessary for him to understand the characteristics of the Geocentric Flame to be able to concoct pills of the highest possible quality.
But concocting pills once was still far from enough to give Yang Chen enough familiarity with the Geocentric Flame. He wanted to get information of all aspects, like knowing the situations in which the Geocentric Flame could go out of control, therefore Yang Chen still need to conduct even more concoction experiments, so that he could comprehend the characteristics of Geocentric Flame even better.
Yang Chen was very patient, he spent the following next month to concoct yang qi pills in the Profound Spirit Furnace using the Geocentric Flame, to learn about the properties of its fire. When the number of third grade pills had already crossed three hundred, Yang Chen finally stopped concocting and began to absorb the Geocentric Flame.
When the first thread of Geocentric Flame entered Yang Chen’s body, the extremely hot sensation forced Yang Chen to repeatedly, forcibly control his mental state, so that he wouldn’t get distracted. In his previous life, when he received the Real Sun Fire, Yang Chen was at the YuanYing stage, but currently he was a mere qi layer cultivator, his tolerance for fire was far inferior compared to before.
Fortunately Yang Chen already had an experience of using fire to do various things for over ten thousand years, in addition to that he still possessed strong self-control. Resisting the pain that felt like being burned at a stake with great difficulty, Yang Chen slowly began to permeate his own fire attributed spirit power throughout the Geocentric Flame.
After a short while, Yang Chen discovered that the spirit power in his entire body was seemingly ignited by this trace of Geocentric Flame; his whole body had begun to combust. This was purely a feeling, if Yang Chen wished, he could use the water attributed spirit power to ‘pour water to extinguish the fire’ to stifle this portion of flame, but Yang Chen didn’t do anything like this. If he did not go through this the first time, he would never be able to genuinely refine and absorb another flame, no matter what kind it was.
Enduring the pain that felt as if his whole body was set on fire, Yang Chen’s mental state had become tenacious like an old mangosteen1, without the slightest amount of hesitation about abandoning the plan. His formidable spirit power was monitoring the situation of his body at all times, guiding his spirit power and the Geocentric Flame, which were in contact with each other, around, little by little.
Absorbing a flame at the qi layer was a very risky task, but Yang Chen had no other option. First, there were still people within the Immortal Falling Cave who were waiting for their chance to attack him, and second: he was looking forward to the time when he would be able to pay his respects under his master once again, able to assist his master to rise to the heavens. If he didn’t have enough strength, he would not be able to do that.
Yang Chen was certain that after absorbing the flame, his fire attributed cultivation would rise by leaps and bounds. The difference between a fire cultivator with a flame and a fire cultivator without a flame just could not be measured in a difference between their stages. It was a very normal for fire cultivators with a flame to easily be able to defeat cultivators two layers above them with ease.
Currently Yang Chen needed to urgently increase his strength, but he also didn’t want to destroy the proper foundation that he had built, so he could only think of one way to reach the heavens in single bound, and that was to endure and take some heavenly treasures. This had two benefits, first they would not destroy his foundation and second, it would also steadily increase his strength.
Having the experience of ascending to the spiritual world and the world of immortals in his previous life, Yang Chen was well aware of what happened to people, who used spirit medicines to suddenly increase their strength, after ascending. It would already be considered enormous luck to be able to become a servant for a strong person in the spiritual world, but most of those people accidentally trespass on the territory of some formidable spirit beast and from then on disappear without a trace. Cultivation never has any shortcuts.
Along with the flow of time, Yang Chen’s body, which was being nourished by the fire attributed spirit power, slowly started getting used to this kind of burning by the flame. Only after finally reaching this condition, did Yang Chen begin with the next step, that was to use the thread of Geocentric Flame to pull out even more thin threads and blend them into the thirty six Heavenly Stars, seventy two Earth Fiend Layers of the Fourth Fire attribute, enter them into his meridians and start circulating.
The spirit power of the Fourth Fire was as if it had started boiling, the flame rapidly permeated the one hundred eight spirit power threads. Apparently this division had lowered the formidability of the Geocentric Flame by a lot, very soon Yang Chen was not able to sense the existence of the Geocentric Flame anymore.
Absorbing a flame could be metaphorically compared to using the flame to ignite the Spirit Power. It was like using fire to ignite a piece of firewood, a spark of flame wouldn’t have enough energy, it would require a sufficiently high amount of energy. Just absorbing one thread of geocentric fire was far from enough to reach this situation, so he could only continue with the absorption. Because of the peculiar situation of Yang Chen’s Spirit Power, the requirements at the Geocentric Flame were even higher.
The events which followed were very simple, one trace after another, the Geocentric Flame started to increase more and more within Yang Chen’s Spirit Power and finally, after the utmost boundary was reached:
Bang!
All of the meridians began to ‘burn’.
This time, the Spirit Power had been completely integrated with the flame, moreover all one hundred eight threads of Spirit Power had been completely linked with the flame, the Spirit Power within each thread was brimming with fire from the Geocentric Flame. Those regions which originally had not been influenced, were also ignited and all of them began to ‘burn’.
The Spirit Power of the Fourth Fire was as if it had consumed a huge supplement pill, it began to flow violently and under the provocation of the flame it began to circulate within his meridians at lightening speed. Yang Chen did not have to suffer that intense burning pain again, because of the circulation it was replaced by a warm and comfortable sensation.
The Geocentric Flame could be classified as a Fourth Fire, but after the flame blended in, not only had the Fourth Fire Spirit Power increased sharply, but because Yin and Yang were mutually complementing each other, the related Third Fire was also aided and under the provocation of the Fourth Fire Spirit Power, began to crazily absorb the underground vein’s Spiritual Influence and rise violently.
The sharply rising spirit power began to run rampant within his body, but under the control of Yang Chen’s formidable spiritual awareness, it was very quickly controlled and restricted within the meridians, becoming more and more powerful. After some time, when Yang Chen had sensed that it was enough, he began to guide the fire attributed Spirit Power to attack the crucial points within his meridians.
Bang!
Like a hot knife cutting through butter, the fire attributed Spirit Power began to open a barrier and Yang Chen finally entered the ninth qi layer in fire attributed cultivation.
Immediately after breaking through, the spirit power appeared to be a little lacking, but the Geocentric Flame began to ignite yet again and the spiritual influence of the underground spirit vein began to frantically rush into Yang Chen’s body, overflowing it and once again starting to replenish it. At the time when Spirit Power accumulation was sufficient, Yang Chen once again began to guide it to attack the next barrier.
Under the eruption of energy, this barrier within the meridians was also broken through without any suspense, he easily reached the tenth qi layer, the peak of the qi layer. Suddenly Yang Chen had a sensation about the energy of heaven and earth. What Yang Chen needed to do most in this realm, was to accumulate enough spirit energy, then he could begin to break through after comprehending the required mental state and finally become able to connect the energy of heaven and earth and successfully build his foundation.
For Yang Chen, comprehending the mental state required to break through was not a problem, with his experience as a Great Principal Golden Immortal, how could he be stranded at the trifling foundation stage?
But Yang Chen did not want to break through immediately, he was at the peak of the qi layer, but only the fire attributed spirit power had increased, the other attributes still needed to be improved, as there could not be much discrepancy between the attributes. In addition to that, Yang Chen wanted to consolidate his realm and did not want to keep on increasing his cultivation. Haste makes waste, suitably stabilizing the foundation would certainly have many benefits for his future cultivation.
When Yang Chen finally calculated the days he had spent here, he suddenly discovered that already half a year had passed.
Sensing the violently surging Spirit Power within his body, Yang Chen had the sudden urge to be impulsive. Those people who were waiting for him at the side of the magma river, it was finally time to settle his debts with them.
1. The mangosteen is a fruit that starts to harden after harvest