When Yang Chen had previously planted the PengLai Divine Wood in the Medicine Garden, huge changes had occurred in the space. However, after the Blood Phantom Vine had been planted, virtually no changes had developed. This baffled Yang Chen.
But after spending some time on it, he understood the reason: the majority of herbs originally growing in the Medicine Garden were of the second wood attribute. If the Blood Phantom Vine, a spirit object which also had the second wood was added, then it would not trigger any major changes.
But after acquiring the Blood Phantom Vine, the Medicine Garden was as secure as Mount Tai even without the defensive spell of the dome. Without a method to deal with the Blood Phantom Vine, any intruder entering the Medicine Garden wouldn’t come out unscathed. Growing the Blood Phantom Vine was just like growing a natural bodyguard.
Even Yang Chen had to make extensive preparations in order to enter the Medicine Garden, to make sure wasn’t injured by the Blood Phantom Vine. If it wasn’t for Yang Chen using special methods to trap it, and the layers of qiankun pouches surrounding it, the Blood Phantom Vine would probably have broken out of the Medicine Garden and caused a massacre within Pure Yang Palace.
Yang Chen’s only regret was that the grade of the Blood Phantom Vine was not easy to increase. It could not be done without the blood of experts. Fortunately, this Blood Phantom Vine of his had already sucked the blood of a YuanYing stage expert for about a hundred years. Although it still hadn’t matured yet, the energy it had obtained was barely enough for it to pass through its vulnerable period and become capable of defending itself in this realm.
But if he wanted to increase the grade of this Blood Phantom Vine again, then he had to have it suck the blood of an even higher leveled expert than elder Hua Wanting. That meant that he required a Da Cheng stage expert’s blood. Thus, Yang Chen currently didn’t have any extravagant hopes for increasing the grade of this Blood Phantom Vine.
After carefully entering the Medicine Garden, Yang Chen went to where the Blood Phantom Vine was planted and began to prepare for the refining of the Blood Phantom Vine.
This refining was not to turn the Blood Phantom Vine into a flying sword, but rather to mark Yang Chen’s spiritual awareness imprint on the Blood Phantom Vine. This would allow the Blood Phantom Vine to accept Yang Chen as its master, no longer attacking him and listening to his orders from then on.
The process of refining had to be carried out very carefully, even after Yang Chen made sufficient preparations. The Blood Phantom Vine itself was highly toxic, so Yang Chen controlled the Medicine Garden to seal this region for the time being, so that the Blood Phantom Vine didn’t affect the other plants growing in the Medicine Garden. He applied herbs all over his body and only then did he carefully approach it.
If he wanted to refine the Blood Phantom Vine, he had to come in contact with it. Under normal circumstances, with Yang Chen’s strength of the initial Foundation stage, as long as he came in contact with it, he would immediately be sucked dry by the Blood Phantom Vine, so he had no other choice than to use the methods he had learned in his previous life regarding dealing with the Blood Phantom Vine. He applied several layers of herbs which could restrict the Blood Phantom Vine and applied them to his hand, forming a glove. Only then did he dare to touch it.
Because of the herbs used by Yang Chen to restrict it, the Blood Phantom Vine appeared completely suppressed. This also made Yang Chen’s work very easy. His spiritual awareness rushed into the Blood Phantom Vine via one of the vines.
Suddenly, many sinister shadows of the Blood Phantom Vine appeared in Yang Chen’s spirit sea. Resembling a viper in coloration, the vine started wreaking havoc in Yang Chen’s spirit sea.
Unfortunately, Yang Chen’s spirit sea, even apart from the blood river, possessed PengLai Divine Wood, Real Sun Fire and the Geocentric Flame. Complementing these were layers of fifth earth soil and bridge formed by the cyan ox horns. For the Blood Phantom Vine, any attempt to damage them was completely futile.
Regardless of how berserk the vines were, as long as they came into contact with any of these things, they were immediately repelled. Very quickly, the blood colored vine discovered that no matter how it twisted along the enormous trees of PengLai Divine Wood, it was unable to harm them. Furthermore, running into either the Real Sun Fire and the Geocentric Flame just repeatedly inflicted harm. The only one capable of receiving it was apparently the layer of fifth earth soil.
The Fifth Earth soil was the region which wood attributed plants were most fond of. The Blood Phantom Vine noticed this very quickly and stuck its root into the Fifth Earth Soil, and then began attacking the bridge formed by the enormous ox horns.
All along, Yang Chen was controlling and observing everything. The Blood Phantom Vine had tangled with the two horns, but very quickly discovered that the two horns didn’t have any blood for it to suck. Finally, devoid of options, the blood phantom vine gathered all of its vines and focused on the blood river.
The blood river was the thing which was closest to blood, but also the thing the Blood Phantom Vine was instinctively the most scared of. In the end, unwilling to lose, the Blood Phantom Vine inserted a small vine into the blood river to explore.
The instant the blood Phantom Vine’s image came in contact with the blood river, it suddenly started to wither and then, violently shaking, started to slowly disintegrate. The vine which entered the blood river couldn’t be pulled out.
The violent shuddering continued for some time, until Yang Chen suddenly gave the order to stop through a strong thought. With that one thought, the blood river immediately released the the vine and the image of the Blood Phantom Vine immediately regained its form and turned into a round ball, not daring to move anymore.
Yang Chen’s spiritual awareness, directly probed that round image and soon started slowly moving it. Moving according to Yang Chen’s will, the Blood Phantom Vine also began to slowly weave around the PengLai Divine Wood. Compatible yin and yang was the only correct path.
After this final step, Yang Chen opened his eyes. The Blood Phantom Vine before his eyes was mysteriously giving off a sensation of intimacy. Yang Chen experimented with a quick mental order, and a vine immediately stretched out and coiled around at Yang Chen’s side to form a circle. From start to end, it hadn’t once come in contact with Yang Chen.
Until now, Yang Chen had only thought of subduing the Blood Phantom Vine by force. Taking a rough count of the time, everything that happened in his spirit sea seemed to have taken only around an incense stick of time, but in the outside world he had spent almost a whole two months. The timing of his plan was just perfect, he had decided to provide guidance again in exactly two months.
Last time, Yang Chen had provided sufficient guidance and had also walked through the Nine Earth Manor and Ye Xiu Manor once, therefore there weren’t many people who needed guidance.
This time, after Yang Chen had given pointers to the disciples once, he had a lot of free time again.
Generally speaking, Yang Chen was the most relaxed one among all Merit Transferring disciples. Since he had provided ample and detailed guidance before, those disciples would not face a major problem for at least half a year or more. As such, Yang Chen seemed to be the most idle Merit Transferring Disciple.
But then again, this was the ideal result which Yang Chen had hoped for. Despite giving guidance, he could not allow his cultivation to drop, so the current state was the optimal situation for him.
After subduing the Blood Phantom Vine, Yang Chen was not very anxious about refining the Blood Phantom Vine into a sword embryo. Instead he began to increase the grade of his second wood attribute for which he had received from the Clear Sky Sect.
The Blood Phantom Vine was the purest kind of second wood plant, almost comparable to the PengLai Divine Wood of the first wood attribute. If this had not been the case, Yang Chen would not have racked his brains over how to make use of the Blood Phantom Vine as his second wood flying sword.
The first wood’s spirit power had already successfully assimilated the PengLai Divine Wood’s spirit power, so naturally Yang Chen wanted to turn his second wood spirit power into Blood Phantom Vine’s spirit power. Like this, controlling his Blood Phantom Vine flying sword in the future would be made even more familiar and easier.
This kind of thing, Yang Chen had already done it once. Last time, he had used the PengLai Divine Woods master root and had successfully blended it into a foundation stage pill. Naturally, this time, Yang Chen had picked the same method.
With the experience of making the third grade foundation stage pill, Yang Chen was much more relaxed. However, there was only one Blood Phantom Vine, which could not be compared to the amount of PengLai Divine Wood branches, so Yang Chen could use only the vine leaves as herbs.
This time, Yang Chen only used one month to refine the foundation stage pill. After all, Yang Chen had long ago reached the Foundation stage, he merely needed to change his spirit power. Furthermore, refining it once was sufficient as there was no need for a high quality third grade pill.
After building one’s foundation, many things become quite simple. Those matters which required a long time before reaching the Foundation stage could be completed in a very short time afterwards.
Taking one second wood foundation stage pill, the second wood spirit power in Yang Chen’s body began to transform for the first time, from ordinary second wood spirit power it had changed to very high grade blood phantom vine spirit power.
This process proceeded slowly and steadily, since Yang Chen already had experienced transforming his first wood spirit power and fifth earth yuan qi, he knew that after subduing the main part of the Blood Phantom Vine, there wouldn’t be any more problems.
In less than ten days, Yang Chen had already transformed the second wood spirit power in his body into the blood phantom vine’s spirit power.
As soon the second wood spirit power had transformed, the shadowy image of the blood phantom vine in his spirit sea began to solidify.
With a rumbling sound, Yang Chen’s spirit sea again began to expand. This time, the expansion was not very large, only widening by approximately fifty percent compared to before, but Yang Chen’s spirit sea had already reached an area with a radius of 100 mu1.
Since yin and yang were now in balance, the PengLai Divine Wood grew vigorously and the large pillar supporting the sky had grown even higher. Even the sky of the spirit sea had become higher.
His spiritual awareness, which had already been at the JieDan stage, had apparently advanced by leaps and bounds after this transformation and broken through all barriers to enter the initial YuanYing stage.
This was an amazing surprise and completely outside of Yang Chen’s expectations. He had never thought that, someday, when he was only at the Foundation stage, he would have spiritual awareness comparable to an initial YuanYing stage expert. The might of the Three Purities Secret made Yang Chen see Greatest Supreme Elder in a completely new light.
With his spiritual awareness reaching the YuanYing stage, Yang Chen was as if he had entered a brand new realm. Yang Chen had also entered that realm in his previous life, but that time it wasn’t so distinct. At least, the complexity of his spirit sea in his previous life when he was a Great Principal Golden Immortal could not be compared with the current circumstances.
After the transformation this time, two thirds of his second wood spirit power had been consumed. Even though Yang Chen had completely consumed two Profound Yang Fruits and had then used their spirit power to replenish his own, only one third remained. However, the quality had greatly increased.
Everything was going according to Yang Chen’s plan, and the Merit Transferring Disciple’s life was calm and orderly. Giving pointers to outer disciples did not generate even the smallest amount of pressure on Yang Chen and also didn’t delay his cultivation either. After the second wood spirit power had been transformed, Yang Chen once again gave pointers to outer disciples and then went to welcome two special guests.
His guests who had come to look for Yang Chen were two old friends from the recently established Hall of Eccentrics. She Kui and Xie Sha had gone to some unknown place following the Palace Master, and had only appeared in front of him half a year after Yang Chen had returned to the Pure Yang Palace.
“Against our expectations, you are quite carefree!”
She Kui and Xie Sha had smiles spread across their faces, they were seemingly very satisfied with the way things were going.
“These two master ancestors, how come you have time to come over?”
Yang Chen greeted them with a face full of smiles. Since both of them were at the YuanYing stage, the Palace Master had directly made them elders. Since they were of the same generation as the Palace Master and Wang Yong, Yang Chen could only call them master ancestors.
“What kind of bullshit is this? Don’t give us that!”
Hearing that Yang Chen had addressed them like this, the faces of the two immediately dropped. In all likelihood, one of the most complicated things inside the sect were these kinds of complicated hierarchical relationships, which made these two carefree people very uncomfortable.
After venting their gloominess, the two then spoke about their intentions. During this time, they had been under the guidance of the Palace Master of the Pure Yang Palace, looking at something related to tool refining. Although they had learned a lot, all of the things the Pure Yang Palace collected were for the cultivation of cultivators, not for demon beasts, so many things were still not clear to them. So after much thought, they decided to look for Yang Chen.
Coincidentally, these two wanted to refine their destined flying swords. Generally speaking, all demon beasts could refine a part of their body and treat it as their destined flying sword, She Kui and Xie Sha were no exceptions. She Kui had picked four of his poisonous fangs while Xie Sha had picked his scorpion tail.
The demon beasts had instinctively used the strongest parts of their bodies as their destined magic weapon, but this kind of method was very primitive. After looking at the tool refining methods of cultivators, She Kui and Xie Sha had also begun to think about their destined magic weapons and didn’t want them to be crude.
So these two instinctively thought of Yang Chen. Yang Chen had countless ideas which normal people could not understand. She Kui and Xie Sha kept their own counsel, and after finding the time, they came to Yang Chen to discuss these matters.
Yang Chen was completely willing to discuss these things with the two. After all, they were an important part of the Pure Yang Palace’s fighting strength.The stronger the Pure Yang Palace was, the better it was for Yang Chen. That’s why he intentionally began to use some things he knew to guide them.
The two YuanYing stage beasts stayed at Nine Earth Manor discussing matters related to tool refining. Many of the directions of thought Yang Chen pointed out were things which She Kui and Xie Sha had never thought about. In this sort of intense discussion, these two people immediately had a flashes of insight and the concepts of refining tools started to become clearer and clearer by the day.
One day, when they were fully embroiled in discussions, Shangguan Feng suddenly rushed into the Nine Earth Manor.
“Yang Chen, just recently master ancestor Wang Yong suddenly departed, leaving behind a letter, and ordering me to notify you.”
Shangguan anxiously said upon seeing Yang Chen: “He said that your master had been attacked and has sustained some injuries, so he had rushed ahead to rescue her!”
As soon as these words left Shangguan Feng’s mouth, he immediately sensed a wave of coldness and his whole body started shivering.
1. 1/15 of a hectare