Nine Transformations of the True Spirit.

Southwest of Renzhou, the Chongde Mountains stretch for thousands of miles, like a giant dragon lying on the ground.

In the center of the mountain range, majestic peaks of a thousand feet high can be seen everywhere, and there are even several towering peaks of three thousand feet high, as if they were connected to the sky. Halfway up the mountain, it is shrouded in clouds and mist, and its true appearance cannot be recognized all year round.

But these giant peaks can only be viewed from a distance and cannot be approached.

This is the mountain gate of Haoran Sect, which is protected by a large formation to protect the sect. Although there is no cloud or fog to cover it, no one dares to peek.

No one knows how many years the gate of Haoran Sect has stood in the Chongde Mountains, but since tens of thousands of years ago, Haoran Sect has been one of the ten major sects, quietly watching the clouds roll by in Jiuxianzhou and overlooking the rise and fall of the world of immortal cultivation.

The Haoran Sect occasionally experienced ups and downs, but it had never encountered a crisis of destruction. At its lowest point, it controlled half of Renzhou.

With the support of the Haoran Sect, the Daren Dynasty lasted for at least tens of thousands of years, but the royal bloodline has changed several times and the surname has been changed several times.

However, even the Haoran Sect could not completely control the vast Renzhou, and the same was true for the other ten major sects, leaving room for survival for the large and small sects in Jiuxianzhou.

The Haoran Sect also disdained to compete for cultivation resources such as small spiritual veins and small spiritual stone mines. They occupied the only giant spiritual vein in Renzhou and opened up most of the Chongde Mountains into a spiritual medicine garden.

He also controls several giant spirit stone mines and has recruited the most talented disciples from all of Renzhou. There are many geniuses, and there are more than a dozen Nascent Soul elders alone.

The sect leaders of all generations were great monks with profound cultivation and omnipotent means, who overpowered Renzhou.

Haoran Sect is the holy place for practice in Renzhou, and naturally a large number of cultivators gather at the foot of Chongde Mountains.

Even the ten major sects could not give up the huge profits of opening a market town. The Chongde Market Town established by the Haoran Sect had the most stable order and the most precious treasures among all the markets in Renzhou.

Every day, an endless stream of cultivators poured into the Chongde market, so the Haoran Sect simply built a city with a radius of fifty miles and named it "Chongde City".

This is a city of monks, where tens of thousands of monks gather and everyone can find the treasure they desire.

At the Chongde Auction, which is held once every twenty years, there are all kinds of treasures, such as thousand-year-old spiritual herbs, high-level magic weapons, and top-grade spiritual materials... Even Nascent Soul cultivators are flocking to them.

On this day, Chen Yuan descended his light outside Chongde City and looked at this magnificent city with a deep gaze.

He flew for six days in a row, covering tens of thousands of miles, and finally arrived at this famous city of monks.

The wall of Chongde City is about ten feet high and has sixteen city gates. Outside each gate, there is a foundation-building monk on duty.

Chen Yuan, wearing a gold-thread hollow mask, came to a city gate in the northeast, spent thirty low-grade spirit stones to buy a pass token, and walked into Chongde City.

The city gate is very large, at least ten feet wide. There are many monks entering the city, but many of them have pass tokens and can pass through on their own, so not many people need to purchase tokens.

When Chen Yuan passed through the city gate, an invisible wave swept across him, the pass token tied around his waist glowed white light faintly, and the invisible wave quietly dissipated.

After entering the city, the streets are crowded with people. The shops on the street are of different styles, either elegant attics or magnificent halls. Each shop occupies a large area.

There are no dilapidated buildings in Chongde City. Every shop is made of spiritual wood that is thirty, fifty or even eighty years old, and is immortal for at least a hundred years.

On the outskirts of the Chongde Mountains, the Haoran Sect has opened up a large number of spiritual fields and recruited Qi-refining monks to cultivate spiritual herbs and trees. There are also two giant spiritual stone mines in the mountains, which also recruit low-level Qi-refining monks to mine.

Ninety percent of the Qi-refining practitioners in Chongde City make a living from this.

Otherwise, they would not be able to survive in the prosperous Chongde City.

These Qi-refining monks gathered from all over Renzhou. They usually cultivated spiritual herbs, mined spiritual minerals, earned spiritual stones, and then returned to their homes in the city to practice. This cycle repeats over and over again.

Most of them have poor aptitude and are pseudo-spiritual root cultivators. If they stay in the mountains to practice on their own, they may not be able to build a foundation in their entire lives. Only by coming to Chongde City to try can they have a chance of building a foundation.

The low-level spiritual herbs cultivated by these Qi-refining monks using their own spiritual energy will be transplanted by the monks of Haoran Sect to the spiritual medicine garden in the Chongde Mountains to absorb the pure spiritual energy of the giant spiritual veins.

After a few decades, these spiritual herbs will grow into one hundred, three hundred or even five hundred year old spiritual herbs, and can be refined into elixirs, which will be used for cultivation by the monks of Haoran Sect or sold to the monks of Renzhou.

In fact, after these spiritual herbs have taken root and sprouted, they can grow with the help of the spiritual energy of the giant spiritual vein. However, it is obviously more cost-effective to use cheap Qi-refining monks to ripen them first, and then consume the spiritual energy of the giant spiritual vein.

The same is true for giant spirit stone veins. Mining requires enormous spiritual pressure, which mortals cannot bear. Only cultivators can dig out spirit stones. It is not only hard work, but also quite dangerous. Disciples of the Haoran Sect naturally will not do it. Recruiting Qi-refining cultivators is the best choice.

The Confucian and Taoist monks, who were full of benevolence and morality, used the most stringent formation to monitor the casual cultivators who came out of the dark mine, covered in stone dust, to ensure that they did not hide any spiritual stones, and then let them go...

Chen Yuan's mind was filled with records about Chongde City from the classics. The cultivator who left his consciousness in the jade slip might have once been a wandering cultivator who had mined spiritual mines and cultivated spiritual herbs for the Haoran Sect. The words between the lines contained resentment towards the Haoran Sect.

But these have nothing to do with Chen Yuan, and he cannot change the current situation.

In the world of immortal cultivation, strength is respected. Low-level cultivators have no dignity at all in front of a behemoth like the Haoran Sect.

Chen Yuan accidentally saw this book in a shop selling jade slips and books when he went to Fanyang to buy demon pills. The book gave a very detailed introduction to Chongde City.

Chongde City is like other large markets. In order to facilitate the restraint of foreign monks, flying is prohibited in the city.

But not long after Chen Yuan entered the city, a beam of light flew over his head and headed towards the center of Chongde City.

The escaping light was very faint, but all the monks who noticed it showed awe in their eyes.

Only Nascent Soul cultivators are not subject to the no-fly ban.

After the escaping light disappeared, Chen Yuan retracted his gaze, turned several busy streets, performed the light body technique, and came to the northwest corner of Chongde City. He stopped in front of a three-story building with a plaque with the words "Sifang Pavilion" written on it.

Behind the small building is a verdant bamboo forest, which shades a dozen courtyards. This is where Haoran Sect welcomes guests. If any monks come to visit, they must enter through here.

It is said that Sifang Pavilion was not originally located in Chongde Market, but near the mountain gate of Haoran Sect.

However, the Haoran Sect had tens of thousands of disciples and too many visitors to bother them, so they simply moved to Chongde City.

Chongde Academy is also located in Chongde City, scattered around a hundred-meter-high hill in the south of the city.

The Haoran Sect will send Jindan monks to teach in Chongde Academy. As long as the Confucian and Taoist practitioners meet the requirements, they can enter the academy to practice.

If these independent cultivators can form golden elixirs, they can join Chongde Academy or Chongde City and become guest officials, serving the Haoran Sect.

In this way, the Haoran Sect can select talented people among the independent cultivators, enrich its own strength, and consolidate its control over Renzhou.

Those monks who leave Chongde Academy will become closer to Haoran Sect because of this experience, and establish sects and families in various places, and naturally become supporters of Haoran Sect.

……

There are many cultivators coming in and out of the Sifang Pavilion. After all, even the Qi-refining cultivators who want to visit the Haoran Sect have to pass through here.

When Chen Yuan revealed his cultivation level, a Qi-refining cultivator came up to him and led him to a quiet room, where he met a middle-aged deacon who was in the early stage of Jindan.

He felt the aura of Chen Yuan's false infant realm, and with a very respectful expression, he asked Chen Yuan why he came.

Even the monks of Haoran Sect did not dare to be disrespectful to the fake infant monk.

Chen Yuan still had the gold mask on his face. Yan Tongchun was also a true disciple of the Haoran Sect. If they met him in Chongde City, something might go wrong.

The golden mask is just a low-grade magic weapon and cannot block the spiritual awareness of others.

But Chen Yuan had set up a spiritual barrier around him. With his current spiritual strength, anyone below the Nascent Soul stage who wanted to spy on him would not be able to succeed.

Chen Yuan took out the jade pendant Zhang Wushan had given him and said with a smile, "I want to visit your sect's Yuexinghu true disciple, Taoist Zhang Wushan. Please inform Taoist Zhang that an old friend is visiting."

The middle-aged deacon took the jade pendant and smiled even more: "So you are an old friend of Junior Brother Zhang, so you are not a stranger. Please wait for a moment, I will send someone to invite Junior Brother Zhang."

After that, he called a young scholar and handed him the jade pendant: "Take this jade pendant, return to the mountain gate, and go to Yuexing Lake to report to the true disciple Zhang Wushan that an old friend is visiting. Go and come back quickly."

"Yes!" The young Confucian scholar immediately agreed, took the jade pendant with both hands, bowed to Chen Yuan, then turned and walked out of the quiet room.

After the foundation-building monk left, the middle-aged deacon smiled and said, "My fellow Daoist, our sect's mountain gate is too vast to deliver the message in a short while."

"And Junior Brother Zhang may not be at the mountain gate. We may have to wait for some time."

"I will arrange a courtyard for you to stay in temporarily while you wait for Junior Brother Zhang's reply. How do you think?"

Chen Yuan bowed and said, "Then I'll have to trouble you, fellow Taoist."

The middle-aged deacon then called over a foundation-building cultivator and arranged a quiet courtyard with two entrances for Chen Yuan.

Under the guidance of a Qi-refining monk, Chen Yuan came to the courtyard and settled down. A spirit gathering array was engraved in the training room. After it was activated, the spiritual energy was quite rich, comparable to a small spirit vein.

There is a branch of a giant spiritual vein in Chongde City. The spiritual energy is as rich as that of a large spiritual vein, providing spiritual energy for the monks in the city.

For example, the courtyard where Chen Yuan lives, the concentration of spiritual energy in the spirit gathering array is comparable to that of a small spiritual vein. It is an earth-level cave in Chongde City, and it requires ten high-quality spirit stones to rent it for a year.

As for the higher-grade heavenly cave, which is also the highest-grade cave, the concentration of spiritual energy is comparable to that of a medium-sized spiritual vein, and it requires one hundred high-quality spirit stones to rent it for a year.

There was once a false-infant cultivator who wanted to use a heavenly-grade cave to form an infant. However, although the spiritual energy in the heavenly-grade cave was rich, it only had one training room. Through the control of the spirit gathering formation, the spiritual energy supply was stable and slow, and it was impossible to burst out a huge amount of spiritual energy in an instant for the cultivator to form an infant.

Chen Yuan sat upright in the training room, meditating and breathing to restore his true energy.

He flew all the way here. Although the journey was long, after refining Kunpeng's true blood, his flight speed increased and his true energy consumption decreased a lot. The speed of absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth doubled. In just one hour, his true energy was fully restored.

Two hours later, there was a knock on the gate of the courtyard. Chen Yuan stood up and walked to the main hall. He raised his sleeves and the heavy wooden door slowly opened.

The young scholar who had returned to the mountain gate to deliver the letter walked quickly into the main hall, clasped his fists and bowed, and said respectfully: "Senior, Uncle Zhang left the mountain gate three months ago and went out to travel. He has not returned yet. Please wait for a few days."

As he spoke, he flicked the storage bag at his waist, took out the jade pendant, and presented it with both hands.

Chen Yuan frowned, took out two high-quality spirit stones from the mustard seed ring, flicked his fingers, and slowly flew towards the young scholar.

He smiled and said, "Please accept these two spiritual stones. I'll leave this jade pendant in your hands for now. Please keep an eye on Fellow Daoist Zhang's whereabouts. If he returns to the mountain gate, please let me know in time."

The young scholar showed a delighted look on his face. He took the spirit stone with both hands and bowed deeply. "Don't worry, senior. I will ask my fellow disciples to keep an eye out for Uncle Zhang. As soon as Uncle Zhang returns to the sect, I will go to see him with the jade pendant and report your visit to him."

He was only at the initial stage of foundation building. Two high-grade spirit stones could be exchanged for two hundred and forty medium-grade spirit stones. For him, it was an absolute windfall.

The young Confucian scholar withdrew contentedly, and Chen Yuan also stood up and left the courtyard, slowly walking towards the most prosperous street in Chongde City.

Zhang Wushan will not return to the sect for a while. His cultivation has reached the limit, and meditating in the courtyard is useless. He simply goes to Chongde Market to stroll around and adjust his lonely state of mind after years of hard cultivation. (End of this chapter)