Wanfa Daojun, starting from the Little Cloud and Rain Technique

Chapter 433 Rebates?

Ji An nodded slightly, no longer dwelling on the matter. He understood the ancestor's profound meaning; it was a spiritual bond left behind.

The disciples, receiving such preferential treatment, will inevitably have a greater attachment to the sect.

When he leaves the sect, everything from Crimson Flame Peak will remain; it will be his generous gift to the sect.

He acquires various kinds of knowledge during his travels and will not hesitate to hand it over to his sect.

Ji An solemnly cupped his hands and asked:

"There's one more thing I'd like to ask you, Ancestor. You need to take a Golden Core Pill to break through to the next level. How do I get one?"

To break through to the Golden Core stage, forming a Golden Core is an unavoidable resource.

It can unleash the power of the five elements and increase the chance of a breakthrough by 30%.

Master Zhengyang's eyes were full of laughter as he teased:

"You've started planning for Core Formation so early, huh? Haha, that's good. A man who doesn't plan for the future will have trouble in the present!"

He paused for a moment and said in a deep voice:

"No extra effort is required to exchange for a Golden Core; the sect will issue one to all eligible disciples."

If a disciple wishes to leave the sect after breaking through to the Golden Core stage and pursuing a higher realm, I will not stop them. The only condition is that they stay in the sect for a full sixty years.

Putting myself in their shoes, I am deeply grateful for all the sacrifices the sect has made. No matter where I am in the future, I will always remember that this is where my cultivation began.

The reason he was able to break through to the Golden Core stage back then was because of the help of the entire sect, which enabled him to obtain a Golden Core.

Ji An sighed inwardly, thinking that the sect was making a venture capital investment. If they encountered an ungrateful wretch, the sect would definitely have a method to evaluate the disciple.

If someone truly has ungrateful tendencies, the sect probably wouldn't provide them with pills for free.

He said softly, "The sect is generous. Assuming you don't succeed in breaking through, what price would you have to pay to obtain another Golden Core?"

Master Zhengyang raised an eyebrow, his voice becoming even more solemn:
"If a disciple fails to form a Golden Core and still wants to obtain a Golden Core through the sect's channels, he/she needs 100,000 merit points and must prove that his/her injuries have healed."

In spiritual practice, there is a saying that the Golden Elixir is unchangeable; once the Golden Elixir is formed, its quality cannot be altered.

In response, some cultivators would take a rather extreme approach, forcibly stopping the process before the Golden Core is fully formed.

Although this would result in severe backlash, it would also preserve the capital to start over. Cultivators with ample lifespan and wealth would choose this approach.

The elixirs needed to forcibly stop the damage during a breakthrough are extremely rare and expensive. Without the financial resources to rely on a cultivator's self-healing abilities, there is a high probability that there will be no improvement.

"Ten thousand merits, that's a lot, it would probably take hundreds of years to accumulate!"

Ji An chuckled. Ten thousand great merits are equivalent to ten million small merits. Even for him, it would take more than a hundred years to accumulate enough. It would be almost impossible for other disciples to obtain a second Golden Core.

In a sense, this means the sect has decided not to give failed disciples a second chance.

Master Zhengyang looked intently at her, his tone becoming stern:
"The Golden Elixir is without regret" not only means that the quality of the Golden Elixir cannot be changed after it is condensed, but also has a deeper meaning: without the belief of forging ahead, it is impossible to create a high-quality Golden Elixir.

The Golden Core stage marks the end of the Refining Essence into Qi stage and the beginning of the Refining Qi into Spirit stage. An unwavering Dao heart, which cannot be quantified, plays a significant role in the formation of the Golden Core.

Therefore, if a cultivator tries to form a core again after failing the first time, they are unlikely to achieve any significant breakthrough.

If you are to achieve the Golden Core stage, you must constantly remind yourself that there is no turning back; it's all or nothing.

"Disciple knows."

Ji An left the Wuji Palace and flew to the mountainside on a cloud. He saw that there were still lights in the treasure pavilion, so he landed and stepped inside.

When Jia Yu saw him come in, she said with a smile:

"You just went to see the Ancestor, right?"

"How can you be so sure? Can't I see my senior brother first?"

Jia Yu chuckled softly, took out his wine gourd, and took a leisurely sip, laughing and scolding:

"The scent of the incense in the Wuji Hall is unique in the sect, and the fragrance on you hasn't dissipated yet."

Besides, it's already past 7 PM. If I weren't checking the inventory today, the Treasure Pavilion would have closed long ago.

Ji An chuckled. He had stayed in the Wuji Palace for too long and had only flown down from the mountain peak for too short a time. The strong wind hadn't had time to dispel the scent from his robes.

He took out a neatly stacked set of mid-grade spirit stones from the void space. "Senior brother, there are three thousand six hundred spirit stones here. Please count them."

To exchange a mid-grade spirit stone for a high-grade spirit stone, an additional 20% 'handling fee' is required.

Jia Yu extended his divine sense and scanned the pile of spirit stones, then nodded slightly. "The number is correct. I will go and fetch the high-grade spirit stones."

As soon as he finished speaking, the mimicry array behind him shook and dissipated, revealing the earth dragon beast emerging from it.

"Ancestor Yan, what brings you out?"

Jia Yu was very curious because when Yan Zu fell into a deep sleep, he would only wake up once every hundred years.

Before the demonic calamity broke out, he had only seen the other party regain consciousness once, which lasted for only half a month before the other party fell into a deep sleep again.

The earth dragon beast said in a muffled voice, "My cultivation has improved. I'll go and have a chat with Fellow Daoist Zhengyang."

It strolled out, and auspicious yellow clouds rose beneath its feet, soaring up and sweeping towards the mountain peak.

Jia Yu sighed, "If a demon beast has an excellent bloodline, its cultivation can improve as easily as eating and sleeping. I really don't know what kind of splendor those divine beasts would have!"

He felt quite bitter; in the face of talent, hard work was worthless.

Ji An remained silent. It was true that powerful demonic beasts could improve their cultivation very quickly. Take his Azure Deer for example. With ample resources, it advanced from the Qi Refining stage to the Chaoyuan stage in just over forty years.

In terms of cultivation speed, he, as the master, was utterly weak compared to the beast tamers.

Jia Yu put away the spirit stones and went into the secret vault. He quickly came out again and placed thirty high-grade spirit stones on the table.

"Junior brother, hand over your identity jade token to me. I need to leave an exchange record."

Ji An took out the jade token and handed it over, storing the spirit stone into his virtual space.

Jia Yu placed the golden jade tablet on the spirit plate, recording the time and quantity of spirit stones exchanged.

"Junior brother, what advice does the Ancestor have for your next stage of cultivation?"

"I went out to travel and seek a breakthrough opportunity. No one can help me with this step. If I understand it, I have crossed the threshold. If I don't understand it, I can only waste time."

"After thousands of years of accumulation, the sect finally produced its first Golden Core cultivator seven hundred years ago, after which it entered a period of rapid development."

This illustrates that as long as one accumulates enough experience, success becomes inevitable.

Based on my junior brother's performance over the years, I think it's only a matter of time before he breaks through to the Golden Core stage.

Ji An cupped his hands in greeting and smiled, "Thanks to your kind words, Senior Brother, my confidence is even stronger now."

It is not easy for quantitative change to lead to qualitative change, but he is confident.

With his already high level of comprehension and the added benefit of the Dao Seed, it would be extremely difficult for him to break through to the Golden Core stage, let alone for other cultivators.

"Haha, do you remember what you said? If you want me to call you Ancestor, you'd better work twice as hard, otherwise I might not be able to wait."

"I won't keep you waiting long, Senior Brother." Ji An's eyes were calm, and his tone was confident and composed. "If I go out to travel, I will still need to ask you to take care of Crimson Flame Peak."

"It's nothing. Crimson Flame Peak is a treasure of the sect, so it's only right to take care of it."

Jia Yu patted his chest and said, "Besides, there's never a shortage of spirit wine at your temple. I couldn't be happier."

After exchanging a few words of laughter, the two left the treasure pavilion and returned to their respective caves.

Ji An returned to his cave at Crimson Flame Peak, sat cross-legged in his quiet room, and commanded the stone tortoise to use all the spiritual energy it had absorbed to cultivate the gourd world.

He placed the jade slip containing the Five Elements Cycle and the Five Elements Mutual Generation Chapter on his forehead, studied it carefully several times, and felt that he could try to cultivate it. So he put down the jade slip and began to circulate the cultivation technique.

The cultivation of this new chapter takes a long time, as it connects all the other five elements chapters. One complete cycle takes two quarters of an hour, and no mistakes can be made during this period.

The difficulty lies in the fact that the transformation between different chapters requires different techniques, which consumes a great deal of spiritual energy and demands a high level of spiritual strength.

The advantage is that the quality of the magic power will be significantly improved after being tempered by the power of the five elements.

None of this was difficult for Ji An. After half an hour of trying, he successfully circulated the technique through a full cycle.

Once you succeed once, the rest is much simpler.

Within Ji An's body, magical power was drawn from his dantian, and the five divine palaces shone brightly, each refining the magical power.

Within the acupoints, the Dao seed shone brightly, and a mysterious aura permeated the air.

After the magic power is refined and purified, it returns to the dantian, leaving only 80% of the original magic power.

The stone tortoise and the primordial fire will still consume 10% of it. The stone tortoise's shell will become brighter, and the eight trigrams stripes will appear even more profound. The primordial fire will shine even brighter.

The primordial fire is directly affected by the cultivator's input, just like a car engine; good fuel and bad fuel result in different horsepower.

The cultivation that Ji An is currently doing is adjusting the various divine palaces to a single frequency, which is laying the foundation.

With a solid foundation, you can seize opportunities when they arise.

Nothing happened that night, and Ji An finally finished his cultivation and fell into a deep sleep at dawn.

When he woke up again at noon, he felt refreshed and full of energy.

He sat up and focused his mind on his dantian, connecting it with the stone turtle. Now that the spiritual veins of Crimson Flame Peak had been upgraded to the second-tier top grade, he was very concerned about how much spiritual energy the stone turtle could absorb.

Lines of text appeared in his mind, and a silent smile appeared on his face.

[Master: Ji An]

【Daoyun: 0】

[Kan Spirit 1.5, Gen Spirit 1.4, Zhen Spirit 1.3, Xun Spirit 1.4, Kun Spirit 1.6, Qian Spirit 1.6, Dui Spirit 1.6, Li Spirit 1.7]

His mind left the stone turtle and returned to his body; the amount of spiritual energy he gained exceeded his expectations.

"How could a top-grade spiritual vein contain so much more spiritual energy than a high-grade spiritual vein?"

Ji An muttered to himself, this was not normal. He had stayed in the Wuji Hall on Chaoyang Peak for so long, but the spiritual energy he gained per unit of time was not as much as when he stayed on Chiyan Peak.

But Chaoyang Peak is a third-tier spiritual vein, and the spiritual energy I gained there was more than that from Chiyan Peak.

He frowned and pondered for a long time, but still couldn't come up with a solution.

To figure out this unusually fast phenomenon, he flew on a cloud to a low-class spiritual field and stayed there for six hours before using his divine sense to connect with the stone tortoise.

As lines of text appeared in his mind, Ji An was even more confused.

[Kan Spirit 1.8, Gen Spirit 1.6, Zhen Spirit 1.3, Xun Spirit 1.6, Kun Spirit 1.9, Qian Spirit 1.8, Dui Spirit 1.8, Li Spirit 1.9]

At this moment, the bright moon shines silently, and his deep gaze is fixed on the distant mountains.

He remembered very clearly how much spiritual energy the stone tortoise could absorb in a lowly region, and the land beneath his feet did not contain the five spiritual energies of Gen, Zhen, Xun, Qian, Dui, and Li.

What does this mean?
Ji An pondered this carefully, realizing that the stone tortoise had absorbed eight kinds of spiritual energy from places he was unaware of.

What kind of place could it be? He immediately thought of the Calabash World. Whether his guess was accurate or not, he only needed to conduct one more experiment.

With this in mind, Ji An hurriedly returned to Crimson Flame Peak on his flying flaming banner.

The trajectory of the flying artifact under the bright moon resembled a crimson cloud.

Upon returning to Crimson Flame Peak, he ordered the stone tortoise to consume all its spiritual energy to cultivate the gourd world.

He placed the gourd-shaped stone in the cave at the foot of the mountain and entrusted it to Golden Hair and Big Yellow for joint care, while he returned to his cave halfway up the mountain.

At noon the following day, six hours after returning to Crimson Flame Peak, Ji An sank his divine sense into his dantian and connected it with the stone tortoise.

[Kan Spirit 1.3, Gen Spirit 1.2, Zhen Spirit 1.1]

"That makes sense. So the stone turtle can draw spiritual energy from the gourd stone, and it has all kinds of spiritual energy."

After the truth came out, Ji An laughed heartily.

The gourd stone is like a portable Crimson Flame Peak, perfectly solving his problem of not being able to collect all kinds of spiritual energy when he travels.

By using spiritual energy to cultivate the gourd world and then harvesting spiritual energy from it, this business is extremely profitable, and there are even rebates!

Ji An had a conjecture: as the spiritual veins of the gourd world continued to improve, the spiritual energy he could obtain would also increase.

The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that his conjecture was correct, and that it would be verified once the spiritual veins of the small world improved.

Ji An left the cave, rode the clouds to the cave at the foot of the mountain, and took the gourd stone.

He strolled to the edge of the cold pool to prepare for lunch when Wei Songtao ran over and said:
"Grandmaster, I have prepared more than two hundred spirit earthworms. When will you receive them?"

He had already gathered everything, but then he realized he couldn't find his master anymore.

Give it to me after lunch.

Ji An remembered what he had asked him to do. "Thank you for your hard work. I was busy with other things and forgot. Go to the warehouse later and get five spirit stones as a reward."

"It's no hardship; it's my honor to serve my master."

Wei Songtao was all smiles, easily and happily earning spirit stones on Crimson Flame Peak.

He turned and walked a short distance away, a gentle breeze ruffling his now completely white hair, a testament to how time had altered its appearance.

We need to find a replacement for him quickly.

Ji An sighed and decided to ask his two disciples to inquire. He took out two golden communication swords, recorded his request into them, and then activated them.

Two golden beams shimmered with tiny rays of light in the sunlight, gradually disappearing beyond Crimson Flame Peak.

Zhang Xuening served the spiritual food, and after Ji An ate it, he took the spirit earthworm to his cave and released it into the gourd world.

The earthworms excitedly wriggled their bodies and quickly burrowed into the moist yellow soil.

The scent of the soil made them feel very comfortable.

Ji An extended his divine sense deep into the soil but found no signs of the Gathering Yuan Tree sprouting. He decided to wait another half month to see if there was any progress.

(End of this chapter)