A leisurely life in the world of cultivation

Chapter 228: We've struck it rich!
The lightning of Tingyang Cang completely dissipated into the sky, and the remaining pressure in the Five Elements Hall receded like a tide, leaving only the lingering lightning energy on the black stone ground.

The palace door was ajar, and the morning mist seeped in through the cracks, bringing Li Weizhou a touch of warmth.

The Immortal Realm truly is a realm where each level is a new heaven.

Let alone Tingyang Cang, a Heavenly Venerable, even the old man from the Hu clan, who was an Earthly Venerable, wouldn't stand much of a chance against him, according to Li Weizhou.

Still a nobody.

Standing in the hall, Li Weizhou first used his divine sense to scan the entire Five Elements Sect. The spiritual energy in Tao Xixing's secluded meditation room was stagnant, indicating that he was still in deep seclusion and there was no movement at all.

The outer disciples seemed completely oblivious to the oppressive aura emanating from Ting Yangcang, and continued their cultivation as usual.

In the herb garden, Bai Zhiwei and Granny Jinhua were also busy.

After confirming that the sect was safe, he slowly breathed a sigh of relief, raised his hand to rub his temples. Dealing with one Earth Venerable and one Heaven Venerable in succession, even with the protection of the Eastern Emperor Bell, it was inevitable that his mind would be a little tense.

He walked into a quiet room furnished with the names of past ancestral leaders, picked up an incense stick from the altar, lit it, and placed it in the incense burner.

He even murmured to the memorial tablet: "Great kindness of the Ancestral Master."

This legacy has fallen upon him...

Then, Li Weizhou took out the storage ring shaped like a blue fox. The ring was dark and the fine spiritual patterns embedded in the fox's body pattern shone with a very faint light. If you didn't look closely, you would just think it was an ordinary old object.

Li Weizhou lightly tapped the ring with his fingertip, hesitated for a moment, and then probed it with a very faint wisp of divine sense.

With treasures like the Blood Eye, the Taiji Diagram, and the Eastern Emperor Bell, even though they are fragmented, they should be able to protect themselves under these circumstances.

The moment the divine sense touched the inner wall of the ring, a chilling yet refined golden spiritual aura rushed towards it. It was not the cold hardness of ordinary metal, but a sharpness with spiritual charm, as if stepping into a secret realm of golden veins buried for thousands of years. Even the divine sense felt as if it were being gently cut.

Li Weizhou felt a slight chill and quickly condensed his divine sense into a fine thread, slowly probing into the depths. The first thing he touched was a jade slip that shimmered with a faint golden halo. The jade slip seemed to be made of top-grade gold marrow. As his divine sense swept over it, the five ancient seal characters of "Ruijin Zhenxuan Jing" (锐金镇玄经) were clearly reflected in his sea of ​​consciousness. Between the characters, there seemed to be fine golden light flowing, as if it contained a sharpness that could cut through chaos.

Thinking of the old man of the Hu family's golden eyes, Li Weizhou guessed that this should be the true fundamental technique of the Hu family!
After reading the jade slip and browsing through it, I found that this cultivation method is based on "refining sharp metal into bones and condensing the sharpness of the profound". It is a complete set of cultivation methods, from "Golden Spirit Tempering Meridians" in the Spirit Movement stage and Spirit Origin stage, to "Transforming God and Soaring Through the Sky" in the Spirit God stage, and then to "Suppressing the Profound and Breaking the Boundary" in the Immortal Spirit stage.

Each piece exudes the sharpness of the Hu family's thousands of years of heritage. "Piercing armor, tearing defenses, and slaying evil" is the root of the Hu family cultivators' reputation for "fierce killing" in the Central Plains.

Excellent, it's ten thousand times stronger than the metal-type cultivation method within the Five Elements Sect.

The Moon Goddess is blessed!
He set the jade slip aside for the time being and continued to probe with his divine sense. In the corner were three bright white jade bottles, with gold intertwined patterns engraved on the body of the bottles, and plain labels that read "Sharp Gold Tempering Pill", "Thunder Suppressing Profound Gold Pill" and "Gold-Splitting Barrier-Breaking Pill" respectively.

It goes without saying how precious the medicine stored up by a powerful Earthly Venerable is.

Well, Zhou Yueniang is pregnant. I'll ask Bai Zhiwei and Granny Jinhua later if she can take these potent medicines.

He carefully put the jade bottle away and his gaze fell on the three scrolls of gold-patterned silk array diagrams stacked not far away.

The silk surface was made of an unknown material; this was the first time Li Weizhou had ever seen such a formation.

The image gleams with a faint golden light, making it clear at a glance that it is no ordinary piece.

After taking it out, unfold the top scroll. The ink-black array patterns are like golden blades intersecting, and on the side is a line of words marked in ancient seal script: "Ten Thousand Blades Sky-Splitting Array"!
What a loud tone!
Li Weizhou's eyes lit up. After looking at it for a moment, he confirmed that it was the Hu family's protective formation!
Is the old patriarch of the Hu family really confused, that he would even give him such a precious thing!
That's too hasty...

However, Li Weizhou likes it!

I don't know how those grandsons of the Hu family managed to break this old man's heart so badly...

Li Weizhou carefully observed the array diagram, which detailed the need for nine "Mysterious Gold Pillars" as a foundation. The diagram required drawing upon the power of the Gold Spirit to condense a sharp barrier. Once completed, the array would not only unleash a barrage of golden blades to annihilate enemies but also use the resilience of the Gold element to withstand attacks. Even without someone presiding over the array, it could withstand a full-force attack from an enemy of Earthly Venerable rank and would even inflict damage from the golden blades within the array.

He glanced at the other two scrolls, namely "Golden Spirit Concealment Array" and "Crimson Gold Gathering Yuan Array," both top-tier metal-based arrays used to condense the nine Xuanjin pillars.

The Xuanjin Pillar can continuously absorb the golden spiritual power between heaven and earth, including spirit stones, spirit beast cores, and so on. It can absorb and store all kinds of golden spiritual energy.

He now understood why the Hu family descendants were not afraid that Old Man Hu would not survive the tribulation.

If Old Man Hu were to transfer his life's cultivation into the nine Xuanjin pillars of the Hu family before his death, it would be equivalent to the Hu family possessing a sect-protecting formation comparable to the strength of a top-tier Earth Venerable expert.

At least you can protect yourself without worry.

No wonder those bastards were urging Old Man Hu to come over at this time...

Li Weizhou was beaming with satisfaction; they were all excellent products.

After placing the array diagram, I probed deeper with my divine sense and touched a heavy object. Although its spiritual light was faint, it had a sharp and compelling quality. It seemed that the years had worn away some of its sharpness, but it was even more substantial.

When it was summoned, a palm-sized crimson-gold jade seal was seen floating in mid-air. The seal was engraved with the ferocious characters "Splitting the Sky" and surrounded by nine-curved golden battle patterns. There were several scratches of varying depths on the edge, indicating that it was an old artifact that had gone through countless battles.

After examining it with his divine sense, Li Weizhou's face lit up with surprise. This was one of the Hu family's inherited treasures: the Sky-Splitting Golden Seal.

A top-grade spiritual treasure can instantly draw upon the metal-elemental spiritual power within a ten-mile radius, unleashing the divine power of "Golden Peak Town," which can directly shatter a cultivator at the Spirit God Realm!

It is also the token of the Hu family's successive patriarchs. It was with this golden seal that the Hu family's ancestors carved out a place for themselves in the Central Plains.

Li Weizhou held the Rifting Heaven Golden Seal in his palm, blinked, and felt a sense of unreality.

The Hu family, with countless members who had schemed and plotted for years to obtain the heirloom, had just given it to him like this.
If our ancestor Hu Yue had been able to wield this seal back then, he probably wouldn't have broken with his family and gone to the Northern Spirit Realm.

Now it's so easily in my hands, tsk, is this how a heartbroken person acts so recklessly...?

Just as I was about to take stock of whether there were any other items, I suddenly felt my mind was in turmoil again.

This familiar feeling...

When he subconsciously took out the last treasure from his storage ring and placed it in his palm, he realized that it was a tattered flag.

The flag is dark gold in color and made of neither silk nor cloth. It feels cool to the touch but is indestructible.

The flag is embroidered with crisscrossing mountain and river patterns, most of which are broken, with charred and curled edges, and three fist-sized holes with dark red marks around the edges, resembling primordial spiritual blood that has dried up for ten thousand years.

Even in its current state of disrepair, the faint, innate spiritual light still lingers. With a gentle touch, one can feel the earth elemental energy in the world resonating subtly.

This is……

As the Eastern Emperor Bell transmitted a mysterious message, Li Weizhou's lips curled slightly. Good heavens, it was actually the Wuji Apricot Yellow Banner!
In the ancient mythology, this originally belonged to the ancestor Hongjun, and was later passed on to the primordial celestial being.

It possesses the power to bloom ten thousand golden lotuses, be impenetrable by anything, repel all evil, and be immune to all magic.

The famous Five Banners of the Primordial Heaven!
but……

Looking at the tattered rags in front of him, Li Weizhou felt a sense of desolation, not to mention the blood-red eyes and the Taiji diagram that were sobbing in his mind.

What a prestigious title! It should be immortal and indestructible.

How did it get like this...?

His last bit of pride vanished instantly, replaced by a sense of dejection.

Let alone his current cultivation level, even if it increased a million times, it still wouldn't reach the level of a prehistoric saint.

What level of cultivation did the person behind the scenes have to bring these saints to this point?
Even when these treasures were at their strongest, they were beaten to this state. Now that they are in such a broken state, what can he do?

Give up, give up...

Li Weizhou himself didn't realize that his eyes were slowly turning gray, and a trace of demonic energy was even quietly rising in his sea of ​​consciousness...

"Clang!!!" A bell rang throughout his mind, instantly washing away Li Weizhou's strange behavior!

What the hell!

Has he gone mad from practicing qi cultivation?!

After a sudden awakening, Li Weizhou's face instantly turned extremely ugly.

How could this be?
Old man Hu has been trying for who knows how many years, but...

No, perhaps the Hu family's decline to this state is due to the evil influence hidden within the Wuji Apricot Yellow Banner?
The Wuji Apricot Yellow Banner was originally a treasure that could suppress great fortune, but after it was damaged, it also harbored demonic energy, so it became an object that brought bad luck.
Let's not think about anything else for now, let's tidy this up properly first.

Close your eyes, here I come!!

When I opened my eyes again, I was already in the Simpson Desert on Earth.

An endless sea of ​​blood!
With the rapid advancement of nuclear fusion, the amount of blood entering the Blood Sea has skyrocketed from the amount of one West Lake per day to the amount of two East Lakes per day, which is equivalent to ten West Lakes.

Every moment, countless livestock fall to the ground.

And, the dead...

This scene was still somewhat terrifying.

However, upon sensing the wisps of true spirit merging into his sea of ​​consciousness, Li Weizhou felt that they were somehow somewhat approachable...

In such a short time, those wisps of true spirit gathered, causing Li Weizhou's sea of ​​consciousness to expand more than double.

It's all thanks to the bloodshed.

Without the Blood Sea, if others cultivated this demonic art, even if they weren't burst apart by the flesh and blood of the alien species, their divine consciousness would become mixed and turbid due to absorbing endless true spirit, making them like a chaotic demon god, a super lunatic.

Secondly, only a technological civilization could produce so many living beings almost infinitely and continuously supply Li Weizhou without violating the "rules of heaven".

Even in the infinitely vast spirit world, it's impossible for anyone to slaughter hundreds of millions of living beings every day...

In short, if things continue at this pace, advancing to the Immortal Spirit Realm is not far off.

After absorbing and refining the Wuji Apricot Yellow Banner, it turned out that this treasure was the most severely damaged among all the treasures.

Almost none of its divine effects have been preserved; we can only wait for it to slowly recover.

But it is still a treasure. Right now, there is another supernatural power that is not considered a supernatural power to it, but it is extremely useful to Li Weizhou: Gathering Spirit.

However, this gathering of spirits is not for people, but for the spiritual veins!

……

Five Elements Sect, Houtu Peak.

When Li Weizhou placed a transparent, apricot-yellow flag image into the depths of Houtu Peak's spiritual vein, Houtu Peak clearly trembled slightly.

Then, endless earth-elemental spiritual energy fell from all directions onto the spiritual veins.

However, Li Weizhou knew that if this pace continued, it would probably take a considerable amount of time for the spiritual veins to upgrade.

It could take ten or eight years, or even thirty or fifty years.

In the spirit realm, for any power, upgrading a Xuan-level spiritual vein to an Di-level spiritual vein within just ten or eight years, or thirty or fifty years, is a highly profitable endeavor!

However, Li Weizhou couldn't wait that long.

This time, the two old men weren't too malicious, and he managed to get through it.

But next time, if it's a Sinful Clan Earth Venerable or Heaven Venerable who comes, he won't even know how he died.

Even if he manages to escape, what will happen to his entire family?
Therefore, we still need to upgrade the spiritual veins as soon as possible to enhance the power of the sect's protective formation.

Fortunately, in addition to absorbing the free-floating earth elemental energy on its own, the Wuji Xinghuang Banner can also actively add "material".

If we could buy a Grade Earth-type spiritual vein from the Tingyang Clan and integrate it directly, it would greatly improve efficiency.

Why not just use a level-elemental spiritual vein instead?
If a spiritual vein has a spirit, then by using the current spiritual vein to "devour" the purchased spiritual vein, the Five Elements Revolving Array will not need to be changed and can continue to be used.

According to the principle of mutual generation of the five elements, the entire Five Elements Array will benefit!

However, if a level-elemental spiritual vein is used directly as a replacement, then the formation needs to be rearranged.

Because the balance between the spiritual veins has been broken, and once the balance is broken, the newly added earth-level spiritual veins will be incompatible with achieving the balance of the five elements.

Otherwise, given the grand scale of the Five Sacred Mountains True Lords back then, if they couldn't gather five Earth-level spiritual veins, wouldn't they at least be able to find one or two?
This is also why Li Weizhou wanted to accumulate five Earth-level spiritual veins or five Heaven-level spiritual veins; a single one wouldn't be of much use to him.

The appearance of the Wuji Apricot Yellow Banner has now solved this problem for Li Weizhou!
We've struck it rich!!

"call!"

After letting out a soft breath, Li Weizhou looked up at the sky; a day had passed just like that.

It's time to go and bring my family back.

……

"so fast?"

Within the Ice and Snow Secret Realm, Zhou Yueniang and the others were overjoyed to see Li Weizhou arrive and announce that the crisis had been resolved.

After Li Weizhou recounted the events, he took out the "Sharp Gold Suppressing Mystery Scripture" and the Rifting Heaven Golden Seal given to him by Old Hu and handed them to Zhou Yueniang, saying, "I reckon this person has a close relationship with the Ancestral Master. Take these. Also, there are some pills. Ask Bai Zhiwei later to see if you can take them. In addition, after some time, I will take Situ to Thunder Mountain in Central State to see if we can get some benefits."

Zhou Yueniang looked at the cultivation technique jade slip and magic weapon with delight, but she was still mindful of appearances and put them away first. She then said happily for Situ Qingyue, "The Great Thunder Yang Scripture is definitely fine. Sister Situ's subsequent cultivation technique is settled!"

Li Weizhou looked at Feng Biwu and Qi Erniang and said, "You two definitely have a chance too."

He even winked at the two of them.

If it were truly revealed that they were also those who had opened the Hidden Divine Palace and possessed innate supernatural powers, wouldn't the major forces in the Central Plains, especially those who mainly cultivated water and earth, try every means to win them over?
But now is not the time. A tall tree catches the wind. If four members of a family openly reveal the Hidden Divine Palace, wouldn't that clearly indicate something is wrong?
A smile appeared on Feng Biwu's stunning face as she said, "I'm not in a hurry."

Qi Erniang smiled and said, "I'm not in a hurry at all! With my husband, wife, and Lord Situ protecting me, I can even slack off! Now I'm just waiting for my wife to give birth to the eldest child in the family, and then I'll be responsible for taking care of the child for you."

Tian Ru laughed and said, "They're all good girls, and Wei Zhou is so lucky. I only hope that your family can live together in harmony and love for a long time." After hesitating for a moment, she said to Li Wei Zhou, "Actually, it doesn't matter whether you're in the Northern Spirit Domain or not. If there really is a better place for you, your master and I will only be happy for you. We don't want you to stay in this harsh and cold place and delay your future."

His gentle face was full of sincerity.

Tao Ling'er's face immediately tensed up. If Li Weizhou's family really left, then she and her mother would have to go back to the old days of counting spirit rice to make ends meet.

But she couldn't bring herself to ask him to stay. Powerful families like those in Zhongzhou were vying to take him away, and she also wanted her junior brother's family to have a better life.

What a contradiction!
Li Weizhou chuckled and said, "Master's wife, let's not say such things anymore. Our two families are actually one family. From now on, let's rely on each other in the sect."

……

(End of this chapter)