The world of martial arts, the immortal swordsman in the mortal realm.

Chapter 231, Page 246: Flying Sword Upgrade, First Sacrifice
Lu Chen put away the two flying swords and was about to speak when he saw the crane and tiger revert to human form and charge over.

Li Xinzhu took out a small, black gourd, about the size of a palm, uncorked it, aimed it at the Cold Dragon, made a hand seal with one hand, and chanted incantations. Wisps of icy white vapor emerged from the Cold Dragon's seven orifices, gathering into a semi-transparent miniature Cold Dragon, which dazedly threw itself towards the gourd's mouth.

Hong Yue then took out a red gourd, pointed the gourd's mouth at Han Chi, and also made hand seals and chanted incantations.

From the wound on the top of the cold dragon's head, wisps of blood-red mist, shimmering with a dazzling spiritual light, emerged and were thrown towards the red gourd. Before long, the spiritual light of the emerging blood-red mist dimmed and even turned slightly black.

Hong Yue shook his head regretfully, stopped chanting the incantation, plugged the gourd's mouth, and gently weighed it in his hand.
"About seven ounces."

With that, he presented the gourd to Lu Chen with both hands:

“Fellow Daoist Lu, these seven ounces of Cold Dragon Blood can be used for alchemy, weapon crafting, and talisman making. They can also be offered as a sacrifice to the Heavenly Court in exchange for merit.”

Lu Chen took the gourd and asked:
"Can only seven ounces of blood be extracted from a cold dragon that's over ten feet long?"

Hong Yue gave an awkward smile:
"Well, once the Cold Dragon dies, its blood will quickly lose its spirituality, so we only had time to extract these seven ounces of the spiritual Cold Dragon blood."

"..."

Lu Chen was speechless for a moment.

Hong Yue coughed lightly, then took out a small animal skin bag, opened the bag, made a hand seal, and put the corpse of the Cold Dragon into the animal skin bag.

Li Xinzhu, who had taken away the essence of the Cold Dragon, approached Lu Chen with a beaming smile and presented him with a piece of pure white metal, about the size of a fingernail and brimming with golden energy.

"Thank you for your help, Fellow Daoist Lu. This is the Taiyi Refined Gold."

Lu Chen took the small piece of Taiyi refined gold and casually weighed it in his hand; it was exactly three qian (a unit of weight).

This mission to kill the Cold Dragon didn't take him much effort. As promised, he obtained three coins of Taiyi refined gold, and also received a thick and strong calamity aura, seven ounces of Cold Dragon blood, plus the intangible gain of taking Li Xinzhu and Hong Yue away from the Earth's core. Lu Chen was quite satisfied.

In addition, he felt that Han Chi, Li Xinzhu, and Hong Yue were all weaker than he had imagined.

However, Han Chi was just a young dragon beast, and Li Xinzhu and Hong Yue were just inexperienced junior disciples of the Divine Beast Mountain. It was not surprising that they were a bit weak and could not represent the overall level of the Journey to the West world.

Therefore, he was not arrogant and decided to focus on his spiritual practice and keep a low profile.

At this moment, Li Xinzhu suggested:
"Fellow Daoist Lu, why don't we explore the Cold Dragon's Nest again? If we're lucky, we might find something else."

Li Xinzhu and Hong Yue were not after the treasures that might exist in the Cold Dragon's Nest.

Both sides had agreed beforehand that any treasures found in the Cold Dragon's Nest would belong to Lu Chen.

Li Xinzhu has already obtained the essence of the Cold Dragon. After refining it, she can obtain the Cold Dragon's innate supernatural powers of ice wind and ice lightning.

Hong Yue obtained the body of the Cold Dragon. Whether he refined it into a puppet or peeled off its scales to make a magic robe, in exchange for the Cold Dragon's transformation technique, it would greatly increase his strength.

Both of them were extremely satisfied with their gains, which far exceeded their expectations—this Han Chi was much stronger than the one Li Xinzhu had seen last time, and if it weren't for Lu Chen, it could easily have taken them both down.

Therefore, Li Xinzhu's suggestion was merely to help Lu Chen explore the Cold Dragon's nest as a small token of her gratitude.

Lu Chen naturally wouldn't refuse, and the three of them took off again, returning to the Cold Pool.

Back above the icy pool, Li Xin took out six talismans and handed two of them to Lu Chen:

"Fellow Daoist Lu, these two talismans are a water-repelling talisman and a cold-repelling talisman. Activated with true essence, they can repel water and cold."

Lu Chen accepted the talisman, thanked them, and saw that the two of them each held two talismans. After activating them, their bodies seemed to be covered with two invisible films. So he did the same and infused his true energy into them.

The two paper talismans spontaneously combusted without fire, and two invisible films covered Lu Chen's body, as if he had two extra layers of skin. They adhered tightly to his body surface without causing any discomfort.

Then Hong Yue took the lead and jumped into the cold pool. Li Xinzhu and Lu Chen followed suit.

The invisible membrane formed by the water-repelling talisman and the cold-repelling talisman kept the pool water and the bone-chilling cold outside. Lu Chen only felt a slight coolness, and the pool water did not touch his body at all. Not even his clothes or hair were wet. He could even breathe freely underwater.

This made Lu Chen sigh, Li Xinzhu and Hong Yue may be bad at cooking, but they certainly have a lot of tricks up their sleeves.

This also shows that Divine Beast Mountain should be a major sect with profound foundation, much stronger than the Void Sword Sect, which has only been passed down through three generations.

The pool is only about an acre in size on the outside, but it is very spacious inside, and the water gets colder the further you go down.

Logically, at this level of coldness, the entire pool should be completely frozen solid, yet the water remains liquid, with not a single ice crystal visible even in the depths.

After diving more than a hundred feet, the cold-avoidance talisman could no longer keep out the chill. Li Xinzhu's teeth were chattering from the cold, and Hong Yue's face was also turning blue.

Fortunately, the bottom of the cold pool was finally reached. The three of them swam around the bottom of the pool and found a cave entrance that was big enough for a person to bend down and enter.

Hong Yue took the lead and entered the cave, followed by Li Xinzhu and Lu Chen. They swam along the winding path to the cave entrance for a while, and then the space suddenly opened up, revealing a spacious cave.

The cave was completely dry, and the walls were covered with icicles. In the center was a large black rock, flat like a bed, covered with a thick layer of ice crystals. There were scratches on the ice crystals, which were clearly the bed of the Cold Dragon.

The three searched the nest, which was even colder than underwater, but found nothing of value.

Li Xinzhu looked apologetic and said to Lu Chen:
"I'm sorry, Fellow Daoist Lu, you made a wasted trip."

Lu Chen smiled slightly, unconcerned:

"It's alright. Although there are no treasures here, I've been practicing magic recently and I need a cold cave. This place suits me perfectly, so it's an unexpected bonus."

His Calamity Sword can also absorb the Calamity Qi of the Cold Calamity. Previously, deep within the Earth's core, there was not a trace of coldness. Although the Twin Dragon World had entered winter, there had not been a massive blizzard to generate enough Calamity Qi to cause the Cold Calamity.

At this moment, within the nest of the Frost Dragon, he did sense the presence of the calamity of the Frost Calamity.

Especially near the Cold Dragon's bed, the aura of calamity and disaster was even more intense, no less so than the calamity aura of volcanoes, earthquakes, meteorites, and thunderstorms that permeated the depths of the earth's lungs.

Lu Chen suspected that there was something more to Han Chi's bed.

Of course, there was no need to say this to Li Xinzhu and Hong Yue.

Upon hearing Lu Chen's statement that he needed the cold cave, Li Xinzhu and Hong Yue breathed a sigh of relief and smiled.

"It's good that this place is beneficial to you, fellow Daoist. We two still need to rush back to our sect to report, so we'll take our leave now."

Lu Chen nodded:
"I'll see you off."

After seeing Li Xinzhu and Hong Yue off from the cold pool and waving goodbye to them, Lu Chen returned to the Cold Dragon's Nest, sat cross-legged on the ice bed, and carefully sensed the source of the calamity energy. He discovered that the calamity energy indeed originated from under the ice bed.

Beneath the ice bed, there seemed to be some tiny holes, from which a continuous stream of icy, calamistic energy surged forth and spread in all directions.

"It seems there might be a malevolent abyss deep underground, teeming with chilling energy. This is where the calamities of cold disaster arise. No wonder the Cold Dragon built its nest here..."

On the way out of the depths of the Earth's lungs, Lu Chen chatted with Li Xinzhu and Hong Yue, subtly obtaining a lot of information.

For example, deep within the earth, there are all kinds of natural evil sites, including Yin evil, fire evil, cold evil, and so on, which constantly generate evil energy.

Places rich in Yin energy often give rise to various Yin-related demons. If a corpse is buried above a place of Yin energy, it can also produce vengeful ghosts, zombies, and other ghostly demons. Places with strong Fire energy are prone to disasters such as earthquakes and volcanoes.

The evil energy is the complete opposite of the spiritual energy. It is of no benefit to cultivators and will instead damage their physical bodies. In fact, the evil energy may even rush to the brain, causing cultivators to lose their minds and become possessed by demons.

Therefore, respectable monks often avoid evil spirits like the plague.

However, some cultivators collect malevolent energy to refine magical artifacts or cultivate special supernatural abilities. But apart from some demons born from malevolent energy, cultivators do not directly inhale or exhale malevolent energy, whether refining magical artifacts or cultivating supernatural abilities; they only carefully collect it using magical artifacts.

Lu Chen can directly absorb the calamity energy originating from Han Sha into his body, which makes him a great anomaly.

If other cultivators knew about him, they might suspect that he was some kind of special demon.

It absorbed the saturation of the cold and calamity.

Lu Chen took out the Taiyi refined gold, which was the size of a fingernail, and then selected the flying sword that he was most satisfied with. He breathed out true fire and burned the Taiyi refined gold.

The grade of Taiyi refined gold is much higher than that of Xuan Tie elite. It took Lu Chen nearly two hours of true fire to melt such a small piece, which was only the size of a fingernail.

But that's not enough to forge a sword.

Lu Chen continued to burn the Taiyi refined gold molten liquid with true fire, and after another hour or so, he finally turned it into a thick, blazing white golden aura.

Lu Chen forced out a drop of blood from his fingertip, made a hand seal, and injected the drop of blood into the ball of blazing white-gold energy.

The blazing white gold energy, upon encountering the drop of blood, seemed to have met its destined master, surging into the drop of blood. In the blink of an eye, the drop of blood swelled several times its original size, its color turning white gold, shimmering with an extremely sharp, blazing white cold light, so intense that a single glance from it could cause one's mind to be wounded.

Lu Chen made another hand seal, and the platinum blood bead landed on the flying sword he had chosen. As if it had a life of its own, it quickly extended and covered the entire flying sword in the blink of an eye, before seeping into the sword's body.

The sword flashed with white light, but there was no earth-shattering change. Instead, its brilliance became more restrained, and at first glance, it looked like just an ordinary longsword.

Lu Chen knew that, under the combined effects of his blood and the Taiyi refined gold, the sword had undergone a complete transformation.

He reached out and grasped the sword hilt, silently sensing for a moment, a smile gradually appearing on his lips.

He stepped out of the Cold Dragon's lair, intending to go out and test his sword.

By this time, the talisman for warding off the cold had already lost its effectiveness.

However, Lu Chen protected his body with his force field and ignited his inner fire to strengthen his body surface. He felt that he could withstand the extreme cold that could freeze a person into an ice corpse in an instant. So he left the nest, entered the water, surfaced from the bottom of the pool, and then flew to the top of a cliff on one side.

Looking around, Lu Chen spotted a house-sized boulder several dozen feet away. Holding his longsword, he casually swung it, and a beam of sword light shot out, slicing the boulder in two with a sharp crack, the cut as smooth as a mirror.

Lu Chen tossed the longsword into the air again, pointed at a small hill about 20 feet high, a hundred feet away, and the sword flashed white light, turning into a dazzling white rainbow that instantly crossed a hundred feet and disappeared deep into the hill.

Then, the small hill began to shake violently, and its surface was covered with dense cracks. From each crack, as if a volcano had erupted, streaks of white light spewed out. Finally, with a loud bang, it collapsed and shattered completely.

Lu Chen reached out and beckoned, and the long sword flew back.

He gripped the hilt, gently stroking the flying sword upgraded with Taiyi refined gold, and murmured to himself:

"Now you finally have the right to name it. Hmm, I'll call you 'White Rainbow Sword'."

Although it only used three qian of Taiyi refined gold and the main body was still Xuan Tie elite, since it contained Lu Chen's blood, this sword cannot be judged by its material alone.

Furthermore, if better rare and divine iron is obtained in the future, it can be used to refine the rare and divine iron and gradually replace the essence of the black iron, just like today.

Therefore, this sword is no longer a transitional product, but a precious sword with infinite possibilities, worthy of having a name.

After practicing the "White Rainbow Sword" for a while and getting a general idea of ​​its power, Lu Chen took out the Frost Dragon Blood and found a method for tempering flying swords with the blood of demonic beasts from the Void Sword Sect's inheritance. He selected another flying sword, consumed three or four ounces of Frost Dragon Blood, and processed it in the same way. This flying sword turned ice blue and emitted a chilling aura.

Even without activating its sword energy, the mere aura emanating from the sword caused a thick layer of white frost to form on the ground within a three-zhang radius.

This sword only had an added icy effect; its essence wasn't improved. So Lu Chen gave it a rather perfunctory and arbitrary name:
"Let's call it Ice Sword."

Lu Chen thought for a moment and decided to test the sacrificial function with the remaining four ounces of cold dragon blood.

He immediately took out the Heavenly Soldier Talisman, found the sacrificial prayer, set up a simple altar with stones, placed the Heavenly Soldier Talisman and the red gourd containing four ounces of cold dragon blood on the altar, and recited the sacrificial prayer.

After reciting the sacrificial prayer three times, the Heavenly Soldier Talisman trembled slightly and emitted a beam of crystal light that swept across the gourd. The gourd vanished into thin air, and the number in the merit column on the talisman's light screen changed from zero to two.

As the gourd disappeared, Lu Chen, a seasoned time traveler, keenly sensed a spatial fluctuation.

"Only two merit points?"

Lu Chen frowned, slightly dissatisfied.

However, considering that the Frost Dragon was just a young dragon beast with such weak strength, it's not unreasonable that a mere four ounces of Frost Dragon blood could be exchanged for two points of merit.

After all, merit points are quite valuable; two merit points can be exchanged for some pills produced by the Heavenly Court.

"Let's exchange some pills first to see how they taste."

Lu Chen opened the pill exchange option, skipped the Bigu Pill and Qi-replenishing Pill which cost one merit point per bottle, thought for a moment, and chose to exchange for two "Yangyuan Pills".

Nourishing Essence Pill: It can gently nourish and purify true essence, aiding in cultivation. It has a certain effect on breaking through the minor bottleneck of the "Refining Essence into Qi" stage. One merit pill.

Lu Chen himself didn't actually need these low-level pills.

He can just absorb the calamity.

I exchanged the pills for the sake of those around me.

As Lu Chen confirmed the exchange, the two merit points he had just received were instantly wiped out. The Heavenly Soldier Talisman emitted another beam of light, and a small jade bottle appeared on the simple altar.

When the jade bottle appeared, there was also spatial fluctuation. This time, Lu Chen was completely focused and even mobilized the "Sword Intent of Immortal Slaughter" to carefully sense it. With the powerful position of the Sword Intent of Immortal Slaughter in the way of space-time teleportation, he finally gained some understanding.

After closing his eyes and contemplating for a while, Lu Chen thought to himself:

"The Sword Intent of Immortal Execution is indeed domineering! A hundred more times and I should be able to break the teleportation function of the Heavenly Soldier Talisman. Seems like I miscalculated? I should have split those two merit points and exchanged them one at a time… the same goes for the sacrifice. I need to be more careful next time…"

Lu Chen reached out and took the jade bottle, opened the stopper, and a refreshing fragrance wafted out, instantly invigorating the spirit.

"The pill is a good pill, but..."

However, even though the pills were produced by the Heavenly Court, Lu Chen was still a little uneasy.

Although the Heavenly Court is open to countless cultivators across the four continents, if it were to tamper with any pills that anyone holding a Heavenly Soldier Talisman could exchange for, it would probably have been discovered by clever people long ago, causing a huge uproar.

After all, the Heavenly Court cannot control everything. In the world of Journey to the West, there is no shortage of powerful beings who dare to challenge the Heavenly Court.

However, Lu Chen still scraped off a little powder with his fingernail and tasted it carefully.

If there is any hidden force that subtly affects one's mind, the Zhuxian Sword Intent will react immediately and eliminate the "external evil".

As for the physical aspect, if there is an impact, the sword body, which has reached the stage of refining internal organs, will also react.

As it turned out, Lu Chen was overthinking things. At least for this kind of low-grade pill, the Heavenly Court was quite open-minded, and there was nothing wrong with the pill.

"So what if I'm being overly cautious? You can never be too careful about what you put in your mouth. I'll still have to taste each and every pill I exchange for in the future..."

[Oops, I finished writing Chapter 2, only to realize I didn't set Chapter 1 to auto-publish... Oh well, it'll be perfect to post both chapters together. Please vote with your monthly tickets!]

(End of this chapter)