Fangxian Heretical Path

Chapter 306 Metamorphosis and Foundation Building Insect
This scene is because the Cordyceps' spiritual root failed to transform into a dragon and did not form a spiritual vein. Therefore, all the spiritual energy of heaven and earth within its body returned to Fang Shu's body.

With the help of this same source, Fang Shu's physical body, true qi, and soul—his three treasures of essence, qi, and spirit—immediately rose in strength, allowing him to cross the thresholds of Qi Refining and Foundation Establishment and enter the seventh tribulation.

In other words, Fang Shu at this moment, whether it is magic power, divine sense, or pressure, is already a genuine Foundation Establishment Immortal!
Realizing this, he felt quite emotional:

"The process here can truly be described as a gradual accumulation of knowledge and experience, without any obstacles... The Daoist talisman is indeed true."

The foundation he had laid in the past allowed him to easily cross the threshold that most people would find difficult to cross.

However, Fang Shu quickly came to his senses.

At this moment, his body was radiating spiritual light, and cracks were clearly visible all over his body, making him look like a porcelain doll that had cracked and was about to shatter at any moment.

Faced with this situation, Fang Shu looked around, but his face remained completely calm.

A Foundation Establishment stage physical body is already capable of withstanding all spiritual power, and even three times that amount would be fine; at most, the surface of the body would suffer some damage.

The most urgent task at present is to completely integrate the cordyceps spiritual root into the body and use it as a medicinal guide to build one's own Dao meridian!
Indeed, Fang Shu has now successfully transformed his essence, energy, and spirit, reaching the seventh tribulation.

However, his foundation-building process is not yet over.

Or rather, this is just the beginning!
His previous actions of walking and sitting on the ground were actually just a rehearsal, and preparations for building his own Dao foundation.

Fang Shu withdrew his hand from the Cordyceps root and looked down.

He gripped this spiritual root with immense force and cooked it with his true energy, turning it into a completely shapeless form, a rotten flesh and blood of alternating gold and red colors.

Surprisingly, the secret texts were circulating and shining brightly within its flesh and blood.

Fang Shu examined the secret texts and immediately recognized them as the ones he had inserted into the insect grass spiritual roots when he was cultivating spiritual roots and refining gu.

At the same time, a restless thought began to appear in his mind.

This gave him a new insight: "The condensation of my Dao lineage should be done through refining Gu."

He immediately sat down cross-legged and began to ponder how to refine the Gu with the lump of flesh and blood in his hand, and what auxiliary materials he should use.

Soon, a silent smile appeared on his face.

With a flick of his wrist, the seed bag flew up, releasing all the superior spiritual materials stored within, which floated and sank in the meditation room and outside the altar.

The countless flickering lights added an even more mystical touch to the already spiritually rich cavern.

Fang Shu sat cross-legged on the five-colored earthen altar, and simply closed his eyes slightly, releasing his divine sense to wander among these spiritual materials.

To his surprise, among the hundreds and thousands of spiritual materials, apart from a few spirit stones and pills, only the Gu worms and Gu eggs stirred his mind slightly.

Fang Shu gathered all sorts of Gu worms and Gu eggs, large and small, around himself, but he felt as if something was missing, and that something was right beside him.

Suddenly, he moved and opened the live seed bag again, letting the opening spray out and then back in like a fountain.

With a whoosh, Fang Shu took out one item after another from the bag, replacing the other miscellaneous items, according to his own will.

These objects fluttered and tumbled in mid-air, like falling leaves or bees and butterflies, making a rustling sound.

They are not spiritual materials, not ores, not elixirs; they are simply books!

Moreover, all these books, from folk tales to foundation-building spells, regardless of their value, inspired Fang Shu to use them to refine Gu.

Looking at these books and classics, Fang Shu's eyes were strange. He immediately guessed, "Using books to refine Gu, could it be that what I am going to refine this time is a bookworm?"

A bookworm is someone who lives in a place where books are collected, who can devour books, and who will eat any word and crave any text.

Any text it targets, even if it is engraved on metal or stone, it will scrape off a layer and devour it completely.

Fang Shu had even heard rumors that in ancient times there were powerful bookworms that could not only devour the words on paper and stone tablets, but also the words in people's brains.

It's like a decree from a cult of immortals; anyone who falls under the influence of the Bookworm will have the words in their mind devoured, and will completely lose the memory of that cultivation manual, and will never be able to learn those swallowed words and secret texts again.

Furthermore, being a bookworm isn't all bad.

The Gu Dao immortals often use bookworms to store their cultivation manuals, which is not only convenient but also prevents others from spying on them.

Even if one is not a Gu Dao immortal, if one obtains a bookworm, as long as one has the corresponding method of refining it, one can directly consume the various texts and techniques within the bookworm's belly, memorize them on the spot, and imprint them deep in one's memory.

These bookworms are undoubtedly a great help to immortals who want to be lazy and have a great memory.

Fang Shu thought to himself, "Since this insect is so mysterious, its function can be big or small. Even if it overlaps with the function of my Dao talisman, it wouldn't be too bad if I could refine it."

Moreover, this insect is related to my foundation-building cultivation path; it is by no means comparable to an ordinary bookworm!

Once he calmed himself down, he immediately grabbed the books and threw them at the lump of rotting flesh in his hand.

A strange scene unfolded.

Various books and classics, centered on Fang Shu's right hand, swirled around, spitting out characters that were black, red, or gold, of all sizes and kinds, like a swarm of bees, seemingly chaotic on the surface, but actually orderly.

Once the words are uttered, the remaining books and classics lose their appeal to the other party.

With a casual glance using his divine sense, he discovered that all the books and classics had become blank. Even the gold and iron books and stone inscriptions had their surfaces smoothed out, leaving them completely bare, without a single character remaining.

"Is this... still considered magic?" Fang Shu's eyes widened in surprise.

Next.

Because he had collected a large number of books, and also received books from the Er family ancestor and the Dragon Maiden Immortal family, it took a whole day to feed all the books and classics.

With so many books and texts, rich in layers, and quite a few at the Foundation Establishment level, it should be more than enough for refining Gu.

But for some reason, Fang Shu still felt a void in his heart, as if something most important was missing.

He stared intently at the rotting flesh in his hand, finally snapping out of his daze, a sneer appearing on his face:

"I almost forgot about you."

Suddenly, he reached out and inserted a finger into the hole in his forehead.

Immediately, wisps of golden light surged from his mind, as if a new spiritual root had sprouted.

After Fang Shu extracted all the golden light, it took shape in his hand, resembling a talisman.

The last thing he was missing in this Gu refining process was the Dao talisman in his mind!

Fang Shu examined the Taoist talisman, his eyes flashing with a strange light.

He had just felt that if he were to cultivate a bookworm, the effects of the bookworm would overlap with those of the Daoist talisman.

Now it seems that perhaps it was because he had a Daoist talisman in his body that the opportunity to refine Gu with the book arose.

After all, the Cordyceps spiritual root was already connected to the Dao talisman within his body and was under its jurisdiction and control. When Fang Shu pulled out the former, he had to sever the connection between the two first.

really.

As soon as the Dao talisman appeared and landed in his palm, the emptiness he felt inside his body instantly disappeared.

Instead, there was an irrepressible restlessness.

Fang Shu's mind was clear at this moment, as if he had received divine revelation, and he completely understood how his own Dao lineage should be built.

He was smiling, picking flowers with both hands.

From his left and right hands, gold threads and characters emerged, encircling his body and forming a cocoon-like structure.

The silkworm cocoon was translucent and pulsated like a human heart, instantly pumping all the surrounding spiritual energy into it.

The once vibrant and spirit-filled cave was instantly emptied, leaving not a trace of spiritual energy.

If someone were here, they would find that because all the spiritual energy was accumulated inside the cocoon, like a paste, Fang Shu looked as if he had become an insect solidified in pine resin and amber.

Or to put it more vividly, he became an embryo waiting to hatch inside an eggshell.

But as time went by...

Fang Shu showed no sign of hatching from the eggshell.

On the contrary, his body was slowly melting away. First, his hair and skin were peeled off, revealing his muscles, and then the flesh and blood on his body disappeared, revealing his veins, blood vessels, and internal organs.

Once his flesh and blood melted away, he was left with nothing but a skeleton.

Even so, Fang Shu's physical body continued to melt, as if he had been poisoned by a bone-dissolving poison, his bones turning into pus on the spot.

Even his soul was scattered from its human form, transforming into a blurry human shape, lingering within the eggshell.

If it weren't for the still abundant life force on the eggshell, his condition would be even more terrifying than going into a demonic state, much like dying on the spot, and in a way that leaves no trace of his body.

Fortunately, Fang Shu was fully aware of his current situation and knew that he had encountered something good!
This was because he took advantage of the opportunity to break through to the Foundation Establishment stage, and his physical body was broken into a mass of decaying flesh and blood, just like an insect emerging from its cocoon, and was about to be reshaped.

This process is recorded in the Blood Mother's True Scripture.

Fang Shu even suspected that his ability to obtain this opportunity was largely due to his understanding of the Blood Mother's True Scripture and his practice of absorbing Erdaiyuan's essence.

It is the fusion of all his past cultivation and accumulation that has given him this transformative opportunity.

Boom boom boom!
The eggshells on the five-colored earthen altar continued to vibrate.

In just three days, the blurry humanoid shape formed from Fang Shu's melted flesh began to slowly solidify in the center of the eggshell.

First, the pus formed from the melting of bones coagulated again inside the eggshell, giving rise to the skeletal structure. Then came the brain, followed by the internal organs, which gradually took shape, turning into flesh and blood that piled up in the bones. Then came muscles, skin, and so on.

This re-condensation process was relatively slow, taking about seven days.

When Fang Shu's body reappeared in the eggshell, his appearance was the same as before, but all the blemishes on his face, as well as the scars and moles left from his past growth or cultivation, had disappeared.

Even his hair, after growing back, was blacker than ink and much more supple than before.

Its only flaw.

As Fang Shu's physical body melted and reformed, perhaps because some of his flesh and blood were discarded, he grew back to look even younger.

He looks exactly like a sixteen-year-old boy right now, incredibly vibrant.

Slowly opening his eyes, Fang Shu gazed at his reconstructed body, momentarily captivated, before finally snapping back to reality.

What delighted him even more was that, after this transformation, all the hidden injuries and damage to his body disappeared, and he received a kind of innate replenishment, as if he had just been born.

At this moment, he was no different from those scions of noble families who had been taking medicine to maintain their health since birth, or old immortals who had cultivated secret methods to prolong life.

Its most direct impact is reflected in lifespan.

Ordinary immortals, after reaching the Foundation Establishment stage, will only have a lifespan of around three hundred years. If they suffered hidden injuries before reaching the Foundation Establishment stage, or if the cultivation method they practice damaged their physical body, their lifespan will be shortened to less than three hundred years.

Only immortals who have not been injured and have been recuperating can live for many more years, at least ten or twenty years, and sometimes up to sixty years.

Now, Fang Shu's physical lifespan has reached the limit of Foundation Establishment Immortals—a full three hundred and sixty years!
In other words, this breakthrough of his lifespan has given him an extra 60 years compared to ordinary people.

Although Fang Shu is not very old, not even sixty years old yet, he still feels happy about things related to lifespan.

He stretched his body thoroughly, and he vaguely sensed that there was something more wondrous about his physical body, but unfortunately, now was not the time to ponder that.

Fang Shu immediately closed his eyes slightly, entered a meditative state, and forgot about his body.

In the blink of an eye, he seemed to have arrived in a new world. There were no mountains, forests, or trees here, but rather a vast and boundless net formed by various kinds of energy intertwining and entwining.

And he was like an imperceptible worm in this web of deception.

The little insect resembled both a worm and a dragon, its texture like water and light, and even its presence seemed almost imperceptible. It was perched in a corner of the wide net, not daring to move, only daring to glance at this vast net world.

And this little insect is Fang Shu.

The world of nets seen through the eyes of the little insect is the world beyond.

As for those intertwined lines, they are the countless rules of heaven and earth that define the entire outer world.

Fang Shu looked up at the scene and was deeply shocked.

But he didn't have time to look closely. After just one glance, he felt a blur before his eyes, and the world in his vision changed from blurry to real, transforming back into the world he saw with his own eyes.

The four walls of the cave, the five-colored earthen altar, and his newly formed physical body all appeared before his eyes one by one.

From Fang Shu's current perspective, he could barely make out the energy that made up all things, as well as the traces left by the rules of heaven and earth.

However, compared to the fleeting glimpse just now, this perspective is undoubtedly extremely superficial, only revealing the surface.

He remained immersed in the scene for a long time before finally snapping out of it.

Looking at himself again, he realized that he was still the same little insect.

And this little insect is the true Dao vein that he has cultivated this time.

This thing is not rooted in his physical body, nor in his soul, but in the void; it can be real or unreal, exist or not exist.

It is a reflection of Fang Shu's mind and an embodiment of the Gu Dao. It is also a unique Gu worm that he refined with the three treasures of essence, energy, and spirit, as well as various Daoist talismans.

Or rather, the Dao worm!
(End of this chapter)