The Path of Immortality: Starts With Creating Water Bear Gu

Before refining pills, there was still one major task to be completed.

Long Xuan suddenly smiled and placed one of the World Tree seeds, like a precious treasure, on the table. With a thought, his consciousness entered the space within the World Tree seed.

Looking at the surrounding green fields, Long Xuan took a deep breath of fresh air and felt completely relaxed. He smiled slightly, ready to plant the divine tree immediately.

There’s a particular trait of heaven-defying spiritual herbs, that is: no other herbs can survive around them.

Low-grade herbs planted next to heaven-defying spiritual herbs would have all their nutrients absorbed and wither. If two heaven-defying spiritual herbs are planted close to each other, they will fight, and in the end, neither will survive.

Therefore, when planting heaven-defying spiritual herbs, the distance between them must be incredibly large, large enough to span multiple mountains, ensuring they are never clustered together.

This was something Long Xuan had learned while planting the Divine Dragon Wood.

So, in the northernmost part of the World Tree seed space, he planted the Heaven-Mending Tree, and in the southernmost part, he planted the World Tree.

It didn't take too much time, after all, planting the Heaven-Mending Tree only required sticking in a branch, and planting the World Tree only required burying a seed. It wasn’t much labor at all.

After he finished laying down the high-grade spiritual soil, he soon saw growth progress on both divine trees, which filled him with great joy.

Now, he was the owner of two divine trees, with another equally powerful divine tree, the Soul-Nourishing Tree.

He was looking forward to seeing how big the Heaven Devouring World Toad's body would grow if he placed these three heaven-defying treasures into its stomach.

These are truly one-of-a-kind treasures in the world, surpassing even the twelfth-grade heaven-tier spiritual herbs. There is nothing in this world with a higher grade than them.

Even if that Third Young Master's second-grade treasures were numerous, could their combined value be higher than that of these three heaven-defying spiritual herbs?

He only needed these three heaven-defying spiritual herbs to make the Heaven Devouring World Toad's size surpass that of the Third Young Master's three-legged Golden Toad. Moreover, he had many earth-tier and heaven-tier spiritual herbs.

When it comes to treasures, quality is more important than quantity. No matter how many low-tier treasures the Golden Toad stores in its belly, its power will always be limited.

Long Xuan took a deep breath in excitement and finally turned his attention away from the two trees, preparing to begin refining the Heaven-Mending Pill.

He only had one chance to refine the pill. The materials required to create the Heaven-Mending Pill were far too rare. Even the wildly wealthy Third Young Master could only provide him with a single set of ingredients. As soon as the transaction was completed, the Third Young Master's treasure trove had 400 fewer items.

What limits the number of heaven-defying pill recipes is not the number of pill-refining geniuses, but the scarcity of the materials.

However, for someone like Long Xuan, who has an almost supernatural advantage, even one chance is more than enough. He immediately began the refining process without a trace of nervousness.

At this moment, the rabbit excitedly ran out from the insect bag, circling the enormous pill furnace, which was large enough to hold ten thousand ingredients, and frolicked wildly.

This pill-refining rabbit's favorite thing in the world was refining pills, especially heaven-defying spiritual pills. Seeing the rare materials made it nearly lose its mind.

Now that Long Xuan was about to refine a heaven-defying pill, how could it not be excited? It immediately ran over to observe, eager to witness the birth of the Heaven-Mending Pill.

Seeing the overjoyed rabbit, Long Xuan laughed and teased, "Are you here to secretly learn my techniques?"

"My tuition fees are quite expensive, you know."

"But since we're so familiar, I'll give you a 10% discount. You can work to pay me back slowly."

With a mischievous grin, Long Xuan finally brought out all the spiritual herbs and began the first step of pill refining: extracting the essence of the herbs.

A ball of icy blue flames suddenly rose from his hand, releasing an astonishing chill. Under the control of his numerous split souls, the Divine Ice Flame was divided into 160 portions, each separately burning 160 different types of spiritual herbs suspended in the air.

This is one of the benefits of cultivating the "Heavenly Demon Soul Splitting Divine Art." By using split souls, he could multitask, and refining herbs with flames became incredibly convenient.

Otherwise, extracting the essence of 10,000 spiritual herbs one by one would take forever.

It was because he had only recently begun cultivating the "Heavenly Demon Soul-Splitting Divine Art", and had only split his soul four times, creating a total of 160 soul fragments. The quantity was indeed a bit low; otherwise, he would have wanted to split out 10,000 souls in one go and refine all the spirit herbs at once.

The refining of the Heaven Mending Pill this time was of utmost importance. He wasn't planning to let his clones, whose alchemy skills were slightly inferior, participate. After all, the clones couldn't monitor the progress.

To be cautious, he had to personally take charge. Otherwise, with the help of the clones, his refining speed could have been much faster.

Time passed bit by bit, and the rabbit beside him sat quietly, watching him refine the pills with extreme seriousness. Its expression was solemn, and it didn’t even blink.

In this way, the man and the rabbit sat there for a whole month.

On this day, dark clouds suddenly began to gather above the mountain cave, stretching endlessly across the sky. The black clouds rumbled with thunder, flashing with lightning, but no rain fell.

Immediately afterward, a strong wind started blowing, sweeping up the sand and rocks on the ground, as if a dust storm had broken out. The area with the most intense disturbance was right above the mountain cave. In the sky, the black clouds formed a massive black funnel, its tip pointing directly at the cave and spinning rapidly.

Just moments ago, the sky had been clear, but now, dark clouds filled the heavens, and fierce winds howled. This was clearly a heavenly phenomenon, indicating that some rare treasure was about to be born nearby.

Even though Long Xuan had specifically chosen a remote and desolate location for refining, the phenomenon was still noticed by many people.

In the southeast direction, a green boat was rapidly flying toward this place. There were both men and women on the boat, all of them Marrow Cleansing stage Gu cultivators.

There were six of them in total, all wearing the same style and color of clothing, a light green, which clearly indicated they were from the same faction.

The handsome young man at the front of the boat stood at the bow, gazing in the direction of the phenomenon with a look of astonishment.

“Just moments ago, the weather was calm, and the sky was clear. Now, all of a sudden, the sky is covered with dark clouds, and the wind is raging. Such a drastic change without any warning can only mean that a rare treasure is about to appear. Moreover, I am 80% certain that it is a treasure refined by someone.”

The young man spoke excitedly, his eyes filled with greed.

“Senior Brother, how can you be so sure that this phenomenon is caused by a treasure appearing? And how do you know it’s something man-made and not something naturally born?” one of the younger disciples on the boat asked curiously.

“Hmph! Do you really need to ask? This is a barren and remote area with extremely scarce spiritual energy. Any treasure naturally formed by heaven and earth would be born in a place rich in spiritual energy, not in such a desolate location,” the young man explained.

“So, this treasure that triggered the heavenly phenomenon must have been refined by someone. They are probably refining pills or crafting artifacts so powerful that they attracted this phenomenon.”

“Most of the people who stay in such godforsaken places are weak rogue cultivators. They hide here because they fear being killed for their treasures. Now that this phenomenon has lasted so long without a Heavenly Tribulation descending, it’s likely that the person refining the treasure has a low cultivation level. If we go, we should be able to seize this heaven-defying treasure.”

“Snatching the treasure is one thing, but the real prize is the pill recipe or artifact blueprint that caused this phenomenon. If we get that and hand it over to the Gu Spirit Sect, we could exchange it for a huge contribution to the sect.”

Upon hearing this, everyone’s eyes lit up with excitement. A treasure that could trigger a heavenly phenomenon was bound to be heaven-defying. Who wouldn't be tempted by such a treasure?

However, a female Gu cultivator wearing a white veil frowned slightly and hesitated. “Are you planning to lead us to kill someone and steal their treasure?”

The young man turned to look at her with disdain. “Are you trying to play the saint? In the Gu world, saints don't live long. If you feel too kind-hearted, you can get off the boat. You won’t get any share of the treasure.”

The veiled woman remained calm and continued, “Someone capable of refining a treasure that causes a heavenly phenomenon isn’t an ordinary person. Facing such an individual carries great risk. Are you so confident you can defeat them?”

“We have an important mission to complete. Our distinguished guest is nearby. I advise you not to cause unnecessary complications. Your life is insignificant, but ruining the sect's mission is a serious matter.”

The young man laughed, “The Gu Spirit Sect is the number one sect in the Xuan Yue Empire. I am one of the top ten geniuses in the sect, and with the assistance of my junior brothers, who could we possibly lose to?”

“Besides, this is just a brief detour. How much time could it possibly take? It won’t delay our mission at all. I think you’re just being overly cautious.”

He suddenly turned to his junior brothers and said, “We have a major disagreement here. You can either choose to listen to me and join me in killing that person, or you can listen to her and prioritize the mission.”

“If you choose to follow me, stay on the boat. If you choose her, get off the boat with her.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the group of juniors averted their eyes from the veiled woman and did not move a step.

The veiled woman sighed softly and jumped off the boat, landing gently on a giant butterfly.

“Hmph! What a sanctimonious hypocrite. Let’s not bother with her. I’ll lead you to great fortune…”

Moments later, the green boat stopped in front of the swirling black cloud vortex. Everyone on board was shocked by what they saw.

Treasures capable of causing heavenly phenomena were extremely rare. Even the well-informed disciples of the Gu Spirit Sect were witnessing such a phenomenon for the first time. Their faces were filled with awe.

“My master is currently in seclusion here. Please leave to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings!” a voice called out.

The voice belonged to Fire clone, who stood atop the tip of a tree, hands clasped behind his back, shouting at the figures in the sky.

Hearing the voice, the group of geniuses on the boat looked down. They saw a person standing on the highest leaf of a tree, motionless, as if lighter than a feather, without bending the leaf at all.

Everyone was stunned. How was this even possible?