Translator: CinderTL
Having taken all necessary precautions, Song Wen began his secluded cultivation.
He retrieved the souls he had purchased beforehand and guided them into the Sea of Consciousness Black Hole, which devoured them. Then, he activated the Forbidden Divine Art, absorbing the soul fragments produced by the Black Hole's consumption.
It's worth noting that after prolonged observation, Song Wen discovered that the Forbidden Divine Art merely accelerated the Sea of Consciousness's absorption of these soul fragments. In truth, even without the art, the Sea of Consciousness would gradually absorb the soul fragments generated by the Black Hole's consumption. However, this process was relatively slow and easily overlooked without careful observation.
Time flowed steadily during his cultivation.
In the blink of an eye, eleven years had passed. With a sufficient supply of souls, his primordial spirit smoothly broke through to the peak of the Divine Transformation stage.
Throughout this period, the Corpse Soul Ravine remained remarkably peaceful.
Wu Yue and his subordinates behaved themselves impeccably, showing no signs of defiance.
Externally, no one dared to trouble the Corpse Soul Ravine.
The breakthrough in his divine sense occurred silently, without disturbing anyone within the ravine.
Wu Yue remained completely unaware of what Song Wen was doing inside his cultivation cave.
After advancing his primordial spirit, Song Wen didn't emerge from seclusion. Instead, he refined some medicinal pills for his Gu insects and continued his retreat.
He resumed devouring souls to strengthen his primordial spirit.
After all, as Ye Bing had said, the strength of one's primordial spirit directly determined the success or failure of advancing to the Void Refinement Stage.
If he could elevate his primordial spirit to the Void Refinement Stage, his cultivation breakthrough would likely follow naturally.
However, the rate at which his primordial spirit improved had slowed dramatically compared to before. It was as if an invisible wall was obstructing the growth of his divine sense. Now, he had to cultivate several times harder than before just to achieve the slightest progress.
Despite the slow progress, Song Wen refused to give up easily. After all, his situation was far better than that of other peak Divine Transformation Stage cultivators.
Those cultivators had to exhaust every resource, even risking their lives, to find spiritual objects that could enhance their primordial spirits, hoping to slightly increase their chances of advancing to the Void Refinement Stage.
Another eighteen years passed in the blink of an eye. Song Wen's primordial spirit had reached a point where further progress seemed impossible.
The invisible wall had grown increasingly thick and heavy. Even the slightest improvement in his primordial spirit's strength now required cultivating dozens of times harder than before.
With a flick of his wrist, Song Wen conjured a jade bottle into his palm.
The bottle, a gift from Ye Bing, contained the Void Union Primordial Breakthrough Pill.
After a moment's hesitation, Song Wen placed the jade bottle on the ground before him. With a wave of his hand, a massive quantity of spirit stones materialized, hovering densely in mid-air.
The spirit stones began to swirl automatically, settling into thirty-six distinct corners around the perimeter of the cultivation cave.
These corners marked the formation nodes of a Fifth-Tier Spirit Gathering Formation.
The spirit stones were all high-grade, totaling seven thousand two hundred, with two hundred placed at each formation node.
As the spirit gathering formation began to draw Spiritual Qi from the spirit stones, the Spiritual Qi within the cultivation cave surged dramatically.
Song Wen sat cross-legged, his gaze fixed on the jade bottle on the ground before him.
The bottle shattered abruptly, releasing a thumb-sized medicinal pill that flew into Song Wen's mouth.
The Void Union Primordial Breakthrough Pill, once swallowed, transformed into a warm, boundless force that rapidly spread through his meridians, coursing through his entire body. Unlike the gentle warmth of ordinary medicinal pills, this force carried a tearing, shattering impact, as if seeking to crush both his physical body and primordial spirit, then reshape them anew.
Song Wen's brow furrowed slightly, fine beads of sweat appearing on his forehead.
He could clearly sense his primordial spirit trembling violently within his Sea of Consciousness. His once-stable divine sense began to surge outward uncontrollably, as if trying to break free from some invisible restraint.
Simultaneously, the spiritual power within his body began to boil fiercely, like a volcano about to erupt.
Both his spiritual power and primordial spirit showed signs of advancement, urgently requiring vast quantities of Spiritual Qi and soul fragments for nourishment.
Soul fragments were easy enough to obtain. Song Wen successively retrieved over a dozen Soul Bottles, shattered them, and devoured the sealed souls within, using them as sustenance to strengthen his primordial spirit.
However, Spiritual Qi could only be absorbed from the outside world.
Song Wen fully activated the Corpse King's Rebirth Art, drawing in Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi.
Thanks to the Fifth-Tier Spirit Gathering Formation, the Spiritual Qi within the cultivation cave was so dense it seemed to solidify into substance. Mist-like clouds swirled around him, coalescing into vortices of Spiritual Qi that slowly rotated around Song Wen, continuously channeling energy into his body.
Yet Song Wen's rate of absorption was so rapid that the Spiritual Qi provided by the Fifth-Tier Spirit Gathering Formation proved utterly insufficient to meet his needs.
The Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi outside the cultivation cave was also affected, forming a massive vortex that converged toward Song Wen's location.
Initially, only the Spiritual Qi within Corpse Soul Ravine was drawn in, but the influence gradually expanded, stretching tens of thousands of miles outward.
The cultivators within Corpse Soul Ravine were the first to notice the anomaly. They looked up at Song Wen's cultivation cave, their faces etched with shock.
"This... someone is breaking through a cultivation bottleneck, and a major realm bottleneck at that! Could it be... Yang Yu... attempting to advance to the Void Refinement Stage?"
In a pavilion at the bottom of the ravine, Wu Yue pushed aside the two sleeping women draped over him on a low couch and abruptly sat up, his eyes wide with disbelief.
"Hmm..."
A few drowsy moans echoed as the women stirred, awakened by Wu Yue's rough movements.
Still half-asleep and seemingly oblivious to the abnormal Spiritual Qi, they clambered onto Wu Yue's back.
"Senior, what's wrong?" one of the women asked.
Ignoring them, Wu Yue shook off the women, threw on a long robe, and strode out of the pavilion.
He gazed at the celestial phenomenon, his expression shifting from shock to solemnity, and finally to fervent excitement.
"If Senior Yang Yu truly succeeds in advancing to the Void Refinement Stage here, his elation might lead him to spare me trouble. He might even bestow upon me treasures for reaching the Divine Transformation Stage, as he promised. But I can't just wait passively. I should do something for Senior Yang Yu to earn his favor."
As Wu Yue pondered this, he suddenly noticed two figures flying out of Song Wen's cultivation cave.
Upon closer inspection, he realized they were two fourth-tier peak Corpse Puppets.
"The disturbance in Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi will inevitably attract outsiders. Wu Yue, I'm entrusting you with handling cultivators at the nascent soul stage and below. Refine these puppets first—they might prove useful." Song Wen's voice echoed in Wu Yue's Sea of Consciousness.
Wu Yue's face lit up with wild joy.
"Senior, rest assured! This junior will spare no effort, even if it costs me my life, to ensure no one disturbs your cultivation."
(End of the Chapter)
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