Spring came and winter passed.
Another season quietly disappeared beneath the passage of time, and by the time Lin Sheng finally lifted his eyes from the alchemy furnace in front of him, only half a year remained before the Centennial Auction.
Inside the secluded alchemy room, the temperature was astonishingly high. A heavy bronze furnace occupied the centre of the chamber, its surface covered with intricate formations that continuously circulated, while beneath it burned Lin Sheng's Innate Flame. The flame was no longer the pale colour it had once possessed. At its core was now a deep yellow radiance, dense and brilliant, like a miniature sun buried within the heart of the fire, and every time the flame surged, the surrounding air distorted violently from the heat. Ordinary liquids placed anywhere near it would evaporate almost instantly, while even some Rank 3 spiritual materials would begin showing signs of melting before entering the furnace.
The transformation of the flame was not accidental.
It was connected to the Yellow Origin Star Diagram within Lin Sheng's sea of consciousness.
The diagram had undergone a profound transformation over the years, and although it still appeared like a vast celestial body suspended within the depths of his consciousness, its surface was now covered in increasingly complicated patterns of starlight. The countless stars within the diagram no longer seemed merely decorative. They moved according to an obscure rhythm, their positions changing with the circulation of Lin Sheng's Shen, producing an increasingly profound Dao rhythm that continuously seeped into his sea of consciousness.
That rhythm had already begun changing everything within.
His sea of consciousness was becoming more stable, his mind was becoming increasingly clear, and even the Innate Mental Flame had undergone an obvious transformation. The flame that represented the foundation of his mental strength burned steadily within the sea of consciousness, its once ordinary brilliance now containing a faint golden-yellow hue.
Lin Sheng could feel the difference more clearly than anyone else.
The Yellow Origin Star Diagram was becoming stronger.
But it was also approaching its limit.
He sat before the furnace with his eyes half-closed, his perception quietly extending inward until it reached the vast celestial diagram suspended within his upper dantian.
For a long time, he simply observed it.
Then his eyebrows slowly furrowed.
The Yellow Origin Star Diagram was already showing signs that it could no longer bear an unlimited increase in his Shen.
The pressure wasn't visible from the outside, but Lin Sheng could sense it clearly. Every time his Shen increased beyond a certain threshold, the diagram would experience a faint tremor, as though an enormous weight had been placed upon an object that had already reached the limits of its structural strength.
If he continued forcing his Shen upward without changing the diagram, eventually the entire structure would begin to crack.
That would be extremely dangerous.
The Starry Sky Cultivation Method had always been different from ordinary Shen cultivation methods.
Its cultivation could roughly be divided into two interconnected aspects, Contemplation and Meditation.
Contemplation was the construction of the Starry Sky itself.
The practitioner needed to continuously imprint increasingly profound stellar diagrams within the sea of consciousness, each diagram representing a different stage of the starry sky and possessing its own capacity for containing Shen.
The Yellow Origin Star Diagram was only one of those stages.
Above it existed the Red Giant Star Diagram, followed by even more profound stellar transformations, including the White Neutron Star Diagram and the later stages beyond it.
Each diagram had its own limits.
When one diagram could no longer withstand the pressure generated by the practitioner's growing Shen, the cultivator had to begin imprinting the next diagram above it, allowing the new structure to replace the previous limitation and provide a larger foundation.
Only then could the Shen cultivation continue advancing.
The second aspect was Meditation.
Unlike Contemplation, which focused on constructing and strengthening the celestial diagrams, Meditation represented the transformation of Shen itself.
Opening Aperture, Entering Samadhi, Spiritual Platform, Divine Treasure, Primordial Spirit....
Each realm represented a fundamental transformation of the practitioner's Shen.
The two paths supported one another.
The diagrams provided the structure capable of holding the increasingly powerful Shen, while the Meditation realms transformed that Shen into something increasingly profound.
Lin Sheng had already reached the peak of the Spiritual Platform stage.
His Spiritual Platform had nine floors, and every floor represented another transformation of his will and mental foundation. The strength of his Martial Will had benefited enormously from this process, because his will had been continuously tempered as his Shen advanced.
But now he had encountered another bottleneck.
The Yellow Origin Star Diagram was approaching its maximum capacity.
"Looks like the Yellow Origin Star Diagram can only carry me this far."
Lin Sheng murmured quietly.
His eyes became thoughtful.
If he wanted to continue advancing towards the Divine Treasure Realm, he would eventually need to begin preparing the Red Giant Star Diagram.
The problem was that there was no guarantee the next diagram would be easy to complete.
Lin Sheng remembered the last time he had attempted to fully contemplate the Yellow Origin Star Diagram.
Everything had progressed smoothly at first.
The structure of the diagram had gradually become clearer, the countless stellar patterns had slowly connected, and the Yellow Origin Star Diagram had steadily approached completion.
Then it had stopped.
Not because his comprehension was insufficient.
Not because his Shen was too weak.
There had been another problem.
The Sun!.
Lin Sheng's expression became slightly strange.
The sun of the Immortal Continent was not merely an ordinary celestial body.
According to the cultivation knowledge he had inherited, the sun hanging above the heavens was the origin of all Yang within the world. Its radiance permeated the entire world, its Yang Qi influencing the countless living beings beneath it, and even cultivators who never deliberately cultivated Yang-attribute techniques were constantly affected by its existence.
The Yellow Origin Star Diagram appeared to possess a connection with this principle.
When Lin Sheng had attempted to complete the final stage of his contemplation, he had discovered that the diagram seemed to require a particular type of energy to complete its transformation.
Pure Yang Qi.
Without it, the final portion of the diagram could not be perfectly constructed.
That was why his previous attempt had stopped at a crucial point.
Lin Sheng couldn't help sighing.
"If the Yellow Origin Star Diagram already has such a requirement, what about the Red Giant Star Diagram?"
He wasn't worried about the difficulty itself.
He was worried about encountering another environmental restriction.
If the Red Giant Star Diagram required some equally special condition, his future cultivation would become considerably more troublesome.
He could search for resources.
He could search for inheritances.
He could even search for rare treasures.
But some things couldn't simply be bought with Spirit Stones.
Lin Sheng slowly withdrew his perception from the Yellow Origin Star Diagram and turned his attention towards the deeper aspects of his Shen.
The Starry Sky Cultivation Method didn't merely cultivate what ordinary cultivators called the soul.
It cultivated the entire structure of Shen.
The sea of consciousness, the mind, the will, the soul and the true spirit.
The sea of consciousness was the foundation, existing within the upper dantian and continuously transformed by the stellar diagrams.
The mind was the first major manifestation of that foundation.
In his previous life, there had been sayings such as the mind is infinite in nature and mind over matter.
Although ordinary people treated such phrases as philosophical ideas, Lin Sheng had gradually come to understand that there was genuine truth hidden within them.
The mind was capable of extending beyond the physical body.
Once sufficiently powerful, it could interact directly with the outside world, allowing a cultivator to move objects without touching them, perceive distant surroundings, manipulate spiritual energy and even influence the environment through pure mental strength.
This was why Shen cultivation could produce abilities that appeared completely impossible to ordinary martial artists.
The will was another transformation.
The nine floors of the Spiritual Platform had continuously refined Lin Sheng's will, turning something that had originally been relatively intangible into a force capable of directly affecting reality.
This was also one of the reasons his Martial Will had grown so quickly.
Martial Will wasn't an isolated phenomenon.
It was connected to the overall strength of his Shen.
As his Spiritual Platform became stronger, his will naturally became more stable, more concentrated and more capable of carrying his Martial Concept.
That was why Lin Sheng's advancement in Martial Will had always seemed unusually smooth compared with ordinary martial artists.
His foundation in Shen was simply too strong.
But there was another part of Shen that Lin Sheng understood far less completely.
The soul.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
According to the records he had obtained from the Cultivation Continent, the soul was essentially the outer shell surrounding the True Spirit.
The True Spirit itself was different.
The True Spirit represented the deepest essence of the individual, something far closer to one's fundamental existence than the ordinary soul.
A cultivator could strengthen their soul continuously, and in the later stages of cultivation, this outer shell would gradually become more substantial.
That was where the Nascent Soul came in.
After a cultivator formed a Golden Core, the next major transformation would eventually produce a Nascent Soul.
The Nascent Soul was not simply a smaller physical body.
It represented the soul becoming increasingly substantial, eventually possessing an independent form capable of existing outside the physical body.
Lin Sheng's thoughts deepened.
And according to the cultivation records, even the Nascent Soul wasn't the final destination.
The true key to the Divine Transformation Realm was the formation of the Primordial Spirit.
The Primordial Spirit was formed through the fusion of the Nascent Soul and the True Spirit.
At that point, the distinction between the cultivator's soul and their deepest spiritual essence would undergo an enormous transformation.
Lin Sheng's fingers slowly tapped against the side of the alchemy furnace.
"The True Spirit..."
He whispered.
This was the part that interested him the most.
Because according to the records of the Cultivation Continent, the True Spirit was the thing that ultimately entered the Underworld after death.
Not the physical body.
Not the sea of consciousness.
Not even the ordinary soul.
The True Spirit.
That was why the cultivation world's descriptions of death and reincarnation had always placed such extraordinary importance upon it.
The body could decay.
The sea of consciousness could collapse.
The soul could scatter.
Yet the True Spirit was said to continue its journey.
Lin Sheng remained silent for a long time.
He had never been particularly interested in the concept of the Underworld before.
His path had always been focused on becoming stronger while alive.
But the deeper his understanding of Shen became, the more he realised that the soul and True Spirit were not concepts that could simply be ignored.
There were mysteries in this world that even his current cultivation could not touch.
The Underworld was one of them.
Perhaps the records were wrong.
Perhaps they were incomplete.
Perhaps the Underworld truly existed in a form completely different from what cultivators imagined.
But until he had enough strength to investigate it personally, there was no point drawing conclusions.
Lin Sheng shifted his attention back to the alchemy furnace.
The Hundred Yuan Pill was still being refined.
Within the furnace, several streams of medicinal essence slowly merged together, and the moment they approached one another, Lin Sheng's mental strength immediately divided into dozens of strands.
Each strand controlled a different portion of the medicinal essence.
The fire temperature rose.
The medicinal essence began circulating.
Lin Sheng's fingers moved slightly.
The flame beneath the furnace immediately changed.
BOOM!
A deep roar came from within the furnace.
The medicinal essence that had been approaching instability was instantly suppressed, and the violently fluctuating spiritual energy was forced back into equilibrium.
Lin Sheng's expression remained calm.
Refining a Rank 4 pill required extremely precise control.
A tiny mistake could ruin an entire furnace of materials.
For ordinary Rank 4 alchemists, this was a serious challenge.
For Lin Sheng, however, it was mostly a matter of concentration.
His Shen was simply too powerful.
His Innate Mental Flame had also undergone continuous transformation under the influence of the Yellow Origin Star Diagram, allowing him to control the alchemical fire with astonishing precision.
Time passed slowly.
The medicinal fragrance within the room became increasingly dense.
Lin Sheng's eyes remained fixed on the furnace.
Suddenly, the entire furnace trembled.
A deep medicinal fragrance burst outward.
Lin Sheng's expression changed slightly.
He raised one hand.
The furnace lid flew upward.
WHOOSH!
Three golden streams of light shot out simultaneously.
Lin Sheng's fingers moved.
The three streams of light stopped in midair as though they had struck an invisible wall.
Three perfectly round pills slowly descended into his palm.
A faint golden pattern covered each pill, and within the patterns was a subtle circulation of spiritual energy.
Lin Sheng examined them carefully.
After several breaths, a faint smile appeared on his face.
"Three pills." They were of common grade but at least one of them seemed to advance to fine grade.
He had successfully refined the Hundred Yuan Pill.
Although the pills still required further testing and refinement before he could confidently produce them in large quantities, the first successful furnace had already proven that the formula could be mastered.
Lin Sheng placed the pills into a jade bottle.
Half a year remained before the Centennial Auction.
He had already prepared most of what he needed.