Chapter 238: Liquefied Spirit

Developing Essence was an ancient core drug. When Zhou Donghuang had obtained the recipe for it, he had already been a magnificent practitioner in the Heavenly Stage. Naturally, he had no use for this core drug, which was meant for Golden Essence adepts to take orally.

Furthermore, among the disciples he had taken in in his past life, during his time wandering the galaxy and the planets, the one with the lowest level of practice at the time was already an adept who had undergone Divine Transformation. So of course, they had no use for the Developing Essence either.

In his past life, Zhou Donghuang felt that he would rarely have use for the Developing Essence prescription, unless he suddenly had the impulse at some time or another, to take in another disciple.

However, before he could take in another disciple, he did not expect to reincarnate and go back 1000 years in time due to an accident and have to start all over again.

But in these circumstances, there was a use for the Developing Essence.

“Next… I’ll set up an energy-gathering position, then swallow take the Developing Essence.”

At present, Zhou Donghuang had plenty of spirit stones with him. After leaving Ziyun and before arriving at the Tielao Planet, he had traveled to a few planets in several galaxies. With the memories of his past life, he beat everyone to the draw and obtained the possessions left behind by the Dharma adepts after their passing.

Among these were numerous spirit stones.

Of course, most of them were mid-quality spirit stones. Only a minority of them were high-quality spirit stones.

The reason for this was also because the planets where the Dharma adepts were could not hold a candle to the Tielao Planet, which housed the Lightning Sword Sect, be it in terms of the practice environment or the practice resources they contained.

The Tielao Planet had high-quality spirit stone veins, but those few planets did not have them.

Zhou Donghuang had gone to those planets in his past life before he had entered the Dharma stage.

It was also during that time that he had noticed the possessions left behind by the Dharma adepts. But each time, he could only sigh in regret because someone else had beaten him to the chase and taken away the belongings of those Dharma adepts.

As for what had happened later, of course Zhou Donghuang had heard a lot about the possessions left behind by many Dharma adepts.

But at the time, his level of practice was already quite high, so his attitude towards the belongings left behind by the Dharma adepts had been a passive one. He did not deliberately seek after them… so, although he knew when the leftover possessions of the Dharma adepts had appeared and on which planet, he nevertheless paid no attention to their precise locations.

Back then, his attention had been concentrated on the resting places of the martial adepts who had surpassed the Primordial Soul Stage.

However, with his current level of power, he still did not have the ability to collect the various possessions left behind by those martial adepts above the Primordial Soul Stage.

“Some precious and uncommon spirit fruits also appeared…”

Apart from this, Zhou Donghuang also remembered the exact time and situation when many spirit fruits ripened. He was going to collect those spirit fruits in the future.

In his past life, he knew that it was difficult for him to get even one out of a hundred of those spirit fruits.

But in this life, using the memories of his past life, he was completely capable of beating everyone else to the chase. Before the various forces and powerful persons made a move, he could take action beforehand and collect those spirit fruits.

To Zhou Donghuang of this life, his past-life memories were no different from an extremely effective cheating device.

“More than 300,000 mid-quality spirit stones are equivalent to more than 30,000 high-quality spirit stones… that’s enough for me to use for quite some time.”

Thirty-thousand high-quality spirit stones. Even in the Lightning Sword Sect, not many people were likely to have such resources.

Zhou Donghuang had obtained these spirit stones from the different resting places of several non-affiliated Dharma adepts.

As for those non-affiliated practitioners, unlike the sect disciples who had plenty of readily-available resources, they spent all their efforts searching for spirit stones and earning spirit stones. They could only buy the various resources which they needed if they had spirit stones… unlike the disciples of the sects.

In the Lightning Sword Sect, they only needed to complete the different tasks allocated to them by the sect in order to get a fixed number of contribution points. And they could exchange the contribution points they accumulated for core drugs, for spirit weapons, and also for a few precious and uncommon materials.

Within the Lightning Sword Sect, there were some things that spirit stones could not buy. They had to use their contribution points.

Of course, after exchanging your contribution points for items, you could in turn exchange them for spirit stones in the trade center. This was also permissible.

Across the entire boundless universe, the situation in all the other sects which were considered proper was basically about the same as the Lightning Sword Sect.

In these circumstances, apart from the few people at the top level of each sect, the rest of the sect disciples usually did not have as many spirit stones as the non-affiliated practitioners outside who had the courage to venture out, unless they were lucky enough to enjoy a windfall elsewhere.

Because of this, with the wealth of spirit stones that Zhou Donghuang had right now, forget about the outer elders of the Lightning Sword Sect, even among the inner elders, it was likely that few of them could compare to him.

Of course, those in the upper echelons of the Lightning Sword Sect, such as the head of the sect, the four inner Valley Heads, the five outer Hall Heads, the Lightning Sword Sect elders—they definitely had an astonishing amount of spirit stones because many of the items that could be exchanged for spirit stones in the sect were all provided by them.

Correspondingly, the sect would give them a certain number of spirit stones as compensation.

“Ten-thousand mid-quality spirit stones are probably enough to set up an energy-gathering position, right?”

Usually, Zhou Donghuang did not even need 10,000 mid-quality spirit stones to set up an energy-gathering position for his practice. As his level of practice was too low at the moment, absorbing too much spiritual energy from heaven and earth would cause him to be overloaded, resulting in the opposite effect.

However, right now, Zhou Donghuang was not doing this purely to practice.

He was intending to leverage on the effect of four ancient core drugs, the Developing Essence, to condense Dharma Power in one go!

He had a rapacious design: He wanted to simultaneously cause four Golden Essences to develop into Dharma Power in one go!

He had the confidence to do so because of the ancient core drug, the Developing Essence.

However, although he was full of ambition and had a certain level of confidence, Zhou Donghuang was not entirely sure because he had never seen anyone consume the Developing Essence. This was actually his first time refining a core drug like the Developing Essence, which was recorded among the prescriptions passed down from ancient times.

“Now, I’ll consume four pills of Developing Essence.”

The chances of the Developing Essence becoming a pill were not high. Even with Zhou Donghuang’s level of capability in refining core drugs, he could only produce a batch of two pills after using all his might… and this was already Zhou Donghuang’s limit after using the Samadhi fire to refine the Developing Essence. Unless he used a more advanced fire, it would be difficult to refine more than this number of pills.

“As expected of an ancient core drug… It would be difficult for typical core-forging masters to refine the Developing Essence if their core-forging abilities were subpar, no matter how powerful the fire they created.”

Zhou Donghuang had realized this in the core-forging process.

“Gulp…”

Zhou Donghuang opened his mouth. He put four Developing Essence pills into his mouth and swallowed them.

Immediately following this, he clearly sensed that the moment the four pills slid down his throat, they transformed into four forces that merged together. In the end, it was after his intervention that they separated into four forces once again, each entering the four Golden Essences in his essence point.

In the next moment, he started to work on the four Golden Essences in his essence points while absorbing spirit energy in the energy-gathering position to practice.

With the four Golden Essences spinning around together, they absorbed spirit energy at lightning speed. Coupled with the effect of the Developing Essences in the four Golden Essences right now, their speed was ridiculously fast.

They were more than a thousand times faster than they usually were!

“That fast?”

Zhou Donghuang was dumbstruck for a moment before he continued to concentrate fully on spinning the four Golden Essences. Following the circulatory movement as stated in “The Lord of the Four Supremes,” he spun them around in the great circulatory cycle.

At this moment, Zhou Donghuang had his eyes closed and did not realize that the 10,000 mid-quality spirit stones placed around him on his bed were visibly losing their luster at a gradual pace.

If this speed continued, it would not take long to exhaust these spirit stones completely!

Meanwhile, above Zhou Donghuang’s head, the spirit energy that had gathered from all around and had even condensed into liquid form, was rushing straight down onto Zhou Donghuang’s head just like running water in a stream.

It was necessary to know that usually, it was even considered a complete exaggeration for Primordial Soul adepts to be able to see spirit energy in fog-form through the energy-gathering position.

But look at Zhou Donghuang now. Using the effect of the Developing Essences, the spirit energy absorbed through the energy-gathering position had condensed into liquid form.

It was usually very difficult to see the spirit energy that filled the world. It was very difficult to even condense it into fog form, much less its denser liquid form.

However, the reason why the spirit energy had presented itself in liquid form was entirely because of the effect of the Developing Essence.

Under normal circumstances, even if Zhou Donghuang spun the four Golden Essences around and used this energy-gathering position to practice, it was still difficult to condense spirit energy into fog form, much less liquid form.

Like a whale swallowing seawater, while Zhou Donghuang absorbed the liquefied spirit energy and practiced as if he had gone mad, outside his residence, minute changes occurred to the spirit energy of heaven and earth.

At least Da Zhuang, who had been practicing, sensed it. “What’s happening?”

However, although he sensed the changes, Da Zhuang did not know what had happened. What’s more, he no longer felt it after he stopped practicing.

Under the location where the Lightning Sword Sect was stationed, there was not only one high-quality spirit stone vein. There were also many more mid-quality spirit stone veins.

A place where many spirit stone veins could form was no doubt a place that had plenty of spirit energy.

Coupled with the spirit energy emanating from the spirit stone veins, this positive feedback loop caused the entire encampment of the Lightning Sword Sect to become a sacred place of practice.

When the non-affiliated practitioners practiced outside and used up a number of spirit stones to set up an energy-gathering position, the effect may not be as good as practicing in the Lightning Sword Sect without setting up an energy-gathering position.

Because the Lightning Sword Sect was situated in a place with an abundance of extremely-dense spirit energy, even if Zhou Donghuang absorbed spirit energy without restraint in a corner of the Autumn Valley and condensed it into liquid form, he would not cause alarm to anyone.

The reason Da Zhuang could sense it while practicing was because he was in close range.

The other people of the Autumn Valley did not notice the anomaly happening in Zhou Donghuang’s residence. Not even those mid-Primordial Soul Summer Valley elders noticed it.

Right now, the only person in the Autumn Valley who had discovered the anomaly in Zhou Donghuang’s residence was the Autumn Valley Head, He Jin.

It was also because Zhou Donghuang’s residence was in the same direction as He Jin’s residence. They were not far apart… if it were not so, even He Jin would not notice the anomaly in the spirit energy surrounding Zhou Donghuang’s residence.

“All the spirit energy is gathering around him… The speed at which it’s gathering is ridiculous. Forget about my practice, not even the Sect Leader can amass this amount of speed!”

He Jin floated in midair and gazed into the distance at Zhou Donghuang’s residence. His face showed total surprise. “He… He’s practicing?”

“Is he really nothing more than a Primal Core adept?”