Chapter 213: Rapid Advancement

"Hahahaha, our Feng Clan is finally saved, saved!"

The Elder and the Clan Leader knelt on the ground as if crazed, laughing toward the sky, while hot tears rolled down their aged cheeks, which were covered in blood-colored patterns.

"Wuwuwu... the Feng Clan is saved, we are saved!"

Inside and outside the room, the men, women, and children of the Feng Clan knelt down in groups, one after another wailing loudly.

"Many thanks to our benefactor for bestowing the Wind God Power upon us once again. From this day forward, our Feng Clan is the benefactor's subordinate, willing to follow the benefactor anywhere!"

After a bout of wailing, the Clan Leader and the Elder, having regained their senses, turned around, prostrated themselves on the ground, and kowtowed to Xu Chen with loud thuds while sending messages of gratitude via telepathy.

Xu Chen was caught between laughter and tears, yet he also let out a long sigh. He helped the two old men up and sent a telepathic message: "You two are too kind. Saving you is actually saving myself; I do not deserve such a grand gesture. We can discuss matters of following and repaying later. Right now, the fact that someone has awakened and recovered their clan patterns shows that my experiment this time was very successful. Next, I need to refine two more furnaces of Shenyang Huaming Pill to wake up the remaining deep-sleepers. At the same time, I must find a way to resurrect the Old Witch Master. I believe that only after the Old Witch Master is resurrected can the Feng Clan truly recover its strength, and only then can you help me find the way back!"

"Yes, yes, Benefactor, rest assured. Now we will all listen to your arrangements; we will do whatever you tell us to do!" The Elder hurriedly wiped away his tears and nodded.

"Good, you arrange for people to continue observing and caring for the rest. I will go back to refine pills first!" Xu Chen did not linger any longer; he walked out of the stone room and headed back to the place where he refined pills.

At this moment, Feng Feiyi followed and caught up from behind.

Xu Chen greeted her with a smile and then asked, "How is your brother Feng Yi recovering?"

Feng Feiyi sent a soft telepathic message: "Brother is recovering very well, but I heard that after Feng Liu regained his clan patterns, he seems to be feeling somewhat uncomfortable!"

Xu Chen smiled and said, "Hmm, that is understandable. After all, he was previously the tribe's strongest warrior, and these warriors who have manifested clan patterns and awakened Divine Pattern Battle Techniques have made him feel great pressure."

Feng Feiyi hesitated for a moment and asked, "Xu Chen, can you help us all recover our clan patterns?"

Xu Chen thought for a moment and said, "In theory, it is possible, but the process is very painful, and it requires a massive amount of my time and energy. I am afraid I do not have that much time to stay in the Feng Clan, because this place is completely unsuitable for a person of the Mortal World like me to survive for a long time. I worry that staying here for too long will also lead to me being slowly eroded and decayed by the Underworld Qi. You have the Divine Pattern bloodline passed down from ancient times, but I do not!"

Upon hearing this, Feng Feiyi's face turned pale, and she gave a soft 'mm' and stopped speaking.

Xu Chen, however, smiled and said, "But don't worry, I will definitely help you recover your clan patterns and activate your Divine Pattern Battle Technique."

Feng Feiyi's feet faltered. Instantly, tears rolled down her cheeks, and she squatted on the ground, lowered her head, and began to pick at the wall skin with a sobbing motion.

Xu Chen was momentarily at a loss. Looking at this burly, tall woman who was half a head taller than him even while squatting, he finally patted her round, full shoulder gently to comfort her:

"You don't need to be like this. If I hadn't met you, I fear I would still be lost in the black mist, or perhaps even dead. Therefore, I am equally full of gratitude toward you. Helping the Feng Clan is also a way of repaying the help you gave me."

Feng Feiyi turned around and hugged Xu Chen, burying her head in his shoulder while sobbing: "It was you who saved me, and saved our entire tribe. We are the ones who should thank you. I will accompany you to leave the tribe and find the road to the Mortal World."

Her body, full of astonishing elasticity beneath her tight-fitting clothes, pressed against Xu Chen, leaving him somewhat breathless. He could only comfort her with a wry smile: "It is too early to say this now. For the moment, let's try to save as many people as possible. I feel that the way out is not easy to find; my greatest hope is still the Old Witch Master. If you are free, accompany me to refine pills. It just so happens that I still have many questions about Minghuang and the Divine Patterns."

"Okay!" Feng Feiyi let go of Xu Chen in surprise. On her face, covered in strange blood-colored patterns, a look of shyness actually appeared. She secretly wiped away her tears, lowered her head, and stood up.

Sigh!

Looking at this burly, tall woman who was half a head taller than him the moment she stood up, Xu Chen could not help but sigh in his heart.

In fact, Feng Feiyi had a hot figure and her features were quite delicate. After the blood poison patterns on her face faded, she was quite pleasant to look at, but this height was full of challenges between different species.

If he really couldn't go back, perhaps he could barely accept it after getting used to it over time.

But now that there was suddenly hope of returning, he felt that this thought could not exist even in the slightest.

As for a Daolu, the delicate and petite kind like Thirteenth Senior Sister would be better.

However, having inexplicably fallen into Black Wind Ridge and gone missing for so long, he wondered what the sect's Elders and his senior brothers and sisters would think. Would they think he had kicked the bucket again?

Also, he didn't know if Thirteenth Senior Sister had succeeded in Foundation Establishment.

And Eldest Senior Brother and Seventh Senior Sister had gone to the Yelang Ancient Kingdom to search for Fourth Senior Brother's whereabouts; he wondered if they had found him.

Sigh!

Thinking of matters in the Mortal World, Xu Chen could not help but let out another long sigh, his desire to return home becoming even more intense.

In the blink of an eye, almost another ten days passed.

Xu Chen refined two more furnaces of Shenyang Huaming Pill in succession, fed the medicine to the remaining few deep-sleepers, and continued to observe them after simple adjustments.

During this time, the previous sleepers also woke up one after another, and they had all actually developed clan patterns. Moreover, two of them felt the Divine Patterns shortly after waking up.

These Feng Clan members who had fallen into varying lengths of sleep were both men and women, and they were almost all the most powerful warriors of the last three generations of the Feng Clan. As for the more ancient ones, they had long since decayed and died completely, and were buried in the valley outside.

The only one left who was not yet completely dead was the Old Witch Master, who was locked in another cave.

With the awakening of these sleeping warriors, and their manifestation of clan patterns and even perception of Divine Patterns, the mood of the entire Feng Clan became more lively and jubilant every day.

And in the hearts of the Feng Clan people, Xu Chen became increasingly lofty, worshipped crazily as if he were a true god and ancestor.

Now, even if Xu Chen said a trivial word, the entire tribe would treat it as an imperial decree and follow it, completing it quickly and meticulously.

Feng Xing, Feng Zhao, and a group of young and strong warriors would spend all day surrounding the stone room where Xu Chen refined pills and meditated. As soon as they saw him come out, they would swarm around him to show their concern.

He naturally understood everyone's thoughts very clearly.

But whether it was refining pills or saving people, it consumed a huge amount of time and energy. Xu Chen had already discussed it with the Clan Leader and the Elder: if he could resurrect the Old Witch Master, he might help treat some of the young warriors with good aptitude before leaving, but certainly not all of them.

Everyone in the tribe already knew this news, but the Clan Leader and the Elder strictly forbade anyone from disturbing Xu Chen. Therefore, these young warriors could only try their best to 'brush their faces' and get familiar with him during the short gaps when Xu Chen came out of meditation, so that their chances would be greater when the time came.

Taking advantage of the process of waking the second batch of sleepers, Xu Chen went to see the Old Witch Master again.

However, this visit still left him without the slightest bit of confidence.

The Old Witch Master was too powerful; the terrifying aura of his Soul was like an endless abyss of ice, making him unable to feel the boundaries at all. He didn't even dare to use his Divine Sense to forcibly touch the Old Witch Master's body, fearing that he would wake up this 'old mummy' who had been sleeping for at least several hundred years.

Soon, the second batch of sleepers also began to wake up one after another.

Xu Chen basically stopped paying too much attention to them, instead spending most of his time on cultivation. He was constantly attacking his body's apertures at a rate of one round every three days, a speed that surprised even him.

Because as more apertures were opened and the circulation of Yuan Qi became smoother, the speed and scale of the Yuan Qi tide under the stimulation of the Divine Blood Paste became larger and larger. He no longer needed to use the Demon Refining Art to break through the apertures and flesh; he could directly break through the barriers. Furthermore, the number of apertures he could break through at once had reached nearly fifty, up from the initial twenty-something per round.

According to this speed, he calculated that perhaps in at most twenty days or so, he would be able to open all the apertures in his body and officially enter the middle stage of the Zhenyuan Realm.

Although Minghuang was dark, sunless, and cold enough to drive one mad, and there was absolutely no clue about how to return.

He also did not have much confidence in waking the Old Witch Master.

But Xu Chen's mindset had been becoming more and more relaxed recently.

Although this place was barren and seemingly desolate, it possessed a unique treasure like the Divine Blood Paste.

He felt that he should not be too anxious to leave right now, but should instead take advantage of this opportunity to improve his cultivation and realm as quickly as possible.

According to his judgment, the Divine Blood Paste could at least allow him to break through to the Danyuan Realm in one go.

In fact, if his food and water reserves were sufficiently abundant, he felt that if he could stay here for eight or ten years, he might even be able to break through to the Spirit Transformation Realm.

Because the Blood God Grass he had on hand alone was enough for him to accumulate enough to reach the point of breakthrough.

Furthermore, there were several human tribes nearby; they had even more Divine Blood Paste and Blood God Grass, and even God Crystals—things that were rarely encountered or even non-existent in the outside world for thousands of years, and he absolutely would not be willing to give up on obtaining them to take out.

Most importantly, he was becoming increasingly interested in the so-called Divine Pattern Battle Technique.

In the process of awakening more than a dozen deeply dormant members of the Wind Clan, he had successively condensed over a hundred Ancient Runes within the Blue Light Treasure Bottle.

Among them were several more Divine Pattern Battle Techniques with different functions, both offensive and defensive, and he had demonstrated and exchanged verifications with several awakened Wind Clan warriors in the valley outside who could sense the Divine Patterns.

Although these Divine Pattern Battle Techniques varied in power, they were indeed something quite different from the Magic Spells of the Immortal World.

They were particularly simple to use; as long as one had the aura of Divine Blood accumulated from Divine Blood Paste to support them, one could easily release the battle techniques without the need for any Array or incantations.

The only thing he regretted was that most of the Divine Patterns condensed within the bodies of the Wind Clan people were duplicates, and the battle techniques were pitifully few—adding them all up, there were only a dozen or so; as for the rest, they were all ordinary Divine Patterns without any conscious fluctuations.

And these usable Divine Pattern Battle Techniques were not all very powerful; aside from three or five types used for defense and offense that were indeed quite good and could be mentioned in the same breath as large-scale Magic Spells, the others were very mediocre.

For example, there was a Divine Pattern called Wind Whisper that could be used for communication, which was basically no different from the current Divine Sense Transmission.

For example, there was another Divine Pattern called Wind Lift that could move objects, which was actually just the Object Control Technique of the Immortal World.

Overall, Divine Pattern Battle Techniques were indeed very magical and simpler to use than Magic Spells, but the conditions for the user were also very harsh, requiring a powerful bloodline to awaken the Divine Patterns, as well as the support of Divine Blood energy.

But all in all, after becoming familiar with these Divine Pattern Battle Techniques, Xu Chen was more inclined to believe that these battle techniques were ancient, wild versions of Magic Spells or even Arrays—simple, direct, brutal, and without any bells and whistles.

As for the effects, it was hard to say for now which was better.

(End of this chapter)