Chapter 219: Seeing is Believing

Perhaps it was half a day, or perhaps it was a full day.

Xu Chen had already exhausted the Yuan Qi in his dantian three times over, and he had lost count of how many phantom images released by the Spectral Mirror had been shattered; finally, the four of them had worn this terrifying Fourth-Rank Soul Beast down to its last breath.

Its massive body was now almost unrecognizable in shape, its two large wings were riddled with holes like tattered rags, more than half of its several-zhang-long tail had been severed, and its scales and armor were almost entirely shattered; its whole body billowed with Black Mist like a piece of charcoal that hadn't burned through, and as it was pinned to the ground by the Divine Pattern Battle Technique, it struggled and let out low, weak roars, yet it no longer possessed even a shred of strength to fight back.

"Atuga~"

Watching the dying Fourth-Rank Nether Beast, Feng Liu let out a great roar, and a cyan light on his body rapidly condensed into a phantom of a giant over ten zhang tall; holding a Giant Fork, he lunged down with a roar, plunging the zhang-long Giant Fork into the top of the giant lizard's head.

Accompanied by a feeble scream, the Giant Fork sank in all the way to the hilt, and a terrifying aura exploded from the fork; the Nether Beast's massive head completely disintegrated within the cyan light, turning into large chunks of debris that splattered across the sky, and then its huge body began to collapse, turning into black smoke and dissipating.

A full quarter of an hour later, this massive Soul Beast had completely vanished, though some bones and meridians remained on the spot, looking like the skeleton of a giant beast that had been corroded for countless years.

Feng Yi retracted his Divine Pattern Battle Technique, raised his hand to grab, and a giant hand appeared in the cyan light, pulling a pitch-black Soul Bead a full foot in diameter from the skeletal remains; he ran excitedly to Xu Chen with a face full of agitation, offering it up respectfully with both hands.

"Benefactor, we killed this giant beast!"

Xu Chen took the Soul Bead, and as his Divine Sense slightly penetrated it, he felt a desolate, icy aura instantly envelop him, causing him to shiver uncontrollably from the cold.

This was the largest Soul Bead he had harvested since he first encountered Soul Beasts.

The terrifying Soul aura inside was incomparably deep and pure; just this slight contact with his Divine Sense made him feel as if he had fallen into an ice cellar, and if this were a cultivator in the Kaiyuan Realm, their Soul would likely have been frozen solid.

In terms of cultivation theory, the Three Spirits belong to Yin, and the Seven Souls belong to Yang.

The stage of Refining Essence into Qi is mainly to cultivate the Seven Souls, using Yuan Qi to strengthen the body, ultimately reaching the point of supporting the Three Spirits so they can grow strong enough to form a Primordial Spirit, which is the only way to finally achieve Spirit Transformation and form an infant.

And in the stage of Refining Qi into Spirit, the main focus is cultivating the Primordial Spirit, also known as the Yin Spirit; when the Primordial Spirit grows strong enough to leave the shell, one can borrow the power of the Heavenly Tribulation to wash and transform it into a Yang Spirit.

The transformation from Yin to Yang is actually the highest form of reversing life, similar to another form of rebirth, from which one sheds delusions and worries, achieving immortality.

The highest realm of Lian Shen Huan Xu is when the Yang Spirit and the Seven Souls merge into one, combining into a body of ultimate truth and ultimate Yang, completely shedding the mortal flesh and ascending to become a saint.

In the Mortal World, although there are systematic cultivation techniques and systems, Heavenly Material and Earthly Treasure for strengthening and cultivating the Soul are extremely scarce; therefore, for millions of years, while there have been many great cultivators who achieved Spirit Transformation, very few have been able to cultivate the Primordial Spirit to completion before their thousand-year lifespan was exhausted, and it takes several thousand years to produce one Void Breaking True Immortal.

If one says that among mortals, it is hard to find one genius with a Spirit Root in ten thousand, then perhaps fewer than one in a thousand cultivators with Spirit Roots can achieve Golden Core, and one in a hundred Spirit Transformation cultivators might not necessarily produce a Void Breaking True Immortal who has refined a Yang Spirit.

If one aggregates this data, it means that based on a population of one billion mortals, it is not certain that even one True Immortal could be born.

And the reason why becoming an immortal is so difficult is that cultivation resources are severely lacking, insufficient to provide these great cultivators with enough Heavenly Material and Earthly Treasure to cultivate the Primordial Spirit, leaving them to rely only on time and rare spirit items to accumulate slowly.

But the appearance of Nether Beasts is like a ray of dawn, allowing the great cultivators of the Mortal World to find a treasure for rapid cultivation.

The Underworld, a place of extreme cold, is precisely where Underworld Qi is most abundant, which is why it can give birth to such strange and ferocious Demon Beasts as Nether Beasts, which possess tyrannical and terrifying Soul power.

Taking this Soul Bead out, it could likely catalyze a Spirit Transformation Great Cultivator directly to the True Spirit Realm.

It is a pity that the two worlds are separated by heaven and earth and cannot communicate normally, otherwise a group of Spirit Transformation Great Cultivators would risk their lives to come here to make a fortune.

But for Xu Chen, this is not a treasure land, but one filled with incomparable crises, where every step must be taken with extreme caution.

Xu Chen put away the Soul Bead, and Feng Liu and the others did not let the remains of this Soul Beast go to waste; they hacked it into pieces, stored everything they could into the Crystal Stone Space, and then returned in high spirits.

Returning to the canyon, the entire tribe, having received news of the victory, was immediately plunged into an unprecedented carnival.

The Clan Leader and the Elder gathered the whole tribe to hold a grand feast, bringing out all the food and drink they could, and began to celebrate enthusiastically.

After the feast, Xu Chen went into seclusion again, setting to work on refining a new batch of Shenyang Huaming Pills, while the Elder and the Clan Leader began arranging manpower to prepare for the resurrection of the old Witch Master.

Feng Liu and a group of warriors went out in all directions to clear out the many Nether Beasts near the habitat, and went to contact several other tribes, preparing to hold a tribal joint assembly that hadn't been held for countless generations, intending to form a more extensive Nether Human Race alliance after the old Witch Master awoke, to jointly resist the Nether Beasts and expand the human living space.

In the blink of an eye, nearly another month passed.

Xu Chen refined three furnaces of Shenyang Huaming Pills one after another, and also stepped up his cultivation to improve his level, successively opening all the remaining Apertures and officially stepping into the middle stage of the Zhenyuan Realm.

At this time, the Feng tribe was already extremely lively, with the Clan Leaders, Elders, and a large number of warriors from five nearby tribes gathered in the canyon.

During this month, Xu Chen rarely came out of seclusion, but he did occasionally walk out of the stone room to meet with the people of these tribes in the middle of his pill refining and cultivation.

Although the Feng tribe revered Xu Chen like a god and was filled with incomparable gratitude and worship, for the people of the other tribes, this thin and short mysterious figure did not necessarily command awe; however, under the suppression of the Feng tribe, the people of these tribes remained relatively quiet, and no one provoked him, though a great sense of distrust still existed.

Hearing is false, seeing is believing.

Although the Feng tribe had indeed awakened many powerful warriors who had previously been dormant, and many had even manifested their clan patterns and activated Divine Pattern Battle Techniques, it was not necessarily the credit of this short, strange man.

Although Xu Chen did not want to lower himself to the level of these ignorant Netherhuang natives, in order to obtain enough information from these tribes, he decided to show a little of his hand and demonstrate to them what a miracle was.

Thus, he decided to restore the clan patterns for several Feng tribe warriors, including Feng Feiyi and Feng Yi, on the spot.

This was something he had promised.

Moreover, he also needed to demonstrate sufficient ability to suppress these savage and irritable Netherhuang natives.

After researching for more than two months while staying with the Feng tribe, Xu Chen had also roughly figured out the conditions for restoring clan patterns and Divine Patterns.

The clan pattern is a peculiar attribute hidden deep within the bloodline of these Ancient Human Race; although its origin is unknown, it is actually just like the Demon Beasts and Spirit Beasts of the Mortal World, a kind of aura inherited from ancient gods and demons, only because it had been eroded by Underworld Qi for millions of years in the Underworld, the power of the bloodline had been completely suppressed, so both the clan patterns and Divine Patterns remained hidden and gradually became a legendary story.

And restoring the clan pattern is very simple: it is to use white Qi to completely clean out the Underworld Qi in these people's bodies and restore them to a state of pure flesh and blood.

However, the conditions for activating Divine Patterns are much harsher.

Not every Nether Human Race whose clan pattern has been restored can feel the existence of a Divine Pattern; this is related to the strength of the bloodline. Only those warriors with extremely strong resistance to Blood Poison can possibly feel the existence of a Divine Pattern under the stimulation of a powerful Divine Blood aura, and only then can they truly grow into a powerful Divine Pattern Warrior.

The first person Xu Chen experimented on was Feng Yi, because he himself had already vaguely felt the existence of a Divine Pattern and belonged to a person with heaven-defying aptitude.

Xu Chen believed he would not need to spend too much effort to activate his clan pattern and Divine Pattern.

Therefore, after Xu Chen announced this decision, the entire Feng tribe and all five tribes that had arrived were stirred up.

Xu Chen did not go into seclusion to cast the spell; instead, he cleared out a large space in the hall where the Feng tribe lived daily, had Feng Liu and several other Divine Pattern Warriors guard the perimeter, and then had Feng Yi take off his clothes and sit cross-legged, first having him take a Taiyuan Soul-Entering Pill and helping him refine it by simply using Yuan Qi to urge it.

Not long after Feng Yi took the pill, crackling sounds began to emerge from his body, an extremely painful expression appeared on his face, black blood began to ooze from his ears, eyes, mouth, and nose, and even more terrifyingly, faint five-colored halos began to emerge from his pores in wisps.

This was the phenomenon of the white Qi in the Taiyuan Soul-Entering Pill beginning to burn the Underworld Qi.

However, the content of white Qi in the Taiyuan Soul-Entering Pill was scarce, so the speed of this process was not fast, and as the pill refining ended, these phenomena also quickly disappeared.

After about two quarters of an hour, Feng Yi opened his eyes; although his face was covered in black blood, his emotions were extremely agitated.

"How is it? Do you feel any changes in your body?" Xu Chen asked with a smile via sound transmission.

Feng Yi nodded excitedly and said, "I feel it. The Nether poison and Blood Poison in my body are both decreasing, and I have vaguely seen the existence of the Divine Pattern."

Xu Chen thought for a moment and said, "I originally planned to use another Shenyang Huaming Pill on you, but your body has recovered very well, and you are already close to feeling the existence of the Divine Pattern, so I won't waste the pill. I will help you restore your body directly, but the process might be quite painful, so you must endure it!"

Feng Yi immediately nodded his head like a chick pecking at rice and shouted excitedly, "Benefactor, use all your strength! I'm not afraid of pain; if I let out a single groan, I'm a spawn of a Nether Beast!"

You said it yourself, don't you dare brag!

Xu Chen nodded with a smile that didn't reach his eyes, directly circulating the Demon Refining Art, and with a pull of his Divine Sense, a terrifying white Qi instantly surged into Feng Yi's body.

(End of this chapter)