Even high-level cultivators in the cultivation world are the same.
Only those at the Tribulation Transcendence stage, who are just a step away from ascension, have gained a slight understanding of the power of laws.
Only then can they leverage those laws to directly use unrefined spirit energy from the air, or even control the spirit energy attacks they have already released.
Mu Chenze was a bit dazed.
The fact that he had successfully communicated with his attack just now was something even he didn't quite understand.
Even his attempt to use spirit energy and divine sense to communicate with the water blades had been an instinctive move.
It was as if, guided by some unseen force, the pure water spirit energy in the seawater had given him a certain feeling, granting him that momentary impulse.
After changing the direction of the final water blade, his divine sense had been completely exhausted, which was why Jun Luo had to grab him by the collar and drag him away.
Now that he thought back on it, he could no longer recall that sensation.
Hoping to find that mysterious feeling once more, and with Gu Ningyun and the others standing guard for him, Mu Chenze cast his water spells without hesitation.
At first, he only fired twelve water blades at once. Later, he even attempted to use his spirit energy to draw in the water spirit energy from the surrounding seawater after firing the blades.
However, even after he practiced the technique to the point where he could instantly fire water blades without needing hand seals for assistance, he never managed to re-enter that state.
Perhaps this was what everyone meant when they said some chances only existed for a fleeting moment—they could not be calculated or predicted.
In any case, he had grasped that sudden opportunity earlier and caught a glimpse of a level that his current cultivation should never have been able to touch.
Mu Chenze gave a carefree smile and flipped his folding fan, turning his attention back to practicing his water spells.
He only stopped once everyone had accumulated ten full spirit jade boxes.
This patch of blue sea coral was massive. The small amount they had taken from various spots was barely a scratch on the surface for the colony.
Wen Xuan put away the boxes in her hand and, with a wave of her arm, produced a large vat as tall as a person.
She then pulled out a spirit hoe. "I plan to dig up a small one to take back and keep in my Cloud Residence.
"For one, this coral is beautiful and would make an excellent decoration. Secondly, if I ever need it for alchemy in the future, I can harvest it whenever I want."
"That's easy enough." Mu Chenze took the spirit hoe and dug out a small coral cluster about half a person tall from the edge, rock and all, before placing it into the vat.
The vat filled with seawater as soon as it was brought out, and Wen Xuan waved her hand to store the vat inside her spirit beast bag.
Storage bags could only hold inanimate objects or spirit plants.
Coral polyps were animals and would die if placed in a storage bag. The spirit jade boxes only sealed their life force and spirit energy, keeping them in the exact state they were in the moment they entered the box.
Wen Xuan wanted to raise live blue sea coral, so she naturally couldn't put it in a storage bag.
Seeing this, Gu Ningyun's eyes shifted as she looked deeper into the blue sea coral forest.
She didn't want to raise the coral herself; she had her eye on the Blue Lake Scallops that lived within the coral forest.
The 《Almanac of Heavenly Wonders》 recorded that these scallops lived on the rocks of the blue sea coral forests. Because they fed on the coral, their meat was also rich in the same hallucinogenic toxin and was inedible.
However, while searching for wine recipes in the library earlier, she had discovered a travelogue.
The author was a food cultivator whose greatest hobby was traveling across the cultivation world to collect exotic ingredients.
In his travelogue, he recorded that in a certain part of the seabed in the East Sea near Cangzhou, there was a blue sea coral forest.
Low-level cultivators mostly harvested the blue sea coral for alchemy or artifact refining, but they turned a blind eye to the Blue Lake Scallops living among the coral clusters.
They despised the shells for being too brittle to be useful, and the meat for being toxic and harder to store than the coral, viewing them as useless. Little did they know that this was like buying the casket and returning the pearl.
I simmered them over a gentle flame, using my self-created Blue Lake Scallop toxin treatment technique to allow the toxins to dissipate with the steam generated during the cooking process.
Once the toxins had been reduced to a certain level, I removed the scallop meat and added spirit materials like Stream-Return Grass, stir-frying them over a high flame before plating them ten breaths later.
The deliciousness of the flavor was such that even high-grade ingredients paled in comparison.
I deliberately left a trace of the toxin unpurified. Upon eating it, my primordial spirit drifted as if riding the clouds, ascending straight to the nine heavens.
Inviting the stars and the moon, I roamed the four seas with the breeze;
The greatest sounds are silent; I bathed in spirit light and ascended the Heavenly Gate.
By the time I woke, only ninety percent of my divine sense remained.
This kind of sensation was something I had never experienced since I began my cultivation, so I ate them again.
When only ten percent of my divine sense remained, I sat in meditation to recover.
Day after day, month after month.
A year later, I was able to eat untreated Blue Lake Scallops directly and snap the branches of Blue Sea Coral with my bare hands.
I was no longer confused by any low-grade illusions, and my speed in breaking high-grade illusions increased by thirty percent.
Reading this, Gu Ningyun had a sudden realization.
The contents of the 《Almanac of Heavenly Wonders》 were mostly compiled by seniors based on their own experiences. Although the content was verified by the sect and accurate,
and every effort had been made to record all known treasures in the cultivation world,
nothing was absolute. Even the many powerful cultivators of the sect had certain limitations.
Moreover, the cultivation world changed every single day.
The world was vast, the cultivators were numerous, and the mysterious thoughts of talented individuals could not be summarized by a single jade slip.
Even though the content of that jade slip was... ridiculously extensive.
While she knew the contents of the 《Almanac of Heavenly Wonders》 like the back of her hand, there would always be cultivators discovering new things or new uses for treasures in areas the book did not cover.
That cultivator might be someone she didn't know, or it might be one of her companions, or it might even be herself.
She could use the 《Almanac of Heavenly Wonders》, but she couldn't blindly follow it to the point of losing her ability to discover new things.
For example, the author of this travelogue had discovered many things that others had not.
Even the Blue Lake Scallops, which most cultivators viewed as useless, had such a precious use discovered by him.
Gu Ningyun's divine sense couldn't help but linger on the word "illusion" in the travelogue.
She recalled the only time she had encountered an illusion since she began her cultivation—the illusion before climbing the Stairway to Immortality during the entrance examination.
In truth, when she first entered that illusion, she had been quite at a loss.
Everything around her, including her sense of touch, smell, and pain, was terrifyingly real.
If not for the fact that her memories were intact and she clearly remembered she was taking the entrance exam for Xiaoyao, she might not have even suspected it was an illusion.
But even if she suspected it, as a mortal who hadn't even achieved qi induction at the time, she had no idea how to break that illusion.
She could only force herself to stay calm and think about what she could do.
She could only observe the details within the illusion to see if there were any openings.
Rate on N.U.
