Chapter 310: Two Flowers
All of a sudden, his eyelids fluttered slightly, and his eyes sprang open, following which two beams of golden light erupted out from within.
He began to make a rapid string of hand seals, bringing his palms together and linking them together before thrusting his joint index and middle fingers upward like a sword.
All 108 of the Time Dao Runes on the Mantra Treasured Axis behind him instantly lit up at once.
At the same time, golden light emerged between the palms of his hands before traveling to his fingertips, and a translucent golden thread that was as thin as a strand of human hair began to slowly extend out from his fingertips.
However, it had only protruded around an inch out from his fingertips before it exploded into specks of golden light with a dull thump.
The golden light in Han Li's eyes also slowly faded, and he looked down at his own bloodstained robes with a wry smile on his face.
He had made some progress compared with last time he had attempted this, but once again, he had ultimately fallen just short of manifesting a time law thread.
It looks like it'll be extremely difficult to glean the laws of time even by directly consuming the spirit liquid. Perhaps only by consuming a dao pill will I have a chance of succeeding in this endeavor.
It had now become apparent to him why dao pills were so sought after in the Immortal Realm.
The difference here was like that between directly consuming a spirit medicine and a pill refined with that spirit medicine as the main ingredient.
A pill would give the consumer the best chance of gleaning the law powers contained within the spirit medicine, and that was naturally far more effective than directly consuming the ingredient itself.
Thankfully, he had accumulated a substantial amount of wealth and was able to easily obtain spirit ingredients that contained the power of time laws. Otherwise, this wouldn't have been a feasible path for him to pursue.
After heaving a faint sigh, he took a pill, and a layer of golden light appeared over his entire body once again.
Around half a month later.
Han Li departed from his secret chamber, then made his way to the spirit medicine garden in his cave abode.
The medicine garden was filled with abundant spiritual qi and was thriving with vitality.
Inside the field, the giant ape puppet was holding an azure wooden bucket in one hand, out of which it was scooping pails of shimmering azure spirit liquid onto the garden.
This spirit liquid had been mixed using the recipe stipulated in the book on planting Dao Warriors given to Han Li by Daoist Hu Yan, but he had been using it to water his other spirit medicines rather than on the primary bean.
Han Li swept his gaze across the various spirit medicines in the garden, and his eyes lit up as his gaze fell upon one corner of the garden.
The seedling that had sprouted out of the primary bean was gone, and in its place was a massive golden plant that was around 10 feet tall.
Its trunk was an earthy yellow color, while its leaves had a golden hue.
The leaves were riddled with countless golden veins that were stacked on top of one another in layers, and these golden veins stretched all the way from the leaves to the branches and the main trunk of the plant.
Hanging below the layers of lush golden leaves were a series of azure bean pods, each of which was around a finger in length, and the bulges visible in the pods clearly indicated that they contained the beans that Han Li was aiming to grow.
Han Li was very elated to see this, and he hurried over to the tree before walking a lap around it like a proud farmer, carefully counting the number of bean pods on the tree as he did so.
In total, he counted 75 pods, and under the assumption that each pod contained seven beans, that would've amounted to a total of over 500 beans, which, barring any mishaps, would've developed into over 500 formidable Dao Warriors.
However, these beans clearly hadn't reached full maturity yet.
According to Daoist Hu Yan's book, once the Dao Warriors reached full maturity, the trunk, branches, and leaves of the tree would gradually begin to wilt, supplying all of their nutrition to the beans.
After that, the bean pods would break open on their own to release the beans inside.
Due to the fact that the beans hadn't yet matured, Han Li couldn't sense any special aura from them, so he didn't know whether the mutation was positive or negative.
However, Han Li wasn't overly concerned. There was a very good chance that the mutation had arisen as the primary bean had been watered using spirit liquid from the Heaven Controlling Vial, and anything that concerned the Heaven Controlling Vial generally wasn't a bad thing.
Only after inspecting the tree for a while longer did Han Li turn to depart, but right as he did so, he spotted out of the corner of his eye that there were two small yellow flowers on top of the tree.
He stopped to look at the flowers for a moment, and a perplexed look appeared on his face. He flipped a hand over to summon the book given to him by Daoist Hu Yan, then flipped it open to a certain page.
A short while later, he stowed the book away again, but the befuddlement on his face remained.
The book says that the flowering period of primary bean flowers is quite long, so they'll generally only bloom after the beans have reached maturity, and there's only supposed to be one of them, so why are there two here? Could this also be a result of the mutation?
If that were the case, then that would naturally be a good thing as the rate at which he could develop Dao Warriors would be significantly increased, but as a safety precaution, he decided that it was best to consult Daoist Hu Yan about this situation.
With that in mind, he turned and made his way elsewhere in the medicine garden.
This area of the medicine garden was filled with various different types of spirit medicines, and there weren't many of them, but they were all giving off their own unique auras.
These spirit medicines were all ingredients stipulated in the dao pill recipe that Han Li had obtained, and due to the fact that he had obtained them at different ages, the degree of growth that they were displaying were all different.
The oldest of these spirit medicines were several dozen blue plants that looked as if they had been carved out of ice. They resembled boneset herbs with glowing and translucent leaves, and he had acquired them from the floating mountain secret area.
At the time, he didn't know what they were, and only later did he discover that they were none other than the Hidden Mist Herb stated in the dao pill recipe.
Due to the fact that these spirit plans had been growing deep within the floating mountain secret area, they had been left completely untouched, and several of them had already exceeded 100,000 years of age, making them fit to serve as dao pill ingredients.
Not far away from the Hidden Mist Herbs, in a small area enshrouded within a small array, were around a dozen seedlings that looked as if they had only just sprouted.
These plants were known as Sandthrough Sunflowers, and they had been brought back by Meng Yungui over 100 years ago.
This spirit medicine appeared to have been growing very slowly, but its root systems underground were thriving, and if they weren't enshrouded within this array, they would've most likely stretched across the entire garden, making it impossible for the other spirit medicines to survive.
Aside from the main ingredients, the supplementary ingredients on the dao pill recipe were also quite difficult to gather. Meng Yungui had been very fortunate to have come across these spirit plants, and on the way back, he had almost been killed by someone aiming to take the spirit plants from him. Thankfully, he was able to survive thanks to the protective treasures bestowed upon him by Han Li.
After receiving a reward from Han Li for his efforts, Meng Yungui cultivated on the Crimson Dawn Peak for over 10 years before resuming his spirit medicine search.
In addition to Meng Yungui, both Meng Qianqian and Sun Buzheng had also returned to the Crimson Dawn Peak once each during the past two centuries, but Han Li had been in seclusion on both of those occasions, so he wasn't able to see them.
Meng Qianqian stayed on the Crimson Dawn Peak a little longer than Sun Buzheng as she wanted to see if Han Li would come out of seclusion, and also because Featheryearn didn't want to part with the Two-headed Griffin.
Neither Sun Buzheng nor Meng Qianqian had been as fortunate as Meng Yungui, and they were only able to find some seedlings or seeds of spirit medicines stipulated in Han Li's earthly pill recipes, but Han Li wasn't disheartened by this.
Up to this point, even he had only managed to secure several of the spirit medicines listed on the dao pill recipe, including that Thistle Spirit Flower, and no one had responded to the spirit medicine procurement missions that he had released in the Transient Guild.
After staying in the spirit medicine garden a while longer, Han Li made his way to another secret chamber.
Standing in front of the stone door, Han Li swept a hand through the air, and a series of runes instantly appeared on the door, following which it slid aside to reveal an opening that was as tall as a grown man.
The secret chamber was filled with purplish-golden light, and bursts of crackling were ringing out incessantly from within.
The lightning array inside was still operating, but the eight lengths of Lightning Restraining Wood situated around the array were looking a little dim, clearly having already been exhausted of much of their lightning power.
At this moment, the yellow-robed immortal puppet was seated with its legs crossed at the center of the array, and arcs of purple lightning were constantly flashing all over its body, particularly its chest.
Han Li's brows furrowed slightly as he noticed that the indentation at the center of the lightning array was empty, and the purple crystalline ball that was originally embedded in there was nowhere to be seen.
"Brother Xie," Han Li called out to Daoist Xie through spiritual sense voice transmission, but the yellow-robed puppet displayed no reaction.
After a moment of contemplation, Han Li decided to remain patient and wait.
A long while later, the lightning surging over the yellow-robed puppet's chest began to converge toward the center before quickly disappearing entirely.
At the same time, all of the purple lightning across the entire array also vanished, and the spirit patterns on the lengths of Lightning Restraining Wood gradually faded, while the entire array ceased operating.
A burst of golden light appeared in the puppet's chest, and a palm-sized golden crab slowly emerged from within, then crouched down before springing toward Han Li, who spread a hand open to catch the crab.
"How did it go?" Han Li asked.
Compared with before, Daoist Xie's aura had become far more stable, and there were numerous extremely thin purple veins on its eight legs that could only have been noticed upon close inspection.
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