Chapter 2170.1: Connate Spirit Root
He Wuheng had reached peak latter golden core; he was half step away from nascent soul. He nodded when he heard Lu Yun’s words and left to oversee the Major Cycle Nebula Formation.
Lu Yun and Lu Xiaochi headed for the secret vault. It was the quietest and most secure spot in the Lu residence. Lu Yun could not afford any interruptions if he was to break the Severed Meridians Hold on his uncle.
Whoosh!
The hovering Aureate Bird Cauldron slowly expanded with Lu Yun’s wave. It grew from a flaming red cauldron three inches tall to one that was three meters in height. As Lu Xiaochi watched on dazedly, his nephew threw various spirit herbs and ingredients into the cauldron, refining them into red medicinal liquid.
Thinking for a moment, Lu Yun retrieved another small tea leaf from his storage ring and carefully ripped off a piece that was half of a thumbnail. He likewise threw it into the pill cauldron.
The addition of the tea leaf turned the flaming red liquid in the color of jade green. Refreshing tea fragrance wafted out of it. When Lu Yun next beckoned, the piece of lower rank spirit crystal floated to his hand.
“Please enter the cauldron, second uncle.” He smiled calmly at Lu Xiaochi.
“Alright.” The man took off his clothes without a word and jumped into the Aureate Bird Cauldron.
“The process will be extremely painful, please bear with it.” Lu Yun flipped his hand and clapped the lid onto the cauldron before his second uncle could respond. Both of his hands fluttered in a hand seal and summoned a reddish-gold shadow of a Three-Footed Bird. It circled over the cauldron as Aureate Bird Truefire blazed to life.
“The Severed Meridians Hold… has no solution,” Lu Yun sighed softly.
The Severed Meridians Hold was regarded as the most evil restriction in the three realms and six great daos. Although there was supposed to be a solution somewhere, it only treated the symptoms and not the cause. Breaking it meant that the victim would never stand a chance of becoming an immortal. They would also be the weakest of any cultivation level they advanced to.
All meridians were ruined with the Severed Meridians Hold, so what Lu Yun sought to do was reforge the meridians!
Refine a person as a pill!
He would refine a living being as he would a pill!
One of his disciples in the three thousand lifetimes had also been afflicted with the Severed Meridians Hold. Being a pill refiner fanatic, Lu Yun had thrown his disciple into a cauldron and refined him. He’d used an unparalleled combat art to reforge all of that disciple’s meridians, thereby breaking the restriction.
However, it wasn’t a method available to just anyone. It required someone whose pill dao had reached wondrous, undefinable peaks, or the victim would die in refinement.
Not only did the process require stunning skill, but it necessitated crazed fervor. No normal person would throw a beloved disciple into a pill cauldron, but Lu Yun had been a madman in that lifetime.
Aureate Bird Truefire jumped and flickered while Lu Xiaochi clenched his teeth in the cauldron. He bled through his lips, but didn’t make a sound. Breaking the meridians to reforge them anew was pain worse than being drawn and quartered or flayed alive.
Lu Yun’s hands flicked through hand seals, making the cauldron shake. Suddenly, he paused and probed in the cardinal directions. The connate powers of earth, air, wood, metal, and fire gathered together and surged into the pill cauldron.
“In that world, I used the inner core of a divine beast that took snake form to reforge my disciple’s spirit root. That gave him the talents of the divine beast. This time, I will use the powers of the five elements to forge a spirit root of the five elements for my second uncle!”
Lu Yun set his jaw and formed a very strange hand seal. He then bit his tongue and spat out a mouthful of essence blood, melding it into the Aureate Bird Cauldron.
“Come out, leaf of the Builder Tree!” Keen light shone from his eyes as the shadow of a leaf flickered in and out of sight on him.
His current cultivation level was second turn of the Seeing Dao chapter. Thus, he was able to force the leaf from the Builder Tree out if he needed to.
Lu Yun quickly waved his hand when the leaf appeared and directed a large current of vitality from the leaf into the cauldron. Apart from using his own blood as a catalyst, he was unable to use the leaf’s power. Only then could he guide the leaf’s power into the cauldron for his second uncle to absorb.
Crack!
A tiny crack snaked through the lower rank spirit crystal that he cradled in his arms. Refining a person as a pill was such an enormous drain on resources that even Lu Yun couldn’t support the endeavor for too long with Hongmeng true qi. Thus, he had to use the lower rank crystal.
He didn’t dare use the Qi Accumulation Formation when they were in the secret vault. It would cause an enormous disturbance and easily expose the family vault secret.
The cauldron gradually settled down and the golden bird shadow in the air silently circled over it. The lower rank spirit crystal was no more—there weren’t even shards of it left. Lu Yun took out one hundred paramount rank spirit stones from his storage ring as his hands continued to form hand seals.
……
Seven days later, Lu Yun carefully let his fingers stop.
“It’s finally done.” There was no Hongmeng qi left in his dantian and his meridians were empty. A suffocating sense of emptiness rose in his heart.
Humm!
Blue light flared brilliantly from the Seal of the Multitude in his dantian. The goodwill stored within flooded out, transmuting into Hongmeng qi.
“What a pity that I didn’t have the attention to spare for the seal when I was breaking the Severed Meridians Hold. I would’ve been able to save the lower rank crystal and all these paramount rank stones.”
The seal contained enormous goodwill, but Lu Yun had to actively communicate with it to touch the energy. There was also a transmutation process—all things that Lu Yun hadn’t dared split his concentration for when he was dissolving the restriction. He’d been completely focused on the task at hand.
If the slightest hint of anything had gone wrong, Lu Xiaochi would’ve either turned into a pill or been decimated to ashes.
After recovering his Hongmeng true qi, Lu Yun probed to the south and grabbed a handful of connate flames. He casually tossed it into the cauldron to replace the Aureate Bird Truefire. Once the flames burned down, that would be when his second uncle emerged from the cauldron.
Mission accomplished, the young man sat down to make the best use of time. The methods of the second turn operated slowly and he grabbed a handful of connate fire origin from time to time, refining it as he cultivated.
Another seven days passed before the connate flames inside the cauldron fully dwindled away. The Aureate Bird Cauldron ceased to operate and its lid shot upward, giving way for a naked Lu Xiaochi.
He jumped out of the cauldron with gleaming, flawless skin. He’d looked to be in his thirties to begin with and was exceedingly handsome. Now he looked younger than thirty and shone with a heroic air.
“Tsk tsk, second uncle, your manhood is a sight to behold. When are you going to give me a second aunt, eh?” Lu Yun waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
“Shut up, brat,” Lu Xiaochi cursed teasingly and grabbed a set of long white robes next to him. “Many thanks to you this time.”
He took careful stock of himself. Although his internal force was as empty as ever and he completely lacked cultivation, the frail feeling that’d plagued him before was gone. It was replaced by a vibrant vitality.
This was a sign that his Severed Meridians Hold was no more.
“What’s a little thing between family?” Lu Yun smiled. He was at ease once there was no goodwill coming from Lu Xiaochi. Anything that family did for each other was only to be expected. If gratitude resulted from any actions… that would mean there was still a certain distance between the two.
“Second uncle,” Lu Yun turned serious. “I modified your spirit root as I broke the restriction, changing your fire spirit root into one of the connate five elements.”
“A spirit root of the connate five elements?” Lu Xiaochi blinked. He’d never heard of it before, but being named connate must mean that it was extraordinary. Spirit roots were the foundation of a cultivator and the determinant of their future accomplishment. He’d once possessed a paramount rank fire spirit root, so his cultivation speed was far faster than others.
“My master says that spirit roots are divided into five ranks,” Lu Yun explained matter-of-factly. “Ordinary roots of the five elements, paramount rank of the five elements, immortal spirit root, connate spirit root, and chaos spirit root. I used some special methods to change yours of the paramount fire root to the fourth highest—one that encompasses all five elements.”
“Ah…” Lu Xiaochi stared at Lu Yun like he was seeing a ghost.
He knew the divisions of the spirit roots, but only knew about the ordinary, paramount, and immortal spirit roots. He didn’t know anything that came after.
Cultivators absorbed their respective element to strengthen their spirit root when they reached foundation establishment, but strengthening was all they could do. Enhancing the rank of a spirit root was unheard of!
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