Chapter 458: Chapter 384: Dao Foundation Upgrade
The True Man of Locking Dragon clenched his right hand, and the chain wrapped with the Thunder-cutting Knife entangled the claws of the Chongming Bird. As it hindered the Demon King’s movement, it rotated and sliced, drawing blood marks of electric current on the Chongming Bird’s claws!
"Not as powerful as you think."
The True Man of Locking Dragon also knew the room for imagination this hidden technique of his left, introducing while fighting skillfully: "The Chained Hand can only control very light weapons, such as daggers or small knives. Anything heavier will significantly reduce the speed and power of the Chained Hand."
"Moreover, the Chained Hand can only exert the Permanent Authority of the token, it cannot activate the Active Ability of the token. However, these kinds of short weapon tokens are quite rare and generally not very damaging; they rely on Active Abilities for sufficient lethality. So, I’ve never found a suitable token all these years and would rather keep it hidden than reveal it."
"Even if I found a suitable token, at most I could only control two chains now. Any more would consume too much of my focus, affecting the accuracy of my restrictions. Ultimately, this is just an additional means of Attacking the Secret Realm with the Dragon-locking Well; restrictions are my foundation."
Despite saying this, the talent displayed by the True Man of Locking Dragon still made Yan Qing’s scalp tingle.
The Dragon-locking Well is a divine technique specialized in restrictions. Even Foundation Establishment has a hard time resisting it. In this regard, it is quite similar to the Rabbit Heroine’s Candle Tear Red, both sacrificing potential possibilities to enhance a single effect to the extreme, creating an imagery divine technique.
As a result, the True Man of Locking Dragon not only researched the Dragon-locking Well to have mobile flying, interrupting, and obstructing uses but also remarkably pioneered the use of the Chained Hand. Don’t be fooled by the various restrictions the True Man of Locking Dragon mentioned. As her cultivation improves and her proficiency increases, these restrictions can be surpassed. Even now, with enough Thunder-cutting Knives, she can transform into a powerhouse of slaughter!
She has extrapolated this restrictive imagery of the Dragon-locking Well into a usage comparable to top-tier attacking imagery!
Without the shackles of systematic barriers and with long years for cultivation, what other cards are these Foundation Establishment wielding?
Yan Qing once underestimated these local Foundation Establishment, but even if he couldn’t beat them now, it couldn’t stop him from thinking of them as ’poor Foundation Establishment’ or ’poor Foundation Establishment well-versed in divine techniques.’ Yet teaming up with the True Man of Locking Dragon to attack the Secret Realm shattered Yan Qing’s arrogance as a player.
Heroism is truly as numerous as carp crossing the river!
When the Chongming Bird launched the killing move of double-pupil blood light again, they immediately retreated to the corner of the passage. When the blood light was cut off, the True Man of Locking Dragon threw a pig into the passage, pulled back after the blood light focused on it. After a few times back and forth, when the pig was nearly dizzy, they finally saw no blood light shooting out from the depth of the cave.
Charge!
As expected, the Chongming Bird was absorbing blood gas from the Blood Pool to recover its injuries. However, this is where the advantage of Candle Tear Red appears. Even after the Rabbit Heroine and the others retreated, Candle Tear Red could continue to drain the Chongming Bird’s blood for nearly a minute, so its health was still only 78%!
No more words, go!
A few minutes later, the Chongming Bird launched a killing move again, and the Rabbit Heroine and others dodged once more. In the intense engagement, time flew by swiftly, and nearly an hour had passed—when all the time spent in this Secret Realm, including fighting, discussing, and scavenging, was less than half an hour!
The True Man of Locking Dragon and Pharmacist’s Wish were very concerned about the Rabbit Heroine, as she only had one day of Infinite Divine Power. Initially meant for quickly clearing multiple Secret Realms, now spending so much time on the Chongming Bird was inevitably making her anxious.
Yet the Rabbit Heroine’s tactics didn’t falter, nor did Yan Qing’s.
This kind of slow boss attrition, wasting time, was all too common in his gaming career. He still remembers running several rounds of corpses to defeat Diablo in Act IV of "Diablo 2" back in the day. Now, what’s this minor work? The more time spent, the greater the sense of accomplishment in defeating the boss!
Though there’s a saying that sunk costs don’t partake in decision-making, having reached this far, spending another hour is worth it!
When health dropped to 30%, the Chongming Bird suddenly raised its wings and tilted its head back like a taut bow. Simultaneously, a fan-shaped blood light shot from its beak, aiming for the frontmost Rabbit Heroine, covering even the True Man of Locking Dragon and Pharmacist’s Wish in its vast fan-shaped range.
Water Wave Execution!
Because it resembles a water wave spray, all these fan-shaped attacks were called Water Wave Execution by players.
"Pig!" Pharmacist’s Wish immediately said.
"Retreat!" shouted the True Man of Locking Dragon.
The chain clattered, pulling a pig from the passage to the forefront, which indeed drew the Chongming Bird’s attention. The direction of the fan-shaped blood light changed along with the pig’s position and could even be lured to a corner to minimize damage. Yet the Rabbit Heroine and others kept their distance, not rushing to attack, opting to analyze the situation first.
Swoosh!
With a screeching whistle, the Chongming Bird blew an invisible gale, leaving the pig stupefied and paralyzed on the ground. After a breath, it gradually turned to dust and disappeared, leaving no remains at all!
"Wind of Biting?" After saying that, the True Man of Locking Dragon shook her head: "No, the Wind of Biting isn’t this weak... But if the defensive barrier can’t block it, it will directly corrode the Dao Foundation!"
Yan Qing thought this might be a special attack move against ordinary players, because regular players would rather die themselves than manifest their Dao Foundation. The Chongming Bird not killing them but instead damaging their Dao Foundation might terrify players even more.
After killing the pig, the Chongming Bird calmed down, but once the Rabbit Heroine and others moved up for a melee, it quickly launched the fan-shaped blood light attack again. Within a quarter of an hour, the True Man of Locking Dragon used up the pigs she brought, yet the Chongming Bird still frequently launched attacks, sometimes releasing two fan-shaped red lights that needed two pigs to divert.
"Its second phase will likely frequently launch Water Wave Execution," said the Rabbit Heroine. "We need more pigs."
Although both Pharmacist’s Wish and True Man of Locking Dragon heard the terms ’second phase’ and ’water wave death penalty’ for the first time, they understood the Rabbit Heroine’s meaning immediately without any need for communication cost, as these terms matched the current situation perfectly.
True Man of Locking Dragon climbed out of the Secret Realm quickly, like a spider, and soon returned with a large group of pigs and cattle.
"There are more coming. I’ve told them to drive all the beasts from the manor in," True Man of Locking Dragon said. "Let’s just start the fight."
The ensuing battle held no surprises.
The Chongming Bird continued to frequently launch the water wave death penalty, and from initially one wave, it eventually fired eight waves simultaneously, upgrading the water wave death penalty into the eight-direction water wave execution!
In a game, this would require players to coordinate their positions to counter this execution mechanism, and if even two people cross paths, it would cause both to eat two waves and result in a team explosion — giving it a somewhat extreme end-feel. However, in reality, True Man of Locking Dragon couldn’t be bothered with assigning positions for the livestock, so she simply piled them up in a corner, allowing them to be instantly evaporated by the eight-direction water wave execution.
After dozens of livestock died, the Chongming Bird let out a mournful cry, and its massive body slowly collapsed onto the burning blood pool candle sea, with the golden-red feathers extinguishing like flames.
"Your Dragon Blood Hua Mei Dao Foundation (Demon Core) has been raised to level 41!"
"Your Spiritual Essence Mastery has increased to 1.05!"
"[Candle Tear Red]Divine Techniques have been enhanced!"
What?
Yan Qing was somewhat surprised, opened the Dao Foundation page of Rabbit Heroine, and found her first Restriction [Dragon Reversal] flashing, indicating that Rabbit Heroine had just executed this crucial Restriction, leading the Dao Foundation to gain a significant amount of experience allowing it to upgrade, recovering its status from 41% to 45%.
Does this Chongming Bird have Dragon Race bloodline?
Yan Qing suddenly realized that the Secret Realm’s background story mentioned that the Chongming Bird was polluted by ’Mad Corroding Dragon Poison’, which led to its severe injuries and madness.
So, could being attacked by ’Mad Corroding Dragon Poison’ count as having a Dragon Race bloodline?
Thinking this through, the Dragon Blood Hua Mei Dao Foundation might not be that bad; as long as Yan Qing finds the method to produce ’Mad Corroding Dragon Poison’, he could inject this miraculous virus into enemies during battles, transforming them into Dragon Blood creatures restrained by the Dragon Blood Hua Mei Dao Foundation.
However, it’s still too troublesome, and as a build, it can only be considered T3T4 level.
Yan Qing looked at the upgrade prompt and found no enhancement in Rabbit Heroine’s three dimensions, which was not unexpected.
Aside from a few Dao Foundations, most players do not gain dimensional upgrades once reaching level 40; regular upgrades only bring enhancement during Fifth Transition or Sixth Transition in a multiplicative manner—either no transition or exponential enhancement.
This is why strength-focused players emphasize accumulation before the 39th level during the Mortal Phase, as the dimensional increase during Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Transitions relies on multiplying from a 39-level attribute base. Every 10 additional attribute points in the Mortal Phase translates to almost tens or hundreds of points later on. The higher the attributes, the greater the chance for a gold ascent, which explains why strength-focused gaming is comparable to child-rearing, with each phase being crucial.
While there’s no dimensional upgrade, Spiritual Essence Mastery and Divine Techniques have improved.
Needless to say, Dao Foundation Divine Techniques are crucial because they upgrade alongside the Dao Foundation, and no matter the level of the messenger, one can always trust their Dao Foundation Divine Techniques.
Spiritual Essence Mastery denotes the multiplier between the soul value and the spiritual essence limit. Although the soul value remains unchanged, the higher the Dao Foundation level, the more spiritual essence one soul can manage.
Yan Qing recalled posts mentioning that once a player’s Spiritual Essence Mastery reaches 2 or higher, and soul value doubles during Fifth and Sixth Transition, players would consider how to release all spiritual essence for maximal output in the shortest time, contemplating not on conserving spiritual essence. True strength builds exploit spiritual essence optimally during the Sixth Transition!
The Chongming Bird’s corpse emitted a large heap of brilliance, but a glance revealed the absence of vermillion flame glory.
Yan Qing felt somewhat disappointed and controlled Rabbit Heroine to search for loot.
First was a collection of 1633 True Spiritual Jade, which wasn’t bad;
Gathering materials like ’Chongming Bird’s Eye’, ’Red Gold Feathers’, ’Bird Jade’, etc.;
’Auspicious Beast Blood’ caught Yan Qing’s eye as a critical resource for restoring trust token’s durability, making it particularly vital given the impoverished environment, worrying Yan Qing about future resource scarcity for token repair.
Finally, there were two trust tokens: the Fourth Turn Rare Treasure Token 「Chongming Robe」 and Fourth Turn Ordinary Token 「Celestial Returning Whip」.
Did the Fourth-Turn Difficult Secret Realm Demon King drop a Fourth-Turn Ordinary Token?
Yan Qing eyed 「Celestial Returning Whip」 and conceived an idea.
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