Chapter 265: The Mysterious Blood
"Then can you, while you still retain some shred of consciousness, destroy yourselves? That would at least leave the Tianyuan Realm a glimmer of hope." The Yin-Yang Sword Sect's Nascent Soul True Lord asked.
"Our vitality has not yet run dry—we can still suppress some of the death qi, keep our bodies from decaying too far. If we die, we'll completely corpse-transform, and you've already seen what happens to those taken over by that headless corpse's death qi. At that time our strength will increase even more." The Yin Corpse Sect's Nascent Soul True Lord was the one who understood the situation most clearly.
Unfortunately, even someone like him—who had spent his life manipulating corpses—was powerless in the face of the current crisis. The level of that headless corpse was simply too high, far beyond what they could contend with.
"Leave. That headless corpse probably still needs us to continue wearing down the seal, so for now we won't act. You still have time to prepare." The Nascent Soul of Ten-Thousand Ghost Cavern let out a long sigh.
Who could have imagined that after cultivating bitterly for thousands of years, finally standing at the pinnacle of the Tianyuan Realm, this would be their end?
With heavy hearts, the three righteous path Nascent Souls left the Nine Nether Domain. Though the situation was still under control for the moment, with time the headless corpse's seal would be ground away, and then they would face more and stronger zombies.
"Wait—there should be another demon sect Nascent Soul, shouldn't there?" Qing sovereign asked. It was no secret that the Demon Sect had four Nascent Souls, but here in the Nine Nether Domain there were only three.
"He must have run."
The three righteous path Nascent Souls searched with their divine sense through the Demon Sect's territory and confirmed that the newly advanced Nascent Soul had indeed fled. The Demon Sect had caused so much trouble, yet instead of helping, one of their own had directly escaped. This left the three righteous Nascent Souls fuming.
But given the current situation, no amount of anger would change anything. The righteous path alliance could only focus on suppressing the zombie tide and confining it to the Demon Sect's territory.
If the zombie tide spread, the entire Tianyuan Realm would be in disaster.
"Gu Mo, what do we do now?"
After learning of the Tianyuan Realm's situation, Chu Feifei's face showed worry.
"The Tianyuan Realm's foundations aren't weak. They should be able to hold for a while. For us, the priority is still to raise our cultivation." Gu Mo, for now, had no intention of rushing to the Tianyuan Realm.
By his estimation, the realm's young elites wouldn't make a move immediately either. Instead, they would focus fully on advancing their cultivation, so that in the hour of true crisis they could step forward with stronger strength.
Of course, the Tianyuan cultivators had devised many methods to counter the zombie tide. One was to recruit manpower from other cultivation realms.
For example, from the Qinghe Realm—second only to Tianyuan. The Tianyuan Realm offered generous rewards to attract cultivators to join the fight against zombies.
For those cultivators who had never had the chance to access higher-level techniques, this was a rare opportunity. As for realms smaller than Qinghe, they were downright envious of the Tianyuan Realm's terms.
Fighting zombies was dangerous, yes, but the pay was rich. Cultivators had never been short of people willing to risk their lives for advancement.
Thus, wave after wave of cultivators poured into Tianyuan, greatly easing the pressure there. Yet the high command of the Tianyuan Realm knew the real danger was still to come.
As the headless corpse's seal weakened further, the zombie tide would return again and again, each wave stronger than the last.
As a true disciple of Shennong Valley, Gu Mo naturally had access to the truth. So he devoted this time wholly to strengthening himself—so that when the moment of crisis truly came, he would at least be able to protect himself.
Fortunately, for now, the cultivators held absolute advantage. For the next few years, the situation shouldn't change drastically. These years were Gu Mo's window of growth.
He laid out his path clearly. First came the upgrade of his plants—this was the fastest way to raise his combat strength.
He planted his Heaven-and-Earth Nascent Soul inside his cave-heaven. His Heaven-and-Earth Nascent Soul carried the properties of a Heaven-and-Earth Spirit Root; once planted, it was as though a Spirit Root had taken root inside his cave-heaven.
Drawing on its ability to absorb qi directly from the void, the cave-heaven's qi concentration rose an entire grade.
Combined with the supreme spirit-stone meditation cushion, Gu Mo could already boost a small area's qi concentration up to the fifth tier. Now he only lacked a fifth-tier Sunflower.
That became his focus: the more sunflowers he could sustain, the more Sun Essence he could harvest, accelerating their advancement.
Besides upgrading his plants, Gu Mo also studied the bloodstained fingernail. Aside from plants, creating a new avatar would also massively strengthen his combat power.
That blood on the nail was mysterious. If he could use it to forge an avatar, it would be extraordinary.
But he had yet to find a way to separate nail from blood. Both were far too powerful for him at present to sunder.
He soon shifted his approach—if he couldn't separate them intact, he could help one side destroy the other, thereby achieving separation.
Naturally, he chose to help the mysterious blood. If it could annihilate the nail, then the two would be parted.
The nail's ability to resist the blood already marked it as extraordinary, but Gu Mo lacked the means to claim both. He had to choose.
His method was simple: aid the blood with Sun Essence. The nail clearly belonged to the dark category. Against darkness, Sun Essence was the natural bane. He didn't need to defeat the nail himself, just tilt the balance for the blood.
As Gu Mo infused the Sun Essence into the bloodstained nail, he immediately saw change. The blood grew brighter and redder, while the nail's black color faded.
The change was minute, but it was real. From there it became a long, grinding battle.
Three years passed.
By then, cracks covered the nail, while the blood gleamed with the radiance of the sun—proof it had absorbed the Sun Essence.
"That should be about it."
Gu Mo took out a portion of fourth-tier supreme Sun Essence. In those three years, besides wearing down the nail, he had also advanced Xiaoxiao Flower to fourth-tier supreme, already halfway to fifth tier.
Another three years, he reckoned, and Xiaoxiao Flower would reach fifth tier. Then, with the Heaven-and-Earth Nascent Soul and the meditation cushion, he could harvest a true fifth-tier Sun Essence.
That would be his opportunity to step into the Soul Transformation realm.
For now, he only hoped the Tianyuan Realm could hold out a few more years. Over the last three years, the situation had shifted—from cultivators having the clear advantage, to a stalemate with the zombies.
Zombie numbers kept growing. Their strength too, and even some had acquired strange powers that made them unpredictable.
Gu Mo pushed aside such worries and focused on the cracked nail. He merged the fourth-tier supreme Sun Essence into it.
That one portion of Sun Essence was like the final straw breaking the camel's back. The nail shattered completely, while the blood congealed into a single droplet shining with the brilliance of the sun.
And within that droplet was a strange, airy force—beyond spiritual qi, beyond true essence and magic power. How high it reached, Gu Mo could not judge. But one thing was certain: this blood carried a power of extraordinary level.
This made Gu Mo even more expectant—if he could use this as the foundation to refine an avatar, what kind of result would it produce?
Coincidentally, over these three years Gu Mo had also condensed a Golden Core Dao Seed. This Dao Seed was fused with the genes of the Heaven and Earth Spirit Root—in precise terms, the genes of the Heaven and Earth Nascent Soul.
For this, Gu Mo had fed the Heaven and Earth Nascent Soul quite a bit of Sun Essence, causing the tender sprout atop its head to sprout anew. Afterwards, Gu Mo plucked a leaf from that tender shoot to serve as the root of the Dao Seed.
Mysterious blood, the Dao Seed, spiritual power infused with the force of origin, and the avatar-refining divine ability—everything that needed preparing had been prepared. Next, Gu Mo had to use these to refine a new avatar.
Since this was an unprecedented attempt and he only had one chance, if it failed, the three years of effort would be wasted. To ensure success on the first try, Gu Mo planned to review his earlier plan once more.
"Gu Mo!"
At that moment, Chu Feifei's voice came from outside.
Hearing it, Gu Mo opened the courtyard gate. The place he was living in now was the same small courtyard he had once occupied in Qinglu Sect. Since his cultivation didn't require a spirit vein, he hadn't gone to occupy one.
"When are you planning to break through?"
Gu Mo's gaze swept over Chu Feifei. By now she had already reached Golden Core Great Perfection. With her foundation, there was simply no bottleneck to stepping into Nascent Soul—it was only a matter of when she chose to advance.
"I wanted to ask your opinion."
Chu Feifei sat down on the meditation cushion beside Gu Mo. His room always had three cushions prepared—for Gu Mo, Chu Feifei, and Yuan Niya. Over these three years, the three of them often cultivated together.
Yuan Niya mainly relied on Chu Feifei's unique fragrance to raise her cultivation, while Gu Mo used that fragrance to enter states of insight. In fact, it was in such a state of clarity that Gu Mo conceived of the plan to refine an avatar with the mysterious blood.
"If you feel there's no further room to improve, then just break through."
Gu Mo thought for a moment before answering. Normally, Chu Feifei could certainly wait a bit longer—though there might be no further avenues for growth at the moment, she could always search for other methods to strengthen her foundation even more. But under the current circumstances, no one knew how long the Tianyuan Realm could hold on.
"Alright!"
Chu Feifei nodded.
"Sorry, I'm late." At that moment, Yuan Niya arrived in a rush.
"Sect Master Yuan, you're quite the busy person these days." Gu Mo smiled. Three years earlier, Zhuo Suzhu had passed the position of Qinglu Sect Master to Yuan Niya and then gone into closed-door seclusion.
Now, Qinglu Sect was completely transformed, faintly on the verge of becoming the leading sect of the Qinghe cultivation world—all thanks to Gu Mo.
It wasn't just his battle power, but also his identity. His status as a true disciple of Shennong Valley had long since been exposed. Gu Mo himself didn't care. With Fenghua Sect now reduced to history, he no longer needed to worry about the risk of exposure.
If his power and identity were deterrents, then his identity as an alchemist was the lure. Whenever Gu Mo took action, the result was invariably a high-grade pill.
With the same ingredients, other alchemists would only produce middle-grade or even low-grade pills—but if Gu Mo made them, they would always come out high-grade.
The difference of just one rank in pill quality meant several times the efficacy. Under such conditions, cultivators were willing to queue just to ask Gu Mo to refine pills for them.
This left Gu Mo with a stockpile of pills he had no use for. As a result, he gave most of them to Yuan Niya, which allowed her cultivation to progress rapidly as well. She was already close to Golden Core Great Perfection.
However, excessive reliance on pills inevitably left behind traces of pill toxins in the body. At such times, Gu Mo would perform a perfected-level Cleansing Technique to purify her.
Through this, Gu Mo constantly updated Yuan Niya's physical data. Many metrics had grown, signs of genuine progress. Of course, there were areas where the apparent change was large, but in truth it was only superficial.
Chu Feifei, on the other hand, was the real deal. When Gu Mo updated Yuan Niya's body data, he naturally updated Chu Feifei's as well.
Chu Feifei hadn't refused.
"Gu Mo, do you want the position of Sect Master?" Yuan Niya gave Gu Mo a sideways glance before settling onto the cushion beside Chu Feifei.
If Gu Mo wanted to be Qinglu Sect Master, absolutely no one would oppose him.
"No!"
Gu Mo rejected it without hesitation. He had no intention of wasting time on such matters.
"Feifei, what about you?"
Yuan Niya leaned against Chu Feifei, inhaling the fragrance that drifted from her body, looking intoxicated. Only in moments like this could she feel completely at ease.
"No!"
Chu Feifei shook her head with a smile, then extended her arms to hug Yuan Niya. A faint, elegant fragrance wafted from her body, soothing Yuan Niya's mind. Before long, Yuan Niya involuntarily slipped into a special state.
In this state, her cultivation technique began to operate automatically, several times more efficient than self-cultivation. This, too, was one of the abilities of Chu Feifei's fragrance.
As her cultivation grew, the effects of that fragrance also continued to strengthen. Of all its types, however, the one that induced states of insight was undeniably the most powerful.
Bathed in that insight-inducing fragrance, Gu Mo once again began contemplating his plan of refining an avatar with the mysterious blood.
The small room soon filled with a drifting fragrance. The three of them quietly settled into cultivation and comprehension.
Tianyuan Cultivation World.
"Have you noticed the number of zombies decreasing?" The sect masters of the three righteous sects—who also led the efforts against the zombie tide—were at that moment discussing the situation.
"I suspect part of the zombie horde has left the Tianyuan Realm and gone elsewhere," said the Yin-Yang Sword Sect Master.
"What would be the point of leaving the Tianyuan Realm?" asked the Shennong Valley Master, frowning. The zombie horde hadn't even subdued the Tianyuan Realm yet, so what sense was there in splitting their forces? What was more, many of the ones that left were Nascent Soul-level zombies. Their departure had greatly eased the pressure on Tianyuan Realm.
"They're searching for that headless corpse's head!" All at once, the Taiqing Sect Master realized with a jolt.
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