Not long after Mu Feng, the High Priest, passed away, a letter arrived from Kou Hongying, far away at Condensing Moon Palace.
The content of the letter was simple.
Aside from greetings and a few polite words, Kou Hongying mainly mentioned one thing—she had formed her Golden Core.
She also mentioned that after stabilizing her realm, she planned to bring her disciple Qiu Huaisu to pay a visit to Fen Shan Tribe.
The reason was that Qiu Huaisu still missed Wei Tu, the one who had led her out of suffering and helped her enter Mirror Water Pavilion.
After giving it some thought, Wei Tu decided to write back and decline.
First there was Qi Chengchu, and now there was the Soul-Binding Sect.
He had quite a bit of trouble on his hands.
If Kou Hongying and her disciple came to Fen Shan Tribe now and leaked any information, there was a good chance they might suffer an ambush just like Su Bing'er.
That was a risk he couldn't afford to take.
If it could be avoided, it should be avoided as much as possible.
After finishing the reply, Wei Tu sealed the letter with a restriction and called for Yan Yu outside.
Two years ago, after Wei Yan went into closed-door cultivation to break through, he had handed over some minor tasks, like handling incoming and outgoing letters, to Yan Yu.
—Over the years, Wei Tu had come to place a certain level of trust in Yan Yu.
"High Priest." The curvy, leopard-skirted Yan Yu stepped into the cultivation room and bowed respectfully to Wei Tu.
"The departed are gone, but the living still need to live on. Miss Yan, don't let this disrupt your state of mind," Wei Tu said, seeing that traces of tears still lingered on her face.
Several years ago, when Mu Feng was still alive, he had already told Wei Tu about Yan Yu's constitution.
Yan Yu possessed the bloodline of a witch god.
Though not quite on the level of a spiritual body, if she cultivated steadily, she had a high chance of reaching the realm of High Priest.
However, if her Dao heart became unstable, then no matter how good her constitution, it would be useless.
…
Over the years, Wei Tu had gained some understanding of the witch god bloodline within Ying Ding Tribe.
Before the Immortal Dao took root, the Kang Kingdom practiced secret witchcraft techniques. Those who reached the peak of this path were called witch gods.
Witch gods were on par with Nascent Soul Venerable Masters.
The witch god bloodline was basically a diluted version of true witch god lineage.
Much like Qiu Huaisu and her brother.
However, the siblings were merely descended from Nascent Soul cultivators, placing them a bit lower than true witch god bloodlines.
…
"Thank you for the reminder, High Priest." Yan Yu knew she had lost composure. She wiped away her tears and accepted the envelope before bowing out to deliver it to the post station in Hujie Immortal City.
Just as she was about to leave, she suddenly remembered something. She took out a jade slip and offered it to Wei Tu with both hands. "High Priest, this is the 'Dingyang Pill' recipe sent a few days ago by Fairy Baohua."
Half a month before Mu Feng's death, Wei Tu had been busy refining pills in the pill room and couldn't afford distractions. Since the Dingyang Pill wasn't urgent, Yan Yu hadn't brought it up right away. Afterward, with Mu Feng's passing and her own grief, she had completely forgotten about it.
Wei Tu's reminder had brought it back to mind.
Even a broken ship still has a few nails.
Though Dan Dao was not highly regarded in the Ying Ding Tribe, as one of Kang Kingdom's major powers, the royal court of Ying Ding had been quietly collecting pill recipes from the Immortal Dao for years.
The Dingyang Pill was one of them.
The Dingyang Pill was a second-rank high-grade pill, with effects similar to the Blood Tempering Pill, used to purify the bloodlines of spirit beasts.
Over the past twenty years, Wei Tu had fed the Mountain-Crushing Bear cub plenty of Blood Tempering Pills. At first, they worked well, but over time, the effect diminished.
The cub had developed some resistance to the pill.
That's why Wei Tu had asked Fairy Baohua to help him look for an alternative recipe within the Ying Ding Tribe.
"Some of the herbs are the same as the Blood Tempering Pill, but… the main ingredient is Chiyang Ginseng?"
Wei Tu glanced at the jade slip and frowned.
Chiyang Ginseng mainly grew in the Hengmian Valley at the border between Kang and Chu Kingdoms. It was rarely seen in territories controlled by the Kang people.
"Well, that makes sense. This recipe was collected from the Immortal Dao. Naturally, the herbs would mostly come from Cangnan territory," Wei Tu thought.
With that in mind, he took out a jade pendant from his robe and gently rubbed it.
This pendant was the token that Yu Tong had given him more than twenty years ago when they parted.
Yu Tong was now a guest elder of the Wufu Merchant Guild. Wei Tu could ask him to help find Chiyang Ginseng and also… Vajra Fruit.
At the Jing Kingdom's auction last time, he had given up bidding on the Vajra Fruit, a powerful body refinement treasure from the Ten Thousand Buddha Temple of the Xiao Kingdom, due to fears of exposing his identity.
Now that he had established himself in the Ying Ding Tribe and accumulated a fair number of spirit stones through pill and talisman trades over the years, it was time to turn to the Wufu Merchant Guild to buy treasures like the Vajra Fruit to boost his body cultivation.
Wei Tu didn't hurry to leave Fen Shan Tribe. He flew down from the Pagoda Tower and made his way to a quiet, spacious courtyard within Yan Fen Mountain.
Roar! Roar!
From a craggy rock formation, a yellow bear cub, the size of a head, crawled out from a crack. Upon seeing Wei Tu, it hurriedly rolled and stumbled into a nearby bamboo grove, poked its head out, and peeked at him nervously.
Over the years, Wei Tu had been feeding it Blood Tempering Pills and various spirit herbs. While these were beneficial to its body, the taste of the herbs was far from pleasant.
Wei Tu didn't say much. He waved his hand, and the Mountain-Crushing Bear, sulking in the bamboo grove, slowly walked out with drooping head and rubbed its snout against Wei Tu's robe.
"Mid-stage first rank, almost at the peak. It won't be long before it reaches the late stage." Wei Tu hugged the bear and swept his divine sense over its cultivation.
The Mountain-Crushing Bear had a genuine Earth-rank bloodline, and even carried a trace of its ancestor, the Mountain Giant Bear's true spirit bloodline. Its lineage was extraordinary.
If he hadn't been using Blood Tempering Pills all along to refine its bloodline, the Mountain-Crushing Bear would likely have reached late-stage first rank long ago and remained there for five or six years already.
"This time, Little Shan, you're coming with me out of Fen Shan Tribe," Wei Tu said as he stroked the bear's head and opened the spirit beast pouch at his waist.
For cultivators, those who emerged from trials and hardship had far greater potential than those who lived in comfort.
It was the same for spirit beasts.
Though the Mountain-Crushing Bear was on the verge of a breakthrough, its foundation was still somewhat shaky. It needed tempering.
This time, he was taking it out of Fen Shan Tribe to find some wild beasts to help it gain combat experience.
The Mountain-Crushing Bear hesitated for a moment, then nodded in a daze and climbed into Wei Tu's spirit beast pouch.
Then—
Wei Tu turned into a streak of green light and rose from Yan Fen Mountain, flying toward Hujie Immortal City.
In the blink of an eye, he vanished without a trace.
…
Along the way,
Wei Tu moved at a steady pace,
searching for wild beasts to give the Mountain-Crushing Bear live combat experience.
Compared to its father, the Mountain-Crushing Bear had not yet awakened any innate divine ability, and its means of attack were still limited.
Fortunately, its bloodline was strong, and its skin and flesh were thick. Even if it couldn't win right away, it could outlast the enemy.
"About to break through?" Wei Tu murmured with a faint smile after one month, watching the bear wrestle with a Rock-Spotted Ram and sensing that it was nearing the breakthrough to late-stage first rank.
He had raised the Mountain-Crushing Bear for a long time, feeding it an uncountable number of Blood Tempering Pills and herbs.
Now, after experiencing life-and-death battle, the remaining medicinal power in its body had finally been used up.
Naturally, it stepped into the late stage of the first rank.
After waiting for a quarter of an hour,
the Mountain-Crushing Bear let out a roar on the grassland, flipping the struggling Rock-Spotted Ram with brute strength. It pounded its chest with its paws, then slashed forward, ripping open the ram's soft belly with a flash of spiritual light.
The Rock-Spotted Ram howled, flipped back onto its feet, and opened its mouth, spitting out a thumb-sized dark red demon core aimed straight at the bear.
Swish! Swish!
Wei Tu appeared just in time, flashing in front of the Rock-Spotted Ram. He caught the dark red demon core in his right hand and erased the ram's spiritual imprint from it.
With its demon core removed and already heavily wounded, the Rock-Spotted Ram collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
"Roar! Roar!" The Mountain-Crushing Bear glanced at Wei Tu gratefully, then calmed its spirit and focused its demon power and bloodline to steadily raise its cultivation realm.
A few days later—
The Mountain-Crushing Bear successfully broke through.
But unlike what Wei Tu expected, instead of growing larger, it actually shrank a bit and looked leaner than before.
"The bloodline has strengthened again. At this rate, by late-stage second rank, it might be close to a Heaven-rank bloodline."
Wei Tu swept his divine sense over the Mountain-Crushing Bear's demon body and couldn't help but smile with surprise.
A beast with Heaven-rank bloodline could very well touch the threshold of fourth rank and become a Heavenly Demon on par with a Nascent Soul ancestor.
After feeding the Mountain-Crushing Bear more pills,
Wei Tu put it back into the spirit beast pouch and flew straight to Hujie Immortal City, over a hundred li away.
Half a month ago, Wei Tu had sent a formal greeting to Yu Tong at the Wufu Merchant Guild's branch. Judging by the time, Yu Tong should be back in Ying Ding Tribe by now.
Upon arriving in Ying Ding Tribe,
before he even had time to visit the Wufu Merchant Guild, Fairy Baohua came looking for Wei Tu first and brought up the matter of the Sacred Spring Conference.
"In another eighteen years, the Sacred Spring Conference between the three great tribes will take place. I wonder if Fellow Daoist Wei is interested in the Sword Trial Competition?"
Wei Tu had heard bits and pieces about the Sword Trial Competition over the years.
There was only one Sacred Spring, but the Kang people had three royal courts. Each wanted to monopolize the spring for as long as possible, so they held a Sword Trial Competition modeled after the Immortal Dao sects to decide the distribution of the spring's use.
Participants of the competition had to be under four hundred years old.
At Golden Core stage, four hundred years was still considered young.
And Wei Tu's age was well within four hundred, not even reaching three hundred yet.
He definitely qualified to enter.
"I prefer alchemy and talismans. In combat, I can't compare to others. I'd better not," Wei Tu thought for a moment, then shook his head and declined.
At the Sacred Spring Conference, as an outsider, it wouldn't be proper for him to steal the spotlight.
No need to waste one of Ying Ding Tribe's slots.
"True, Fellow Daoist Wei's life has indeed lacked any dazzling battle achievements," Fairy Baohua nodded in agreement.