Chapter 279: Fifth-Rank Spirit Vein
Gu Mo paid no attention to the prying gazes, though he had underestimated how seriously those outsiders took the Immortal's relics.
Before he even left, a late-stage Nascent Soul cultivator appeared. "Fellow Daoist, did you happen to exchange for an Immortal's relic? I'm willing to buy it for a high price—whatever cultivation methods or secret arts you desire, I have them."
"No, I just came to broaden my horizons." Gu Mo shook his head.
"Is that so? Immortal relics are beyond your grasp. If you really exchanged one, you'd best sell it sooner rather than later." The Nascent Soul cultivator clearly didn't believe him. Because Gu Mo refused to cooperate, his tone carried an undercurrent of threat.
To the outsiders' sects, the Immortal's relics had long been declared their exclusive property. They absolutely would not allow cultivators from this small world to obtain them.
"Oh."
Gu Mo answered indifferently, then drifted away.
"Hmph!"
Seeing how impervious he was, the Nascent Soul cultivator's face darkened. Still, he did not make a move—this place wasn't suitable.
"Sigh!"
Many local cultivators sighed at the scene. They could already foresee that Nascent Soul's fate. But the outsiders were simply too strong; the locals couldn't resist. In many matters, they could only endure.
"So they did follow after all."
Once he left the Immortal City, Gu Mo quickly noticed he was being tailed. He wasn't surprised. The outsiders were indeed overbearing, and he didn't mind letting them cool off.
With that thought, Gu Mo stopped walking.
Two figures soon appeared: the same late-stage Nascent Soul cultivator from before, and another—a Soul Transformation expert.
Clearly, to prevent Gu Mo from escaping, the outsiders had sent a Soul Transformation as backup.
After all, by the Nascent Soul stage, everyone had some life-preserving methods. Especially their escape techniques: without suppression from a higher realm, it was hard to pin them down. With a Soul Transformation sitting in command, they could be absolutely sure of success. And without evidence, even if the locals guessed, what could they do?
"Fellow Daoist, as I said, an Immortal's relic is not something you can handle." The Nascent Soul cultivator smiled faintly at Gu Mo.
"Oh? So you mean to kill me and seize the treasure?" Gu Mo's expression was calm. To that late-stage Nascent Soul, however, such calmness looked like provocation.
"You're seeking death!"
The Nascent Soul cultivator coldly snorted and lunged forward to capture him.
But the Soul Transformation stopped him. A Nascent Soul at the early stage, yet facing a Soul Transformation with such composure—this was either reliance or idiocy. And no idiot could have cultivated to Nascent Soul. The only explanation: this man had a trump card, likely one of Soul Transformation caliber.
If the younger cultivator rashly made a move, it could be dangerous. Since the relic would end up in his own hands anyway, the Soul Transformation didn't mind bullying the weak a little.
After all, this late-stage Nascent Soul was his junior. Since the youth had called him over at once, how could he, as a senior, watch his junior fall into danger?
When a Soul Transformation strikes, heaven itself tilts.
This wasn't Gu Mo's first time confronting such power—his incarnation had once been slain by a Demonic Sect Soul Transformation.
But Gu Mo was no longer who he had been. He now unleashed the soul-force gained from refining Fifth-Rank Solar Essence. In an instant, he too grasped the power to command heaven and earth—the very essence of the Soul Transformation realm.
"As expected…"
Sensing Gu Mo's eruption of power, the outsider's Soul Transformation nodded inwardly. So this was the man's reliance.
"Buzz!"
Two forces of heaven-commanding might collided, shaking the world. Even the late-stage Nascent Soul trembled, drenched in cold sweat. If not for his caution in calling a Soul Transformation, had he acted alone, the consequences would have been dire.
Luckily, his senior had taken action. That Nascent Soul, even with such a trump card, could not match a true Soul Transformation.
Just as the late-stage Nascent Soul prepared to enjoy the spectacle of the local being slain, suddenly, a vast purple maw tore open in the void. With one bite, it swallowed the Soul Transformation locked with Gu Mo.
"Wh—what!"
The shock came too suddenly. The Nascent Soul cultivator's face froze in disbelief. How could a Soul Transformation vanish in an instant, not even his primordial spirit escaping?
"Not good!"
After horror came terror. But it was already too late. Without the Soul Transformation blocking, Gu Mo's heaven-crushing might swept over him.
Against such power, the Nascent Soul had no chance. Body and core alike were annihilated.
Having finished, Gu Mo drifted away.
Immortal City of Tianyuan.
"Hm? Was that a Soul Transformation battle just now?" Other outsiders looked into the distance. They had sensed the disruption of heaven's power—something only Soul Transformation could wield.
But it ended so quickly. Too quickly for them to be certain. After all, two Soul Transformations shouldn't settle victory and defeat in a blink—unless one utterly overwhelmed the other.
Yet in this little world, no such overwhelming power should exist. And they all belonged to the same sect; they wouldn't fight each other. That would break sect law.
"Must've been Zhu Lei. He left earlier, said some native might've exchanged for an Immortal's relic." One Soul Transformation spoke.
"Greedy, isn't he."
Another shook his head. He disapproved of looting locals. It bred resentment. Even if the natives lacked strength to resist, accumulated grudges could cut deep at critical moments.
"Heh, just a bunch of natives. Trading them our techniques is already a great favor. Do they even understand how to use Immortal Stones properly?" A different Soul Transformation disagreed.
"Where is Zhu Lei, anyway? Why hasn't he returned?" someone suddenly asked. The heavenly disruption had quieted long ago, yet Zhu Lei was nowhere in sight.
"Don't tell me he's hiding to avoid treating us." One chuckled.
"Heh, if he got an Immortal Stone, he must bleed a little."
"Indeed. He can dodge us for a while, but not forever."
Several Nascent Soul cultivators were deep in discussion, but none of them would have imagined that the companion they spoke of had already fallen. After all, that cultivator's soul lamp had not gone out.
After being swallowed by the Maw Flower, the victim did not die immediately. Instead, they would endure a process of digestion. At the Maw Flower's digestion rate, it would take about half a day to completely dissolve both body and nascent soul. Only then would that cultivator truly be considered dead.
With this half-day buffer, those outsider Nascent Souls would no longer have any chance of finding Gu Mo.
Inside the cave-heaven space.
Gu Mo buried the exchanged Immortal Stone into his spirit field. Immediately, he noticed the surrounding spiritual energy beginning to gather around the stone. This was the start of forming a new spiritual vein, and judging by the signs, this vein would definitely reach the fifth tier.
"This Immortal Stone really is a fine treasure," Gu Mo said in pleasant surprise. Only by forming a spiritual vein could the density of spiritual energy be maintained without decline.
However, for this vein to fully form, Gu Mo still needed to provide it with a sufficient supply of spiritual energy. Conveniently, the Maw Flower was at that moment digesting a true Nascent Soul cultivator—not a zombie of the same realm, but a genuine one. The spiritual energy derived from such digestion was leagues above what a Nascent Soul-level zombie could provide.
Moreover, after finishing its meal, the Maw Flower spat out a storage ring. This was the collection of a Nascent Soul from a great world—something that immediately drew Gu Mo's interest.
Over several days, Gu Mo carefully broke through the restrictions on the storage ring. One had to admit, the methods of the great world were indeed far superior to those of a small one. The complexity of the ring's prohibitions alone was on a different level.
Fortunately, the owner was dead. Otherwise, the ring could never have been cracked.
With anticipation, Gu Mo extended his divine sense into the ring. Inside, he saw many spiritual materials and treasures he had never encountered before—clearly specialties of the great world.
In addition, there were numerous cultivation manuals and secret techniques, the very sort that outsiders used for exchange with local cultivators.
Such inheritances, of course, were useless to Gu Mo. His Shennong Hundred Herbs Classic inheritance already extended straight to the Great Ascension stage.
"Hm? These are supreme-grade spirit stones!"
Suddenly, Gu Mo spotted a sizable number of special spirit stones he was very familiar with: supreme-grade spirit stones.
As expected, the wealth of a Soul Transformation cultivator was indeed considerable. With these stones, Gu Mo's fifth-tier spiritual vein would be practically assured.
Just as he predicted, after burying the supreme-grade stones and with the Heaven-and-Earth Nascent Soul assisting, a genuine fifth-tier spiritual vein was successfully formed within the cave-heaven space.
With the spiritual vein established, the fields it nourished also advanced to fifth-tier spirit fields.
"Excellent!"
Looking at the several acres now radiating dense spiritual energy, Gu Mo could not help but smile. At last, he no longer had to cling to that tiny patch of fifth-tier spirit field.
With these several acres, he could now expand his cultivation of fifth-tier Sunflowers, yielding more fifth-tier Sun Essence.
Fifth-tier Sun Essence was the key resource for upgrading fifth-tier plants, and at the same time, it was Gu Mo's crucial stepping stone toward the Nascent Soul realm.
"Time to return to the Qinghe Immortal Realm."
For the time being, Gu Mo planned to enter a farming mode. Until those acres of fifth-tier Sunflowers were fully planted, he had no intention of venturing out recklessly again.
With that, Gu Mo patted the dust from his robes and went back to farming.
Meanwhile, the outsider Nascent Souls were in an uproar. They had just learned that one of their brethren's soul lamps had gone out. A Nascent Soul had perished, silently and utterly, without even a nascent soul escaping.
The shock of this was immense. To achieve such a feat would require at least a late-stage Nascent Soul.
"This is impossible. How could a mere small world possess a late-stage Nascent Soul powerhouse?" one of them protested, unwilling to believe.
The three local Nascent Souls of this world they had already met, and all were only at early-stage Nascent Soul.
"That's not certain. This small world has both a Corpse Immortal and Immortal relics. For it to harbor a late-stage Nascent Soul isn't that strange."
"Hmph. Those natives must be hiding something from us."
"What? A Nascent Soul has fallen?"
Before long, the three local Nascent Souls—Venerable Qing and his peers—received the news as well. They were stunned. They themselves had no idea that their realm possessed anyone of such cultivation.
Still, surprise aside, the death of an outsider cultivator brought them no small joy. After all, those outsiders had been far too domineering. Now, with a mysterious figure strong enough to make them wary, the outsiders would at least tread more carefully.
As for the possibility of the outsiders turning on them, the three locals were untroubled. With the Corpse Immortal and the Immortal relics present, as long as the outsiders still had designs on these opportunities, they would not dare to tear things apart completely.
Of course, after this incident, the outsiders would likely dispatch mid- to late-stage Nascent Souls. But this was no bad thing for the Tianyuan Immortal Realm—the zombie tide was growing ever larger.
In the Nine Nether Domain.
"Good, very good!"
The remnant soul absorbed pure soul force, harvested from the cultivator souls hunted by the zombie tide. This intake restored it considerably.
Naturally, as the remnant soul absorbed, Yao Shifeng secretly siphoned some for himself as well, boosting his strength.
The remnant soul did not stop him. He understood well that without such improvement, the youth would grow uneasy and cease to cooperate.
"Still not enough!"
After finishing the feast, the remnant soul felt unsatisfied.
"My lord, the enemy side has already produced a late-stage Nascent Soul. Our own losses have been heavy, and our harvests are not what they once were," one of the Demon Sect's Nascent Souls reported.
"Heh, ridiculous. Do they think sending a few Nascent Souls will be enough to suppress me?" The remnant soul sneered, and in the next moment, its awareness returned to its true body.
Instantly, one of the fingers of that towering headless corpse twitched. Three streams of pure deathly qi shot out, burrowing into the bodies of the three Demon Sect Nascent Souls.
At once, their cultivation bases soared, climbing rapidly until all three reached late-stage Nascent Soul.
"Thank you for your grace, my lord!"
Overjoyed by the surge of boundless power, the three bowed fervently. Never would they have imagined that after becoming zombies, their cultivation could advance so drastically.
"Do well, and your rewards will not be lacking." The remnant soul's voice sounded weary. Each use of its true body consumed an immense portion of its own strength. Still, with three late-stage Nascent Soul zombies—zombies with intelligence, no less—they now had the means to deal with that outsider late-stage Nascent Soul.
Such a soul would make a most satisfying feast.
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