'Once I select the trees with the potential for spirituality, I can use the Spirit Awakening Technique to open their consciousness!'
Qi Ping intended to perform this awakening indiscriminately. Whether they were high-ranking spirit trees at the Soul Transformation or Nascent Soul level, mid-tier trees at the Qi Refining level, or even common mortal wood without any rank, he planned to awaken and nurture them all.
In the history of the cultivation world, there were many instances of mortal beasts and commoners ascending to the heavens. There were also legends of ordinary trees in sacred lands evolving into Immortal-grade spirit wood!
As long as he established a proper promotion system and a resource supply chain—allowing them to regularly nourish the spirit veins with spiritual essence and earn promotion resources in return—the system would function. Provided the cycle between heaven and earth was maintained, Qi Ping could sustain even millions of treant spirits!
'I will let Lin Yue handle the creation of this promotion system. I only need to review and optimize it later.'
'Once a vast number of spirit trees are awakened, the focus will shift to how they are nurtured...'
'When encountering those with the potential to become Immortal-grade trees, I must have a suitable cultivation system in place.'
In truth, the cultivation world never lacked individuals with extraordinary talent. What was lacking was opportunity, resources, and a tailored cultivation system. What Qi Ping needed to do now was research the most suitable cultivation method for these spirit trees!
In this world, unless a spirit tree manifested as a human, had a grandmaster create a bespoke manual for it, or was lucky enough to stumble upon a perfectly compatible technique, it could only rely on instinct to absorb the essence of the sun, moon, heaven, and earth. This method was far too slow. If not for the advantage of their incredibly long lifespans, the difficulty of their advancement would be many times higher.
Even the existing cultivation system for Treant Warriors did not entirely satisfy Qi Ping. That ability focused primarily on turning a tree into a treant once it possessed enough spirituality, granting it more flexible offensive power and combat traits. Once transformed, most of their abilities were generic: hardened bodies, regeneration through absorbing earth energy, and the manipulation of plants or specific nature spells.
It wasn't that the ability was poor; in fact, it was quite decent. Whether it was the regeneration through rooting in the earth or the formidable defense, these were powerful traits. If gathered into a super legion or a specialized formation, they would possess terrifying combat strength!
However, for a Treant Warrior, this felt far too rigid. Compared to the rich variety of techniques and spells in the cultivation world, these abilities were easily countered. Most importantly, it failed to truly tap into the trees' latent potential!
Qi Ping's true goal was to nurture Immortal-grade trees, so he had to teach according to their individual aptitudes!
'But if I want to teach according to aptitude, I must create a universal prototype of spells suitable for various trees. Attributes like Yin and Yang, the Five Elements, Wind, Lightning, Ice, and so on must be comprehensive and diverse...'
Qi Ping felt quite confident in this regard. His status as an Earth Immortal Druid provided him with terrifying soul power and recovery capabilities. With his level of comprehension, creating simple spell prototypes was a trivial task. As long as he dedicated some time over the long years ahead to research and create these foundational spell templates, he could accumulate a vast library for the spirit trees to choose from.
Furthermore, the process of creating spells was a form of enlightenment and cultivation for Qi Ping himself, so it wasn't a waste of time. Most importantly, if he could nurture Immortal-grade spirit trees, everything would be worth it.
'After possessing these spell prototypes, the most important factor is the Spell Imprinting ability.'
This was a specialized power derived from the Treant Spirit Contract. Spell Imprinting allowed him to screen for suitable skills and let the Treant Spirits learn the imprinted spells at maximum speed. Furthermore, based on their own circumstances, they would continuously optimize the spell until it became the version most suited for them!
Spell Imprinting was truly a god-level ability for teaching according to aptitude! With this, why should he worry about being unable to filter out the strongest and most promising spirit trees?
'Once the Spell Imprinting is complete, the first step is finished. Next, I'll watch their personal cultivation and then select the ones with the highest potential to form a contract with, turning them into Treant Warriors for further nurturing!'
Qi Ping did not intend to turn every tree into a Treant Warrior. Ordinary Treant Warriors were of little use; only those who could truly keep up with his footsteps and had the potential to reach the Immortal-grade would be candidates for his contracts.
Simply put, Qi Ping had divided the screening into two steps: first, identifying those with the highest spiritual talent, and second, selecting those with the greatest potential. Only at this stage would he begin personalized, targeted nurturing, much like training his own animal companions!
'However, even those spirit trees without exceptional potential but with decent spirituality aren't useless. They can be like the human geniuses, becoming the powerful foundation of the Azure Heaven Domain!'
Qi Ping felt that if he could nurture a million treant spirits in the Azure Heaven Domain, it would inevitably elevate the domain's strength by a massive margin! Moreover, he could utilize these spirits to enhance the spirit veins!
He even considered using these treant spirits to form a special Mountain-River Grand Array covering the entire Azure Heaven Domain, drastically increasing its defensive capabilities. The power brought by a million spirits would be absolutely staggering.
'Then the plan for nurturing Immortal-grade Treant Warriors is settled!'
Qi Ping couldn't help but look forward to it. Which unique spiritual seeds would become the trees that aspired to the pinnacle?
'I imagine I'm the only one in the entire cultivation world who would nurture spirit trees like this!'
Qi Ping felt that this was exactly what a Treant Warden should look like!
Amidst his thoughts, another idea suddenly struck him. Why not use the usage rights of the 4th-grade spirit vein's core locations to trade for the corpses of Soul Transformation-grade demon insects?
'Soul Transformation techniques and resources should work as well. There must be quite a few Soul Transformation demon insect corpses stored across the Star-Sea Continent...'