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Qing Xuanling and Xuan Dan attempted to refine the storage ring together.
As Qing Xuanling had anticipated, she and Xuan Dan, originating from the same source, shared identical divine sense. While this might change over time with the practice of certain special techniques, for now, it was an incredible advantage they possessed.
Refining an artifact that had belonged to a cultivator at the peak of the Qi Refinement stage while being only at the intermediate stage was no simple task. As cultivation levels increased, the improvement gained from each small breakthrough became significantly larger.
Thus, the difference between Qing Xuanling's divine sense and that of the fox-masked man was more than tenfold. This meant not only that Qing Xuanling had to exert far more effort to dissipate every tiny fragment of the divine sense seal, but also that the seal itself was immensely extensive.
In simple terms, the divine sense seal within the spatial ring consisted of ten parts. Qing Xuanling had to spend an average of five hours just to dissipate one part of the seal.
Afterward, she had to rest for nearly seven hours to recover her divine sense. Unlike Qi, divine sense took an eternity to regenerate. Even with Xuan Dan's help, the process didn't speed up much.
Qing Xunaling's face lit up with defiance, causing Xuan Dan's face to darken with worry.
"Even if it takes a whole week, I will make sure this storage ring becomes mine!"
After one day, they had only removed four parts of the seal.
The second day, seven parts of the seal.
By the third day, Qing Xuanling and Xuan Dan were lying on the floor, their faces pale.
"...I'm never doing this again," Xuan Dan murmured weakly.
Qing Xuanling smiled faintly. Although she was completely exhausted, suffering from constant headaches and lacking the energy to do anything, if given the chance to repeat the process of the last three days, she would do it again.
Using her divine sense to dissipate a divine sense seal had been, unsurprisingly, excellent training for her divine sense. She felt it had increased by ten percent compared to three days ago.
Although the improvement might seem insignificant, it absolutely wasn't. Especially since the only way she knew to improve her divine sense was by improving her cultivation.
An extra ten percent, gained in the process of refining a very useful artifact, was above all, a great bargain. She would be willing to receive another ten rings just to dissipate their divine sense seals.
She took a few more minutes to rest before finally standing up and staring fixedly at the bronze ring, whose appearance gave no hint of its true identity as one of the most sought-after artifacts by cultivators.
Her divine sense, somewhat faint after the great exertion, slid into the ring and seemed to be absorbed into a completely black and empty space. Qing Xuanling sensed the space with her divine sense for a few more seconds before beginning to form her own seal.
Qing Xuanling controlled her divine sense to form complex shapes, failing several times at first. To her surprise, her control over her divine sense was quite poor.
Forming the seal with divine sense felt like trying to do origami with the hands of a two-year-old!
Gradually, Qing Xuanling slowed her pace and began to slowly experiment with her divine sense. She familiarized herself with it, performing some "basic" exercises to improve her control until she finally achieved the mastery necessary to leave her seal inside the storage ring.
'Almost three hours just on this, but I think it will be worth it!'
Qing Xuanling's divine sense split hundreds of times, transforming into hundreds of threads that slowly joined together to form a large figure. Sweat trickled down the forehead of Qing Xuanling, who was sitting cross-legged.
Slowly, the threads of divine sense formed a character! The character Qing!
A clear sound resonated in Qing Xuanling's mind when the last thread of divine sense formed the character Qing.
"I did it!" She jumped up. "Finally! Damn, this really did take long!"
Xuan Dan, who had long since collapsed on the floor, looked at Qing Xuanling's pale but excited face and finally couldn't bear it any longer, losing consciousness on the spot!
Although Xuan Dan found it indignating, his divine sense was not as abundant or potent as Qing Xuanling's, despite her constantly using hers to create pills. Thus, Xuan Dan ended up much more tired after keeping up with Qing Xuanling's pace.
"Uhh... I think I overdid it. Next time I should go slower." Qing Xuanling scratched her cheek upon seeing Xuan Dan's state, but her attention quickly returned to the storage ring. "Anyway, let's see what kind of beauties are hidden in this storage ring!"
Qing Xuanling mobilized the little divine sense she had left toward the storage ring. A space of fifty cubic meters appeared in her mind. Her eyes widened in disbelief!
A storage ring with such a large internal space was extremely expensive! It cost at least more than two hundred thousand spirit stones!
A bright smile appeared on Qing Xuanling's face, and she quickly began to carefully inspect the items inside the storage ring, which turned out to be quite abundant. She was basically drooling as she counted the items.
"Several Level 2 spiritual medicines, tens of thousands of spirit stones, various spiritual materials, first and second-level artifacts, along with several jade slips that might contain secret techniques! And above all, there are more than a thousand mid-grade spirit stones!"
Qing Xuanling's breathing accelerated. Mid-grade spirit stones, besides being much harder to obtain, were more than a hundred times more valuable than low-grade spirit stones, which were what most cultivators used.
One mid-grade spirit stone could practically be exchanged for one hundred low-grade spirit stones!
So, those more than a thousand mid-grade spirit stones had added more than one hundred thousand low-grade spirit stones to Qing Xuanling's fortune! She even doubted that the elders of her family had that many spirit stones!
Qing Xuanling was so excited she almost jumped for joy, but her excitement soon faded, and a doubt arose in her heart.
'Why did the fox-masked man have such valuable things on him?'
She quickly realized that this matter was not simple. After considering several unlikely possibilities, Qing Xuanling had no choice but to change her strategy. Instead of walking blindly, she began to inspect the jade slips for information.
Qing Xuanling's divine sense entered the jade slips as large amounts of information flooded her head.
Most of it, just as she had thought, consisted of some secret techniques and ancient notes.
But Qing Xuanling felt a bit surprised. The quantity of secret techniques and notes was quite high. Her doubts increased after realizing this. It was only when she read the information in the last jade slip that she understood.
"Whoa... I must say that guy had very bad luck." Qing Xuanling shook her head, finally understanding what had happened.
The fox-masked man was named Jing Chudi, the youngest and most talented elder of a Foundation Establishment family. The Jing family, unlike the Qing clan, had been a clan lucky enough to have an ancestor who reached the Foundation Establishment realm after many years of remaining a Qi Refinement family.
The Jing family rose rapidly with their ancestor in the Foundation Establishment realm, annexing several families in the process and securing a vast amount of wealth. However, good times are destined to end at some point.
More than two hundred years had passed since that ancestor reached the Foundation Establishment realm, and for some reason, no descendant of the Jing family had been able to follow in his footsteps.
This was obviously a great danger for the Jing family. Fearing that the family could not withstand the strong winds of the world after his death, the Jing family ancestor decided to completely divide the family in an attempt to survive.
He divided the wealth and the most talented people of the clan and sent them in different directions, trying to avoid the numerous enemies they had created over time.
Jing Chudi was, specifically, the great-grandson of that ancestor. The reason he was so desperate to get Ye Fan was that he knew a secret of his ancestor: his father was not human, but a Devouring Boa that had reached the third level and somehow obtained a human form.
His excitement upon discovering a child like Ye Fan was predictable. If his thoughts weren't mistaken, the reason his grandfather had reached the Foundation Establishment realm was due to his lineage. Therefore, if the Jing family had descendants with Ye Fan, it was likely that the family's latent talent would awaken, and they would manage to obtain another cultivator in the Foundation Establishment realm!
Unfortunately, Jing Chudi, who carried thirty percent of the Jing family's wealth, ended up encountering Qing Xuanling and her companions...
Qing Xuanling had a bitter expression on her face. "The twists of life are, without a doubt, impossible to predict. That the Jing family's biggest reserve asset died will undoubtedly be a hard blow for them.... I wonder if they will ever be able to rise again."
She didn't feel particularly moved, but she felt some admiration for how decisive the Jing family ancestor had been. It was a pity that his descendants were so useless.
"Although this resulted in me getting all of this, so I guess everything is fine!" Qing Xuanling left the matter behind with a happy smile.
Such things were not rare in the world. Reaching the Foundation Establishment realm was harder than going against the heavens, so less than one in a hundred forces could maintain a constant flow of cultivators in the Foundation Establishment realm.
Especially for a force like the Jing family, which emerged from an extremely peaceful southern city with low-level spiritual veins.
Cases like the Qing clan, which has existed for a little over a thousand years and yet counts several Foundation Establishment cultivators, are mainly due to luck and the harsh environment where they were established.
The Qing clan was not only created in Ziyu City, a city in the middle of the Scarlet Forest, but they were also established in the northern zone of the city, which faced directly onto the Scarlet Forest, serving as the city's first line of defense.
It was unlikely that the Qing clan would have reached what it is today if not for the second clan leader's decision to turn the clan into the city's frontline defense, managing to get the Celestial Orchid Sect to accept them as an affiliated force and avoiding attacks from the Mo clan and the Ink Sword Sect.
Of course, this caused the Qing clan to face several potential complete annihilations, barely surviving thanks to geniuses who emerged in moments of greatest need.
In that sense, the Qing clan seemed blessed by the heavens themselves. A genius capable of reversing the situation always appeared when the clan's situation was precarious.
Qing Xuanling's eyes turned determined after thinking about all this. The Qing clan had few moments of peace during its development, and nothing indicated that this would change in the short term, so she had to strengthen herself as quickly as possible.
Thus, hopefully, she too would be like those geniuses who suddenly appeared and saved the clan.
But first, she had to look at the most important objectives for the clan.
"The tournament between the main forces of Ziyu City will begin in a few weeks, so I must strengthen myself as much as possible in the time I have left. Improving my cultivation would be one way, but I still require at least three or four months to reach the fifth layer even if I have high-quality pills..."
She sighed. Her spiritual roots remained her greatest weakness. Anyone could advance in less than three months with all the battles Qing Xuanling had recently experienced and with the resources she currently possessed.
She was worried. She seriously doubted she could reach the eighth or ninth layer of Qi Refinement in two years, when that supposed Level 4 secret realm would open. Unless she had some miraculous encounter, advancing that much in her cultivation would be impossible.
"I suppose I only have this path left..." Qing Xuanling sighed deeply as she took out a jade slip from her storage ring. It was a jade slip containing one of the legacies of the Jing family.
A legacy that only the descendants of the Foundation Establishment cultivator could obtain. A body cultivation technique!
The reason only the cultivator's descendants could obtain the technique was that it required the Devouring Boa lineage to cultivate. It would be useless for an ordinary human.
Qing Xuanling, obviously, did not have such a lineage in her blood. But that didn't mean the technique wouldn't be useful to her.
"Body cultivation is the only way I can quickly improve my strength compared to others, but the Devouring White Dragon Cauldron Art is still a somewhat incomplete technique as it lacks any derived techniques... So if I want my body cultivation to truly be useful in two years, the Devouring White Dragon Cauldron Art cannot remain incomplete!"
Qing Xuanling's eyes shone. She planned to use the Jing family's legacy to deduce techniques for the Devouring White Dragon Cauldron Art!
She had no other choice. Body cultivation was fundamentally different from spiritual cultivation, where cultivators could use their Qi to utilize millions of techniques. In contrast, body cultivators could only use special techniques by improving certain parts of the body through the cultivation of the body cultivation technique itself.
In simple terms, most body cultivation techniques altered the cultivator's body to some extent to allow them to unleash abilities known as Blood Techniques, although this name was rarely used currently.
But the important thing was that even if Qing Xuanling reached the peak stage with her body cultivation, she could do little if she didn't have at least one Blood Technique. At most, she would simply be a beast with great physical strength, but cultivators had many ways to deal with beasts.
Only with Blood Techniques could she become a worthy body cultivator.
'It's a bit early, but I must start investigating my own Blood Techniques. Although this won't greatly improve my strength in the short term, I should be able to learn to use my body better at least.'
This would fulfill Qing Xuanling's purpose of strengthening herself for the upcoming tournament and for the secret realm in two years.
With that decided, Qing Xuanling immersed herself in deep cultivation for the following weeks.
She studied how to create her own Blood Skills, but she didn't focus only on that. She also trained her sword and movement techniques and the five spells she had already learned. Qing Huomei had offered her more spells to learn, but Qing Xuanling refused.
Her trump cards would always be her sword and body; spells were just a way to diversify her attacks. But even so, she preferred having a few high-level cards rather than many low-level ones.
So Qing Xuanling focused on bringing the mastery of all her spells to the master level, which she barely achieved.
Besides that, Qing Xuanling brought her body cultivation to the gates of the third layer. One or two weeks would be enough for her to advance.
Unfortunately, she didn't manage to create any Blood Techniques, though that was obvious.
She might have made progress in other areas if she had had more time, but unfortunately, her time had run out.
Today was the day of the tournament.