No matter how the outside world changed, Little Bamboo Peak remained peaceful. The only difference was that the person in charge was now the true person in charge: Wei Zhongran.
After Li Wuyi formed his Golden Core , he not only had to consolidate and comprehend his new realm but also had many new Immortal Arts to cultivate.
Wei Chituo , seemingly spurred on by Li Wuyi and Gong Chenying , also broke through to the Pseudo-Core Realm in one go after six months of seclusion. After coming out, he stared at the courtyard where Li Wuyi lived for a long time. It seemed he had made some kind of decision. He then went to Yun Chunqu's courtyard, and the two talked for half a day, no one knowing what they discussed. Afterward, Wei Chituo and Yun Chunqu, who had broken through to the late stage of Foundation Establishment, went to the Mission Hall on Lord Lao Peak and accepted over a dozen missions in one breath. For some unknown reason, they chose missions of the highest difficulty for every single one. These types of missions were almost a matter of life and death. The way they accepted them made the deacon of the Mission Hall tremble with fear, thinking the two had been provoked into committing suicide.
The two were often gone for months at a time. Each time they returned, they carried a thick stench of blood that was nauseating. On one occasion, both returned severely injured. When they got back to the sect, Wei Chituo was carrying an unconscious Yun Chunqu on his back, and the moment he landed on Little Bamboo Peak, he also collapsed from exhaustion. In the end, it was Wei Zhongran who personally intervened to save them. Later, it was rumored within the sect that among the missions they had taken, one was to hunt down a Pseudo-Core Realm cultivator. Unexpectedly, the person they were hunting had already formed a Golden Core a month before they arrived. This was a grave error in their intelligence, and they were plunged directly into a life-or-death situation. But the two were of resolute character; how could they let themselves be slaughtered? They unleashed their full potential, using all their divine abilities. In the end, at the cost of burning their essence blood, they paid a heavy price but managed to join forces and kill the Golden Core master whose realm was still unstable. They too were severely injured and nearly perished. But because of this final outcome, upon returning to the sect, this single mission earned them fifty thousand Spirit Stones . It was truly a case of great risk and great reward.
Wei Chituo and Yun Chunqu took a full four months to recover from their injuries, but the essence blood they had burned in that great battle would still take at least a few years to fully restore. Yet, after their wounds healed, they began to madly accept missions again, and they were still the extremely dangerous kind. This made everyone in the sect suck in a cold breath; these two were clearly a pair of madmen who didn't value their lives. Wei Zhongran seemed to turn a blind eye to their actions, acting as if he didn't care at all.
What was unexpected was that Wen Xinliang and Lin Daqiao , also disciples of Little Bamboo Peak, after training in the Hundred Thousand Mountains for two months, also chose to start crazily accepting missions. Whether they were from the sect or the various peaks, they swept through the Mission Hall without any reservations. They only accepted two types of missions: assassination and covert killing.
Their methods were completely different from Wei Chituo and Yun Chunqu's. They would often track their opponents for days or even months before erupting to kill, usually with a single fatal blow. Their escape routes were also planned in advance, and they almost always came and went without a trace. At the same time, they did not linger in battle. If one strike missed, they would swiftly retreat a thousand li, then lie in wait again, waiting for an opportunity until the target was dead.
For covert killings, they used traps, poisoning, poison-laying, poison-spreading, and even formations. Often, their opponents would be reduced to a puddle of pus without any warning. The two of them could disguise themselves as any ordinary cultivator, perhaps brushing past their target in a trading city, or walking past their table in a teahouse or inn. Not long after, those people would evaporate from this world completely.
These four from Little Bamboo Peak, with their frantic mission-taking, had gradually brought the long-silent name of Little Bamboo Peak back into the ears of the disciples. As the two teams of four continuously completed their missions, accompanied by the fall of one infamous figure after another in the outside world—and the names of these fallen individuals all appeared in the missions the four had accepted, including some from the other three great sects—the fame of these four grew within the sect. In the end, they were even called "The Four Fiends of Little Bamboo Peak."
Wei Zhongran paid no attention to any of this, merely managing the affairs of Little Bamboo Peak with Miao Wangqing .
Gong Chenying, on the other hand, had remained in the Spirit Plant Garden , cultivating assiduously in addition to her management duties. She did not go out at all. Only Gong Chenying herself knew the reasons for this. One was that her Qiongqi Purgatory Art was about to reach the late stage of the third layer; it was a critical juncture in her cultivation. Although it wasn't like qi refining seclusion where she couldn't be interrupted, she couldn't be away for too long. The other reason was that after Li Yan sent that message a year ago, it was as if he had completely cut off contact with the outside world. The ancestral teachings of the Tianli Clan were carved into her very bones, which prevented her from having too much contact with other men. And the only person she was familiar with, Zhao Min , had also entered a long seclusion, which made her even more of a homebody.
In another space, countless thousands of li away from the Malevolent Spirit Sect, Li Yan was sitting cross-legged in the Secret Room . His eyes were slightly closed, his breathing long and deep. The spiritual energy outside his body had turned a deep black, shrouding his entire figure within it, rhythmically contracting and expanding with his every breath. This black spiritual energy had reached an extreme concentration, yet it still continuously poured out from the pores of his entire body with his breathing, seemingly endless.
At this moment, the black qi was so dense that it could directly push away the golden earth spiritual energy here by several feet, forming a hollow area, as if drawing a boundary on the ground.
On one side of the Secret Room, amidst the churning golden-yellow spiritual energy, a huge face was gazing at the black qi outside Li Yan's body, muttering to itself, "Spirit qi transforming into a marsh. This is the sign that his Gui Water qi refining has reached its limit and is about to become liquid. He is about to reach Foundation Establishment."
The huge face was formed by a wisp of Pingtu's Divine Sense . Since Li Yan came here a year ago, he had not gone out again. Before coming, he had first gone to Lord Lao Peak to purchase a large amount of consolidating and essence-cultivating medicinal pills. He had also received his own "Foundation Establishment Pill" from Wei Zhongran. When Wei Zhongran saw Li Yan come to collect the "Foundation Establishment Pill," he was also greatly surprised. Although he knew that Li Yan had reached the tenth layer of Qi Condensation after returning from the Secret Realm, he had always believed that besides the effect of the ridiculously dense spiritual energy in the Secret Realm, Li Yan must have had some other fortuitous encounter in the Wheel of Life and Death . He never expected that after only half a year back in the sect, Li Yan would come to collect the "Foundation Establishment Pill." He had Li Yan release all his cultivation for his inspection. After confirming that Li Yan had reached the late stage of the tenth layer of Qi Condensation, he couldn't help but secretly praise the Fragmented Poison Body , one of the sect's three great poison bodies, for being able to make a disciple with a Miscellaneous Spirit Root no less inferior to those prodigies.
After a brief thought, Wei Zhongran still gave the "Foundation Establishment Pill" to Li Yan. Normally, a sect disciple only had one chance in their life to receive a "Foundation Establishment Pill" for free, and they had to have reached the Great Perfection of the tenth layer of Qi Condensation to receive it. This was to prevent random use and wasting the pill. Once this "Foundation Establishment Pill" was used and failed to lead to a successful Foundation Establishment, one would have to purchase it themselves for any subsequent attempts. The price was frighteningly high; an ordinary Qi Condensation cultivator would often need to save for twenty to thirty years to be able to buy one. Given the lifespan of a Qi Condensation cultivator, after the first failure, they would at most have one more chance to buy a pill for Foundation Establishment. Li Yan's action was clearly against the sect rules, but Wei Zhongran knew that Li Yan shared the same idea as a very small number of disciples in the sect: to charge from the late stage of the tenth layer of Qi Condensation to the Great Perfection in one go, and then use that momentum to continue charging toward Foundation Establishment. Although this behavior seemed like seizing victory's momentum, it still had great hidden dangers, but there were also those who succeeded, such as himself.
Through Li Yan's performance over the past few years, Wei Zhongran already knew his character. He was the type to be extremely cautious and meticulous, and he acted with careful consideration. Among those on Little Bamboo Peak, besides Li Wuyi, he had the most stable personality. He was not like Yun Chunqu and Gong Chenying, who were of few words and seemed extremely stable, but in reality, one was extremely ruthless and the other was extremely stubborn when faced with trouble, lacking a flexible mind. Therefore, after consideration, Wei Zhongran still gave the "Foundation Establishment Pill" to Li Yan and told him the timing for consuming the pill, points of caution, and so on. He explained to Li Yan for half an incense stick's time, which once again made Li Yan feel the importance of a master. If Wei Zhongran hadn't told him, a single oversight on his part could have led to a mistake in some subtle detail. Of course, Pingtu would probably have given him guidance at that time, but it was uncertain if it would have been in time during a critical moment.
In the end, Wei Zhongran still said to Li Yan with some apology, "Besides you, I have guided all my other disciples in their cultivation. It's just that your cultivation method is special, so I can only give you general insights. I have never guided you in Immortal Arts and the like; you have comprehended them all on your own. If there is anything you don't understand in the future, you can seek me out."
His words also moved Li Yan. Most cultivators were cold and unfeeling. Someone like Wei Zhongran, who spoke to his disciple with apology, was likely an exception. Li Yan had long since accepted Wei Zhongran and Little Bamboo Peak into his heart and acknowledged this master. He immediately bowed respectfully. Then, after Wei Zhongran gave him detailed instructions on matters needing attention during Foundation Establishment, Li Yan took his leave. But what he didn't notice was that as he left, there was a peculiar look in Wei Zhongran's eyes as he watched him, as if there were still words left unsaid.
After preparing all kinds of medicinal pills, Li Yan hung a seclusion sign outside his bamboo courtyard, took out the round rhomboid crystal, and directly teleported to the Secret Room in the Secret Realm. He decided that this time, he would not come out until he successfully reached Foundation Establishment.
After arriving at the Secret Room, he began a monotonous and tedious cultivation. When his spiritual energy was exhausted by the Qiongqi Purgatory Art, he would cultivate the True Scripture of Gui Water to restore it. When his spiritual energy was full again, he would practice the Qiongqi Purgatory Art once more...
Day after day, month after month. Two months later, he reached the Great Perfection of the tenth layer of Qi Condensation. Four months later, the Qiongqi Purgatory Art also faintly showed signs of breaking through to the second layer. At this point, he began to focus all his efforts on stabilizing his spiritual energy. This session of sitting lasted for ten months. These ten months seemed long, but it was not so. One must know that someone like Lin Daqiao had once been stuck at the Great Perfection of the Qi Condensation stage for several years before finally breaking through to Foundation Establishment in one go.
Watching the dense spiritual energy around Li Yan that seemed about to condense into water, the face materialized in the Secret Room grew more and more solemn. Although the cultivation methods of the Five Immortal Sects greatly increased the chances of reaching Foundation Establishment, there was still a high probability of failure. Once the first attempt at Foundation Establishment failed, the difficulty of the second attempt would be at least ten times greater than the first, and it would become progressively harder.
Foundation Establishment, the first real step for a cultivator on the path to immortality. The Qi Condensation stage was merely to lay a solid foundation for all this, using the spiritual energy of heaven and earth to change one's own constitution, wash away impurities in the body, and allow the physical body to reach the minimum standard to become an immortal. At the same time, the spiritual energy in the body would also constantly change as the body was strengthened, from thin to thicker and thicker, until finally the Dantian was filled with dense spiritual energy and its flow became extremely slow. As they squeezed against each other, they needed more space, and the spiritual energy would also be continuously compressed with cultivation. At this time, the cultivator's body needed a major change: the expansion of the Dantian and Divine Sense, wider meridians, and more vigorous flesh and blood. When all the spiritual energy in the body transformed from gas to a marsh-like liquid, the foundation of cultivation was truly established.
Of course, the final size of each person's Dantian expansion was different, which depended on factors such as their cultivation method and constitution. This was also what caused the difference in strength among cultivators of the same realm.
But at this moment, Li Yan was about to face a crisis. This was also something Pingtu had not expected. The Fragmented Poison Body had actually begun to split at this very moment.