Entering our apartment in Wu clans city reveals a pretty interesting scene. Luli and Cui are giving Xin Ci what I can only assume to be a makeover. Luli is already wearing just enough makeup to be tasteful, with groomed hair and painted fingernails. Cui herself isn't wearing any makeup, yet at least, and Xin Ci is patiently sitting in a chair as Luli and Cui are painting her nails.
They all briefly pause when I open the door, turn around, see that it's me and then go right back to painting Xin Ci's fingernails. There's no makeup on Xin Ci just yet, so that's what's probably coming right after they're done with the nails. "Where's Ningbing right now? There's something that I need to talk about with all of you."
Said something is the blessed land I've inherited. We're not going to move there permanently right away, I want to spend a few days exploiting dream realms before leaving, nor are we never coming back here again, since I'll definitely want to explore the dream realms accumulated here. But in relative terms we are going to spend most of our time inside of the blessed land from now on.
Xin Ci gives me a short nod, remaining still as Luli and Cui paint her nails. "She's been going to the arena almost every day, she can't stand staying cooped up doing nothing."
That sounds like her, if forced to be peaceful she'd probably throw a tantrum before committing the odd massacre or two in retaliation. I give the three of them a smile. "I'll go and cultivate for a few hours then, until then you three just continue making yourself more pretty for me."
Blushing is their response to me. I give them a wink before going into our bedroom and getting myself comfortable.
It's time to explore some more dream realms.
—
I whistle at the sight in front of me.
A literal field of corpses stretches out as far as the eyes can see. The corpses bear no physical wounds, yet the light behind their eyes is still absent. The corpses are of men, women, elderly, children, animals, variant humans. Whoever it is that made this field didn't care for who or what occupied it, only that it was filled with the dead.
Scanning the area around me visually reveals a single living thing. A scrawny, bony woman stands there facing me, staring with disappointment into the horizon, where the sun is setting. She is wearing simple, blue robes, her hair is sheer black. Her sunken eyes and malnourished appearance give her a pretty ominous aura, as does the fact that she actually has no aura for me to detect at all.
Other than the woman there's nothing alive, there's no trees, no birds, no nothing. The only thing living in this field of corpses is her and I. Waving my hand at her does nothing, she's either ignoring me entirely or she can't see me at all.
Dream realms usually have many hidden dangers, most of which I can just not care about. Prolonged exposure to them would usually cause damage to a gu master's soul, something that I am immune to. The only thing that I need to be wary of is mental damage from wisdom path methods, but I should be able to come up with a countermeasure against that.
The woman continues staring into the sunset, before taking a deep breath and sighing. "I finally created a body bearing the Northern Dark Ice Soul physique, yet even that is unable to bring me to the heights of my main body."
She isn't looking at me, so hopefully she's just talking to herself. I prepare to leave the dream realm at a moment's notice. The woman continues talking. "Cultivating another path, using another extreme physique is likely to reach the same outcome. Ren Zu's children did not merely bear an extreme physique, that alone would not have given them the power to wage war against the heavens."
Ren Zu's children are all named after the ten extreme physiques, or rather the physiques are named after them. It is said that his children all waged war against heaven, destroying seven of the nine heavens. The woman continues talking to herself. "Perhaps there is a way to refine an immortal extreme physique, but so long as Ren Zu's children continue to exist their physiques cannot be simply refined."
What the fuck is this woman on about. She continues. "Ren Zu's children were created using Derivation Gu, perhaps merging the mortal variants, those not of his children, of the extreme physiques would be sufficient to refine his own physique."
At any point in time a single instance of any immortal gu worm can exist, trying to refine one that already exists will always fail. The same is not true of mortal gu, which can have an infinite amount of them exist. Is she implying that the extreme physiques are to the physiques of Ren Zu's children what mortal gu are to immortal gu?
She goes silent, before continuing to stare into the sunset. I keep my focus on her, ready to leave at a moment's notice. After a few seconds she lets out another sigh, before leaning down and grabbing one of the dead bodies from the field.
Without wasting a moment she immediately activates a killer move as soon as the corpse is on eye level with her. Said corpse belongs to a tall, fourteen year old boy with short brown hair. Its eyes go from dead to living in a single instant, before the now living corpse disappears.
Looks like the woman took him into her aperture. She continues staring into the sunset, not saying any more words. As she continues staring I start to feel the dream realm unravel, before finding myself in front of a now dim door.
I blink as I feel my soul path attainment go from being 'merely' master level all the way to that of a great grandmaster. I just went from having the soul path attainment of a rank 6 gu immortal to that of a rank 8 expert. I'm not far from reaching quasi-supreme grandmaster either.
Whoever it is that woman was, she was definitely a monster when it came to soul path. That's also without taking into consideration what her whole yap session was about.
Ren Zu's children are, according to that chick at least, still kicking around somewhere. There's also the fact that she was considering refining Ren Zu's physique, of all things.
Something tells me that I won't get an answer to what was going on with her anytime soon, but I also have the feeling that I'll have a use for what she has revealed fairly soon.
Exploring dream realms is something that's still on my table, so I put that dream realm into the back of my mind and head out into another.
According to the Vampire Immortal exploring dream realms is something that completely changed the way that gu immortals advanced during the Great Era, and I can definitely see why. Dream realms are practically the accumulation of all immortal gu masters to have lived until now, just waiting to be exploited.
What I am doing is the equivalent of being where a gold rush is going to start a few years before anyone else comes. I put my hands on a bright, brown door, before feeling myself pulled into another dream realm.
—
I stand up from my bed, stretch, and then smile with glee as I tally up all of the attainment I've gained from exploring dream realms for the past few hours.
My soul path attainment is practically on the verge of being quasi-supreme grandmaster, strength path has reached great grandmaster, blood path great grandmaster.
This really feels like stealing gold from a gold rush. Ningbing barging into the room interrupts my chain of thought. "You're finally fucking here, do you realise how boring the past eleven days have been?"
I attempt to interrupt her, but she continues ranting. "Your fuckbuddies do fuckall other than giggling and gossiping, There's noone to fucking kill around here. So I've had to spend most of my time just fighting in the arena, where we're not allowed to kill the other guy mind you, waiting for your tits to come back from whatever killing spree you went out on!"
Ningbing continues panting angrily, I clear my throat. "You're my fuckbuddy too though."
Processing that takes her a second or two, at the end of which she snarls and leaps onto the bed to strangle me. Giving her a peck on the lips is all it takes to get her to blank out and blush. "Let's go talk with Cui and the others. There's something I need to tell you."
Ningbing moves away from me. "What, you decide to remain as a girl or something?"
I stand up from the bed and motion for her to follow me. "No, you'll find out along with the rest."
Entering the living room reveals that Cui, Xin Ci and Luli are done with their makeup and nails. They're now having a chat over some tea. I interrupt said chat by clearing my throat. "We're going to be leaving Wu Clans city in a few days to explore, the three of you are coming along with Ningbing and I to keep us company."
Wu clan city is the mortal side of a big superforce. There's no doubt in my mind that they have rank 8 gu immortals among their ranks, talking about some immortal inheritance while being listened on would just lead to me getting robbed by gu immortals.
Saying that they're coming along to keep us company means I've found an immortal inheritance. If I was to instead say that they're coming along to serve us then we're just going for another reason, be it for a visit to some clan or just to actually explore.
Xin Ci, Luli and Cui blink in surprise. Xin Ci is the first to gather her wits, she gives me a deep bow. "I can't wait to keep both of you company."
Ningbing snorts and turns her head away. Cui and Luli give me brief nods. I give them all a smile in response. "Great! Now let's go to bed."
Whether it is the harem I'm about to indulge myself in or the exploration of dream realms that I look forward more to is something I'm not exactly sure about.
—
The very first thing that Yu Land Spirit does after taking us into the blessed land is, somehow, throw me an offended look. "Water Collapse Immortal Gu, my most prized treasure, sold for two thousand immortal essence stones. Are you happy now, you fucking ass-whore?!"
Ningbing immediately begins laughing loudly enough to wake the dead. How a fish is able to make an offended expression is not something I quite understand. "Right now I am. Did you manage to buy everything that I asked for?"
Yu Land Spirit stares numbly at me with its fishy eyes. "I've purchased the refinement materials for that Vampire Immortal Gu you gave me the recipe for, as well as those pretty mermaids you wanted. You sold my most prized treasure so you could turn into a man and fuck fishgirls."
Ningbing's laughter becomes even louder. Luli, Cui and Xin Ci meanwhile are awkwardly standing behind me. I wave for them to go further into the island. "We'll build a house to live in later today, for now just prepare a regular camp."
Crying and accusing me is what Yu Land Spirit decides to do after I'm done giving my concubines orders. "When I first laid eyes on you I thought that you were a pretty pleasant girl, now you've shown me what you truly are. You basta-" I interrupt him. "If you don't mind, I have some things to do. Obey Ningbing while I'm gone, and for now just go and search Treasure Yellow Heaven for a gu house for us to live in."
Treasure Yellow Heaven is, for all intents and purposes, cultivator Ebay. It's a grotto-heaven, the immortal aperture of a rank 8 expert, that functions as a place of trade for gu immortals. The gu immortal that the grotto heaven belonged to is long dead, and the heavenly spirit, which is the land spirit equivalent of a grotto heaven, is most likely nothing more than a glorified CPU by this point.
Three hundred thousand years is how long Treasure Yellow Heaven has been around, for all of those years no one, not even the venerables, has ever managed to figure out where the grotto heaven itself is supposed to be. The gu immortal that created it is known as Daoist Countless Treasures, while alive he absorbed a fragment of the immemorial heavens, which is the only reason that Treasure Yellow Heaven still stands to this day.
One of the main gu worms that makes Treasure Yellow Heaven function is the Rank 8 Treasure Light Immortal Gu, whose effect is to let out a light that is larger and brighter the more valuable a trade good is. Value itself is inherently subjective, but that doesn't mean that some things are not more inherently valuable than others.
I give the land spirit a sigh. "Where are the batmen?"
Yu Land Spirit teleports the four batmen I asked it to buy in front of me. "Here they are. You want the slavery gu too?"
Batmen are a race of variant humans. The four batmen the land spirit teleported stare at me with apprehension. Their ears are pointed and large, just like a bat's ears, their skin is a dark grey, but still human. They have human arms, on their backs they bear large, leathery wings and their legs are those of a bat.
On the furry scale they'd rate somewhere in between a one and a two. Batmen are born with innate blood path dao marks, giving them something like a weaker version of an extreme blood path physique.
A nod is my response to the land spirit. "Give me the slavery gu as well."
Two rank 5 slavery gu appear in front of me. I grab them in my hands and immediately refine them, before pouring primeval essence into them.
Combining the liquor worm and the amplify effect gu takes my primeval essence from rank 3 initial stage to rank 3 peak stage, but even that's barely enough to activate a single one of these gu worms.
Activating a single rank 5 slavery gu uses up almost all of the primeval essence in both of my apertures. One of the batmen is enslaved on the spot, the other three are going to have to wait till later. I leave the other rank 5 slavery gu on the ground, from where Yu Land Spirit immediately teleports it away. "Send me and the batman out, I'd rather not have him undergo immortal ascension here."
Yu Land Spirit immediately removes the batman and I from the blessed land, putting us right back onto the rocky ground where the volcano used to be. Give this place a few years and some grass might start growing.
I yawn. "Break your aperture, if you survive immortal ascension I might keep you around for longer."
Refinement materials for blood path gu worms are people, immortal gu masters are also refinement materials for immortal blood path gu worms. The batman variant human takes a deep breath, before a surge of heaven and earth qi rushes towards him as he breaks his mortal rank 5 peak stage aperture.
Undergoing immortal ascension is a dangerous prospect. A gu master first has to reach rank 5 peak stage, after which they have to crush their aperture. Only their vital gu will survive, but the real danger starts when heaven and earth qi flows into them.
They need to balance human, earth and heaven qi at the same time. Too much heaven qi and they do a magic trick where they disappear. Too much earth qi and they do a magic trick where they permanently turn into a statue. Both magic tricks are lethal.
So far the batman has managed to balance all three qi without issue, the real fun starts when the clouds begin to darken and gather above him. What flashes through the clouds is neither rain nor lightning, instead it is light.
As the light flashing between the clouds becomes brighter and more frequent, I prepare to defend the batman. When undergoing immortal ascension one also has to undertake a heavenly and earthly calamity, the light above is without a doubt the heavenly calamity about to strike the batman.
The earthly calamity comes in the form of a shadowy eagle flying down towards him. Said eagle is entirely dark, made purely out of qi. I jump towards it, landing a flying kick onto its body.
Sharp cracks spread throughout it as a loud boom resound from the impact. My current physical power is more than enough to deal with it. It tries to correct course, but a spinning kick at its body is more than enough to shatter it into pieces.
By the time I land onto the ground the heavenly tribulation is just about to strike the batman. I rush towards him, before jumping and putting myself between him and the incoming tribulation.
A beam of light strikes me, searing my skin, flesh and bone as it cooks me alive. I spawn in the strength path phantom of a phoenix, whose beating wings are enough to keep me floating.
Five seconds is how long it takes for the beam to stop, five seconds during which I've been wounded quite a bit. I'm not melting the way I did back in Gu Yue Village, but I doubt that I look entirely pleasant either.
My landing onto the ground cracks the rock. I take a second to collect myself, before turning towards the batman.
He's not a statue, and he's not disappeared. I give him a smile. "Congratulations! Now pray that the others also pass their immortal ascension and you might actually live."
I need two gu immortals to refine gu with, any extras I'm going to use as a cover in Treasure Yellow Heaven. These guys are nowhere near what I would consider trustworthy, the second slavery gu loses its effect on them they're probably going to try and kill me.
—
AN:
Hope you enjoyed the chapter :).
If you notice any mistakes pls let me know so I can get them fixed.