Soon, the two blue rhomboid crystals returned to Li Yan's hands. He held them and looked at the crowd.
"I'll be brief. I don't know what you all saw just now. Would you care to share? I will then reveal all that I know so we can corroborate our findings."
Li Yan looked at the crowd. He wasn't trying to be mysterious to show off how capable he was, but rather, he wasn't confident himself. He didn't know how much they had understood or if it was different from what he knew. He was afraid of misspeaking and being unable to justify himself in the end.
"I saw a five-colored space with a huge white ball of light in the center. But when my divine sense touched it, it couldn't enter even half an inch and was repelled. Probing the rest of the area with my divine sense just revealed a five-colored space with nothing else," the first to speak was the pretty young woman, Hu Ziyi, who said thoughtfully.
"What I saw was similar to what Ziyi saw, except the central light ball was deep green. My divine sense was also repelled on contact, and I found nothing else unusual," Yu Yiyong said with a smile as soon as Hu Ziyi finished, and he looked at her. He had looked at the other crystal with the green core. Seeing him address her so familiarly, Hu Ziyi shot him a glare, but it was a look full of charm, which made Yu Yiyong's smile grow wider.
"He sure sounds friendly," Mei Bucai first muttered under his breath, then also spoke thoughtfully, "I had the same result, but I discovered that the five-colored space should be composed of the five elements' spirit qi. I could feel the different five-elemental attributes within. The deep green light ball I saw radiated a very strong wood spirit power. I suppose the other one's center should be metal spirit power."
His words made many people nod in agreement, clearly having noticed this situation within the crystal as well.
Li Yan's gaze lingered on the fatty for a moment. He had known before that this fatty's talent was astonishing. He had heard that he was usually in a semi-cultivating state, and that was only under the coercion of the Golden Core elder from Lord Lao Peak. He hadn't expected his observation skills to be so sharp. Looking at the expressions of the others, more than half had also noticed this. It seemed he had only gained more knowledge due to the advantage of his True Scripture of Gui Water.
What the others said next was more or less the same. After a while, Li Yan's gaze fell on Gong Chenying. She had also held his crystal just now, so she must have investigated it again. Gong Chenying nodded at him, indicating she had only seen the same things. Li Yan now basically understood the difference between what he knew and what the others knew. After weighing it in his mind and organizing his thoughts, he began to speak.
"The key here is that five-colored space. Just as we investigated, that space is composed of five regions of the five elements' spirit power. But did you notice that when I gave them to you just now, the sizes of these five regions were basically the same, but if you were to investigate them again now, you would find a difference." With that, Li Yan pointed a finger, and the two crystals floated in front of him.
With puzzled faces, the crowd shot their divine senses toward the two crystals in front of Li Yan.
Seeing Li Yan's action, Gong Chenying couldn't help but praise him inwardly. 'My little martial uncle is truly meticulous. At first, he threw the two crystals directly to the crowd. This was because the crystals were very mysterious in their hearts. By passing them through their hands, not only would the sense of mystery disappear, but their resistance to Li Yan having collected the crystals alone would also be greatly reduced. It seems even his repeated reminders not to infuse spirit power were deliberate. This would actually make some Qi Condensation cultivators want to probe with their spirit power even more. I can't believe he even included me, his senior sister, in his calculations. He must have calculated that I would intervene and intimidate the crowd.' Thinking of this, a bitter smile flashed in Gong Chenying's beautiful eyes.
'And this time, he only floated the two crystals in front of him, letting everyone probe with their divine sense together. One reason is to save time, and the other is to let others subconsciously and gradually accept that he is the owner of these crystals. What a brilliant mind.' Gong Chenying's perception of Li Yan rose to another level. She hadn't expected this young martial uncle to be so adept at manipulating people's hearts. She too couldn't help but extend her divine sense, then quickly probed the crystal in her own hand, a contemplative look appearing on her face as well.
As the crowd probed with their divine senses, Li Yan continued, "If you observe carefully, you will find that the space now is slightly different from before. Some regions are shrinking, while others are expanding. They are constantly changing as a whole. I imagine that even in the crystal in Senior Sister Gong's hand, the space is now like these two."
Gong Chenying couldn't help but nod. With her powerful divine sense, these subtle changes couldn't escape her notice. The space in these three crystals was indeed different from when she had probed them before. She couldn't help but shift her gaze to the three green gourds on the ground. As her gaze shifted, many other cultivators also looked at the gourds. They had seen that besides repeatedly handling the three crystals, the only other thing Li Yan had touched was these gourds.
Li Yan's voice was calm as he continued, "It seems you have all thought of it. It's these three green gourds on the ground. These gourds contain the five elemental spirit qis of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. Their purpose is to store and release these five elements. This is the secret to how the different sects of the opposing side merged and walked together. The five-elemental spaces in the crystals we received were of unequal sizes. This should be the original state of the Wheel of Life and Death. The different colored cores in the center represent different five-elemental spirit powers. Although there were twenty colors at the passage entrance, I think they still fall within the scope of the five elements. For example, white, light white, green, deep green, emerald green—all these colors I just mentioned belong to the metal and wood elements, but the artistic conception of the same attribute spirit power they contain is different, so there will still be some discrepancies. Even if a sect chose two blue rhomboid crystals with wood-attribute cores, like green and deep green, these two paths could still eventually intersect and be judged as hostile parties.
Therefore, only by choosing crystals with completely identical core colors will paths of the same sect not intersect and lead to a fight. But the three opposing sects somehow discovered this secret. When the five elemental regions in the outer space of the blue rhomboid crystal are basically the same size, the space here actually regards them as the same party and no longer judges them as hostile. Thus, the green gourd came into being. This gourd contains five streams of spirit qi—metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. You can freely adjust the amount of each type of spirit qi released based on the size of the five-elemental space in your own crystal, gradually forming a basically balanced five-elemental space. This space can be maintained for about a quarter to half an hour before it returns to its original state. The reason for this is the different colored core light balls in the center. These cores store a powerful stream of a single attribute's spirit qi, which constantly impacts and washes over the surrounding five-elemental space until it returns to its original form.
This also explains why in the first trial, that Chan monk immediately crushed the blue rhomboid crystal. He didn't want us to discover the secret, but he didn't have time to destroy the green gourd in his storage pouch. As for the demonic beast in the second trial, it only threw away the crystal, and there was no green gourd in its storage pouch. This is why I said earlier that the demonic beasts were not involved in the three sects' conspiracy."
The crowd couldn't help but nod. Put this way, it did indeed explain the differences between the first and second trials.
"Doesn't that mean we can also merge onto other paths?" a cultivator couldn't help but ask at this point.
Hearing this, Li Yan nodded and continued, "Theoretically, yes. But if we do so, we won't be able to maintain it for long. If you use your divine sense to probe again now, the balance within the five-elemental regions has already begun to change significantly. I estimate that in at most another thirty breaths, the merging rule will be broken, and we would need to continue injecting the five-elemental spirit qi from the green gourd. The reason the other side can maintain the five-elemental balance in their crystals for a long time... I also did a small test inside the sphere after you all came out." Li Yan didn't give them time to ask questions; he was also calculating the time in his head. More than half of the one-hour limit had already passed.
"I probed the bodies of four or five of their Qi Condensation cultivators and made a surprising discovery: they were all of miscellaneous spirit roots." Speaking of this, Li Yan also sighed inwardly. The reason he had suddenly thought to probe them was that he had felt a sense of familiarity when he saw these Qi Condensation cultivators at the entrance of Little Bamboo Peak's passage. He later realized it was triggered by his own True Scripture of Gui Water. Since he wasn't a Golden Core master and lacked the ability to probe from a distance, he had been looking for a chance to find the answer on their bodies. Until the end of the first trial, he had actually hastily checked one corpse. But because time was pressing then, with the black shadow from outside the sphere about to descend, he could only briefly probe one body. But the result of that brief probe had been a revelation. He discovered that the residual spirit qi in that corpse was actually five-elemental spirit qi. No wonder it felt so familiar. He himself had miscellaneous spirit roots, albeit a very special type of five-elemental spirit root.
In the second trial, because they encountered demonic beasts, he had no chance to check. But inside the sphere just now, he had checked again and was completely certain. Apart from the two Foundation Establishment cultivators who were not of miscellaneous spirit roots, the several Qi Condensation cultivators he checked all were. Because they had died recently, the residual spirit power in their bodies still remained. Even on the Foundation Establishment cultivator who was just a skeleton, he had detected three types of spirit power.
"After you all left, I also balanced a blue rhomboid crystal's five elements inside the sphere. But the rate at which the balance dissipated was very slow. Now, the balanced regions in the crystal's space are being consumed very quickly. It might be that the more people there are, the more unstable the five-elemental space within the crystal becomes, or perhaps it's consumed faster. I estimated that with the way we're going, these three green gourds will be empty after at most one more trial. And these three gourds came from three different people on their side. So how did they manage to get through trial after trial and still have so much five-elemental spirit qi left in their gourds? The problem lies with those Qi Condensation cultivators. Although I only checked a few bodies, they were all of miscellaneous spirit roots. We can infer that the Qi Condensation cultivators from these three sects must all be of miscellaneous spirit roots. Because this way, they can also escape the rules here. This should be another secret of the Wheel of Life and Death that the three sects discovered.
Since these Qi Condensation cultivators don't consume the balance of the five-elemental space in the crystal, and this balance is only for the use of the Foundation Establishment cultivators, the five-elemental spirit qi in the green gourds is enough for them to use. As for why this is the case, I've thought about it carefully. It might be because miscellaneous spirit roots have an extremely difficult time reaching Foundation Establishment, so there are no miscellaneous spirit roots among their Foundation Establishment cultivators. Cultivating so many five-elemental miscellaneous spirit root Qi Condensation cultivators... it should be that there are relatively more miscellaneous spirit root cultivators at the Qi Condensation stage, and at the same time, this can reduce the consumption of the five-elemental balance in the blue rhomboid crystal."
Li Yan said all this without a pause, causing a storm to rage in everyone's hearts.