An establishment like Tianxiang Brothel was bound to be well known in Lingtian Pass.
Yet Lingfengzi hardly had the leisure to go hunting for Luo Chen; he genuinely had just been passing by.
When the two ran into each other, they exchanged a few ordinary pleasantries.
Even so, under Lingfengzi's slightly strange gaze, Luo Chen still felt a pang of guilt. He offered a quick reassurance to smooth things over.
"I've already thoroughly analyzed the formula for that Wind Acupoint Pill of yours. Three months at most, and I should be able to brew it."
At the mention of a mere three months, Lingfengzi's eyes lit up instantly.
"Splendid, splendid! Three months is just right!"
Those words *just right* struck Luo Chen as curious; the man seemed in a terrible hurry to use the Wind Acupoint Pill.
Sensing his curiosity, Lingfengzi explained in a hushed voice, "The situation is growing more precarious by the day."
"As the one among the five Nascent Soul cultivators with freedom of movement, I have to head out from time to time to scout the situation. Not long ago, I visited the Bikong Region. The defense there has collapsed, overrun entirely by demon beasts. Even Mount Bikong has been wiped out, and I couldn't sense Fellow Daoist Qingkong's aura anywhere."
With just that sentence, Luo Chen's expression turned solemn.
Perfected Qingkong was Mount Bikong's ancestor. If not a trace of his aura remained, his fate was all too easy to imagine.
"Fire Ridge has complex terrain, and the cultivators there mostly hide deep underground, so they should be able to hold on a while longer."
"In the Tyrant Saber Region, the fighting never ceases—they truly live up to their name."
"Yet in my eyes, the fall of Mount Bikong signals that the collapse of the three regions has already begun. Before long, we may very well see the demon beast horde massed beneath the walls of Lingtian Pass."
"Under such circumstances, if I can obtain the Wind Acupoint Pill, I will be able to fully master one of the Misty Sect's formidable secret techniques, increasing my odds of survival considerably."
"So, I must trouble you, Fellow Daoist Luo."
After a few more words, Lingfengzi hastily excused himself and departed, clearly bound on other urgent business.
Luo Chen's originally pleasant mood grew heavier following the conversation.
Matters that had once been confined to letters and intelligence reports were now drawing terrifyingly close to him.
He had lived through a war between humans and demons before.
During the opening war in the Howling Moon Mountain Range, he had even fought on the front lines.
Yet battles of that magnitude were relatively insignificant to Nascent Soul cultivators.
What truly struck terror into the hearts of Nascent Soul cultivators was a clash on the scale of the Northern Sea demon beast army assaulting the Ice Polar Sect, where an ancient sect passed down since antiquity was wiped out overnight.
And this time, the scale was even grander!
This was a direct collision between the Million Mountains of the Eastern Desolation and the thirty-six regions of the human cultivation world.
Its peril was destined to run far deeper!
People had always said that Nascent Soul experts were extraordinarily difficult to kill; decades or centuries might pass without hearing of one falling in battle.
In truth, that was largely accurate. None who had cultivated to this realm were easy prey.
Everyone had hidden trumps and protective arts; worst came to worst, one could discard the physical body and let the Nascent Soul teleport a thousand li in a blink.
Experts of the same realm rarely fought to the death. Most cultivated in isolation, and their occasional interactions were largely limited to bartering resources and exchanging cultivation insights—much like the outwardly busy yet fundamentally leisurely life Luo Chen had enjoyed of late.
Unless trapped in an enclosed space, such as the Land of the Fallen Demon.
Or unless facing specialized techniques targeting a cultivator's Nascent Soul teleportation—such as Demon Emperor Qingshuang's Universe in the Sleeve, the absolute suppression of the desolate beast Ghost Immortal Tower, or the sealing weight of Luo Chen's Hunyuan Cauldron.
Across multiple grand battles in the Eastern Desolation, even without Demon Emperor Qingshuang taking the field in person, several Nascent Soul experts had fallen one after another. Clearly, someone else among the demons had mastered a method to counter Nascent Soul teleportation.
This was the primary reason why many Nascent Soul experts in Lingtian Pass, Luo Chen included, were reluctant to take to the battlefield lightly.
Every one of them possessed supreme confidence, yet none could claim absolute certainty when confronting the bizarre, innate talents of the demon race.
* * *
Strolling along lost in thought, Luo Chen found himself up on the city wall before he realized it.
Beneath the falling night, the black ape puppet stood silently behind him, making no sound.
Luo Chen gazed quietly into the pitch-black distance, which resembled a giant beast with its maw agape, waiting at any moment to swallow Lingtian Pass whole.
*I hope our fellow Daoists in the Tyrant Saber Region and Fire Ridge can hold out for another two years, or at least until my three-year patrol duty is over.*
*As long as I don't run headlong into the very first wave of the demon beast onslaught, many things will be far easier to manage.*
Luo Chen pondered.
It was somewhat selfish, but such was the cultivation world—better that a fellow Daoist perish than oneself.
He lingered on the wall for a short while before returning.
The black ape puppet stepped silently into a watchtower, a Great Soul Pill held in its mouth, slowly refining the medicinal essence.
* * *
Just as Luo Chen had told Lingfengzi, he had already analyzed the formula for the Wind Acupoint Pill down to the finest detail, aided by the red dog puppet's exhaustive memorization.
It was a rather peculiar fourth-tier pill!
Its purpose was not to swell magic power or elevate one's cultivation realm, but to open a brand-new acupoint within the human body.
Its name: the Wind-Storing Acupoint!
Nor could that acupoint store magic power; its sole function was to house wind, drawing upon the body's magic power to wash over it again and again.
The Wind Acupoint Pill was needed not only to open this Wind-Storing Acupoint, but also to serve as the core that stabilized it.
After understanding the formula completely, Luo Chen caught a faint glimpse of what kind of art Lingfengzi intended to cultivate.
Much like refining a source true flame, the man likely wished to utilize the Wind-Storing Acupoint to refine a type of Untainted Wind—essentially a True Natal Wind.
Except fire possessed a seed, whereas wind had no physical form. The sea of qi and purple palace could contain a seed of flame, but they could not hold formless wind, which was why a new acupoint had to be opened.
If the man truly achieved that level, his overall prowess would undoubtedly undergo a qualitative transformation.
Just like when Luo Chen had refined the Wither-Bloom True Fire years ago, whether it was pill concoction, artifact crafting, or facing an enemy in combat, his strength had immediately jumped to a whole new plane.
Since this involved a fellow cultivator's life-saving means, Luo Chen delayed no further.
Upon his return, he lit his furnace and set to work at once.
Three months had been his conservative estimate.
In reality, after two months, Luo Chen successfully finished a batch, obtaining nine Wind Acupoint Pills.
With that, his task was already complete.
Yet feeling his touch was hot, he simply tossed the remaining two sets of ingredients into the Hunyuan Cauldron to brew another batch.
To his surprise, he succeeded once more, yielding another nine Wind Acupoint Pills.
Eighteen in total!
When Lingfengzi arrived, Luo Chen presented him with nine pills. Unaware of the extra batch, Lingfengzi was overjoyed.
He openly praised Luo Chen's alchemy as peerless across past and present!
Ancestors of the Misty Sect had also attempted to brew the Wind Acupoint Pill, and their best effort had yielded a mere five pills from a single furnace.
This time, he had only hoped for one.
Never had he imagined Luo Chen would hand him a full nine Wind Acupoint Pills.
Luo Chen naturally offered a modest smile, brushing it off as sheer luck and hitting a good streak.
Lingfengzi certainly didn't believe that. Upon his return, he promptly filed a request with Castellan Lingtian for a period of closed-door cultivation, promising to emerge in six months at the latest and asking that no one disturb him during that time.
Castellan Lingtian granted the request.
When word of Lingfengzi's brief seclusion reached the ears of other Nascent Soul cultivators, however, it carried an entirely different meaning.
It signified that the very pill Lingfengzi had spent years dreaming of had been successfully concocted by Luo Chen.
With that, Luo Chen's renown as an Alchemy Master rang louder than ever.
More and more visiting cards flooded his residence, and those seeking an audience possessed increasingly lofty cultivation realms.
Serving as a temporary gatekeeper, Xu Xiaoliu had initially felt quite smug, but before long he found it hard to endure the overwhelming aura of these grand figures, no matter how politely they restrained themselves or how warm their smiles were.
The difference in realms was simply too vast; a Foundation Establishment cultivator could not hold up.
In the end, Fairy Jueqing took over for Xu Xiaoliu, temporarily acting as Luo Chen's gatekeeper to receive visiting cards and welcome the guests.
To everyone's disappointment, Luo Chen did not agree to brew pills for anyone thereafter.
The word he sent out was that while refining pills for a fellow cultivator, he had experienced a sudden moment of enlightenment, achieving a breakthrough in his alchemical comprehension, and needed quiet isolation to contemplate his craft.
Put that way, others naturally could not press the matter.
After all, the greater Luo Chen's alchemical skill became, the higher their chances of success would be when he eventually agreed to take their commissions in the future.
In truth, that wasn't the real story.
That Luo Chen's alchemy had improved was beyond doubt. He had long been a genuine fourth-tier alchemist, and in the Land of the Fallen Demon, he had even concocted the fifth-tier Law Deduction Pill!
Yet producing a fifth-tier pill had not made him a fifth-tier alchemist.
To be blunt, that had been a stroke of sheer fortune, accomplished through the aid of the system.
However, after successively refining vast quantities of Poison Warding Pills, Hongyuan Pills, and Great Soul Pills, and successfully concocting a wide array of demanding fourth-tier pills with vastly different styles—such as Nascent Soul Formation Pills, Nine Separations Pills, and Wind Acupoint Pills—his foundation as a fourth-tier alchemist had become rock solid, without the slightest flaw.
Even without relying on the system to gain entry-level mastery, as long as he had sufficient time, he was confident he could brew any fourth-tier pill in existence.
By this point, the title of Alchemy Master was his in every sense!
The main reason Luo Chen refused all further commissions was the impact of Lingfengzi's words.
He had ordered his subordinates to gather extensive intelligence, and every scrap confirmed that the situation was deteriorating by the day.
Under such circumstances, continuing to build his fame would benefit his distant future, but it offered little immediate advantage.
In the end, a person had to rely on himself.
Thus, he too entered closed-door seclusion.
As for the Crimson Firmament sword qi, which took half a year to refine per strand, despite various delays, he had refined eight strands before he knew it.
He wanted to use the remaining time to refine two more strands as quickly as possible, pushing the art into minor attainment.
At the same time, the polishing of his cultivation realm was nearing perfection, just a single breath away from completion.
All of this demanded a quiet environment that allowed no distractions.
* * *
While Luo Chen remained in seclusion, the world continued to turn.
Driven by Li Yingzhang, the partnership with the Tianyuan Commerce Alliance took its first solid step.
Within Lingtian Pass, at the very location previously selected by the Tianyuan Commerce Alliance, a brand-new multi-story building rose from the ground, complete with a hung signboard.
Its name was the Luotian Treasure Pavilion.
Any outsider seeing it would know at once that it belonged to the Luotian Sect and was the property of Alchemy Master Luo Chen. Moreover, because of the peculiar location, many guessed it had ties to the Tianyuan Commerce Alliance.
Yet the Luotian Treasure Pavilion's initial business caused very little stir.
The resources it sold were aimed strictly at low-tier cultivators, rarely even touching the business of Golden Core experts.
This decision came from Li Yingzhang.
He was far more cautious than Luo Chen, fearful of backlash from the Castellan's Estate or suppression from the older established sects, and refused to overextend himself.
Even among the numerous tasks commissioned by the Tianyuan Commerce Alliance, he chose only one: purchasing demon beast corpses.
Many factions within Lingtian Pass engaged in this trade, so the Luotian Sect did not stand out.
Gu Zuokai was somewhat dissatisfied with this, yet he understood the Luotian Sect's prudence, so he had no choice but to take things step by step.
With the alliance providing capital and prime grounds while the Luotian Sect supplied manpower, the enterprise slowly took shape.
The low-tier cultivators within the city were also remarkably supportive. Whether out of admiration for Luo Chen's fame as an Alchemy Master or gratitude for the upright conduct many experts attributed to him, they began selling a portion of their slain demon beast corpses to the Luotian Sect.
Even if it was only a fraction of the total trade, for the modestly sized Luotian Sect of today, it represented a steady stream of revenue.
* * *
Another year passed.
Barely over half a year remained before Luo Chen's three-year patrol duty reached its end.
Outside Luo Chen's immortal cave, the Luotian Sect cultivators who resided nearby had gathered together, chatting about various matters large and small.
What they discussed most was who would return to the sect and who would stay behind once the term expired.
Due to the establishment of the Luotian Treasure Pavilion, they were critically short on hands.
The sect had sent a contingent from the rear, and even the former sect master, Sima Huiniang, had arrived in person to oversee the Luotian Treasure Pavilion, yet it was clearly not enough.
Therefore, they would need to draw personnel from the disciples currently carrying out patrol duties.
Fairy Jueqing was present at the gathering as well. Taciturn and aloof, she nevertheless did not seem out of place.
Her earlier proactive gestures of goodwill had already earned her acceptance among many.
In the eyes of Zeng Yilong and the others, Fairy Jueqing was just like Yang Pingdu before her: as long as she joined the sect, everyone was family.
In the future, they would support one another and walk the path together.
Besides, Fairy Jueqing was an expert in her own right; her strength at the sixth layer of the Golden Core realm was a tremendous boon to the current Luotian Sect.
While the crowd chatted, Fairy Jueqing suddenly stood up.
"What is it?" Zeng Yilong asked curiously.
Fairy Jueqing sensed the surroundings carefully, then sat back down.
She said it was nothing, yet doubt and alarm churned within her heart.
Just an instant ago, she had felt a sudden tremor of dread, as though something profoundly dangerous had appeared.
Yet it had lasted only a fraction of a heartbeat before vanishing without a trace.
*Did it come from his direction?*
* * *
Inside the immortal cave.
Luo Chen gazed with great interest at the Yuantu Sword resting across his knees.
With a thought, a burst of crimson sword qi surged from the blade.
Though it appeared as a single stream, it was actually formed from the fusion of ten strands of Crimson Firmament sword qi, which he could disperse at will.
*Empowered by the Yuantu Sword, a single strand of this sword qi will kill any Golden Core cultivator on contact.*
*If the entire stream is unleashed together, even a Nascent Soul expert caught unprepared would suffer injuries.*
It might not sound particularly earth-shattering.
Compared to techniques like the Qingyang Great Handprint, Fire Phoenix Consuming the Prairie, or the Wither-Bloom Dao Finger, it lagged far behind.
Yet each of those previous arts was a spell Luo Chen had cultivated for decades, or even over a century!
The Wither-Bloom Dao Finger was still more profound, originating from the Wither-Bloom True Fire and touching upon the true meaning of nomological law, placing it beyond comparison.
Yet these ten strands of sword qi had taken Luo Chen a mere five years to refine, from start to finish.
What was more, this represented only the minor attainment stage of the *Myriad Firmaments Myriad Transformations Sword Scripture*, which in theory was effective only against Golden Core cultivators.
The reason Luo Chen estimated it could harm a Nascent Soul expert was solely due to the augmentation of the Yuantu Sword.
If he cultivated it to the intermediate attainment stage in the future and refined a hundred strands of Crimson Firmament sword qi, it would undoubtedly pose a genuine threat and could even slay a Nascent Soul expert!
Most importantly, this technique required no advance channeling and no gathering of worldly spiritual qi; it could be unleashed in an instant, catching enemies entirely off guard!
Luo Chen was extremely pleased with its might.
Yet what drew his attention was far more than just this.
With a thought, his status panel snapped open.
Under the cultivation arts column, the proficiency of *Myriad Firmaments Myriad Transformations Sword Qi* had jumped from the entry level to the familiar level.
Not only that, but Luo Chen could sense that his speed in refining subsequent strands of Crimson Firmament Qi would increase significantly. It would no longer take half a year per strand, but would be far faster.
As for how much faster, he hadn't had the chance to test it yet.
*It's just as I anticipated!*
Luo Chen was quite thrilled.
According to the sword scripture's original text, reaching the intermediate stage of a hundred strands took fifty years at the quickest, and reaching the grand attainment stage of a thousand strands required at least five hundred years.
Yet with the boost of the proficiency panel, he could drastically shorten that timeframe.
Before long, he might master yet another formidable art!
Clearly, the pleasant surprises didn't end there.
Luo Chen shifted his gaze upward.
Under the cultivation realm column, a subtle change had appeared:
[Nascent Soul Third Layer: 80/100]
His cultivation realm had finally stabilized!
The wisp of worldly origin qi he had absorbed while comprehending the true meaning of nomological law had been completely refined, its restless volatility fully purged.
Normally, it shouldn't have been this fast, but during the continuous tempering of the Crimson Firmament sword qi, Luo Chen had discovered that it provided no small aid in purifying magic power.
Coupled with the day-and-night burning of the Wither-Bloom True Fire, it had taken him only five years to thoroughly consolidate his realm.
"Let's put it to the test!"
Luo Chen slipped quietly out of his immortal cave.
The black ape puppet, linked to him in mind, was already prepared and opened the way for him. Unnoticed by anyone, Luo Chen departed Lingtian Pass.
The land within several hundred li of Lingtian Pass had long been cleared of all activity.
Luo Chen found a secluded spot and began testing his spells.
Just as he had expected, with his realm stabilized, not only did the might of his spells increase when cast anew, but more importantly, he could once again exercise flawless control over them.
The fluctuations of magic power that had occasionally leaked out in earlier years could now be fully restrained.
His aura was no longer sharply piercing, but gradually receded, becoming as deep as a pool and as steady as a mountain—fitting the bearing of an Alchemy Master far better.
Standing before a massive crater, Luo Chen was filled with satisfaction. He extended his divine sense to its absolute limit while planning his next steps.
*Now that my foundation is solid, I can resume the cultivation I paused earlier and strive to break through to the mid-Nascent Soul stage as soon as possible.*
*The large stash of high-grade Hongyuan Pills I've saved up will finally have a use.*
*There's still over half a year left on the fourth-tier mid-grade immortal cave in Lingtian Pass. I can't let it go to waste; I must make full use of it!*
Having formed his plans, Luo Chen prepared to head back.
Right then, his expression shifted slightly.
Without a second thought, the divine sense he had stretched to its utmost limit began to reel back frantically.
Chapter 807