"Could the material Jiao Xiuyuan uses to craft his avatars have come from Ruomu?"
With a stir in his heart, Li Fan held the withered Ruomu branch in his hand, sensing it attentively.
After a long while, looking thoughtful, he gave a slight shake of his head.
"Similar, yet different. They seem to share the same origin, but bear distinct differences."
"Besides, with Daoist Xiumu's deep-seated hatred for cultivators, it's unlikely he would ever strike a deal with Jiao Xiuyuan."
"Which means..."
Before Li Fan's eyes, the scene from before flashed once more—Ruomu besieged by cultivators, its trunk splitting open down the middle, countless branches tumbling from the sky.
"Perhaps those severed boughs met entirely new fates after plummeting into the Xuanhuang Realm."
The vitality of flora was always surprisingly resilient. Even ordinary plants and trees often sprouted anew from broken twigs.
To say nothing of a wondrous existence like Ruomu, capable of bearing the Everlasting Life Fruit.
"Still, whether Jiao Xiuyuan truly transformed from a bough dropped from Ruomu, or merely found a remnant branch from those days to use as material for crafting avatars, is difficult to judge for now."
With a thought from Li Fan, the withered Ruomu branch in his hand suddenly put forth a fresh sprout.
In the blink of an eye, the sprout grew into a tender new twig.
Hanging from the tip of the twig, like a piece of fruit, was a tiny golden sphere.
The corner of Li Fan's eye twitched.
This "golden fruit" was naturally the Golden Core Daoist Xiumu had promised to throw into the bargain.
Yet this manner of delivery was rather bizarre.
Li Fan reached out, intending to pluck the Golden Core.
A faint resistance came from the "fruit."
With a little more force, Li Fan smoothly detached the Golden Core.
From the recoil, the new shoot whipped backward violently, swaying ceaselessly in the air.
Yet before it swayed for long, with a swish, it shrank back into the withered Ruomu branch.
Before Li Fan could even think further, it emerged once again, bearing another Golden Core.
Looking at the withered branch before him, which seemed almost like a living creature, Li Fan grew somewhat solemn.
He did not act rashly, simply plucking the Golden Cores it bore one by one, like picking fruit.
It took nearly the burn time of an incense stick.
Three hundred and seventy-two in total.
Once all the Golden Cores were delivered, the withered Ruomu branch fulfilled its mission.
It crumbled into flying ash inch by inch, scattering without a trace on the wind.
Throughout the process of "harvesting fruit," Li Fan had appeared to store the Golden Cores into his storage ring, but had in truth quietly begun absorbing them with True Reversion.
Just as he had speculated before, a single-method Golden Core only increased the anchor charging progress by 0.25%.
A dual-method Golden Core yielded 0.5%.
Three-Dharma Golden Cores, however, showed a qualitative leap—a single one increased progress by 2%.
Yet among these three hundred-odd Golden Cores, Three-Dharma ones were the minority.
The vast majority were single-method and dual-method.
There were none with four methods or more.
Thus, by the time Li Fan finished unlocking the fifth anchor, only sixteen specially chosen Golden Cores remained.
Li Fan had not selected them based on how many methods were condensed into each Golden Core.
Rather, he judged them by the rarity of their arts.
Ordinary Five Elements arts, which were far inferior to Li Fan's own subtle insights, naturally had no need to be kept.
Others, however, touched upon realms where Li Fan's current understanding was still shallow, making them highly valuable to him as a newcomer to the Nascent Soul realm.
The entire Nascent Soul realm was a process of nurturing and perfecting one's grotto-heaven domain.
The more complete the grotto-heaven domain, the greater the combat strength displayed by a Nascent Soul cultivator.
When it could be made almost identical to the external environment of the Xuanhuang Realm, one could look ahead to the Soul Formation realm.
Li Fan remained somewhat unclear on the specific details.
Yet he vaguely had an idea of the general process.
The so-called "extracting the marrow of Heaven and Earth to attain its spirit."
The marrow of Heaven, as the name implied, functioned roughly similarly to human bone marrow.
The most important function of human marrow was hematopoiesis—the production of blood.
The marrow of Heaven, however, produced the laws.
The laws of Heaven and Earth, much like the blood of the human body, were the cornerstone sustaining the stable existence of the world.
A person without blood dies; a heaven without laws perishes.
By disguising one's grotto-heaven as the Xuanhuang Realm's native environment, one deceived the instinctive law-granting action of the marrow of Heaven, thereby claiming for oneself wisps of the laws that should have manifested in the world.
Of course, just as human marrow was tasked with immune and defensive mechanisms in addition to blood production, the marrow of Heaven also possessed a certain capacity to retaliate.
Therefore, during the process of extracting the marrow of Heaven, one had to remain constantly vigilant against the backlash of Heaven and Earth.
Often, only one law could be drawn at a time, and one could not be insatiably greedy; it had to be measured carefully.
If offering sacrifice to the anima of Heaven and Earth was an open, aboveboard appropriation of laws once one had sufficient strength, then extracting the marrow of Heaven was stealthily stealing laws while still weak.
By strengthening oneself and weakening the counterpart, one narrowed the gap between both sides.
Thereby making ample preparation for the future process of Dao Integration.
Standing now at the Nascent Soul realm, rehearsing the process of extracting the marrow of Heaven in his mind once more, Li Fan naturally gained insights that were distinct and far deeper than when he was at the Golden Core realm.
"Chuanfa was truly a genius of natural talent."
"Beginning with borrowing the wonders of Heaven and Earth and glimpsing the laws of Heaven and Earth, he turned a mortal incapable of cultivation, step by step, into someone who could be accommodated within the entire cultivation system of Heaven and Earth."
"Then, by seizing the essence of Heaven and Earth and extracting the marrow of Heaven and Earth, he narrowed the gap between Heaven and Earth and the self."
"Offering sacrifice to the anima of Heaven and Earth, he grasped the power to wrestle with Heaven and Earth."
"Finally, defying the principles of Heaven and Earth, he supplanted it, perpetually attesting to Longevity."
"Step by step, with a clear purpose..."
"Truly impossible to guard against. No wonder even the might of Heaven and Earth suffered utter defeat before new-method cultivators, forced into counterattacking."
Li Fan sighed in admiration once again.
Looking back over these stages of cultivation once more, Li Fan's heart suddenly stirred, sensing that this progression bore an uncanny resemblance to something in his memory.
Yet just as he tried to ponder it carefully, the inspiration that had surfaced with such difficulty abruptly vanished from his mind.
Even when he called upon the Dao Transformation Stone, he could not recall it.
A sense of hollow loss could not help but well up in Li Fan's heart.
"Strange..."
Li Fan narrowed his eyes slightly, instantly sinking into contemplation.
He was almost certain that under normal circumstances, such an epiphany would never have dissipated so quickly without a trace.
It must have been influenced by some power, causing that wisp of inspiration to vanish in an instant.
"Just like what I experienced in Senior Sister Zhao's illusion."
"Imprisoned in that secret chamber, the moment I sought to cultivate, the chamber walls deliberately emitted noisy, mocking voices, attempting to prevent me from entering cultivation and restoring my state."
"And this shackle of the Xuanhuang Realm is even quieter, unknown to anyone."
"Dharma-Transmitting Heavenly Venerable, is it you...?"
Li Fan abruptly looked up toward the heavens, his expression inscrutable.
Chapter 589