A faint glow emanated from it.
Many blurry images surfaced along with the light.
Just as Gu Xinghan was drawn to the scenes within the glow, the jade disc seemed to come alive, transmitting wave after wave of craving.
Coming to his senses, Gu Xinghan felt a little dazed.
And also somewhat surprised.
Still, he had heard tales of treasures possessing spirituality.
Having accepted this notion quickly, Gu Xinghan began to sense the jade disc's yearning.
Yet it was merely a vague, instinctive impulse.
The jade disc could not speak, leaving him to guess entirely...
Gu Xinghan tried all sorts of ways to satisfy the jade disc.
Spirit stones, mineral jades, medicinal herbs...
The jade disc seemed utterly uninterested in any of them.
It continued relentlessly radiating its craving toward Gu Xinghan.
On top of that, his peers had all succeeded in Foundation Establishment one after another, while he had no idea how to explain his own delay.
With the two issues compounding, Gu Xinghan grew increasingly agitated and frustrated.
It was only by sheer coincidence, when he saw Elder Fang Zaiji preparing a Terminal Disc for a newly recruited core disciple, that the jade disc began to stir frantically, making its target immediately clear to Gu Xinghan.
"This..."
Gu Xinghan hesitated.
After all, this Terminal Disc was a precious treasure that Elder Fang had repeatedly stressed the importance of.
If something went wrong...
In the end, however, he could not overcome the jade disc's insistence.
With a flash of light, the jade disc appeared within his sea of consciousness.
Under Gu Xinghan's nervous watch, the jade disc slowly drifted down atop the Terminal Disc.
Then, from its underside, dense clusters of tiny light beams resembling tentacles reached out.
They adhered tightly to the Terminal Disc.
Initially, Gu Xinghan thought the jade disc would damage the Terminal Disc.
After watching for a while, however, he found that was not the case.
Instead, connected by those sticky tentacle-like beams of light, the two seemed to be merging into one.
This put Gu Xinghan at ease.
At the same time, he felt a sense of novelty.
"Could these two—the jade disc and the circular disc—actually be the same thing?" Gu Xinghan could not help but wonder.
Yet he was a child after all. Having reached no conclusion, Gu Xinghan soon cast the matter aside.
Instead, he studied the imagery he had received from the jade disc.
"Establishing the foundation with oneself? What is this? It seems to match the condition inside my body?"
Gu Xinghan was overjoyed.
He immediately stopped paying attention to the jade disc and threw himself into studying the method of establishing the foundation with oneself.
By the time he came back to his senses from that sudden enlightenment, the jade disc had already completely fused with the Terminal Disc.
However, the fusion process looked as if the jade disc had sprawled upon it and forced itself, leaving the final product not particularly pleasing to the eye.
Still, Gu Xinghan did not care about that.
He knew this jade disc was very likely an extraordinary treasure.
Though young, Gu Xinghan was far from naive. On the contrary, he possessed a keen awareness of the world's perils.
Knowing that an ordinary man incurs guilt merely by possessing a jade treasure, he decided to conceal both the jade disc and the existence of the method of establishing the foundation with oneself.
"Perhaps I can use this new jade disc as a cover and claim to the outside world that it's my Foundation Establishment wonder..." young Gu Xinghan mused.
And so, completely unbeknownst to anyone, the only cultivator in the world to establish the foundation with oneself began his cultivation.
In the beginning, his performance brought unexpected delight to Liu San and the others of the Medicine King Sect.
He grasped everything taught at once and mastered one concept to unlock a hundred more.
He was invincible among those of the same realm, and battling Golden Core cultivators as a Foundation Establishment cultivator was effortless.
For a time, Gu Xinghan became the Medicine King Sect's most dazzling junior disciple.
The entire sect placed immense hopes upon him.
However...
His peak was like a shooting star, fleeting and ephemeral.
Before long, his peers broke through to the Golden Core and Nascent Soul realms one after another.
Gu Xinghan, however, remained stagnated in place.
This highly abnormal turn of events baffled Liu San and the rest of the sect.
Assuming something had gone wrong with Gu Xinghan's body, they took turns examining him personally.
Yet not a single one could discern anything amiss.
When they questioned Gu Xinghan himself, he only said he had tried his best, but could simply make no further progress.
In the blink of an eye, thirty years passed.
The Medicine King Sect could only resign themselves to this reality.
They formally gave up on nurturing Gu Xinghan.
Still, they did not treat him harshly; various resources were still available for his use.
They simply no longer paid him much attention.
Faced with junior disciples surpassing him one after another, Gu Xinghan grew increasingly quiet and taciturn.
He lived in seclusion day in and day out, ignoring worldly affairs and rarely interacting with outsiders.
He was almost entirely forgotten by all.
Just like that, two hundred and sixty-three years passed.
With gray hair and a weathered face, Gu Xinghan finally reached the end of his life.
"Hunyuan Golden Core, Hunyuan Golden Core..."
"Just what is Hunyuan?"
He gave a bitter, sorrowful laugh.
"To create something from nothing, to blaze an entirely new trail... It's too hard. It's simply too hard..."
"Once I successfully established the foundation with myself, I didn't even have the chance to regret it and switch to the new method."
A warm, lustrous jade disc emerged in his hand.
Compared to over two hundred years ago, all of its radiant light was now completely retracted.
It looked just like an ordinary stone found anywhere on the roadside, incapable of drawing anyone's attention.
Looking at the jade disc that had accompanied him for almost his entire life, Gu Xinghan wore a complicated expression.
"You ruined my life... you ruined my whole life..."
He muttered under his breath.
He wanted to smash the jade disc violently against the ground, yet felt an ache of reluctance.
In the end, he gripped the jade disc firmly in his hand. Filled with unwillingness, he breathed his last.
Gu Xinghan's death did not cause the slightest ripple.
Since no anomalies manifested upon his death, it was not until three years later that his corpse was finally discovered.
After more than two hundred years, the Valley of Longevity had long since changed beyond recognition.
No one remembered this former hope of the Medicine King Sect anymore.
Nobody cared.
The funeral arrangements were kept simple.
Soon, Gu Xinghan's corpse was buried in the Medicine King Sect disciples' cemetery within the Beast Seed Realm.
As one of his few remaining relics, the jade disc in Gu Xinghan's hand drew no attention either.
It accompanied him into the earth, buried deep underground.
From then on, it remained in endless darkness.
***
Beyond the Xuanhuang Realm.
Inside the Medicine King Cauldron.
A figure who looked strikingly similar to Li Fan, yet appeared frail in the extreme, let out a muffled grunt.
He wiped the blood continuously trickling from his nose and mouth with his hand, looking as though he might die of blood loss at any moment.
Yet his expression remained utterly composed.
"A single moment in the cauldron, a millennium in Xuanhuang."
He coughed softly, his eyes filled with boundless emotion.
"To personally experience such a disparity in the flow of time... this sensation is truly marvelous beyond words."
The one inside the Medicine King Cauldron was Sacred Embryo Li Fan.
As a component to mislead others, he was an avatar Li Fan had created using his own vital blood through the Sacred Blood Embryo Transformation Method before Mr. Bai's arrival.
Time had been tight, and his aptitude was identical to the original body.
Thus, he was merely a mortal without any cultivation whatsoever.
Not long after departing the Xuanhuang Realm, he sensed that the Medicine King Cauldron had already deviated from its original trajectory.
Moreover, the scenes transmitted back from the Dissociation Disc—the medium of his bodily transformation—were coming faster and faster.
The massive volume of information nearly caused his brain to burst.
Fortunately, everything eventually lapsed into pitch-black darkness.
Only then did he find some relief.
"Although my body transformed into an object, because this sacred embryo still exists, I can actually exert simple control over the transformed medium from afar."
"Still, it goes no further than that."
He had not witnessed the scenes recorded by the Dissociation Disc of the battle between Chuanfa and Mr. Bai within the Xuanhuang Realm, situated as he was beyond its borders.
Yet being able to witness the Dharma-Transmitting Heavenly Venerable make a move with his own eyes for the first time was already an immense harvest for Li Fan.
Setting aside his thoughts about Chuanfa for now, Sacred Embryo Li Fan felt a faint stirring of excitement.
Because he was about to behold the legendary Immortal Ruins.
Creaking and groaning sounds echoed from throughout the Medicine King Cauldron.
This alone spoke to the immense pressure it was enduring.
Sacred Embryo Li Fan used the spyglass prepared beforehand within the cauldron to peer out toward the Immortal Ruins.
Ahead lay utter darkness.
The Medicine King Cauldron flew faster and faster.
A tremendous roar resounded from all directions.
It felt as if it could disintegrate at any second.
Yet within Sacred Embryo Li Fan's view, there was still nothing to be seen.
"Is this as far as it goes?"
He could not help feeling a pang of regret.
Boom!
The Medicine King Cauldron began to break apart.
The violent shuddering made it nearly impossible for him to stay on his feet.
Struggling, Sacred Embryo Li Fan took the spyglass and ducked into the innermost core of the Medicine King Cauldron.
A cramped refuge forged entirely from Eternal Calamity Fine Gold.
Under the ever-intensifying, almost unimaginable pressure, the Medicine King Cauldron finally could hold on no longer and shattered into countless pieces.
Simultaneously, it plummeted toward the Immortal Ruins.
Just moments later, Sacred Embryo Li Fan felt that even the Eternal Calamity Fine Gold was on the verge of giving way.
Yet, true to his innate temperament, he did not give up.
He still raised the spyglass and peered forward.
Instantly, he froze.
Within what had been a pitch-black expanse, an endless wilderness had appeared at some unknown moment.
Across the wilderness, countless ruins were scattered about.
A towering corpse sat cross-legged upon the earth.
The flesh had almost entirely vanished, leaving only a layer of skin draped loosely over the skeletal frame.
Dozens of blood-red chains were deeply embedded into the earth.
They bound the skeleton fast upon the wilderness.
Around the corpse, deep ravines crisscrossed one another.
Upon the desolate ground, they traced out an exquisitely intricate symbol.
Though he did not recognize the symbol, the moment he laid eyes upon it, Li Fan naturally comprehended its meaning.
It was a character.
The character for 'Hunger'!
An infinite sensation of hunger surged instantly through Sacred Embryo Li Fan's mind.
At the same time...
The skeletal remains upon the desolate wilderness abruptly snapped their eyes open!
Chapter 798