This was the Taiqing Divine Thunder that killed the fire lizard. She had spent seven days drawing those hundreds of talismans, but she had only managed to summon this one bolt of Taiqing Divine Thunder. However, A Yao was satisfied. It could be reused dozens of times, and if it could be replenished with lightning-type power, it could be strengthened.
She absorbed the divine lightning from her fingertips into her body.
Several white-robed puppets stood around. Ayao looked at the fallen fire lizard and said, "I have no grudge against you, and those cultivators you killed also had no grudge against you, right? Let's not compare who is innocent or blameless."
After saying that, he sliced open the fire lizard's body with his sword, took out the fire-attribute inner core of the fire lizard, and swallowed it directly into his mouth.
The fire-attribute inner core slowly descended into A Yao's dantian, where a small nascent soul resided, resembling a miniature version of A Yao. Around this nascent soul floated four inner cores of different colored demonic beasts.
Ayao put the fire lizard's body into her storage bag, as well as the array flags of the Immortal Trapping Array and the white-robed puppets around her. With a flash of spiritual light, she transformed into a stream of light and flew towards a mountain peak.
After flying over a dozen mountain peaks, a thick fog appeared ahead. As A-Yao approached, the fog seemed to come alive, spreading out to both sides, only to surge back after she passed. A-Yao flew into the dense fog, passing through a mirage, and arrived at a simple cave dwelling.
This simple cave dwelling was carved out by her a dozen days ago. She entered the cave, sat down on a futon, crossed her legs, closed her eyes, and focused her inner vision on the demon beast's inner core in her dantian. She had been hunting demon beasts these past few days, and with the addition of this one today, she had collected the inner cores of demon beasts of the four elements: metal, wood, earth, and fire.
She was originally of the water element, and with the four demon beast cores, her body now contains all five elements: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth.
Cultivating immortality requires spiritual roots, and the more singular the attribute of the spiritual root, the better—this seems to be common knowledge. However, this common knowledge is actually wrong.
In reality, the quality of a spiritual root has nothing to do with its attributes, but only with its completeness and purity. It's just that in most cases, the fewer innate attributes a spiritual root has, the more complete and pure it is, which creates this illusion.
For example, the Chaos Spiritual Root has all attributes, but it is even more powerful to cultivate than the Heavenly Spiritual Root.
Pseudo-spiritual roots possess multiple attributes, resulting in a chaotic jumble of attributes within the body. Regardless of the cultivation method chosen, the other attributes become a hindrance. Chaotic spiritual roots, on the other hand, have each attribute distributed like a well-organized army, intersecting without interfering with each other and even assisting other attributes.
No matter which attribute one cultivates with a Chaos Spiritual Root, all other attributes will increase dramatically, making the cultivation speed dozens of times faster than that of a Celestial Spiritual Root.
Those who possess this spiritual root, unless they are extremely unlucky and die prematurely, can become a regional overlord. The chaotic spiritual root is also known as the chaotic overlord body.
Many cultivators judge aptitude based on the quantity of spiritual root attributes, which can lead to an oversight, mistaking chaotic spiritual roots for pseudo-spiritual roots.
However, chaotic spiritual roots are extremely rare, occurring only once every hundred thousand years, and are even uncommon in the upper realms. Therefore, in most cases, judging aptitude solely based on innate attributes is not entirely wrong.
Ayao doesn't have a Chaos Spiritual Root, but she can roughly imitate one.
She was going to divide herself into five equal parts.
Ayao took out two bottles of pills from her storage bag and poured them into her mouth. After swallowing them, she quickly formed hand seals, and her body emitted bursts of light. In the dazzling light, a painful expression appeared on her face, and many beads of sweat appeared on her forehead. After a while, four beams of light separated from her body and turned into four Ayaos sitting cross-legged in meditation.
These A Yaos, one dressed in red, one in green, one in yellow, and one in white, were all at the late-stage Golden Core realm, while the original A Yao's strength had dropped to the late-stage Golden Core realm.
Regardless of the type of spiritual root, advancing to the Void Refinement stage requires the unification of the five elements. If the attributes are insufficient, one must find a way to complete them. A Yao divided herself into five parts, and now each clone is equivalent to a single-spiritual-root A Yao. The main body and clones correspond to the five elements: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth, and their cultivation does not hinder each other.
When both her main body and her clone reached the early stage of the Nascent Soul realm, she used a secret technique to merge them, directly skipping the middle and late stages of the Nascent Soul realm and entering the Void Refinement stage.
Besides shortening her training time, Ayao also didn't want to attract attention.
It's astonishing that she went from the mid-Foundation Establishment stage to the early Nascent Soul stage in just three years. When she formed her Nascent Soul at Yingxiu Peak, she used a magic array to conceal the celestial phenomenon of the formation. Now, the Lu family doesn't know that she has formed her Nascent Soul, and they don't even know that she formed her Core two years ago.
The four clones stood up, and Ayao threw four storage bags to them. They then turned into streaks of light and disappeared.
Ayao needs a clone to help her find a demon beast with phoenix blood.
Humans can only cultivate the Phoenix Technique to the second level at most. To reach the third level, one needs at least a trace of Phoenix bloodline. There are no Phoenixes in this Canglan Realm, and even if there were, she wouldn't be able to ask them for it.
Therefore, she could only hunt down a monster with a thin layer of phoenix bloodline and extract a drop of phoenix essence blood.
There are many close relatives of the phoenix, such as the Vermilion Bird, the Azure Luan, the Golden-Winged Roc, the Five-Colored Peacock, and the Chongming, etc. They all have the phoenix bloodline, a high concentration of it. However, these are all divine birds, born with a divine embryo, which is not found in this Canglan Realm.
Even if you have it, it's useless. If you ask them for a drop of essence blood, they'll kill you with a single wing.
She was looking for a demon beast with a very, very thin phoenix bloodline.
After her four clones left, A Yao continued to cultivate in her simple cave. She made a suit of armor from the fire lizard's skin, two swords from its claws and teeth, and used its flesh and blood to make the Nine-Colored Pill. After a month, she removed the Bewitching Array outside her cave and left the place.
————
Above the Demon Spirit Abyss, miasma swirled, and a streak of light flew across the vast forest. It was a young woman riding a flying sword, wearing a purple gauze dress and a veil.
This is Ayao.
Ayao flew through the mountains on her sword and suddenly spotted a spiritual herb, which she picked. She continued flying in one direction, and after a short while, she saw a cultivator who had perished.
Curious, she flew down. The cultivator looked to be around thirty years old. His clothes made it impossible to tell which sect he belonged to. A large part of his left shoulder had been bitten off, and he had a penetrating wound in his abdomen with congealed blood. However, he shouldn't have been dead for too long; he probably died last night.
With a wave of her hand, the man's storage bag flew towards her.
With another wave of his hand, the man's corpse was burned to ashes by a ball of flame.
"I took your storage bag and cremated your body to prevent it from being eaten by birds, beasts, insects, and ants. That's fair enough," Ayao said, looking at the ashes blown away by the wind.
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