Chapter 507: Chapter 496: Sword Cultivator Father
The Cultivation World is such that sometimes, even if you don’t do anything wrong, you could still be plotted against by others simply because you possess something desirable. Spiritual beasts have it even worse; in the eyes of cultivators, the first thing that comes to mind is how much their inner cores are worth in spirit stones, whether their blood and hide can be exchanged for cultivation resources.
Some are envious of others even when they possess nothing, merely because of their high talent for cultivation, and due to such jealousy, they find ways to trip you up from time to time.
That’s why people often say that cultivating is defying the heavens, not because the Heavenly Dao doesn’t allow them to cultivate or to achieve enlightenment, but because the path of cultivation is fraught with hardship and setbacks. Hence, some blame the heavens for the difficulties of cultivation.
If cultivation were truly defying the heavens, then why would the Heavenly Dao provide so many cultivation resources? Why bother sending down Heavenly Thunder to purify one’s talent? Only those with malevolent intentions encounter Heart Demons when faced with the Heavenly Thunder.
With a sudden insight, Ye Qiu sat down cross-legged with ease, Little Golden Crow stood by his side, and Li Yuan together with Old Turtle felt the intense fluctuations of spiritual energy and distanced themselves a bit further away.
Old Turtle looked on with envy and said to Li Yuan, "The Heavenly Dao indeed favors you human cultivators more, to have such an epiphany so suddenly. I have never seen any spiritual beast have a breakthrough from an epiphany; they always have to accumulate steadily."
Li Yuan shook his head in disagreement: "But don’t forget, once you spiritual beasts enter the Cultivation World, your talents are higher than us human cultivators. Even though your accumulation might be slower, your foundations are more solid, and you’re not as prone to Heart Demons as we are. Some cultivators accumulate spiritual energy all their lives and still can’t break through. Not everyone possesses insight. With Spirit Roots, the exceptional ones are one in ten thousand, and those with good Spirit Roots are one in a thousand. Moreover, having a good Spirit Root is one thing, but having a good disposition and insight is even rarer still. Just think, how many humans are there in the Xuanyuan Realm? How many cultivators? And how many can cultivate to the Nascent Soul Stage?"
After hearing Li Yuan’s analysis, Old Turtle fell silent. It truly had never seen a spiritual beast affected by a Heart Demon, which was probably due to their straightforward nature, lacking the many twists and turns that human cultivators possess.
Moreover, regardless of how high their parents’ cultivation levels are, all humans are born without any cultivation and must rely on themselves to cultivate step by step.
However, it’s different for spiritual beasts. Take merfolk for example, due to their noble bloodline, little merfolk are born with cultivation at the Foundation Establishment Stage. As for those legendary Divine Beasts, they possess the power to destroy the heavens and the earth.
Thinking this way, it seems that humans really don’t have much of an advantage. Indeed, the Heavenly Dao is fair.
Suddenly, Ye Qiu entered a state of sudden insight. Unable to mine for spirit stones, Old Turtle simply wandered around the Merfolk Secret Realm, greedily stuffing any tasty fish it encountered into its space.
As for Li Yuan, he took advantage of the spiritual energy from Ye Qiu’s insight to quickly recover.
Ye Qiu spent ten days in his sudden insight. By the last two days, spiritual energy had enveloped him in a cocoon.
"You’ve broken through, congratulations!" Li Yuan opened his eyes and said to Ye Qiu.
Nascent Soul Middle Stage, Ye Qiu felt the robust spiritual energy inside his body and stretched his limbs with vigor.
Hearing the commotion, Old Turtle also swam back, equally delighted to congratulate Ye Qiu.
"Sorry to have kept you waiting, let’s go mine for spirit stones now."
"Go, go, go..." Old Turtle couldn’t wait any longer, excitedly rubbing its two front flippers together.
Ye Qiu felt that even if Old Turtle underwent Transformation, it would still look like a sleazy old man. Unfortunately, Transformation required reaching the Divinity Transformation Stage, and he didn’t know if they’d still be able to meet after ascending to the Upper Realm.
No matter whether he kept the merfolk secret realm for his sect or traded it with Wuji Sect for other resources, Ye Qiu felt that he should thoroughly loot it first. Leaving behind an active spiritual vein was already quite generous of him; even so, everyone in the sect should be grateful to him!
However, he had already taken plenty before, so he decided to let Old Turtle have the lion’s share of the spirit stones. He didn’t mind even if it took all the spirit stones, because Little Golden Crow said that the ice flame was worth much more than this spirit vein.
But Old Turtle was an honest creature. Even if Ye Qiu said it was okay to take it all, Old Turtle still left quite a lot for Ye Qiu. It only needed top-grade spirit stones now; the others weren’t much use to it and it was better to earn some goodwill.
"So this is the heart of a spirit vein." Both human and turtle dug to the middle and finally saw the true face of the vein core.
In fact, it wasn’t that special—just a white jade stone. Due to its youth, and because no heavenly thunder had struck, it was somewhat dim-witted with little consciousness, simply absorbing spiritual energy and producing it again like a filter.
But Ye Qiu knew this filter was extraordinary; it was top-notch material for artifact refining. Legend had it that adding a vein core to a weapon made it more likely to become a divine artifact. He even thought about taking it back for Ye Sheng.
However, it was a case of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. There was no need to destroy the entire secret realm for one artifact forging material. There were many materials that could turn weapons divine—he could find something else for his son. As for this vein core, he would let it stay right here and grow well!
Having looted most of the spirit stones from this spirit vein, Ye Qiu stopped his hand. To dig further would affect the growth of the vein core. To grow back to its previous state, it would probably need tens of thousands of years!
For a cultivator, that’s a very long time, but for a sect, it’s nothing to worry about. To his knowledge, Tianyan Sect had been passed down from the Upper Realm and had survived for at least several hundred thousand years.
Waiting ten thousand years indeed wasn’t much, but who knew what would happen in those ten thousand years—it was up to his sect leader junior brother to decide.
When Qin Guan received the message from his senior brother a month later, he never expected that a mere trip would bring such a magnificent surprise to the sect.
An active spiritual vein within a secret realm—how valuable was that? The fact that this secret realm was previously inhabited by merfolk made it even more mysterious.
Although his senior brother said that he had almost completely looted the secret realm, Qin Guan felt that was appropriate. The fact that his senior brother would hand over the secret realm to the sect was already a huge gain, and he still wanted to reward his senior brother!
The only annoyance was that the merfolk secret realm was in the outer sea, and Tianyan Sect was not close to the outer sea at all. Between them was Wuji Sect, with whom relations were not very good. Who knew if Wuji Sect would become jealous and cause trouble in the future? Was it really necessary to trade with Wuji Sect as his senior brother had mentioned? But what would need to be taken from Wuji Sect to be worth this secret realm? Qin Guan was plunged into worry.
After contacting his sect leader junior brother, Ye Qiu did not rush to leave the outer sea. Instead, he found a hidden undersea canyon and stored thousands of merfolk corpses there, setting up isolation arrays and seals around it. With tips from Little Golden Crow, neither spiritual beasts nor cultivators would be able to find it.