After passing through the location of the five Nascent Souls again, Jiang Li, who had already experienced it once, was clearly much more successful this time.
After he returned to the ground, Jiang Li stepped on the air repeatedly and walked along the small passageway. Soon, he encountered the Five Elements Formation Disk that blocked his path.
The authority given to him by Peak Master Wei was not enough to take effect here.
At this moment, the Shu Mountain Earth Spirit was still wailing in his Qi Sea. Without him opening the door, the problem came. How could he return to the surface through this indestructible Five Elements Formation Disk?
It was obviously not reliable to use his fists to smash it. The Demon Subduing Pagoda that was connected to the earth vein was something that even a Nascent Soul cultivator could not break. Jiang Li reckoned that even if he died here, he would not be able to break it, although he would not die from exhaustion anyway.
Apart from brute force, was there any other way to pass through this place?
There was.
The old Earth Spirit had secretly corroded the array formation in the Demon Subduing Pagoda for more than a thousand years. Although he could not accumulate the power to take revenge on Shu Mountain, it was enough to let him open a few small back doors in the Demon Subduing Pagoda.
After all, in the original plan, after he seized Jiang Li’s body, he had to think of a way to get out.
With his flesh and blood body, he could no longer appear and disappear like the spiritual bodies. It would definitely be even more difficult to use the escape technique to travel. Therefore, the back door he left behind must be quite big.
Although Jiang Li, who had already obtained the Earth Spirit Body, did not have an earth attribute spiritual root and had never cultivated an earth attribute cultivation method, he could still rely on this physique to use a simple Earth Escape Technique.
What he needed to do now was find a gap that could allow him to escape.
In Jiang Li’s eyes, the towering Shu Mountain Five Elements Peak was reflected. In his vision, the flow of the earth vein power became clearer.
It was hard to say how much the Earth Spirit Body had increased Jiang Li’s strength. The greatest help it gave him was still in the Dao of Runic Formations.
In the cultivation world of the Great Mountain Region, what kind of array formation was recognized as the most powerful?
It was similar to the Shu Mountain Five Elements Peak and the Misty Mountain Range. It combined the mountains and rivers and borrowed the power of heaven and earth to form a large array.
With his talent in runes and array formations, coupled with this pair of eyes that could see the flow of the earth vein, this would undoubtedly make his formation path seem like a cheat.
Compared to others, they had to calculate in detail before they could roughly guess the direction of the earth vein flow and carefully set up the array bit by bit.
However, Jiang Li was able to directly see the earth vein clearly, and it was even to the extent that he was able to directly extract it from the ground. The advantage and convenience he was able to obtain when setting up a large-scale formation could simply not be described with words.
In next to no time, Jiang Li noticed that within the complicated formation patterns of the Five Elements Formation, there was an earth vein energy that was different from the others. It was several times thicker than other earth vein energy, and it flowed in a completely different direction.
Jiang Li’s eyes lit up. It was here.
He reached out and pressed down on that node. The earth vein power of the same source slowly seeped into it, following the direction of that array pattern and seeping his strength in bit by bit.
Following that, the Earth Escape Technique imbued with the Earth Spirit Body activated. His figure was like toothpaste as he slowly squeezed into the flowing reverse formation pattern.
Following the flow of the earth vein power, he shuttled through the Five Elements Array Disk, and the scene he sensed was strange and varied.
A moment later, a head appeared from the other side of the Five Elements Formation. Then, the entire body squeezed out bit by bit.
After all, Jiang Li had never practiced Earth Escape or had an earth attribute spiritual root. He could not escape instantly like Shen Ruoshi from the Heaven and Earth Hall.
With the help of the rich earth vein power, the process was still very difficult.
It was impossible to use it in battle. It was barely enough to drill a hole in the ground.
It took him more than a minute to successfully squeeze past the array disk’s obstruction and reach the seventh level.
However, now that he had found a way, the rest was simple.
Relying on this back door, after going up two more levels, Jiang Li had already returned to the fifth level. On the Golden Light Pagoda statue in the outside world, the fake red dot had originally stopped on the meditation mat in front of the pagoda monument.
Now that Jiang Li came up and walked around twice, that red dot overlapped with his true body, no longer having any obvious signs.
From here, he could use the token to go up openly.
When he finally returned to the ground, he was stunned.
Jiang Li stood in a daze. When he saw the golden projection not far away, his heart skipped a beat.
He thought to himself, did this Demon Subduing Pagoda actually have a tracking function? Then, wouldn’t his tracks below be seen clearly?
He did not dare to speak first.
Fortunately, Shenshan Qiuhua’s words made him feel at ease.
“Senior Brother Jiang Li, you’re really too impressive. You actually really reached the fifth level of the Demon Subduing Pagoda! That’s something that no disciple from Shu Mountain has been able to do in the past hundreds of years!”
So they had only noticed that he reached the fifth level? Jiang Li heaved a sigh of relief without leaving a trace, and he instantly understood in his heart that it was definitely the Earth Spirit that had made preparations in advance to prevent him from being exposed.
The other sword cultivator disciples by the side praised him successively, whereas Jiang Li was modest and only said that he was lucky.
“Jiang Li, your talent is extraordinary. The last person who could achieve this was our current generation’s Sword Head, Shenshan Jianyi.”
When Jiang Li heard this name, he glanced at Shenshan Qiuhua. That was her grandfather.
Shenshan Qiuhua’s eyes were filled with worship. In her eyes, if he could do the same thing as her grandfather, wouldn’t Jiang Li be as powerful as him?
Originally, there was no standard for this level, but with an impressive predecessor as a comparison, it was different.
The Shu Mountain Sword Head was the number one combatant on the surface of the Great Mountain Region.
Jiang Li had accomplished the same thing as the other party. Didn’t that mean that his future would be like Shenshan Jianyi, standing at the peak of the cultivation world of the Great Mountain Region?
Jiang Li just did not know what their expressions would be like if they knew that he had actually already reached the eighth level and obtained the Spirit Essences of the entire nine levels.
After the Demon Subduing Pagoda trial, these ten Shu Mountain disciples still had to start Foundation Establishment.
Peak Master Wei naturally did his best to invite Jiang Li to build his foundation in the Shu Mountain mystic realm with them.
However, Jiang Li firmly rejected it.
He already had his own plans for the Foundation Establishment’s location.
…..
Riding the Wood Dragon Rayquaza, Jiang Li flew high in the sky until he could no longer see the towering Five Elements Peak behind him.
He patted the wooden dragon beneath him. Rayquaza immediately understood what he meant. It turned its head and crashed into a cloud beside it. Then, the huge wooden dragon disappeared.
In the cloud, the Nine Nether clone had been waiting for a long time.
The Yin Burial Coffin swelled up in front of him, and Jiang Li rode the wooden dragon into the coffin.
After obtaining the Earth Spirit Blessing, everything in his body that was already filled to the extreme began to stir. He had already reached the limit before breaking through and could no longer suppress it.
The spatial artifact, Yin Burial Coffin, was in a similar state like him.
Jiang Li had invested countless materials and spiritual objects into this artifact, and it had already arrived at the critical point before breaking through. After the last push, it would be able to reach a new height.
After entering the coffin space that he had not seen for a long time, the interior of the space had changed drastically compared to before.
Not to mention the expansion of space, this coffin was almost changing every day.
However, unlike the originally relatively empty space, there was a layer of spirit stones, spirit mines, and a large number of high-grade spiritual materials on the bottom of the Yin Burial Space.
There were really no fake goods. The floor was full of them.
He had even bought an extremely expensive Bloodsucking Wood Tree.
With the income of Green Mountain Residence during this period of time, together with robbing the Hundred Tempering Mountain and some other transactions, he gathered a considerable amount of wealth during this period of time. Now, it was all piled up in the Yin Burial Coffin.
In addition, in the center of the coffin space was an inverted ancient tree, the Nine Nether Wood.
In the deepest corner of the coffin, there was a huge corpse with three heads and six arms sitting on the skeleton throne. Its entire body was filled with a chaotic aura.
A small high-grade Profound-rank Yin Burial Coffin actually gathered so many evil beings. If it did not advance, it would probably be unable to contain these guys.
Fortunately, the requirements for advancement were very close.
After this period of accumulation, the number of ghosts in the coffin had already reached 990,000, which was close to the limit. The last 10,000 ghosts were in a Soul Capturing Bag beside it.
Jiang Li sat down in the coffin and made the final adjustments.
In the outside world, the Nine Nether clone executed the maximum speed of a Golden Core cultivator and flew in a certain direction.
The scenery below quickly changed. He flew past the heavy mountains, crossed the steep mountains, saw the Mother River, and flew past the Southern Seal Kingdom.
A moment later, he plunged into the sand.
This desert was lifeless and had no vitality anywhere.
In the region of the Great Mountain Range covered in emerald green mountains, it was very abnormal for such a desert to suddenly appear.
When Jiang Li first came here, he saw that the barren plants of the Southern Seal Kingdom were turning yellow. The country was leaning against the desert, and from plants to animals, all of them revealed lifelessness.
Back then, he was a little curious. Later on, because of the one in the underwater graveyard and the massacre of the Golden Core sword cultivators, he naturally paid attention to this place.
With his increasingly high status, it was no longer difficult for him to understand some of the secrets. After specially asking the sect, he learned that this place had a little connection to him.
The speed of Golden Core cultivators was very fast. It took slightly more than two days to arrive here from the Shu Mountain Region. Jiang Li relied on the method of observing the earth vein to cross the sandy terrain and fly to the center of this desert.
This was a dried-up huge basin, and it was also where the desert’s earth veins gathered. There was no oasis under the basin, but a twisted and strange forest.
These trees were all withered trees, but under the effect of the earth vein’s extreme Yin land, although the withered trees died, they still did not stop growing.
From above, in the center of all the twisted withered trees, one could see an extremely huge and charred tree stump.
This was the corpse of a thousand-year-old demon king, Ghostwood Tree Spirit, who had once surpassed Nascent Soul. Its avatar was as tall as the sun, and its roots sank into the depths of the netherworld!
Jiang Li’s initial cultivation method, the Ghost Wood Art, was copied from the tree stump after the thousand-year-old Ghostwood Tree Spirit died.
Although he had already switched to the Nine Nether Dao Scripture, both of their attributes were Yin-Wood.
The place where the thousand-year-old demon king, the Ghostwood Tree Spirit, died was naturally the best place for him to establish his Dao Foundation.
The Nine Nether clone threw out the coffin. After entering it, the surface of the coffin sank into the ground like it was soaked in blood.
Due to having absorbed too much blood during this period of time, the coffin turned from the initial grayish-black color to the current blood-red color.
Under Jiang Li’s control, the Yin Burial Coffin passed through the thick earth layer and entered the earth vein node before slowly stopping.
On the ground, the array formation that had been prepared previously began to operate at this moment, concealing the aura of this basin as much as possible.
In the coffin space, Jiang Li opened his eyes and stretched out his hand to open the Soul Capturing Bag at the side.
Ten thousand ghosts immediately surged out from within. He also threw away dozens of blood gourds. A large amount of high-grade demon beast blood poured out, forming a large pool of blood around him before slowly gathering together.
The final investment of the ghost finally satisfied the final advancement conditions of the Yin Burial Coffin. The entire coffin space began to tremble violently. The Yin Burial spiritual qi inside began to spin like a hurricane, carrying countless ghosts as if it was the end of the world.
The surrounding earth vein power absorbed it and surged over endlessly, pushing the coffin to begin its transformation.
Jiang Li did not stay idle. He carefully took out a translucent white spiritual fruit from a jade box and stuffed it into his mouth without any hesitation.
This was the legendary Dao Foundation Spiritual Fruit that Jiang Li had obtained from winning first place in the Great Mountain Cultivator Competition.
[Consumed the Dao Foundation Spiritual Fruit. Added Status: Dao Essence Circulation.]
[Dao Essence Circulation: Surrounded by a trace of Dao Essence, automatically optimizes and replenishes the Dao Foundation. Duration: 10 minutes] (− +)
The flavor of the Dao Foundation Spiritual Fruit did not come from the taste on the tip of his tongue. Instead, it was more like the shock of touching a spiritual fruit.
It was as if all the details of the Dao of Heaven and Earth were revealed before his eyes.
As the saying went, if one heard the Dao in the morning, they could die in the evening with satisfaction. The profundity of the Great Dao could not be described with words.
This was the power of the Dao Foundation Spiritual Fruit. There was a trace of the extremely subtle essence of the Great Dao hidden within.
What were cultivators most afraid of when they embarked on the path of cultivation?
The worst thing was to take the wrong path!
If one made a mistake when establishing their foundation at the beginning of the Great Dao, they might not be able to see much of a problem initially.
However, as his cultivation increased, the path ahead would become more difficult and complicated.
A hundred years later, or a thousand years later, when one was about to ascend the path to immortality, they might discover that no matter what, they were unable to take that crucial step.
After asking around, they realized that their initial Great Dao Foundation was wrong. That would be true despair.
If one’s Dao Foundation was unstable, not to mention becoming an Immortal or Buddha, it was very likely that one would suffer from Qi Deviation and die.
However, with this trace of Dao Essence, it would be completely different.
This trace of Dao Essence was equivalent to the official cheat of the Heavenly Dao. It could clearly tell a cultivator the mistakes and flaws during the Foundation Establishment realm and change and optimize them.
After pressing for five seconds, the subtle Dao Essence swimming in his body no longer looked like they were about to disappear at any moment. Instead, they seemed to be swimming even more happily.
After the preparations were completed, the Foundation Establishment realm officially began!
Jiang Li pointed forward, and the trunk of the Nine Nether Wood automatically split open, revealing the humanoid space that should have been where “Green Mountain Ascetic” was.
He flew over and sat cross-legged on the ground, using the same posture as before to enter the human-shaped hole.
With the Spiritual Root of Heaven and Earth, the Nine Nether Wood Branch, as a support, the foundation of the Nine Nether Dao Scripture was formed.
This was Qi!
A few roots of the Nine Nether Wood stretched out and fell to the ground. In the pool of blood that had just gathered, it began to draw out the blood diagram of countless beasts that were mixed together from the blood gourd.
With the blood of the hundred beasts, he could use the ancient body refinement technique to condense the beast blood tattoo and establish the foundation of the Beast Blood Diagram.
This was Body!
Jiang Li then sent the first Parallel Mind and third Parallel Mind into the bodies of the sword cultivator clone and the asura’s corpse, and together with the Nine Nether clone, they formed three completely different mental worlds as support. They surrounded Jiang Li’s core consciousness and continuously provided nutrients.
With the Asura, Nine Nether, and Sword Cultivator, the three of them formed the foundation of the Bodhisattva Heart Sutra.
This was Spirit!
In Jiang Li’s Qi Sea, the small stone person emitted an endless stream of pure Earth Vein Spirit Essence.
The intelligent spirit inside was ruthlessly extracted. In the consciousness space, he turned into a stone statue of the same appearance and smashed into the ground, sinking deeply into it.
The originally pale and fake land gradually turned into soil and rocks. The granules were clear and thick.
Using the Earth Spirit of the Shu Mountain Five Elements Peak as a sacrifice, he gathered the Earth Vein Spirit Essence and built the foundation of the Five Elements Immortal Mountain.
This was Earth!
From Green Mountain Ascetic’s mouth, a round and golden pill flew out, passing through the outer clothing of the Nine Nether Wood roots and landing in Jiang Li’s stomach.
The Heavenly Lightning Indestructible Zombie Golden Core appeared in his mental world like a scorching sun. Then, the power of life and death of the Indestructible Zombie Golden Core separated towards the left and right, and what surged out was a surging tribulation cloud of the Heavenly Dao. The terrifying tribulation lightning within rumbled endlessly, revealing boundless heavenly might.
Using the power of Life and Death to lock down the power of the Heavenly Punishment and preserving the heavenly lightning in the sky, he built the foundation of the Life and Death Tribulation Lightning.
This was Heaven!
Heaven, Earth, Spirit, Body, and Qi. These five components combined into one, and the trace of Dao Essence acted as the best lubricant amongst them, causing these five forces to not have the slightest conflict and grow together savagely in Jiang Li’s body.