He had reached the pinnacle of the sixth stage in the Iris Sword Sutra, bringing him to a total of thirty-six petals. The petals were crystal clear, looking flawless and dreamy. But at the same time, they were as majestic as mountains.
Lin Yun was almost done polishing his foundation and he wasn’t in a hurry to make a breakthrough. The Iris Sword Sutra had sixteen stages and the first six stages were the foundation to manifest the perfect Iris Flower.
The seventh stage would involve the sutra’s essence, allowing Lin Yun to condense the iris sword aura. At the ninth stage, he could lay down an Iris Sword Array within his body, allowing him to kill enemies with a single thought.
This was a cultivation technique passed down from the primordial era, so Lin Yun didn’t dare to treat it lightly. But he knew that there was nothing wrong with having a solid foundation. Then again, the main reason he took this long was due to him being poor.
He only made his breakthrough by relying on the yin energy. If there was no yin energy for him to absorb, the resources he required to make a breakthrough would be astronomical. So making a breakthrough with his cultivation technique didn’t seem possible at the moment.
He attempted to condense the Violet Sacred Flame to unlock more secrets of the Age Sutra bamboo slip. Right now, he wanted to know what kind of cultivation technique the Age Sutra was.
In the distance, Niu Bingshun and the others were busy working in the field. Out of everyone, Niu Bingshun had the most work to do. He had to carefully scatter the fertilizer on the spiritual herbs. His face was black from the foul stench of the fertilizer.
He tried to resist doing such dirty work, but after being beaten up by Lin Yun, he gave up and accepted his fate. It was almost nighttime when he completed his task. It was during the night that the Dragon Blooded Horse would sneak over. Li Wuyou was always happy to see this goofy horse.
He was simply too bored at Herbal Peak. So he would ride the Dragon Blooded Horse and wander around the nearby fields. He was given the nickname, Plague God, by the other herbals fields. Herbal Peak might seem rule free, but there was one important thing that was considered taboo.
The spiritual herbs had to be taken care of and the Herbal Hall would send someone over every month to check. If there were any discrepancies, the disciples would be severely punished. This was also the reason why swords were forbidden here.
Lin Yun had advised him to cultivate and reach the Profound Martial Realm as quickly as possible, but Li Wuyou wasn’t anxious in the slightest. His cultivation technique relied on accumulation, so the more he accumulated, the more benefits he would receive when he reached the Profound Martial Realm.
He believed this to the point of giving Lin Yun all the spiritual jades he picked up the other day. Lin Yun could sense the wild ambition in Li Wuyou, despite how goofy he usually behaved. It was similar to Bai Lixuan, who chose to stay in the Xiantian Realm.
“Forget it, let me try again,” said Lin Yun. Now that his cultivation technique reached the pinnacle of the sixth stage, the Violet Sacred Flame was much stronger than before. Logically speaking, he should be able to see more of the Age Sutra’s contents.
Lin Yun was far away from everyone as he had assigned them to field work. So, he took out the bamboo slip. Compared to the past, the bamboo slip seemed heavier than before.
Lin Yun slowly extracted the Iris Flower’s flames and unhesitantly poured it into the bamboo slip. As he poured in the flames, the bamboo slip gradually became lighter. It didn’t take long for the bamboo slip to start hovering in the sky.
But that wasn’t all. This time, a huge amount of the Violet Sacred Flame that he poured in was not consumed by the bamboo slip.
The bamboo slip burned for a long time and in the end, Lin Yun saw the words on the slip igniting. Sceneries started to flash in his mind once more, along with the alchemist that he saw previously.
The alchemist stood before the cauldron and started writing down runes. This time, the number of runes was ten times greater than before. Shortly after, the runes would condense. Among the runes, Lin Yun spotted the same one he used to reforge the Xiantian Pellets.
But this time, it was just one of the hundreds of runes; there wasn’t anything special about it. Shortly after, the fragments of memories formed into two ancient words, Age Sutra. Lin Yun’s mind was being flooded with tons of information that surged through his mind over and over again.
“Time is heartless, with heaven and earth as the cauldron…” Lin Yun had a splitting headache from the vast amount of information that flooded his mind. It was like a ringing bell was in his mind as the information imprinted itself.
After a while, Lin Yun began to search through the memories. He discovered that the Age Sutra was indeed a cultivation technique. However, this cultivation technique had nothing to do with alchemy. It wasn’t even a technique that could increase his cultivation. Instead, it was a cultivation technique for spiritual runes.
At this moment, Lin Yun finally figured out what rune he used to reforge the Xiantian Pellets. It was a spiritual rune! These runes were also known as dao runes. In ancient times, there were saints who comprehended the dao runes after seeing through heaven’s secrets. They could easily create dao runes, using them to seal millions of miles of mountains and rivers or heavily injure primordial beasts.
But the inheritance of dao runes had disappeared since ancient times. Since then, no one could discover heaven's secrets again. As a result, cultivators were forced to take a step back and comprehended spiritual runes from dao rune remnants.
Spiritual runes might be weaker than dao runes, but they were easier to grasp. Even someone who wasn’t a saint could practice the spiritual runes. However, mortals couldn’t learn the spiritual runes.
Now, those who could grasp spiritual runes were known as spiritualists. Generally speaking, there were only three types of spiritual runes: alchemy runes, array runes, and artifact forging runes. The spiritual runes were further divided into elementary and graded spiritual runes, being ranked from first to ninth.
A first grade spiritual rune was formed with hundreds of elementary spiritual runes. This means that the spiritual runes would get more complicated as the grade increased. The array in the capital and the Sword Burial Woods were drawn with spiritual runes, but Lin Yun didn’t know what their grades were. This kind of knowledge was beyond his reach.
When Lin Yun opened his eyes, he discovered that the bamboo slip had turned into a pile of ashes. The bamboo slip was an ordinary material and it was preserved by the words written on it. Since the memories from the words had imprinted in Lin Yun’s mind, it was only natural that the bamboo slip crumbled.
“No wonder Lord Thirteen asked if I’ve mastered spiritual runes…” Lin Yun didn’t understand what Lord Thirteen was asking him about before, but it was clear once he realized that the runes he had been practicing were elementary spiritual runes.
He never expected an accidental harvest to put him on the path of a spiritualist. The person who created the Age Sutra comprehended the age energy from the changes in the world. It was an insight he gained by observing the world. In the face of time, nothing could exist for an eternity.
The Age Sutra could convert origin energy into age energy, merging the two to draw spiritual runes. In this way, the spiritual runes would be empowered by age energy. If there were two similar spiritual runes, the one infused with age energy would naturally be more powerful.
However, it didn’t seem easy to practice this cultivation technique. Time was something that could level mountains into flat ground. As Lin Yun cultivated the Age Sutra, his origin energy would be continuously consumed.
There were advantages and disadvantages to this. His origin energy would definitely be more powerful after being refined, but his origin energy consumption would slow down his cultivation. Fortunately, Lin Yun didn’t have to worry about this for the time being.
After all, he still hadn’t meditated properly after reaching the Profound Martial Realm. He could make good use of his time while he was at Herbal Peak to digest them. After he made up his mind, Lin Yun began to practice the Age Sutra.
Practicing the Age Sutra was time consuming. Fortunately, Lin Yun had both the spiritual jades that Li Wuyou gave him and the yin energy from the Sword Burial Woods.
Time gradually passed and Lin Yun finally managed to condense a ray of age energy. Lin Yun had been immersed in his cultivation, not daring to relax. In the blink of an eye, he had already spent a month at Herbal Peak.
Aside from practicing the Age Sutra, Lin Yun practiced his martial techniques. He even attempted to form the first profound vein to take a step in his cultivation. There was no bottleneck in condensing the first profound vein, but the next eight profound veins would gradually get more complicated.
Lin Yun finally succeeded at the end of the month. AFter condensing the first profound vein, Lin Yun could feel that the Iris Flower could contain ten times more origin energy. He could see that every step in the Profound Martial Realm was a huge boost.
If it weren’t for the fact that he grasped the complete sword intent and that they were fighting bare handed, it wouldn’t have been easy for Lin Yun to defeat Niu Bingshun. If they fought for too long, Niu Bingshun could easily exhaust Lin Yun.
After his success, Lin Yun stopped his cultivation. Even Li Wuyou, who had been strolling around, had returned as well. Everyone wore their prisoner uniforms and gathered in front of the straw shack. The inspection was today and the number of herbs they had would get checked.
Aside from Lin Yun and Li Wuyou, everyone else looked nervous.