Now that it was time to leave, Yang Chen wasted no time. After handing the duties back to the old executioner, Yang Chen left the county seat empty handed without a second thought. Of course, all of his luggage was stored in his achievement ring.
To be able to meet Sun Qingxue and Shi Shanshan was an unexpected pleasure, and on his first meeting with the two women, the encounter had ended full of goodwill. Yang Chen wouldn’t deliberately pursue anything, but it would still be rude to refuse such good karma when it was an inadvertent result.
Yang Chen very quickly disappeared from the eyes of those county seat commoners, and after a few months nobody any longer thought about an executioner named Yang Chen.
Yang Chen was now drooling before a great pile of cultivation techniques. Since leaving the Immortal Executioner Stage, his postnatal five phases spiritual roots were already completely full, and moreover completely full in yin yang five phases. Yang Chen couldn’t avoid giving himself a few introductory cultivation techniques.
According to Yang Chen’s original plan, as long as he had full fire spiritual roots he would naturally cultivate according to the road of his previous life, advancing step by step. After all, Yang Chen had even cultivated to great primary golden immortal, and with his fire spiritual roots completely full he could save at least half the time it took in his previous life.
But now, not only was Yang Chen’s fire spiritual roots full, but all his spiritual roots plus the yin yang attributes were all full. This made other thoughts rise in his mind.
In his previous life there were a group of quintuplets who each had one of the five phases, focusing on cultivating theirs. The five brothers’ spirits were connected, and when they joined hands they formed a five phases great formation, becoming extremely potent in both attack and defense while mutually engendering each other. Ordinary cultivators that hardly differed from them in strength might not be their enemy when they acted together.
But those were five brothers cooperating, Yang Chen now had filled double yin yang five phases spiritual roots, he could cultivate all five phases arts, and they were controlled by a single person, even more superior than five people acting together. Besides, with all yin yang five phases, it was really a bit of a waste to only cultivate one.
Not only that, but Yang Chen still remembered what the Elderly Lord said in the Immortal Executioner Stage. With great yin yang five phases double cultivation, he could be even more tremendous than the Elderly Lord even without an eight trigrams stove. Yang Chen couldn’t forgive himself if he wasted such potential.
Yang Chen didn’t want to give up on this opportunity no matter what, that’s why great yin yang five phases double cultivation had already become Yang Chen’s future cultivation direction. Only, what Yang Chen had to worry about now was cultivation techniques.
Yang Chen had obtained a lot of them while beheading immortals in the heavenly court. «A Wood True Secrets», «B Wood True Secrets», «D Fire True Secrets», «G Metal True Secrets», «E Earth True Secrets», «J Water True Secrets», six articles of true secrets that were all able to transfer great yin yang five phases’ most basic innate qi, corresponding to the innate qi of each attribute, simply the best yin yang five phases cultivation arts in the world. If he could get «C Fire True Secrets», «H Metal True Secrets», «F Earth True Secrets», and «I Water True Secrets» to match, he would have a full set of great yin yang five phases true secrets.
But these great yin yang five phases true secrets had one condition, and that was that he had to refine all the yin yang five phases innate qi, otherwise he would be unable to cultivate. It was just unfortunate that, even though Yang Chen knew the locations of the majority of the yin yang five phases innate qi, they weren’t easy to reach. Even if he wanted to cultivate these true secrets, it was impossible at the moment.
While the other techniques he had received were also good, as well as formation arts, they were practically all high level, and impossible to practice with Yang Chen’s current cultivation. The trump cards left behind by those immortals were lost arts, and absolutely not something someone who had just begun to cultivate and still not entered the qi refining stage could covet.
Thus, Yang Chen could only first use some rudimentary five phases arts to lay a foundation in the place of the great yin yang five phases secrets, until such a time that he could obtain yin yang five phases innate qi and begin to cultivate the true great yin yang five phases secrets.
The second level arts of the Three Purities Secrets had already thoroughly absorbed the killing aura around Yang Chen, turning everything into divine consciousness. Only, this killing aura and killing intent hadn’t disappeared completely. As long as Yang Chen willed it, his divine consciousness could swiftly turn into that kind of killing intent again, an extremely sharp weapon to awe enemies.
By now Yang Chen’s divine consciousness was already on the level of the late foundation building stage from his last life. Although divine consciousness was enormously useful in cultivation, without any more killing intent, the Three Purities Secrets couldn’t advance by leaps and bounds like that, and could only gradually advance step by step, thin streams flowing together into rivers.
At present he first needed the strength to protect himself. Otherwise, no matter how formidable his divine consciousness, he was still useless without a spec of magical power. Yang Chen naturally wouldn’t make a mistake like that.
The cultivation from his precious life that he was most familiar with was naturally the Pure Yang Palace’s Great Sun Fierce Yang Central Scripture. This was a required course for fire cultivation in the Pure Yang Palace, and was also the foundation scripture Yang Chen was most familiar with. Yang Chen’s first cultivation was with this one.
When he started cultivating the Great Sun Fierce Yang Central Scripture in his previous life, he had still spent practically a whole month before he could sense a trace of magical power. But right now Yang Chen only needed to start cultivating before his body began to frantically produce magical power.
With the knowledge of more than several hundred thousand times of cultivating it in his last life, the Great Sun Fierce Yang Central Scripture had practically become instinctual to Yang Chen, basically without any deviation in comprehension or errors in cultivation. Adding the divine consciousness far more formidable than his magical power, Yang Chen felt that most basic trace of magical power by just circulating it once.
Soon after, the bits and bits of magical power began to flow along familiar pathways under the control of his powerful divine consciousness, warming, nourishing, opening the energy channels.
With this one circuit, Yang Chen discovered that the benefits he had obtained in the Immortal Executioner Stage were, by far, not just as tiny as full spiritual roots. All his flesh had improved substantially as it was nourished by the enormous life essence of the immortals. The strength of his body and capacity of his energy channels were at a level that Yang Chen found outrageous. The difficulty he remembered from breaking through the key meridian gates the first time he cultivated practically couldn’t be felt.
Without trying he didn’t know, but with one circuit he discovered that his body was actually even stronger than after he originally passed into the foundation building stage. There were close to no impurities within his body, as if it had already been strengthened by the spiritual force at the Immortal Executioner Stage, and was strengthened even more efficiently than the spiritual force. In fact, that was the life force of immortals including the Jade Emperor, the Queen Mother, and the Grand Supreme Elderly Lord.
Spacious and pliable energy channels, plus magical power completely in line with his physical attributes, Yang Chen simply didn’t dare believe that this was the effect of the first circuit. At the end of one cycle, Yang Chen even had the feeling of magical power flowing through his meridians.
Opening his eyes, Yang Chen discovered that his ears and eyes already seemed a lot sharper than before. In the past he could only see clearly for a couple dozen meters, but now his clarity had more than doubled, and he even seemed to hear traces of the motions of ants crawling beneath his feet.
Slowly getting up from under the blazing sun, Yang Chen felt the overflowing magical power within him, and couldn’t help laughing. Shortly after extending one finger, a ball of flame appeared on the tip, swaying back and forth along with Yang Chen’s movements, changing shape as it wished.
Phew, extinguishing the flame with a breath, Yang Chen was indescribably relaxed. He had stepped into the first level qi refining of his last life by practicing just once.
For ordinary people to enter the qi gathering stage, they first had to be able to sense the spiritual influence between heaven and earth and draw it into their bodies, and they also had to be able to complete a full cycle, to draw that trace into their dantian, then they would have truly entered the realm of qi gathering. Only, to be able to take this step was also considered entering the first level of qi gathering.
Completing a full cycle on the first time practicing was impossible even for the most talented genius. Normally, even with full spiritual roots and exceptional perception, this step would at least take a few months from start to finish. Opening the vital meridian points would even more require unremitting spiritual force accumulation and perseveringly attacking to be able to surmount. The road of cultivation wasn’t smooth sailing, not one in ten could step into the first level of qi gathering from the start of cultivation. Yang Chen was unique in having ten thousand years of cultivation experience.
However, Yang Chen stopped cultivating after completing one cycle. The key to yin yang five phases double cultivation was to balance the yin yang five phases. Even though there was no need for exact equality, less differences was better to avoid imbalance. Of course, the yin yang five phases being completely balanced was the best, and if there was some difference one could only equalise the yin five phases and the yang five phases, then level them out someday in the future.
The Great Sun Fierce Yang Central Scripture counted as yang fire among the yin yang five phases. Yang Chen was now looking for suitable foundation cultivation techniques to completely cultivate the other nine kinds of attributes as well, then he could accomplish five phases natural engenderment within himself.
Yang Chen had a great pile of fire attribute central scriptures, from low level to high, but he didn’t have many of the other attributes. However, the only thing that made Yang Chen happy was that he had a few low level foundation cultivation techniques on hand for a few elements, especially a «Blue Wave Water Blade Secret» for water attribute foundation cultivation.
Even though Blue Wave Water Blade Secret was an offensive technique, and very ordinary at that, Yang Chen didn’t care. He wanted this Blue Wave Water Blade Secret to cultivate water attribute spiritual force in order to enter the Sun Painting Mountain medicine garden. Besides the seven step bewitching instant kill formation, entering the Sun Painting Mountain medicine garden still had one other requirement, and that was water attribute spiritual force.
The medicine garden was something left behind by an immortal in the Immortal Executioner Stage that was found and entered by later generations. Even though Yang Chen didn’t know just what rare panacea were inside, the sect that discovered the medicine garden had sold large quantities of elixirs for a very long time, and their disciples had also been enviably rich in pills, presumably their harvest wasn’t small.
There was still some time before the Pure Yang Palace’s main sect accepted disciples, and Yang Chen was just going to go pick up the medicine garden in this time. Relying on Yang Chen’s experience in compounding pills from his last life, he estimated he wouldn’t have any issues with pills for cultivation at least before the yuanying stage.
Even though it was the first time Yang Chen came into contact with water attribute techniques whether in his last life or this one, such a basic technique was still simple in the extreme before a person with the experience of a great primary golden immortal.
The difference from the Great Sun Fierce Yang central scripture was that he had to spend a bit of time on the Blue Wave Water Blade Secret. Three days later, he had also successfully completed one cycle of the Blue Wave Water Blade Secret, equally stepping into the first level stage.
Even though his five phases were complete, since Yang Chen wanted to cultivate great yin yang five phases secrets, he naturally had to match yin and yang. Fortunately he had foundation techniques for all yang five phases, but he lacked two of the yin five phases. It couldn’t be helped, he could only first cultivate the yang five phases to get a bit of strength to defend himself. As for the yin five phases, he could wait until he had gathered the cultivation techniques before cultivating it.
Yang Chen spent about ten days on the remaining three attribute techniques, then having completely entered a more or less correct realm. The next days were mainly for Yang Chen to try controlling the five kinds of techniques to circulate simultaneously and to mutually engender each other, which took a lot of time.
In this time, his formidable divine consciousness finally showed its conclusive effect. Circulating the five kinds of techniques simultaneously was very unpracticed at first and split his concentration five ways, extremely difficult. Several times in a row he was was defeated because he was unable to harmonize them.
After Yang Chen had wholeheartedly cultivated Three Purities Secret a few times, with a level heart and calm qi, and relying on his formidable divine consciousness, after a few more tries he finally managed to move the five phases together. Having experienced his first success, what happened next was only to be expected. In another five days, Yang Chen could already skillfully enter a state of the yang five phases engendering each other.
Strictly speaking, the five kinds of spiritual force wouldn’t lose to the spiritual force of an ordinary person’s second level refined tools. However, in the end they were still only five kinds of spiritual force, Yang Chen’s trouble for stepping into the second level would be five times that of others. Even with the convenience of five phases engendering each other, it would still expend three times the labor.
Fortunately Yang Chen’s spiritual roots were all full now, and he was suited for practically all attributes of spiritual force, with outstanding aptitude and outstanding physical condition, plus transcendent experience, he could increase his cultivation speed. Yang Chen’s final verdict was that, if he didn’t have any outside forces helping, his cultivation speed in this world might still be less than half as fast.
However, even with a slower cultivation speed, Yang Chen would be a lot more difficult to deal with than ordinary people of the same level. With the five phases gathered, Yang Chen already had a five phases great formation, making him invincible from the start in both attack and defense.
Yang Chen kept cultivating as he travelled. He had too little spiritual force to start refining tools, let alone being unable to control swords to fly, even if he was given a flying sword to use on the ground, Yang Chen still couldn’t control it. What the majority of ordinary people used at this stage was talismans. If there were weapons, they were the most basic, they might be a bit better than what mortals had, but far from the level of tools.
The most suitable to use for travelling was the blue cloud talisman. The blue cloud talisman could lighten one’s weight, naturally allowing for higher speed, and without being very tiring. Since Yang Chen had started to cultivate, he would naturally use cultivation to settle the problems he faced.
To Yang Chen, drawing talismans was a piece of cake. Yang Chen didn’t know how long it had been since he touched drawn talismans, but his preparations were sufficient, with a set of any materials. Once his magical power had achieved some minor success, he started drawing these simple talismans.
Yang Chen nodded with satisfaction as the first talisman lay in his hands. If those cultivators saw this, they would definitely stare wide eyed and gasp in amazement. Even the simplest talismans weren’t something that could be completed successfully on the first try.
Yang Chen currently had one advantage, and that was that he could use the same kind of spiritual force, no matter which type the talisman required, making the process extremely smooth. After drawing more than ten blue cloud talismans in a row, Yang Chen also made a few dozen offensive fireball talismans, woodthunder talismans, thirty thousand catties talismans, and others for self protection.
When he had placed these well made talismans in the achievement ring, Yang Chen’s heart suddenly twitched. The Grand Supreme Elderly Lord’s Universe Raising Treasure Secret could raise the intrinsic quality when refining tools, then couldn’t it have the same result on paper talismans?