Chapter 1145: Three Competitors from the Great Houses, Nine from the Noble Houses, and Only One from the Lesser Houses (I)

The Withering-Flourishing True Fire was in the midst of evolving and was thus unavailable, but being a Sage meant Luo Chen could use his Nascent Soul True Fire to refine pills or forge artifacts. In fact, using one's own true fire to refine pills was the norm for most alchemists. At lower cultivation realms, not every alchemist had the capability to subdue a suitable Sourceless Flame, while at higher realms, low-grade Sourceless Flames were usually less stable and reliable than their own true fire.

The same moment that dawn broke, Luo Chen looked at a finished batch of Great Soul Pills with satisfaction. He picked up one and examined it. The pill was pitch black, with a very faint golden shimmer.

"The potency is robust yet well contained inside the pill. The appearance is ordinary, but the effects are wonderful. Top-grade, without a doubt!"

Luo Chen glanced at his status panel. Sure enough, the proficiency level for Great Soul Pill had quietly risen to top-grade. This boosted his confidence about using this pill to refine his soul later.

When he thought of soul refinement, Luo Chen had a strange look in his eyes. Recently, something that had previously slipped him came to his attention while he used Soul Split: There was a change in his divine soul. This change was not related to his subsidiary soul; with the help of one mid-grade Great Soul Pill per month, the subsidiary soul had reached the early stage of the Nascent Soul Realm, which was exactly where he'd hoped it would be by this point.

The matter lay in his main soul. At some point, unbeknownst to him, it had made a significant improvement, and Luo Chen even felt a strange sense of fullness.

"Did the enlightenment cause this?"

Luo Chen chalked it up to that half-year-long enlightenment, since he had no good explanation otherwise. After all, Soul Split didn’t have much of an effect other than splitting the soul, as the name implied. When the user's divine soul reached a point where further progress was impossible, it also allowed them to divide the soul power and enhance the subsidiary souls, which resulted in an overall improvement of the divine soul foundation. But when it came to cultivating the main soul itself, this technique offered little benefit. At best, it made the main soul a little more resilient, but not more powerful per se.

"Well, in any case... my main soul has reached a limit, and it can't advance any more until I reach a higher realm. Whenever that happened before, I could only wait until I broke through to start improving it again, but Soul Split can help me bypass that now." 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ

When he felt this sensation of fullness from his main soul, Luo Chen knew it was a signal that it could be split. Although his subsidiary soul was still a distance away from the main soul in terms of cultivation, he didn't mind splitting off a third one. They can all advance and grow stronger together, wouldn't that be wonderful?

However, this was certainly not the best time to go through that and risk entering a weakened period when the Mirage Dragon Grand Competition was just around the corner. He would have to wait at least until the event was over.

Since Luo Chen had plans to go out soon, he stowed the Great Soul Pills and began cleaning the Primordial Unity Cauldron. As he did that, he suddenly wondered, "How did Saint Alchemist Chu Yan figure out that I'm an alchemist? She even seemed to know that I refined fifth-tier pills, on top of that..."

Knowing that he was an alchemist was one thing. Fu Chaosheng certainly had provided his information to the Star Gate, and even though Luo Chen had never told him that, he could have figured it out. Since Luo Chen had received so many medicinal materials yet hadn't hired anyone to process them into pills for him, the only reasonable conclusion was that he could do it himself.

However, that seemingly baseless speculation about him having refined fifth-tier pills had truly been a jump scare.

"They should know that I've been to the Sunken Sea, but they certainly have no idea I obtained Heaven Refiner's legacy in the Land of Fallen Devils. There weren't many survivors in the Heaven of Bright Illumination back then. Han Zhan, Blood Hermit, and Blood Nightmare are dead. Moon Hermit went missing. Seagon Matriarch is a demon. The Gu siblings keep a low profile and I don’t expect them to show up again anytime soon.

"The only ones who knew I came out of the Alchemy Palace are Silent Fate and Jadecold. Silent Fate is dead, and Jadecold... Hmm..."

Luo Chen mapped out the trail of clues in his mind.

Both Jadecold and Moon Hermit were members of the Penglai Immortal Sect, which has deep ties to the Heaven Origin Dao Sect. Suppose Jadecold sought refuge with the Heaven Origin Dao Sect to evade her elder sister's pursuit, and in the process, she told them what she knew about me...

"No, there’s no way."

Luo Chen quickly dismissed this hypothesis himself, for the simple reason that the Star Gate would never have given a perfunctory title like External Affairs Guest Elder to an early-stage Sage who was capable of refining fifth-tier pills. Such a character could undoubtedly become the next Saint Alchemist.

Therefore, the Star Gate had no knowledge of that. Therefore, Saint Alchemist Chu Yan's speculation probably stemmed from her own intuition.

"Is it some kind of natural resonance between alchemists? Or some kind of Law magic she discovered when she reached the Divine Transformation Realm?"

Luo Chen only made such a guess because after condensing his Nascent Soul, he had devoured a great many books related to the higher cultivation realms to make up for his lack of knowledge in this field. Although the majority of them were mostly theories, people made many records on the path that lay further ahead.

There were numerous Daos and countless Laws. A Great Dao was impossible to grasp and difficult to gauge; as puny existences before the true Great Dao, cultivators could only try approaching it little by little, through slowly comprehending the corresponding Laws.

As for the Laws, they were many and had no ranking systems; they were simply divided into Great Dao Laws and unorthodox Dao Laws.

Great Dao Laws didn't need much explanation. They pertained to the fundamental ways in which the world worked—things like Yin and Yang, the five elements, wind, lightning, space, and so on. These were the most intricate; each one encompassed a multitude of underlying principles. But those who practiced them to perfection, more often than not, became truly close to the origin of the Great Dao.

As for unorthodox Dao Laws, most originated from the myriad paths of cultivation, from things like music, Go, calligraphy, and painting to alchemy, arrays, artifacts, and talismans, as well as other paths that were more niche. An example of the latter were cultivators who fathomed some kind of radical Laws in the midst of harrowing slaughter.

If Saint Alchemist Chu Yan attained Divine Transformation through the unorthodox Law of Alchemy, then it wouldn’t be that weird for her to feel that I've refined a fifth-tier pill. But if that’s the case, then did she really believe me when I denied it?

Luo Chen was a little ill at ease.

***

Inside the cave residence, the temperature was perfect; it felt like a warm spring. Outside, however, it was a bone-chilling winter.

In principle, those who controlled high-tier spirit lands had the ability to change their own weather and influence the local environment. Yet both Green Parasol Mountain or Heaven-Earth Peak followed the natural cycle of the four seasons, at least from what Luo Chen had seen. In particular, Heaven-Earth Peak seemed perfectly natural in that respect.

Luo Chen stepped out of his cave residence just as it was snowing. He didn't use his mana and simply allowed the snowflakes to settle on his head and his shoulders.

Due to the Withering-Flourishing Divine Restriction, his hair was still gray and his face sported wrinkles. He looked like a middle-aged man, way past his prime. As white snow settled on his hair, his aura grew even more weathered.

It was actually simple for Luo Chen to change his appearance. He could either spend a small amount of mana or a bit of origin energy to instantly restore his normal, youthful look.

However, he had no intention of doing that. Even in the cultivation world, where one's cultivation strength could not be judged by appearance, those who look excessively young still attracted much more attention than others. This was especially true for Luo Chen, who did not just look young but was in fact very young relative to his cultivation. While astonished praises from others did fill him with pride, his appearance also often invited unnecessary trouble. Thus, he had deemed his current appearance to be fine the way it was.

With a faint smile, Luo Chen looked at the figure approaching him through the wind and snow. It was Fu Qinglan, clad in a sky-blue gown. With a radiant smile on her face, she extended an invitation. "Senior Brother, let's go!"