Chapter 307 - The First Sprouts and a New Path

Chapter 307: Chapter 307 - The First Sprouts and a New Path

Su Bai watched the nine Root Seeds in complete silence.

The transformed traces of Immortal energy continued flowing through the Myriad-Path Meridian Web, passing from his Infinite Dantian into the nine Gateway Dantians. Every time that energy reached one of the dormant seeds, the faint trembling inside it became stronger.

He had watched those seeds for a long time without discovering what they needed.

Now, for the first time, they were actually growing.

The seed at the center of the first Gateway Dantian shifted slightly before a hair-thin crack appeared across its surface. Su Bai immediately focused his spiritual sense on it, afraid that the strange reaction might be a sign of instability.

That’s when a tiny green point emerged from the crack.

His attention sharpened.

The same change appeared inside another Gateway Dantian, followed by another. Before long, all nine seeds had split open, each producing a delicate sprout that slowly pushed upward from its shell.

Su Bai barely moved.

The growth continued until a single tiny leaf unfolded from each sprout.

After that, everything stopped.

The remaining transformed energy circulated through his Dantians several more times, but none of the sprouts grew any further.

Su Bai examined them carefully.

Eight looked almost disappointingly ordinary.

Their leaves were healthy enough, and a faint vitality could be sensed from them, but there was nothing else that distinguished one from another. They carried no obvious elemental property and showed no reaction when his spiritual sense passed over them.

But one was different.

A faint golden radiance covered its leaf.

Su Bai’s attention settled on it.

The glow was weak enough that he might have overlooked it if the other eight sprouts had not been so plain. More importantly, there was something familiar hidden inside that golden radiance.

He traced it carefully.

A faint light property responded to his spiritual sense.

Su Bai’s expression changed.

Most of Lian Qingyue’s broken-down blessing had passed through this particular Gateway Dantian while the Immortal energy dismantled its lingering hold on his meridians. At the time, Su Bai had been more concerned with getting rid of the seven-day torment than tracking every fragment that disappeared.

Apparently, those fragments had not simply vanished.

Part of them had been absorbed by the Root Seed.

Su Bai studied the golden leaf for several breaths before a possibility slowly formed in his mind.

’Could it be...’

The transformed Immortal energy had awakened all nine seeds and given them enough nourishment to sprout. Yet only the seed that had absorbed something else had developed a distinct property.

That difference was difficult to ignore.

Perhaps boundless energy was only providing the foundation for their growth.

If these seeds were truly meant to become additional Spirit Roots, simple nourishment might not be enough to determine what kind of roots they eventually became.

They might need something to grow toward.

Su Bai’s gaze moved inward toward his original Crystalline Tree Spirit Root.

The Ashen-Frost Blight Flame remained spread across his Crystalline Tree Spirit Root like an ash-gray canopy.

His eyes narrowed.

The possibility was too tempting to leave untested.

Su Bai carefully separated an extremely small strand of the Ashen-Frost Blight Flame.

He did not send it toward the golden sprout. Whatever that one had begun becoming, he had no intention of disturbing it before he understood the process better.

Instead, he chose one of the ordinary sprouts.

The thread of pale, cold flame moved through the Myriad-Path Meridian Web and entered the selected Gateway Dantian.

The reaction was immediate.

The tiny sprout trembled violently.

Su Bai almost pulled the flame back.

Before he could, the sprout drew the thread of Ashen-Frost Blight Flame into itself with surprising force.

The flame disappeared.

Su Bai stared.

The small leaf began changing.

A cool ash-gray radiance spread across one side of its surface, accompanied by the unmistakable property of the Yin-leaning flame he had just fed it. The other side remained dull and colorless.

Su Bai’s heartbeat quickened.

The result was far clearer than what had happened with the blessing.

He sent his spiritual sense into the sprout and examined the imbalance carefully.

The gray side carried a distinct fire property, yet something about it felt incomplete. The sprout had accepted the Ashen-Frost Blight Flame readily, but the property it formed leaned too heavily toward Yin.

Su Bai slowly opened his eyes.

’Fire...’

A Spirit Root associated with fire should not necessarily require perfect balance between Yin and Yang, but this particular seed appeared to be trying to construct something more complete from what he was feeding it.

At least, that was what its current condition suggested.

He suddenly remembered the gift Yan Changkong had given him.

Su Bai reached into his storage.

The palm-sized dark-red stone appeared in his hand, and the golden formation lines beneath its surface gave off a faint warmth.

Concentrated Yang fire.

Su Bai’s eyes brightened.

He drew out a controlled strand rather than releasing the stone’s full power. The Yang fire entered his meridians and followed the path he deliberately opened toward the same Gateway Dantian.

The sprout reacted before the flame even reached it.

Its tiny leaf trembled.

The moment the Yang fire entered the Dantian, the sprout pulled it in just as eagerly as it had consumed the Ashen-Frost Blight Flame.

A red glow appeared across the previously colorless half of the leaf.

Su Bai almost laughed.

Gray and red now occupied opposite sides of the tiny leaf, with the two properties faintly touching along its center.

For several breaths, he expected the sprout to grow again.

Unfortunately, it did not.

Su Bai’s excitement settled enough for him to examine it properly.

The problem quickly became obvious.

The two sides were nowhere near balanced.

His Ashen-Frost Blight Flame had been nourished and strengthened for far too long inside him. The tiny amount of Yang fire he had drawn from Yan Changkong’s stone was swallowed almost immediately, leaving the red half far weaker than the gray.

The sprout had accepted both.

It simply did not have enough of what it needed to continue.

Su Bai studied it without disappointment.

If anything, the result made him more excited.

He had only wanted to test a possibility, yet the sprout had already shown a clear response to both forms of fire. If he continued providing suitable materials and gradually corrected the imbalance, there was a real possibility that this Root Seed could develop into a genuine Fire Spirit Root.

He still refused to treat the theory as confirmed.

One successful reaction was not enough.

The golden sprout had absorbed traces from a blessing. The second had accepted Yin and Yang fire. Both were encouraging, but he still had seven untouched sprouts and no idea whether all nine followed exactly the same rules.

Su Bai’s attention slowly moved across them.

Seven ordinary leaves waited inside seven Gateway Dantians.

He suddenly found himself thinking about everything stored inside his rings.

Flames were only one possibility.

There were other elements, unusual energies, rare materials, and things he had collected precisely because he had never known when they might become useful.

The thought alone was enough to make him sit straighter.

For months, the nine Root Seeds had remained one of the strangest parts of his cultivation.

He finally had a clue.

Su Bai looked once more at the golden sprout and the half-gray, half-red one.

Whatever these seeds eventually became, he was no longer waiting blindly for them to awaken on their own.

Now he could experiment.

And that was considerably more dangerous for the seeds than remaining dormant had ever been.