Chapter 415: Devouring Spiritual Power

The Lingxi Celestial Palace was embedded within a massive mountain peak and protected by layers upon layers of Arrays laid down by their ancestor, the Heavenly Slaughter Daoist. Logically, the Celestial Palace shouldn’t have collapsed even in an earthquake or if the very heavens fell. So how could this be happening?

For a moment, not only Mu Ruo and the City Lord of the Ancient City, but also the remaining Four Great Manor Masters and everyone in the square were utterly dumbfounded.

In their hearts, the Celestial Palace was their spiritual faith—the goal they had pursued their entire lives. With their faith now crumbling before their eyes, it was as if their worlds were collapsing. They all stood there, completely stupefied.

“Impossible! The Lingxi Celestial Palace can’t collapse! I must be seeing things!”

“What in the world is going on? Can anyone save me…?”

“I don’t believe it! The Lingxi Celestial Palace was built by our distant ancestor! How could it just collapse?”

After a moment of dead silence across the square, heart-wrenching wails of despair erupted.

No one could believe what they were seeing.

“Can someone please tell me what just happened?”

Even the City Lord stared blankly at the scene before him, muttering incoherently.

“Mu Jie! The Lingxi Celestial Palace collapsed right after Mu Jie came out! He must know what happened! Quick, ask him!”

Suddenly, someone in the crowd shouted.

The shout jolted them from their daze, and the eyes of the Five Great Manor Masters and the City Lord instantly focused on Mu Jie.

However, to everyone’s surprise, Mu Jie turned around and bolted out of the city at top speed.

He was incredibly fast, transforming into a long white streak as he shot straight into the distance. His speed was far beyond what an Early-Stage Magical Power Realm expert should be capable of.

“After him! He definitely knows why the Celestial Palace collapsed!”

The City Lord shouted and immediately gave chase.

As fast as he was, Mu Jie was even faster. Soon, the fugitive vanished from his sight completely.

“What is going on? Mu Ruo, you’d better tell me exactly what’s happening! First Mu Yan, and now Mu Jie. What in the world is going on with your Dieyi Manor? If you don’t give me a satisfactory explanation today, I will kill you!”

The City Lord turned to Mu Ruo, who had followed him, and let out a furious roar.

Mu Yan had already betrayed the Ancient City by stealing the Spirit Rhinoceros Spring Water and other treasures, infuriating everyone. Now, with Mu Jie’s appearance, the City Lord and the remaining Four Great Manor Masters were overcome with surging killing intent. They glared at Mu Ruo with bloodshot eyes, looking as if they would tear him apart and eat him alive if he gave the wrong answer.

“I…” Mu Ruo felt like crying but had no tears. ‘Heavens, you don’t know what’s going on, but neither do I!’

But he also knew that if he said that out loud, the enraged men would tear him to shreds. He wanted to explain, but he didn’t know how, and his face turned beet red with frustration.

“What’s wrong? Speechless now that your conspiracy is exposed?” Seeing Mu Ruo’s silence, Mu Qi sneered from the side and lunged forward with a punch. “The Lingxi Celestial Palace is our ancestral heritage, and you dared to destroy it! Die!”

“Let’s talk this out! Just listen to my explanation…!” Mu Ruo yelped in alarm.

“Explain? Explain, my ass!” Before he could finish, the usually composed City Lord rushed over and kicked him hard in the lower back.

CRACK! BAM!

In an instant, Mu Ruo became a human punching bag for the City Lord and the Four Great Manor Masters. It was a miserable sight…

…………………………

‘Heh. You all can keep fighting. I’m going to study this Spirit Rhinoceros Spring Water and see if it can help me break through!’

Hidden inside a tiny, unnoticed particle beneath the crowd, Nie Yun watched the bickering men above, smiled faintly, and paid them no more mind.

He had fled for a while before taking the opportunity to duck into the Zihua Cave Mansion and transform into a minuscule particle on the mountain peak. Forget the City Lord—even a supreme expert at the Secret Realm Fourth Layer would struggle to find him now.

After all, the master of the Zihua Cave Mansion, the Zihua Daoist, had reached the Peak of Secret Realm. The Restrictions and Arrays he had placed outside the Cave Mansion were simply beyond the comprehension of someone like the City Lord, who was only at the Secret Realm Third or Fourth Layer.

‘Now that I’ve subdued the Spirit Rhinoceros Spring, my compatibility with its water is at one hundred percent. Consuming it will only help me, with no negative side effects. Even the so-called lifespan reduction that the people of the Ancient City experience won’t affect me at all!’

Nie Yun smiled faintly as he looked at the three gourds before him.

For the people of the Ancient City, consuming Spirit Rhinoceros Spring Water caused their muscles to over-function, accelerating the aging process. But Nie Yun was different. With his one hundred percent compatibility, he would not experience such a thing.

‘Still, I should probably extract the Demon Nether Saliva from these five hundred drops of spring water first.’

The Ancient City had suffered a terrible blow this time. Not only had countless amounts of spring water been extorted from them, but even their very foundation, the Spirit Rhinoceros Spring, had been stolen. However, Nie Yun didn’t feel the slightest bit of guilt.

It wasn’t that he was cold-hearted; it was simply the law of the jungle—the strong prey on the weak. If he hadn’t been powerful enough, the Demon Nether Saliva alone would have been enough to kill him a hundred times over.

They had harbored malicious intentions. To show them kindness now would be nothing short of masochism, and Nie Yun, at least, had no such tendencies.

He opened the gourd and made a grasping motion in the air. WHOOSH! Five hundred drops of Earth Spirit Rhinoceros Spring Water flew out, shimmering with a radiant light. From the outside, it looked no different from the normal spring water. However, with his one hundred percent compatibility, Nie Yun only needed a single thought. Two transparent droplets were instantly ejected from the liquid, landing in a jade bottle he had prepared.

‘Demon Nether Saliva… This is some good stuff. If I run into that so-called Lord Hua again, a single drop of this, even if it doesn’t kill him, will definitely make him suffer badly!’

Nie Yun smiled faintly as he looked at the poison in the jade bottle.

Demon Nether Saliva could instantly kill even experts at the seventh or eighth layer of the Secret Realm. That Lord Hua was probably not at such a high level. Poisoning him would be a piece of cake.

‘Time to take the Spirit Rhinoceros Spring Water!’

After placing the jade bottle of Demon Nether Saliva into his Storage Dantian, Nie Yun opened his mouth and sucked in two drops of the Spiritual Liquid.

The substance acted like a stimulant, accelerating the circulation of his qi and blood. Taking more wouldn’t produce a stronger effect.

GULP! GULP!

The instant the spring water entered his body, it took effect. His muscles felt as if they were boiling, and the circulation speed of his True Qi increased by nearly tenfold!

‘Incredible! Spirit Stones, out!’

Breaking through from the Late-Stage Ultimate Venerable to the Peak had increased the purity of his True Qi. It was like a vat of water being refined into mercury; though the quality had improved, the vat would now be mostly empty. Only by refilling it completely could he truly be considered at the Ultimate Venerable Peak, ready to break through to the next realm at any moment.

Right now, Nie Yun’s Qi Sea was once again empty and needed a massive infusion of True Qi.

Fortunately, he had plundered a large number of Spirit Stones from the Mi Tian Sect’s Treasure Vault, which he could now use for replenishment.

Normally, the quality of Spiritual Qi from Low-Grade Spirit Stones would no longer be sufficient for his needs. However, with the tenfold boost to his qi and blood circulation from the Spirit Rhinoceros Spring Water, he could compress the Spiritual Qi and replenish his reserves at an incredible speed.

CLATTER!

In the blink of an eye, tens of thousands of Low-Grade Spirit Stones appeared, densely packed in the air above the empty room of the Zihua Cave Mansion.

‘Devour the Spiritual Power, replenish the Qi Sea!’

With a long cry, he made a great grasping motion upward. RUMBLE!

The sky full of Spiritual Qi immediately formed a massive dragon that surged rapidly into Nie Yun’s various Acupoints.

“So refreshing!”

Feeling the speed at which the Spiritual Qi was entering his body, Nie Yun let out an excited cry.

‘The Spirit Rhinoceros Spring Water is truly worthy of its name,’ he thought. If his qi and blood circulation hadn’t been accelerated tenfold, absorbing Spiritual Qi at this rate would have undoubtedly caused him to explode. But now, he felt brimming with energy, and the True Qi in his Qi Sea was increasing at a speed visible to the naked eye!

He had never experienced such an exhilarating feeling, not even in his past life!

No wonder the people of the Ancient City found it so hard to leave their homeland. Once you got used to this feeling of accelerated qi and blood circulation, it was as addictive as opium—utterly impossible to give up.

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH!

Soon, the Spiritual Qi from the tens of thousands of Low-Grade Spirit Stones was completely absorbed, yet Nie Yun’s Qi Sea wasn’t even one-third full!

An ordinary Ultimate Venerable Peak expert could completely refill their reserves with just ten Low-Grade Spirit Stones. Yet Nie Yun, even after absorbing tens of thousands of them on top of his existing True Qi, hadn’t even reached one-third capacity. The terrifying depth of his accumulation, the profoundness of his True Qi, and the vastness of his Qi Sea were enough to scare every genius to death if word got out!

‘Sigh, it seems I still don’t have enough Spirit Stones. If I keep absorbing them at this rate, even if I use up all the ones meant for activating the Demon Saint Ancient Corpse, it still won’t be enough to fill my Qi Sea!’

After absorbing another ten thousand Spirit Stones just to reach one-third of his Qi Sea’s capacity, Nie Yun shook his head helplessly and stopped.

He had stolen and plundered his way across the Qi Sea Continent and had only amassed a total of fifty thousand Low-Grade Spirit Stones. If he kept consuming them like this, they would be gone before he could use them for anything else. Even absorbing all of them wouldn’t be enough to fill his Qi Sea!

Fortunately, a full Qi Sea only affected the depth of his True Qi and didn’t have a major impact on his overall combat strength. Otherwise, he really would be crying without tears.

‘If I were on the Floating Heaven Continent, the air there contains Creation Qi. Absorbing just a single wisp of Creation Qi is equivalent to the Spiritual Qi from tens of thousands of Low-Grade Spirit Stones. If I cultivated diligently there, I could fill my Qi Sea within a month even without any Spirit Stones!’

At that thought, Nie Yun recalled the advantages of the Floating Heaven Continent.

The Floating Heaven Continent was the central continent of the entire world, incomparably vast. It was the true stage for the strong, the place where experts truly belonged.

There, one could find an endless supply of Creation Qi to absorb. Creation Qi was a naturally occurring energy of heaven and earth, the very foundation of Cultivation. It was countless times more potent than Spiritual Qi. Only by absorbing this energy could one hope to break through to the Secret Realm; only this energy could grant a person supreme power!

A minor place like the Qi Sea Continent was simply not qualified to produce Creation Qi. Therefore, the Secret Realm was the limit, and breaking beyond it was nigh impossible.

‘I have to go to the Floating Heaven Continent!’

Once the idea took root in his mind, it was impossible to suppress.

However, the Floating Heaven Continent was simply too far away, on the other side of a great ocean. If he tried to fly there, it would take ages.

He had previously estimated it would take ten years to fly there. Now, thinking back carefully, he realized that even though his speed was ten times faster than when he first reached the Ultimate Venerable Realm, it would still be impossible to reach it in less than several hundred years!

Besides, the seas were teeming with countless Demon Beasts. There was no telling what he might encounter on the way; it was uncertain if he could even make it there alive.

If it were so easy to fly over from the Floating Heaven Continent, that so-called Lord Hua wouldn’t have needed to control Huangg Ling and the others. He could have just flown over and claimed the Zihua Cave Mansion himself. There would have been no need to go to such great lengths, only to end up with nothing to show for it.

P.S. The next chapter will be released in half an hour, at 7:30 PM.