Chapter 644: Great Increase in Progress

Chapter 644: Chapter 124: Great Increase in Progress

Wang Ping first inscribed the body-refining Array in the center of the underground cavern. This was only the first step, as the Array also needed to be imprinted onto the Spirit Vein. It served two purposes: first, to gather enough Wood Spirit to refine the final parts of the physical body, and second, to suppress the Spirit Vein’s violent outbursts.

That was why it required such a high degree of stability.

Wang Ping carefully inspected the Array again. Once he confirmed there were no issues, he brought forth the Heaven-Reaching Talisman to refine it. The process was simple, much like refining an ordinary Magical Artifact. The goal was to allow the Array to easily connect to the Heaven-Reaching Talisman and absorb the world’s Wood Spirit.

Another month passed. As autumn approached, the Array’s refinement was finally complete. At the same time, the puppet Wang Ping had sent to the Jiangcun Dojo to set up the Qi Fortune Array also sent back a message: the Qi Fortune Array was ready.

Wang Ping immediately returned to the Mountain Peak Dojo. He instilled the refined Third Realm Primordial Spirit into a previously prepared puppet, then endowed it with basic human memories.

“On the outside, he looks no different from a True Man. His consciousness, however, is dependent on you.” The Nether Water from the Purgatory Banner materialized and offered its assessment of Wang Ping’s new puppet.

Wang Ping observed the puppet, which stared back at him with vacant eyes.

A few breaths later, a muffled thud, like the beat of a drum, echoed from within the puppet. This was the Primordial Spirit fusing with the Array Runes inside, absorbing the world’s Spiritual Qi to reconstruct a substance similar to a Spirit Vein.

The puppet was doing this on its own; Wang Ping was not controlling it.

Perhaps finding the process uninteresting, the nearby Nether Water observed for a moment longer before slipping back into the Purgatory Banner.

Wang Ping kept watch over the puppet until dusk. The changes within its body only ceased when Yu Lian returned from Xiaozhu’s side.

“This puppet is fascinating. It’s actually using the Primordial Spirit’s Qi Sea to supplement its body, trying to create a new Spirit Vein within. That should be impossible, though.”

Yu Lian landed on Wang Ping’s shoulder, her head resting against his cheek, communicating with him in the Spirit Sea.

Wang Ping replied in the Spirit Sea, “It’s more than enough. It’s only meant to test the opportunity for a breakthrough. We shouldn’t grant it too much, or I’ll truly grow attached to it.”

“That’s true!”

Yu Lian agreed.

Afterward, Wang Ping formed a hand seal for a Spell, brought forth a blank Talisman, and drove it into the puppet’s Primordial Spirit. He then used the Pocket World Mirror to transfer the puppet, placing it beside the other one near the Qi Fortune Array.

“How is Xiaozhu doing?” Wang Ping asked.

“Mostly stable,” Yu Lian replied in a lighthearted tone.

“Next, I need to inscribe the Array onto the Spirit Vein. It should take about half a month.”

“Do you need my help?”

“Yes. To be safe, I’m going to use the Divine Technique Formation to stabilize my Primordial Spirit. If you notice anything amiss, be sure to alert me.”

“Okay!”

Yu Lian glanced at the sky. “When will you begin?” she asked.

Wang Ping thought for a moment. “First, I’ll enter a meditative state to stabilize my aura,” he said.

「Three days later.」

Wang Ping, who had been in a meditative state, opened his eyes at the time of his daily practice. In the nearby Dark River, Yu Lian immediately poked her head above the surface. Her massive body shrank to about fifty-five feet long, and she rode a cloud over to circle around Wang Ping.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes!”

Wang Ping nodded and waved his left hand. Ten Celestial Swords instantly shot out from his Primordial Spirit, constructing a Divine Technique Formation around him. The map at the center of the Array solidified a little more.

The number of his believers had grown. Moreover, Wang Ping had been secretly cultivating the Divine Technique for years and had now established a Fantasy Divine Country. With a mere thought from him, the map in the center grew sharp and clear—so clear that one could make out individual flowers, plants, and trees. Through this map, the spiritual energy of his believers was automatically being converted into the light of the Divine Technique.

This was the third step of the Divine Technique, which Wang Ping had already completed.

Then, this Divine Technique light automatically washed over Wang Ping’s Spiritual Body, making him look like a true god at that moment. This was the fourth step of the Divine Technique, which Wang Ping had also completed.

When he was inside the Divine Technique Formation, his physical body naturally possessed a divine quality!

The fifth step’s requirement of twenty thousand believers had long since been met. A light-screen panel showed that he now had 670,000 believers—true believers in every sense, not just people going through the motions of daily worship.

Wang Ping had not continued on to the sixth step, which required one to seal their memories and experience a hundred lifetimes. In his current state, it seemed he didn’t need to; this step was meant for completing the prototype of a Divine Country, and he had already inherited a Divine Country and a Divine Technique Formation from the Xiao Shan Lord!

In other words, Wang Ping could skip directly to the eighth step: seeking hundreds of millions of believers to forge the final form of his Divine Country. This step sounded simple, but in practice, it was exceptionally difficult.

As soon as the Divine Technique Formation deployed, Yu Lian connected with the minds of the believers. Since there were so many of them now, she would select specific ones and give them the responses they needed.

Wang Ping, for his part, activated the body-refining Array. His Primordial Spirit Consciousness, impassive and serene, detached from his Spiritual Body. Viewing his own Spiritual Body from his Primordial Spirit form, he could see that it was surrounded by an exceptionally abundant spiritual energy within the Divine Technique Formation—this was the will of hundreds of thousands of believers.

If Wang Ping were not rational enough at this moment, he would immediately be drawn in by that abundant spiritual energy, recklessly refining it to increase his cultivation. The likely result would be his body exploding, killing him.

The process of imprinting the Array onto the Spiritual Body was not complex. It simply involved guiding the Wood Spirit emitted by the activated Array and slowly inscribing it onto the Spirit Vein within his body.

While Wang Ping was inscribing the Array, Yu Lian concluded her communication with the believers. Her golden, vertical pupils stared, unblinking, at the streams of Wood Spirit that flowed from the Array and poured into the Spiritual Body.

Half a month passed in a flash. The very instant the Array was fully inscribed, the Spirit Vein Consciousness showed signs of reawakening. But before Wang Ping’s Primordial Spirit could react, the Array on the Spirit Vein’s surface suppressed it.

“So it has that benefit as well?” Yu Lian asked, her forked tongue flicking in and out.

“It’s accomplished by using the Wood Spirit to communicate with my Heaven-Reaching Talisman. It isn’t a power inherent to the Array itself,” Wang Ping explained.

“Oh… so are you moving on to the next step of your cultivation now?”

Yu Lian asked curiously. The next step was to refine the last of the physical body; once that was done, he could attempt his breakthrough!

“I’ll take some time to readjust first. Try something new for a change of pace…” Wang Ping said, bringing forth the Pocket World Mirror. “That puppet is about to complete its qi fortune calculations…”

Upon hearing this, Yu Lian extended her Primordial Spirit Consciousness to check on Shen Xiaozhu’s condition. After confirming that everything was fine, she shrank down, draped herself over Wang Ping’s shoulder, and closed her eyes to sleep.

「Three days later.」

The puppet’s calculations finally concluded. As expected, the Qi Fortune Array was destroyed by the Heaven and Earth Energy stirred up by the process. When the puppet transmitted the data from its calculations back through the Pocket World Mirror to merge with Wang Ping’s Primordial Spirit, the calculation progress bar immediately jumped to (94/100).

This was the result of a long and steady accumulation. At least ten of the previous attempts had yielded no data, and those had cost over a hundred million in silver!

Subsequently, tens of thousands of images of the future flooded Wang Ping’s mind. He fought the urge to continue the calculations, because if he did, the number of possible futures generated would be in the hundreds of millions.