Bao Zhi was surprised when Mo Xuan presented his cultivation progress.
"Look, Father! I've been cultivating very hard." He raised his head proudly.
Indeed, his soul foundation has increased by leaps and bounds.
A rank one gu master's soul would initially have no advantage compared to a mortal, at best they would reach the realm of ten-man-soul.
Ten-man-soul meant their soul was at least ten times, but not more than a hundred times as powerful as a common human soul.
Mo Xuan's soul currently reached a shocking level of a mid-strength ten-thousand-man soul!
His soul was almost fifty-thousand times its original strength thanks to the dao marks in the immortal Soul Mirror Wine and the refinement formation's combined effect.
This was the level that a rank five soul path gu master would have. It would take decades to reach this level by using rank five gu!
Bao Zhi inspected Mo Xuan closer, to satisfy his curiosity and dispel his disbelief.
The methods of soul cultivation were still fresh in Bao Zhi's mind.
"A refinement path method?" He thought, instantly discovering the subtle signs left by the refinement formation. He could roughly piece together what had happened.
"This is not all. Watch this!" Mo Xuan drew a bit of primeval essence from his aperture.
It was light red primeval essence!
"Are you surprised, Father? While you were away I pushed through to rank two in a single go." Mo Xuan revealed, very much eager to see Bao Zhi's reaction.
One shock after another!
"Very good!" Bao Zhi patted his back. "This is how it should be. You make me proud."
"With his surge in soul foundation, his mental energy also increased. Thanks to this and his high aptitude, he could break through in one sitting." Bao Zhi surmised in his mind.
"Aren't you curious how I did it?" Mo Xuan was full of energy, he couldn't wait to begin telling. "It all began when I visited senior brother. We started drinking. He is a very good person, I like his company very much."
"But I noticed, senior brother's wine was much more fragrant than mine. Also my wine ran out first, so I took a sip... okay, it was more than one sip. But his wine was really, really good!"
He paused, with a hint of embarrassment.
"Then, hmm... I don't recall much after that. But I did have a strange dream, I remember that!"
"I was burning in flames. But the flames weren't painful, then the fire carried me to some other place."
"When the flames went out, a witch appeared and chained me up in the air! Then she started to poke me with a thousand needles. It was very painful!" Mo Xuan narrated fervently.
"But then, when I woke up, I felt really comfortable! My thoughts were racing, but I was calm."
"I knew, I had to do something, so I sat down and started cultivating. It was really good!"
Bao Zhi chuckled at the colorful commentary.
"Now that you have broken through a major realm, you have some experience cultivating." Bao Zhi took out some gu worms from his aperture and gave it to Mo Xuan.
"This is the rank four Primeval Rafflesia gu house." Bao Zhi introduced.
It was a modified version of the original. Bao Zhi elevated it to rank four, now it could convert the primeval stones stored in the primeval elder gu up to rank four yellow golden primeval essence.
"Woah! A rank four and a rank three gu." Mo Xuan found it hard to contain his excitement, even if these were just support gu.
"But I have something even greater." Bao Zhi teased.
After a while, they descended into a remote location.
"What are we looking for, Father?"
But the answer soon appeared right before them. A blessed land's entrance opened up.
"This... This is just like senior brother's aperture! Whose immortal aperture is this!?"
"It doesn't matter, he's dead already. I'm giving it you." Bao Zhi said plainly.
But before Mo Xuan could say anything in response, a soul beast, the size of a horse carriage, jumped out and roared in anger.
Bang! Whoosh!
Bao Zhi flung the mortal soul beast back where it came from.
"..." Mo Xuan breathed in sharply.
"Don't be afraid." Bao Zhi encouraged as he activated an immortal killer move.
Concealed human qi!
"This will hide you for a while. Go and conquer this blessed land!"
Mo Xuan wanted to protest, but a formless force grabbed him. He was flung into the blessed land's entrance, just like the soul beast.
"Look for the land spirit!" Bao Zhi yelled after Mo Xuan's distant figure.
The opening to the soul path landscape closed.
...
"Master, isn't this too much?" Hao Meng asked Bao Zhi with worry when he returned to the gu house.
"You have seen his shocking progress. Have you not? With his talent, he might become a gu immortal by afternoon." Bao Zhi joked.
"..." Hao Meng was tongue tied for a moment. "I will pray for you, junior brother."
"I didn't send him empty handed." Bao Zhi explained. "The gu worms I gave Mo Xuan contain my will, it could help him if necessary."
With the concealment immortal killer move, Mo Xuan could remain hidden for a long while. The rank six killer move was much more effective and long lasting when used on a rank two gu master.
"Not to mention, with his soul foundation, and the right soul path gu worms he can fight above his cultivation rank."
"Wouldn't it be a waste to let him sit around with his talent? You can think of facing this challenge as a human path refinement method. A talent needs his refinement. Isn't that right?" He glanced at Hao Meng meaningfully.
"..." Hao Meng haven't told Bao Zhi about Mo Xuan's incident, but now he understood he was found out. "Master knows best."
With the matter of the soul path blessed land settled, they left the hidden location behind.
Qinyang sought out Bao Zhi's help.
She needed to expand her information path formation, but without Bao Zhi's method, she had no idea where to even begin.
Bao Zhi joined her, taking a look at the recently improved formation, quickly understanding what she's been up to.
"Intriguing! She is interrogating wills from Wen clan?"
"Hm? These wills can be split endlessly?" Only after observing for a short while did he discover the crux of the method, when the will was replaced by a new identical one.
"Look!" Qinyang began to explain. "I've improved this system as much as I could. But there is still a problem with its speed."
"A time path problem?" Bao Zhi felt a hint of annoyance.
Indeed, the interrogation of the will was taking a long while because it was going in real time. There was no way around this without using time path methods to speed up its thinking.
"So the solution is to do more of the same, just in parallel. I want to increase the overall speed by having multiple wills worked on at the same time."
Bao Zhi nodded thoughtfully. "I assume without creating just additional formations?"
"Obviously! Whatever can be reused, it should be reused. I don't need the parts duplicated unnecessarily."
Bao Zhi pondered for a moment.
"I want to have the results you extract from these wills." He said.
"I can already get that without your help. You are only helping me getting it faster."
After a round of negotiating, Bao Zhi agreed on some extra compensation.
These Wen clan inheritances very were useful for confronting Wen clan's forces.
Next, Bao Zhi activated his technique.
Immortal killer move — Alive in Aspiration, Human in Perception!
Their human qi connected again. It provided a shared perception to both of them.
Bao Zhi could see the world through the understanding of Qinyang, while she gained an even greater insight thanks to Bao Zhi's various attainments.
Attainment couldn't be shared between different people, as attainment was a core part of the individual's true meaning they accumulated, it was different for each person. If it was extracted, it would be lost.
But sharing just the effects of attainment was almost as good.
The killer move alive in aspiration, human in perception could share and mix the quality of individual human qi.
Human qi was the medium that perception passed through, the sixth sense being the most obvious example.
The end result was very similar to having the attainment shared, it could even mimic intuition if the attainment level reached master level!
While perception was the process of gathering information and interpreting it to form an understanding, intuition was a process that involved drawing on the person's subconscious knowledge, experiences, and patterns to arrive at insights or judgments.
Perceiving both the outside and the inside! This was a fundamental pillar of this killer move.
The awaited feeling took hold of Qinyang once again.
"I have to learn how he does this..." She thought to herself.
"Wait, what is this substance?" As she thought about the mystical method influencing her, she noticed the previously imperceptible.
"Human qi."
"And why do you have so much of it?" Qinyang couldn't help but notice the stark difference.
If her human qi was like the flame of a candle, then the human qi around Bao Zhi was like a blazing inferno.
Bao Zhi smiled without explaining. "Let's begin."
The first step was to lay down the framework of the new formation.
Qinyang noticed the differences as she helped placing the gu worms.
Bao Zhi constructed formation spaces to contain the necessary mechanisms. It was similar to the hidden space where the gu immortal wills were stored in the Wondrous Inspiration Pagoda, it did not take up physical space on the outside.
Next, Bao Zhi started nesting the formation spaces into each other, folding one layer on top of another. It went three layers deep.
The overall size of the formation remained unchanged on the outside, but its complexity and the number of gu worms multiplied.
At this moment Qinyang had to stop, she had reached her limits.
Having exhausted her mental energy, she had to take a break and let Bao Zhi do the last steps.
It couldn't be helped, the soul was the foundation of the mind. Even with Bao Zhi's method, too much thinking could exhaust the mind if the soul wasn't strong enough.
When the formation was complete, Qinyang put in ten copies of Shou Xin's will to test the formation's capabilities.
"Hahaha! Very good." She watched as Shou Xin's unsuspecting will was mislead, tricked and annihilated over and over. Gaining pieces of information in the process.
She threw in another ten wills, testing the formation to its limits.
Only the waning effect of Bao Zhi's killer move could put a damper on her good mood.
"Tell me, what is your killer move called?"
"Alive in aspiration, human in perception."
"Good name. Fitting for a human path killer move." Qinyang revealed a sly smile for a brief moment.
She discovered this technique wasn't a formation path method, like she originally thought.
Now that she experienced it for the second time, after some reflection, she understood much more of what was happening thanks to the effect of the killer move.
She also gained a deeper sense of Bao Zhi's foundation when her thoughts wandered from the formation.
"Whatever ordinary thing I thought of during this period, I could gleam new insights I've never thought of before!" Qinyang could only reevaluate Bao Zhi once again in her mind. "Just how deep is Bao Zhi's understanding of the world?"
"I want to keep exploring. I want to keep experiencing. I don't want to lose this feeling! I want it, no, I need it! Bao Zhi! Use you killer move again!" She wanted to say it, as the last strands of this sensation faded, but she knew better.
She didn't want to admit it, but this feeling was mentally intoxicating!
"It can't be helped, the difference is too large in attainments." Bao Zhi thought as he mused, fully aware of Qinyang's inner feelings.
Bao Zhi wouldn't have it otherwise. If what it took to gain her trust and cooperation, was Qinyang acquiring a dependence on him, then he wouldn't think twice about it.
"Don't forget to interrogate the other wills as well. Pay special attention to Wen Jie." With that said, Bao Zhi left.
...
Weeks have passed.
Bao Zhi had finally uncovered some clues through Treasure Yellow Heaven regarding the time path inheritance.
"The hours one spends fishing are not counted against his lifespan."
"The calm found in tranquility flows onward into perpetuity."
"The eye of Time Fisher Grotto opens where the moments fall like sand."
Time Fisher Grotto!
"To think it was related to Old Time Fisher Immortal..."
Bao Zhi had heard of this person.
"Rumor has it, Old Time Fisher Immortal has discovered the secret of longevity through time path." Bao Zhi recalled. "Hah, nonsense!"
"But if that's truly the case, why hasn't anyone seen Old Time Fisher in thousands of years?"
"Is he forced to stay inside his immortal aperture perhaps? Then why are the clues pointing to its location?"
Bao Zhi naturally found himself feeling suspicious.
"He is most likely dead. If it is the doing of the grotto's heavenly spirit, then it is clearly looking for an inheritor."
Bao Zhi only needed a suitable time path method.
He did not want to fight for another grotto heaven, he had his own grotto heaven to recover right now!
Although it had to be said, inheriting a grotto heaven was very enticing!
For the first time in a long while Bao Zhi hesitated.
He couldn't wait forever for the perfect time path solution.
Should he follow this lead or try to create a killer move that's imitating time path and doesn't hinder fire path?
The former was uncertain with a high reward and high risk, while the latter was certain but the expected result was subpar.
"If I can't resolve Hao Meng's tribulation problem, he will be busy with tribulations and might even die in the process, then I can't use his power to retake my grotto."
"But if I let him down with a poor solution, how will I ensure he is still willing to risk his life? How will I know that my solution doesn't create a hidden flaw that becomes a vulnerability in the heat of a fight?"
At the next moment, his will received a message in Treasure Yellow Heaven.
"Xin Cheng! We found what you were looking for."
* * * * *