Over the next few days, Noah would go out to the street market and look for some items that interested him.
Due to the presence of a large number of experts of holy rank, deploying his divine sense to search would simply be asking for trouble.
One particular day, while wandering around, he came across a young man selling a lotus whose petals looked like ice crystals.
"I have already told you! I'll only exchange it for ten holy rank pills! If you don't have them get lost!"
"Snow lotus ice heart."
Noah approached the young man and directly handed him a bottle with ten holy rank pills before picking up the lotus flower and storing it in his magic gourd.
"My friend. Could you sell me that snow lotus?"
Noah just looked at the refined young man who spoke before shaking his head and leaving.
The young man frowned at Noah's rude behavior but didn't stop him.
Noah made his way to another stall and bought a few herbs before spotting a young man carrying a bag on his back as he made his way to a particular stall.
The young man set the bag down on the stall and opened it, pulling out an orange orb that emanated a strong fire qi.
Noah appeared like lightning and grabbed the earth fire core before throwing a holy crystal at the young man in charge of the stall.
"Is this enough?"
The young man looked at the holy crystal with glowing eyes and nodded like a rattle.
"Enough. This is more than enough."
Noah wasted no time and stuffed the earthfire core into his magic gourd before slipping away into the crowd.
A few seconds later, the same young man who had stopped him earlier looked at the now empty place and a vein swelled in his forehead.
The next day, there was an alchemy competition in which the younger generation would be participating.
Obviously, Noah would not miss such an event as he wanted to get two items that would appear there.
As he was registering his data for the competition, he suddenly noticed a glance upon him.
Turning his head, he noticed it was the young man from before.
"Since you are participating then I will also participate and make you spit out the things you have taken from me."
The young man approached the registration place and registered his name as well.
Suddenly a drum sounded, announcing the start of the competition.
The competition was simple enough, whoever refined the best medicinal liquid won.
As Noah was already used to refining potions in his original world, his competence in that kind of alchemy far surpassed his competitors, who specialized more in refining pills.
Within ten minutes, his medicinal liquid was successfully refined and a fragrant aroma began to waft from the bottle.
"So fast!?"
"It must have failed."
"But that medicinal smell..."
The other contestants began to whisper among themselves.
One of the judges frowned and walked over to Noah before picking up the bottle and sniffing it, surprised.
Pouring a few drops into his mouth, the judge's eyes widened in surprise.
"This medicinal essence so pure!"
The other two judges approached him and tasted some of the medicinal liquid.
"This is wonderful!"
"Tell me young man, who is the master that taught you such a level of alchemy?"
"Big brother, let's save the questions for after the competition is over."
"Ah yes, sorry, I got too excited."
The middle judge coughed awkwardly before returning to his seat.
Five minutes later, the young man who wanted to compete against Noah finished refining his medicinal liquid.
The judges approached him and tasted some of the liquid. Although it was of exceptional quality, it still lacked a bit compared to the one refined by Noah.
Ten minutes later, the other participants had finished preparing their medicinal liquids.
After tasting them all, the judges reached a consensus, declaring Noah the winner.
The young man on the other side was surprised and couldn't believe it.
Noah saw his confused face and simply tossed him the bottle of medicinal liquid.
The young man took some and suddenly understood, the medicinal essence of Noah's liquid was stronger and purer than his own.
"I admit it, I've lost. I won't bother you anymore."
Noah just shrugged before going to collect his prize, a holy rank medicinal cauldron.
Suddenly, Noah was surrounded by the representatives of the various forces, who began spouting a lot of trash talk in an attempt to lure him into their factions.
Noah thanked them all before regretfully saying.
"Sigh, this young man is more than touched by how well the elders think of me but unfortunately, my master has forbidden me from joining any forces."
"Your master?"
"If your master managed to raise such a talented alchemist then he must be one of those legendary alchemists."
"What's your teacher's name?"
Noah shook his head.
"My master never told me his name since he took me in as a child."
"Then he must be one of those hidden experts."
Noah took the opportunity to get the second item he came for today.
Pulling out a mysterious black stone, he showed it to the elders around him before asking.
"Elders, due to my special cultivation technique, I must consume one of these stones from time to time but this is the last one I have left. To anyone else it is just like an ordinary stone but to me it is as valuable as a saint grade pill.
If any of you discover one of these during these days, please look for me and I will exchange it for ten holy rank pills."
"Hehe. I seem to be in luck today."
One of the elders took out an identical black stone from his space pouch before handing it to Noah.
"I have kept this stone with me for the past fifty years but have failed to decipher its secrets. Who would have thought it's a cultivation resource."
Noah smiled at the man before handing him the other ten holy rank pills he refined earlier.
After bidding farewell to the elders, he entered his cultivation room and put away the alchemy furnace and the two black stones before entering a meditative state as he waited for the days to pass.
A few days later, a glow on the horizon caught Noah's attention.
"It's time."
He pulled out his special artifacts and fully equipped himself before flying off towards the site.
On the other side, a gigantic purple flower bud rose into the sky as countless transcendent-ranked cultivators struggled around it.
Seeing that the flower had yet to bloom, Noah simply charged his strength and bided his time.
A few minutes later, the thousand-year demonic flower absorbed enough world energy and bloomed.
The cultivators around the flower seemed to go even crazier as they began to avalanche towards the center of the flower while killing each other.
Noah exploded his aura while activating the second form of the demon god transformation before transforming into a gigantic black dragon made of demonic qi that charged at the flower.
The demonic dragon destroyed anyone in its path and in a matter of seconds reached the center of the flower.
Nullifying his transformation, Noah entered the space vortex at the center of the flower before being transported into outer space.
Looking below him, he saw the Tong Xuan realm floating in space.
Before his body began to be affected by the power of the space around him, he took out his magic staff and activated a magic barrier around him.
Behind him, some cultivators entered through the space passage but quickly died because they could not withstand the exposure to space.
Some with profound backgrounds had defensive artifacts that helped protect them while others with weaker defensive artifacts only endured for a short while before dying.
Noah wasted no time and blasted his aura before flying towards the thousand year demon flower and drawing six drops of his elixir from its core before flying out of the place.
After flying for a long while, he arrived near a space storm.
Activating his demon god transformation, he deactivated the magical barrier before shooting into the eye of the storm.
An immense amount of stellar energy assaulted his body, seeking to shatter it into pieces.
Noah did not lose his cool and used a technique he had not used for a long time, the tempered body search.
As he used his divine ability heaven devourer to devour the stellar energy around him, the tempered body register ensured that this energy nourished and tempered his body.
He continued to practice without worrying about the passage of time.
Part of the stellar energy was consumed by the golden skeleton while another part was consumed by his golden blood, purifying it more and more and turning it into golden blood of the demon god.
The last third was used by the tempered body register to temper his organs and muscles.
A year later, Noah stopped practicing the tempered body record and looked around him.
All the stellar energy produced by the space storm was consumed by her body, leaving her without strength, which caused her to dissipate.
Noah clenched his fist and a sonic boom sounded.
"So this is what it feels like to have a physical body equivalent to the transcendent realm."
Currently, both Noah's body and dantian were at the same level of strength.
Noah could now fight a cultivator of the third transcendent rank with just his body.
Opening his palm, he observed the new energy his body produced.
"Star energy..."
With this new energy, he felt his affinity with space become higher.
With a snap, a tiny portal appeared, transporting him a few meters away.
"Haha! With this ability I can replicate the magic staff skill on my own. This will be extremely beneficial to me in future battles."
Although the idea of using such a skill in combat excited him greatly, what he really came here for was the star power itself.
After remembering that in the original story, Yang Kai fused the yin energy of his golden skeleton and the yang energy of his dantian to create a new energy, Noah came up with an even more ambitious and crazy idea.
What if he fused not just two, but four different types of energy? What kind of energy would emerge from that?
And what better catalyst for the fusion of such energies than the baptism of his ascension to holy rank?
"It's a pity that it has to wait until Magna and Lena develop a cultivation method for the mana core."
That's right, the fourth energy he wanted to fuse during his ascension was none other than mana.
If he could improve his mana core cultivation to the equivalent of his dantian's cultivation, his battle power would skyrocket.
As he thought about all this, a bold idea suddenly came to his mind.
It had been a while since he had created a soul clone.
Suddenly the perfect body that could function as a vessel came to his mind.
Opening a portal, he returned to the Tong Xuan realm.
Several months later, he appeared on a mountain while looking at the cave in front of him.
Entering the cave, he picked up an orb that constantly gave off icy energy before focusing on the frozen skeleton in a block of ice in front of him.
Noah placed his hand directly on the block of ice and forced the sleeping soul inside the skeleton to emerge.
Without wasting any time, Noah had the demonic eye of annihilation shatter the other party's soul before he began to split its soul to create his new clone.
A few minutes later, he formed the clone before having it swallow the soul essence in front of it before sending it back to the skeleton.
Now that his soul was much more powerful and because he had the soul-warming lotus with him, he was able to endure the pain of part of his soul being split.
After recovering, he melted the ice and let the skeleton come out.
The skeleton stood up and looked at his new body.
"It feels... Strange."
"It's normal, the bone race is a very strange race.
Well, because your body can't appear in this world yet, I'd better keep you inside the magic gourd."
Noah first sent a thread of his consciousness to communicate with the three demons inside the gourd space to inform them not to be alarmed before sending his clone inside.
Because it was nothing but bones, the clone could survive just fine inside the gourd space.