The impact of spiritual power required a Heaven-Separation Pill to increase the success rate.
Yun Che suddenly opened his eyes.
From his neck downward, fine cracks rapidly spread across his body. The cracks widened and multiplied until they covered him completely. With a slight movement, the fractures split further, and pieces of crystalized flesh began to fall away.
Yun Che slowly stood up and gave his body a powerful shake.
The cracked fragments fell like debris swept by a violent wind.
His clothes disintegrated into dust during the shedding, leaving only the slightly damaged flood-dragon inner armor covering him.
Yun Che stood silently in place and closed his eyes again. After a long moment, he reopened them. A streak of Azure cold light flashed through his gaze as he slowly clenched his fist.
Although the fusion of the three pills only placed him half a step into Core Formation, his Nine Nether Cold Prison Art had already reached great completion.
A flame suddenly emerged from the core embryo.
It flowed along the meridians of his right arm and seeped silently from his fingertips. Three inches above his palm hovered a small Azure flame, quietly burning.
But this flame did not release heat.
It released piercing cold.
This was the essence of the Nine Nether Cold Prison Art—
The Flame of the Nine Netherworlds.
As soon as the icy flame appeared, the thick layer of Azure crystal ice covering the ground began releasing white vapor, showing signs of melting.
Yun Che waved his hand.
The flame vanished instantly.
The vapor slowly faded, revealing a small indentation in the crystalline ground.
Yun Che was secretly shocked by the flame’s power.
After glancing around, he took out fresh clothes from his storage bag and changed. His gaze then fell upon the countless beast bones surrounding him.
After a long moment of thought, he sat down cross-legged and slapped his storage bag.
The flood-dragon skull flew out.
Yun Che stared at it, his eyes flickering with calculation.
Originally, he planned to travel to Nandou City to exchange for a pill furnace, then have Su Wanqing refine the Heaven-Separation Pill for him.
Although three years had passed, Yun Che still felt a faint connection through her soul-blood contract, confirming that she remained safe.
But now, seeing the endless sea of frozen beast bones around him, his thoughts shifted.
The War God Hall refining technique required a crucial tool—
A Reaction Furnace.
Back then, Yun Che had kept the flood-dragon skull specifically for this purpose. But the plan had been delayed by the Three-Pill Fusion, and he had lacked confidence. If he failed, finding another powerful beast skull would take far too long.
Now, however…
He was standing in an ocean of bones.
His desire to forge a Reaction Furnace resurfaced instantly.
Yun Che closed his eyes and recalled the instructions from the artifact-refining jade slip. Moments later he opened it again and reviewed the method carefully.
Then he clapped his hands.
When he spread them apart, threads of spiritual silk shimmered between his palms.
His expression turned solemn.
With a flick of both hands, the spiritual threads floated into the air. Yun Che repeated the process over and over again, generating more and more threads.
Gradually, they wove together into a shimmering spiritual cloth, radiating waves of spiritual light.
The first step of crafting the Reaction Furnace—
Drawing silk from cocoon—was complete.
Now came the real test.
Could the furnace core withstand the refinement of spiritual silk?
Yun Che pointed at the flood-dragon skull.
The spiritual cloth wrapped around it instantly.
At first, the cloth slowly fused into the bone, and the skull’s purple color gradually faded.
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But soon—
Crack… crack…
The skull began to fracture.
Moments later—
Bang!
The entire skull shattered into pieces.
Yun Che sighed quietly.
But the unwilling fire in his eyes quickly reignited.
He leapt into the air, grabbed the floating spiritual cloth, and rushed toward a massive beast skeleton nearby.
This skeleton stretched hundreds of meters long.
Its bones were gray-white and enormous, its skull nearly as large as the flood-dragon’s.
Yun Che pressed the cloth down.
The cloth passed straight through the bone.
No resistance.
Yun Che frowned.
The skeleton was covered in a thick layer of Azure ice crystal, like frozen glass.
He grabbed the bone and squeezed slightly.
The bone creaked but did not break.
After a moment of thought, Yun Che summoned the Nine Nether icy flame again.
As the flame approached the skeleton, white vapor surged from the bone. The Azure crystal layer melted away rapidly until the bare gray bone was revealed.
Yun Che immediately pressed the spiritual cloth onto it.
This time it wrapped around the skull successfully.
But half an incense stick later—
The bone changed color three times…
Then shattered into dust.
The spiritual cloth floated free again, weaker than before.
Yun Che frowned deeply.
The difficulty of forging a Reaction Furnace far exceeded his expectations.
This was likely why the War God Hall refining technique was mastered by so few people.
Even obtaining a powerful beast skull was already an extraordinary stroke of luck for most cultivators. Yet the technique required the skull of a freshly slain spiritual beast, and preferably an extremely powerful one.
If the beast had been dead too long, the success rate dropped dramatically.
Of course—
If one could obtain the skull of a Desolate Beast, the success rate would increase several times regardless of how long it had been dead.
Realizing this, Yun Che glanced at the endless bone sea around him.
“How many beast skeletons are here…?” he murmured.
“I refuse to believe that among all these bones, not a single one can produce a Reaction Furnace!”
He began again.
One skeleton shattered.
Then another.
And another.
Yun Che eventually lost count of how many had been destroyed.
He only knew that he had replenished his spiritual cloth over a hundred times.
His expression darkened.
Suddenly he rose into the air.
The spiritual cloth expanded into enormous rippling circles around him.
He continued generating spiritual threads, pouring all his spiritual power into them.
The ripples grew larger—
Hundreds of meters.
Then over a thousand.
“Still not enough…”
Yun Che drank several mouthfuls of spiritual liquid and continued.
Finally, when the spiritual cloth expanded to a thousand meters wide, he shouted and slammed it down toward the ground.
At the same time—
The Nine Nether icy flame descended with it.
The ground erupted like a tidal wave of bones.
Skeletons shattered and turned into ash in a chain reaction. White vapor filled the air as the entire thousand-meter area was annihilated.
When the dust settled—
The entire area was empty.
Except for one small skeleton.
It was only the size of an ordinary animal.
Yun Che’s eyes lit up.
He flew down and examined it closely.
The skeleton looked completely ordinary.
White, slender, unremarkable.
But Yun Che’s intuition told him otherwise.
He pointed toward the sky.
The spiritual cloth descended again, wrapping around the skull.
The skull changed color once.
Twice.
Three times.
…
Nine times.
Crack.
The skull separated from the spine and floated into the air.
Its shape gradually changed until it resembled a bowl-shaped furnace, releasing waves of spiritual energy.
Yun Che grabbed it.
“Nine-grade Reaction Furnace…”
A trace of regret appeared in his heart.
After all that effort, he had still failed to create a perfect ten-grade furnace.
But he had no idea—
Even the Nascent Soul master who currently led the War God Hall’s Refining Pavilion possessed only a six-grade furnace.
Yun Che’s success was due to the seemingly ordinary skeleton.
Because that bone belonged to a rare Desolate Beast.
Artifact refining consisted of three steps:
Adjustment — Fusion — Integration
Yun Che began the process.
He placed materials into the furnace:
-
Chicken Blood Stone – produced intense heat when stimulated by spiritual power
-
Purple Moon Vine – decomposed materials under catalytic reaction
-
Heaven-Gang Wood – corrosive catalyst
Purple liquid slowly formed inside the furnace.
After calculating carefully, Yun Che added a drop of his own blood.
Bubbles immediately appeared.
Then he added Heaven-Gang Wood and finally the Chicken Blood Stone.
The liquid condensed into a purple sphere.
Yun Che split it into two halves.
One rose into the air.
The other remained in the furnace.
He pressed his hands to his chest and forehead, forcing out a strand of Purple Mansion spiritual energy and injecting it into the floating sphere.
The first stage was complete.
Next—
Fusion.
Yun Che summoned thirty-five flying swords.
One by one, he melted them into the sphere.
Finally the sphere shone with rainbow light.
But Yun Che was not finished.
He took out the black flying sword that had accompanied him through countless battles.
He gently stroked its blade.
A faint sword spirit emerged.
The demonic spirit floating nearby watched silently.
With a decisive thought—
The sword spirit plunged into the sphere.
Yun Che released his divine sense.
The final step began.
Integration.
Time passed.
The sphere stretched and solidified.
Suddenly—
A dragon’s roar echoed.
A crystal-clear flying sword appeared before Yun Che, shining with brilliant light.
A vortex of spiritual energy swirled around it before being absorbed completely.
Yun Che gazed at the sword for a long time.
Then he opened his mouth.
The sword transformed into a streak of crystal light and flew into his body.
The demonic spirit stared in shock.
“Uh… if you swallowed it… where am I supposed to live?”
Yun Che glanced at it calmly.
He pulled out the flood-dragon tendon, refined it using the furnace’s remaining sphere, and turned it into a golden cord.
The demon obediently entered the cord.
Yun Che stored it away.
Then he looked up toward the crystal ceiling above.
Nine Nether icy flame ignited again.
He launched upward like a comet.
From thousands of meters underground—
He burst out of the Corpse Valley.
The entire valley trembled violently.
Cultivators fled in panic as a black figure shot into the misty sky.
Soon rumors spread throughout the valley.
Some claimed that an ancient corpse demon had awakened after ten thousand years of slumber.
Yun Che did not stop.
His destination lay 300,000 miles south.
Two days later—
A massive black city appeared on the horizon.
Nandou City.
One of the 998 cities of the Demon Sea.
Its former ruler, Lord Nandou, a Nascent Soul cultivator, had vanished five hundred years ago.
Since then, the city had been jointly controlled by three sects:
-
Zhutiān Sect
-
Soul-Extinguishing Gate
-
Heavenly Dao Sect
After paying ten low-grade spirit stones, Yun Che received an entry token and walked into the city.
His destination was clear.
The Artifact Pavilion.
The building had three floors.
Each level sold increasingly expensive treasures.
When Yun Che entered the first floor, several cultivators were already arguing with shop attendants over prices.
Yun Che stepped forward.
His true goal had never changed.
A pill furnace.
Because the next step of his path was clear:
Refine the Heaven-Separation Pill.
Then—
Break into Core Formation.