The Path of Immortality: Starts With Creating Water Bear Gu

Chapter 200: The Cautious Long Xuan

Soul Nourishing Wood is an invaluable treasure in the outside world. Its appearance alone is enough to stir up a bloodbath and potentially incite a massive conflict among countless Gu Kings, creating significant chaos.

This is because the effects of Soul Nourishing Wood are nothing short of miraculous. As long as a Gu cultivator stays near the tree, their innate soul power will naturally increase.

Just like lifespan, soul power is divided into innate soul power and acquired soul power.

It's important to note that the strength of one's soul power is largely determined at birth, and it’s extremely difficult to increase it later. Methods to enhance soul power are exceedingly rare.

Even when soul power is increased, it's usually the acquired soul power that grows, while innate soul power is fixed and cannot be increased.

The only exception to this is the Soul Nourishing Wood, which can actually enhance a Gu cultivator's innate soul power.

To explain the difference between innate and acquired soul power, consider this: Every time a Gu cultivator advances in rank, their soul power naturally grows. The soul power of a Gu King is never weak, and powerful Gu Kings can even project their soul outside their bodies, taking over another body for rebirth.

However, every Gu cultivator is a unique individual, and the amount of soul power they can enhance with each rank advancement differs.

Those with strong innate soul power will experience a more significant increase with each rank advancement.

Those with weak innate soul power will experience only a minor increase each time they advance.

With every rank advancement, the gap between the two widens, and as the number of advancements grows, this gap becomes insurmountable, like the difference between heaven and earth.

The importance of enhancing innate soul power cannot be overstated.

It can be said without exaggeration that the Soul Nourishing Wood is enough to arouse the greed of anyone in this world—note the keyword: anyone—regardless of gender, age, or cultivation level. The desire it evokes is universal.

The allure of the Soul Nourishing Wood is fatal for anyone, to the point where they may lose their rationality and risk everything. Once it appears, it will undoubtedly plunge the world into chaos.

It's important to remember that Long Xuan has lived through two lifetimes, and his innate soul power is already incredibly strong—strong to the point of being inhuman.

His innate soul power is already so formidable, and now he is about to possess a Soul Nourishing Wood that can further enhance it. What kind of terrifying monster will this create?

Long Xuan swallowed hard, his throat moving as he made up his mind. Once the six Gu cultivators from the Bai family, all at the Spiritual Sea stage, leave, he would secretly take the Soul Nourishing Wood for himself.

At the same time, he had to guard this tree carefully. He couldn't let the Sou Gu use it for building a house, nor could he allow the Dream Dragon Silkworm to secretly eat all its leaves.

This Soul Nourishing Wood was too precious, the highest-grade spiritual medicine in his entire herb garden, even surpassing the Fire Dragon Fruit Tree and the Living Wood. He couldn't allow it to be wasted.

Suppressing the excitement in his heart, Long Xuan forced himself to calm down and finally turned his gaze to the three cultivation manuals.

Looking at these three manuals, his emotions were mixed.

One was a body cultivation manual, one was a soul cultivation manual, and the last one was a spiritual power cultivation manual. All three were heavenly-grade manuals, the highest-tier manuals in the Gu world.

Everyone can imagine how rare the highest-grade manuals in the world are.

This level of manual only exists in legends; most people have never even heard of them. It was hard to believe that the owner of this cave had three of them.

Cultivation manuals accompany a person for their entire life, and what does a heaven-grade manual mean? If a clan were to acquire one, the cultivation speed of its geniuses would far exceed that of other clans.

The likelihood of a Gu King emerging from that clan would be many times greater than in other clans.

Anyone who cultivates a heaven-grade high-level manual will possess incredible combat power, and the overall strength of that clan would surpass other clans by an immeasurable margin. ??

It’s no exaggeration to say that if a clan masters a heaven-grade high-level manual and is given time to grow, that clan could become a great power in the future, a top-tier force in the entire Gu world.

At this moment, Long Xuan finally understood why the Bai family was willing to sacrifice their clan's future geniuses to seize control of all the mineral veins.

It was all because of these three manuals. These three manuals were far too important for a clan, something worth any price.

In front of these three manuals, even the value of the Geng Metal ore veins seemed insignificant.

As long as they acquired these three manuals, the Bai clan would become supreme in the future; a small region like the Western Lands would no longer be able to contain them.

Unfortunately, despite all their scheming, the Bai clan ended up with nothing. Even after sacrificing their clan's geniuses, they couldn’t achieve their goal. Truly pitiful and lamentable.

Long Xuan took a deep breath, ignoring the body cultivation manual and the spiritual power cultivation manual, and reached for the soul cultivation manual.

While the heaven-grade body and spiritual power cultivation manuals would drive others mad, they held no interest for him.

He could not replace his own “Ten Absolute Scripture” and “Purgatory True Demon Technique” with two heaven-grade manuals.

Although he didn’t know what rank his own manuals would be classified as in this world, he was confident that the ones he created could not be weaker than any manual in this world. He had absolute confidence in his own techniques.

Thus, no manual from this world, no matter how highly prized by the Bai family, could make him consider switching his techniques.

So, what the Bai clan valued above all else was completely useless to him.

He was particularly interested in the Soul Refining technique, as he had yet to practice any soul refining methods.

The Soul Refining technique is a cultivation method that strengthens the soul, increasing acquired soul power. Such techniques are extremely rare, and even after searching through the Long Clan’s Library Tower and the Qian Clan’s Treasury, he hadn't found a single soul refining technique.

So far, this was the first Soul Refining technique he had ever come across, and it was a Heaven-grade high-tier technique.

Long Xuan was very intrigued. He was already considering whether he should create his own Soul Refining technique, which would allow him to cultivate his soul, body, and spirit simultaneously, ensuring no weaknesses.

A strong soul had numerous advantages. For example, the stronger the soul, the higher the resistance to illusions. The stronger the soul, the greater the sensory perception, to the point where even with eyes closed, one could sense opponents attacking from a great distance or from behind.

Additionally, a strong soul could render one immune to Shi Haojun’s ability to eavesdrop on thoughts. Long Xuan believed that similar abilities certainly existed in this world and that Shi Haojun was not the only one with mind-reading powers.

Long Xuan had too many secrets in his heart. This reason alone was enough to make him decide to cultivate a Soul Refining technique.

However, whether to learn an existing technique or to create one of his own, Long Xuan pondered for a moment and decided to first assess the quality of this technique.

If its power was far inferior to the "Ten Absolute Scripture" or the " Purgatory True Demon Technique" , then, given his personality, he would definitely choose to create his own technique.

After all, choosing a cultivation method is a lifelong matter. It couldn’t be taken lightly; if he were to learn, he would learn the strongest one.

Long Xuan opened the first page of the "True Soul Transformation' and just by reading the first line, he knew this Heaven-grade high-tier technique was extremely dangerous.

Because the first sentence of this technique read: "If you wish to practice this technique, you must first find a Soul Nourishing Wood, or else certain death awaits."

The danger of this technique was that without the Soul Nourishing Wood to strengthen the soul, death was inevitable.

And the Soul Nourishing Wood was one of the three great spiritual trees of this world, extremely rare. Finding even one tree in the entire world would be considered lucky.

So it could be said that this technique was so dangerous that only one person in the world could practice it.

And with such a high level of danger, how could the technique be weak? The danger of a technique is directly proportional to its strength, after all.

At this moment, he finally understood why the cave master had to cultivate a Soul Nourishing Wood in the cave. It was entirely because of this technique. He had no choice but to embark on a journey across the world to find the Soul Nourishing Wood, and fortunately, he succeeded in the end.

It's just unknown why such a powerful individual ended up dying here. Someone who practiced three Heaven-grade high-tier techniques simultaneously must have had terrifying combat power in life, Long Xuan could easily imagine.

He began to look forward to this extremely dangerous technique, but now was not the time to study it.

He quickly scanned the treasures in the cave and then swiftly exited the illusion.

After all, the treasures in the illusion were nothing but illusions. To truly obtain them, one had to take action in reality.

Through the Origin Realm, Long Xuan knew what treasures the cave contained, and he felt the cave was worth a trip.

The Soul Nourishing Wood alone was worth taking action for. The Soul Nourishing Wood had the effect of increasing innate soul power, which would greatly benefit him.

Aside from the Soul Nourishing Wood, it would be almost impossible for him to find anything else that could increase innate soul power, so he was determined to obtain the Soul Nourishing Wood in the cave at any cost.

However, how to retrieve the treasures from the cave required careful planning.

After a moment of deep thought, Long Xuan decided to take action today.

From his observations, the six Bai Clan Spiritual Sea-stage Gu cultivators, in order to avoid alerting the Long Clan to the cave’s existence, always cautiously broke the formation at night in secret.

This meant that the six Bai Clan Spiritual Sea-stage Gu cultivators would not come during the day, and those overseeing the work would also need to show themselves during the day.

He could take advantage of the time when they left during the day to quietly plunder all the treasures in the cave.

It would be best if he could frame them for the theft of the treasures and have the Long Clan’s Gu cultivators kill them, leaving no one alive to testify. This plan was simply perfect.

Excited, Long Xuan clapped his hands and immediately sent out his Fire Clone.

It was early morning, and the six Bai Clan Spiritual Sea-stage Gu cultivators had just left. This was the perfect time to steal the treasures.

However, Long Xuan was always cautious by nature, and for safety's sake, he decided not to personally go to the cave but to follow his usual practice of letting his clone handle the task.

Even though he had successfully navigated the cave in the illusion, what was achievable in an illusion might not necessarily be possible in reality, and many variables could arise.

For example, his Origin Realm couldn’t perfectly replicate powerful living creatures. He had to take this factor into account.

Who knew if there were still powerful Gu insects in the cave? This was entirely possible, and caution never hurt.

He had already given the method to break the protective cave formation to his clone. As long as there were no additional variables in the cave, it wouldn’t be difficult for the clone to retrieve all the treasures, and all he had to do was wait patiently.