Chapter 143 – Three Cold Cores
It took Wang Lin ten days to slowly make his way from the Valley of Corpses back to the cave. After he emerged outside the cave, he carefully examined his surroundings. When he was certain nothing was amiss, he exited and dragged the dragon with him.
The ground trembled, alerting Li Muwan. She opened the formation and stuck her head out after Wang Lin called out to her. However, the moment she stuck her head out, her eyes were drawn to a 1,000-foot-long dragon. She was stunned for a long time.
Wang Lin dragged the dragon into the formation and said to Li Muwan, “Are these dragon bones enough for this formation?”
Li Muwan nodded absentmindedly, her mind completely confused. She had seen records about this type of dragon. They were powerful enough to kill late-stage Nascent Soul cultivators, and their entire bodies could be considered treasures.
Inside the dragon’s head was a dragon pill. It was a natural pill that only needed a little refinement to become a real pill that would increase cultivation. The dragon’s skin was a high-quality material for making armor, and the dragon’s bones and tendons were also rare. However, the most valuable ingredient of all was its marrow.
The quality of the marrow depends on the dragon’s age. The older the dragon, the less marrow it has. Once it reaches a certain age, the marrow will become a dragon pill.
The Dragon Pill is something even ancient cultivators dreamed of. This pill allows one to acquire the body of a dragon and allows them to transform. Furthermore, from then on, they will never encounter any obstacles in their cultivation.
However, for a dragon to form a Dragon Pill, it must live for 9,990,000 years. That’s why there are no definitive records of Dragon Pills. Their effects remain mere rumors and legends.
After handing the dragon to Li Muwan, he ignored it and continued on his journey. He had obtained everything he needed besides a furnace on this trip, but he learned that there was a place called the Treasure Refining Pavilion where he could purchase one.
The Treasure Refining Sect had many shops throughout the Devil Sea. The nearest shop was in North Dipper City, 40,000 kilometers away. However, items like pill furnaces were usually expensive, and after hearing Sang Muya say that the head of the Evil Fighting Sect had spent almost all the sect’s spirit stones on a single pill furnace, he gave up on buying one.
He decided to put the furnace aside for now. Since they had the dragon bones, the nine-frame formation would be powerful enough to provide them with adequate protection. Wang Lin would undergo closed-door training, aiming to reach the Core Formation stage.
Wang Lin sat in one of the stone chambers and sealed it with a large rock. Then, he took out 30 flying swords and pointed them at the ground. The flying swords immediately flew into the ground and began digging a tunnel to the base of the mountain.
Wang Lin’s eyes became serious as he shot out a large amount of spiritual energy that transformed into a fireball. The color of the fire gradually turned light blue. Wang Lin frowned slightly, but his face immediately brightened. Ordinary Earth Yin was ranked first. Although it couldn’t compare to Corpse Valley, it was more than enough for ordinary cold cores.
His body moved and he jumped to the bottom of the pit. His body had reached the level of ordinary Earth Yin Rank 3. This was clearly his limit, so he extinguished the fireball and began cultivating.
Wang Lin had already studied the Underworld Ascension Method once, so he could quickly study it again.
Time passed slowly and three days later, Wang Lin opened his eyes. His eyes showed a pensive expression before he took out the heaven-defying bead and gathered the spirit liquid.
Time passed quickly. Besides cultivating, Wang Lin only collected spirit liquid from the Heaven-Defying Bead every day. Once he had collected enough dew, he would spend part of his day cultivating inside the Heaven-Defying Bead with spirit liquid.
As a result, his progress was rapid. It only took him a month to form two cold cores. He only needed to form the final core to attempt to reach the Core Formation stage.
This final cold core would take even longer to form. After all, he had only formed two cold cores last time. However, he was at the peak of the late Foundation Establishment stage, so at least it wouldn’t take him years of cultivation to finally form one.
Wang Lin was confident that he could form his third cold core within three months. Therefore, he was in no rush. Besides cultivating and collecting spirit fluid, he found time every day to nurture several demons.
Wang Lin had tried many times, but he couldn’t implant his divine sense into the demon, so he had to overcome it by slowly nurturing it.
Speaking of the devil, he was very useful to Wang Lin. He slowly extracted the souls from the soul flag and gave them to the devil. All the souls inside this soul flag were cultivators from the Sea of Devils, and most of them were disciples of the Evil Fighting Sect. According to Sang Muya, these souls belonged to people who fought with him for their master’s favor. After they were killed by him, he sealed their souls inside.
Time passed slowly, and by the time the devil had devoured most of the souls in the soul flag, a small piece of Wang Lin’s divine consciousness had developed inside the devil.
The devil himself was unaware that a small part of Wang Lin’s divine sense had developed within him as he thought of a way to escape.
Three months had passed since she entered closed-door cultivation. The prototype for her third cold core had been formed. In these three months, she had gone out several times. The room Li Muwan was in was filled with various materials. She had even managed to obtain soil from somewhere and planted some medicinal herbs. There were also formations of low-grade and medium-grade medicinal stones placed around the medicinal herbs to ensure they had enough spiritual energy to grow.
A small pill furnace was placed in the center of the room, with a pile of failed pills beside it. Li Muwan had begun refining the pills when Wang Lin had entered closed-door cultivation.
Besides the failures on the ground, there were also jade stones scattered across the floor. Whenever Li Muwan got stuck or had a flash of inspiration, she would immediately search among the jade stones.
Of the four rooms inside the cave, one was used for Wang Lin’s cultivation, one for alchemy, one for growing plants, and the last one had been renovated into a bathroom by Li Muwan.
The Devil’s Sea was filled with mist, so the air was extremely humid. The cave was no exception. Clothes would quickly become wet and stick to their bodies. Li Muwan was a girl, and coupled with the stickiness of wet clothes, she really couldn’t stand it any longer, so she went to great lengths to create this bathroom.
Wang Lin didn’t care about the bathroom at all because all he had to do was circulate his spiritual energy and all the Yin energy would be sucked into his cold core.
The power of the nine-bone formation had been greatly increased by the dragon bones. However, Li Muwan said that it should be called the nine-bone dragon formation, not the nine-bone formation.
Once activated, the formation could trap a Core Formation cultivator for months, or hinder a Nascent Soul cultivator for several days. However, Li Muwan regretted that they couldn’t capture the dragon while it was still alive. If they had infused its soul into the formation, it would have become even more powerful. It would not only be able to defend itself, but it would also be able to attack. Any Core Formation cultivator would have died instantly, and a Nascent Soul cultivator would have been forced to leave in a miserable state.
Unfortunately, dragon souls were too difficult to obtain, so he could only dream about it.
Regarding the dragon, Li Muwan took out the dragon pill and stored it until he obtained a better pill furnace. Regarding the skin, Li Muwan spent a month extracting it from the dragon and storing it for later.
Besides all this, there’s also the dragon vein. This is the third mysterious part of the dragon, along with the dragon pill and the dragon marrow. If a treasure refiner were present, they could refine the dragon vein into a weapon that could change its size at will and split into countless branches.
The last part was a small bottle of bone marrow. It was so valuable that Li Muwan was afraid to use it to refine the pills. He handed these things to Wang Lin and with difficulty withdrew his gaze.
Wang Lin kept the dragon’s marrow and tendons and gave the rest to Li Muwan. With her delicate hands, she crafted two inner armors from the dragon’s skin.
After Wang Lin put one on, he saw another one that was clearly made for women and threw it to Li Muwan. She smiled as she quietly put it away in her bag.
There was still a lot of dragon skin left after the armor was made, so Wang Lin kept it all to exchange for other resources in the future.
All the dragons became various treasures.
A month passed and Wang Lin finally formed his third cold core. Yin energy flowed through the cold cores in his head, chest, and dantian.
Wang Lin opened his eyes and revealed a joyful expression. He closed his eyes and decided to do it all at once, so he merged the three cold cores into one.
Situ Nan had previously explained in detail the process of merging three cold cores into one. The fusion was divided into the initial stage and the completion stage. If he could reach the initial stage, then he would truly be half a step into the Core Formation stage. If he consumed the Distant Heaven Pill at the same time as completing the fusion, then he would have an 80% chance of reaching the Core Formation stage.
He didn’t let Li Muwan complete the Distant Heaven Pill because it required a better pill furnace, and there was only one pill left unfinished. He had to ensure the highest success rate for the completed pill.
At the same time, he made a backup plan of using the demon blood root to create a fake Distant Heaven Pill.
Previously, he had thought buying a pill furnace would be too expensive, but now that he had the dragon skin, he could try. If it still wasn’t enough, he would do whatever it took to get one. He took a deep breath and began to try to fuse his cold core.