Chapter 120 – Fourth Layer

The change of lord in this piece of sea territory had attracted the attention of some nearby Blood Condensation monsters, but since Lu Dagui had an equivalent realm, coupled with the three Emerald Sea Spirit Snakes and Lu Dabao’s assistance, Lu Dagui successfully asserted its sovereignty in this sea territory.

There were several challenges coming from the nearby Early Blood Condensation monster beasts, but because Lu Dagui never responded to their provocations, the other monsters couldn’t do anything about it.

For more than a month, Lu Ping had fled nonstop and fought several times against cultivators with higher cultivation levels. This left him severely injured and without the energy to care about the actions of Lu Dagui and his other spirit pets. He only instructed them to guard the territory and protect him during his recovery.

Fortunately, Lu Ping had always carried topnotch medicinal pellets with him at all times, in case of a crucial moment like this.

With the help of a Spirit Regenerating Pellet worth nearly a thousand spirit stones, Lu Ping spent seven days stabilizing his injuries.

With the addition of several ordinary Spirit Regenerating Pellets, Lu Ping’s injuries gradually improved. After three months in the monster crab’s nest, Lu Ping finally recovered from his injuries.

But even after he recovered, Lu Ping wasn’t eager to leave the monster race sea to return to Huang Li Island.

It was obvious that Lu Ping was in this predicament because someone had deliberately leaked his whereabouts to their enemies. Although he could get to safety by going back now, those scheming against him would be alerted into hiding.

These people were relentless, and obviously wouldn’t give up their calculations after failing this time. Not only would they continue, but their next ploy would only be more secretive and more ruthless.

They wouldn’t stop until he was dead. Hence, even if Lu Ping survived this situation, it didn’t mean that he could survive the next.

Lu Ping’s only chance now was to act from the shadows—those people had to believe that he’d fallen within the monster race sea. This way, the people behind the scenes would drop their guards and inadvertently reveal themselves.

More importantly, Lu Ping felt that he’d gained a lot from all the nonstop battles and fights with Mid and Late Blood Condensation cultivators. He sensed that he was on the verge of a breakthrough again.

Although Lu Ping’s battle results were enough to make him proud among Early Blood Condensation cultivators, the harsh reality still made him feel that his cultivation base was lacking. As a result, Lu Ping had never been more eager to improve his prowess than he did now.

Now was a good opportunity. This part of the monster sea clearly didn’t have any strong and powerful monsters for him to worry about. On top of that, Lu Dagui, who had become the lord of this territory, had given him the perfect shelter he needed to stay here.

He could now spend some time focusing on his cultivation base. Fortunately, he had gathered a lot of Blood Condensation cultivation pellets.

Although there wasn’t a spirit vein to boost the surrounding spiritual energy, being far away from Huang Li Island and the sect cultivators gave him the peace of mind to focus on his cultivation. This was crucial in helping him speed up his progress.

With the support of sufficient cultivation pellets, Lu Ping spent another year accumulating his arcane energy to the peak of the Third Layer Blood Condensation Realm.

In the nest, Lu Ping took a jade box out of his interspatial ring. This jade box was specially used to hold valuable cultivation supplies as it could fully retain the spiritual energy inside from leaking out.

Lu Ping opened the jade box and inside were four glimmering bright-red Condensed Blood Beads the size of peanuts, and another slightly smaller Condensed Blood Bead with a faint shimmering surface.

These five Condensed Blood Beads were left behind by the two Emerald Sea Spirit Snakes that died in Lu Ping’s hands.

The Fourth Layer Blood Condensation Emerald Sea Spirit Snake left behind the four larger Condensed Blood Beads.

Whereas the Third Layer Blood Condensation Emerald Sea Spirit Snake only left behind one smaller Condensed Blood Bead—it had self-destructed its other two Condensed Blood Beads before its death.

The breakthrough from Third Layer to Fourth Layer was a watershed for cultivators to advance from Early Blood to Mid Blood Condensation Realm.

The important sign of this watershed was that during the breakthrough, cultivators no longer used their foundation bloodline to consume another bloodline and eliminate their wasted bloodline.

Instead, the cultivators had to absorb an additional bloodline of the same property into their body. The purpose was to complement the deficiencies in their bloodlines due to the exclusion of wasted bloodlines.

This also served to purify and enhance the foundation bloodline. After all, as one’s cultivation base increases, the spiritual energy contained in other bloodlines would also increase as well.

Therefore, with the increase in cultivation base, the difficulties for the foundation bloodline to consume another bloodline would also increase accordingly. Thus, the foundation bloodline needed to be enhanced so it could keep the other bloodlines in check with its absolute prowess.

Hence, the so-called Blood Condensation Realm consisted of two processes. The first process was the consumption and exclusion of the other six bloodlines by the foundation bloodline; the second process was the absorption and inclusion of additional bloodlines of the same type into the cultivators’ bloodlines.

The best choice for additional bloodlines were naturally through Condensed Blood Beads. However, for Blood Condensation cultivators, be it humans or monsters, the Condensed Blood Beads were tied to their very existence and they would never let them fall into the hands of others.

Hence, Blood Condensation cultivators would often self-destruct their Condensed Blood Beads before their deaths. So, there were hardly any Condensed Blood Beads that could be found in the cultivation world.

It must be said, Lu Ping was incredibly fortunate to be able to obtain so many Condensed Blood Beads from Qiao Xipeng and the two Emerald Sea Spirit Snakes.

And despite participating in numerous battles during the Xuan Ling-Zhen Ling war, the Fei Ling Island expedition, and the battles in the buffer sea, Lu Ping didn’t obtain any more Condensed Blood Beads.

Lu Ping’s foundation bloodline was the water Jiao bloodline and he was also focused on the pure water cultivation method. He even went as far as slowing down his cultivation progress just to ensure his arcane energy was pure and thick. It was only natural for him to be extra cautious when it came to selecting the additional bloodline to be absorbed.

The Emerald Sea Spirit Snake were regarded as a noble clan in the monster race because they were inherently born with pure Jiao bloodlines. Coincidentally, the two Emerald Sea Spirit Snakes had the water Jiao bloodline as their foundation bloodline.

This made their Condensed Blood Beads perfectly suitable for Lu Ping to absorb into his foundation bloodline. But Lu Ping had another reason that no one in this cultivation world would ever learn about.

Legend has it that this cultivation world was created by the Heaven Cleaving Seven Primes. Hence, every living being had the blood of the Seven Primes flowing in their veins. As one of the Seven Primes, the True Spirit of Jiao naturally has a prestigious and lofty status in the hearts of the Jiao bloodline cultivators.

However, the same couldn’t be said for Lu Ping. To him, Jiao was nothing more than one of many True Spirits. Above it, there was another supreme True Spirit of superior rank—the True Spirit of Dragon!

However, Lu Ping didn’t know if this Dragon ever existed in this world. At least, there weren’t any legends about it among the cultivators of this world.

But should there be any, then according to the legend of Lu Ping’s previous world, Jiao was nothing more than a subspecies of the true Dragon.

After entering the Blood Condensation Realm, Lu Ping carefully examined the legends of Jiao in this world and collected various pictures depicting it that were passed down by human ancestors.

However, the result was a great disappointment to Lu Ping, as the drawings of True Spirit Jiao were very strange, with various images. But after consulting Master Immortal Liu and Enlightened Master Jiang, Lu Ping learned that the images of Jiao came from the Avatar Realm Great Ancestors who had the Jiao foundation bloodline.

In the Core Forging Realm, after their Golden Core was fused with their divine revelation, it would transcend into a heavenly entity known as the Avatar, which also signified their advancement into the Avatar Realm.

However, the appearance of the cultivators’ Avatar was unique for every person. This was because each Avatar’s form was based on the cultivators’ understanding of the True Spirit of their foundation bloodline. These perceptions were greatly affected by the additional bloodlines absorbed into their body.

As the absorbed bloodlines came from different sources, their arcane energy and divine sense would also undergo underlying changes which would only manifest in the appearance of their Avatar upon reaching the Avatar Realm.

Since Lu Ping had a different identity from another world, his deep-rooted view from the previous world’s culture and heritage made him think differently than the cultivators in this world. Therefore, his preconceptions made him unable to look up to the so-called True Spirit Jiao. Instead, he’d set his eyes on an iconic mythological creature that didn’t seem to exist in this world.

He had to admit, he was gambling his entire cultivation path on this belief. He was betting that this unknown and mysterious creature was real!

Lu Ping instructed Lu Dagui and his other spirit pets to guard the nest while he entered closed-door cultivation.

Lu Ping swallowed one of the Fourth Layer Condensed Blood Beads using the special refinement method in [North Ocean Wave Listening Scripture]. He slowly siphoned the arcane energy and bloodline essence from the Condensed Blood Bead and refined them into his own foundation bloodline.

The refinement was a slow process that required the complete fusion of his foundation bloodline with the bloodline essence and arcane energy contained in the Condensed Blood Beads.

Furthermore, this process was inevitably accompanied by bouts of pain during the fusion process, which could be excruciating for the cultivator. This was well documented in the cultivation process of Blood Condensation cultivators, and Lu Ping was prepared to meet these challenges.

However, the refinement and fusion process left Lu Ping speechless as his bloodline once again demonstrated its unparalleled dominance.

It immediately devoured everything that was extracted from the Condensed Blood Bead. Hence, the slow refinement process was greatly accelerated, and the discomfort that accompanied the process didn’t occur at all.

Once again, Lu Ping experienced the strength of his own foundation bloodline.

However, this Condensed Blood Bead alone only brought him one step closer to the Mid Blood Condensation Realm—it wasn’t enough to advance into the Fourth Layer.

Lu Ping was already prepared for this situation and threw the second Condensed Blood Bead directly into his mouth.

The best option for Blood Condensation cultivators to advance was naturally to absorb the Condensed Blood Beads. However, the method of selection differed for each stage. Most cultivators could only refine and absorb Condensed Blood Beads that came from cultivators in the same cultivation stage as their own.

For example, Third Layer cultivators could refine Third Layer Condensed Blood Beads to break through into the Mid Blood Condensation Realm.

Of course, using Fourth Layer Condensed Blood Beads was more efficient.

This was because Fourth Layer Condensed Blood Beads had a higher volume of profound spiritual energy and bloodline essence. Hence, the average cultivator could often break through to the Mid Blood Condensation Realm just by using one or two of them.

However, after Lu Ping integrated the [Sea Coast Wave Listening Scripture] and the [Flying Spirit Ocean Treading Scripture] into the [North Ocean Wave Listening Scripture] and reconditioned his cultivation base with it, his already peerless arcane energy became even more profound.

As a result, even a Fourth Layer Condensed Blood Bead from a noble monster with a high purity Jiao bloodline wasn’t enough for Lu Ping to break through to the Mid Blood Condensation Realm.

It wasn’t until the third Condensed Blood Bead was refined that Lu Ping felt he had truly touched the bottleneck to advance into the Mid Blood Condensation Realm.

It was as if Lu Ping could enter the mid-stage at any time, but there was a thin layer of silk that he couldn’t tear through.

Without any hesitation, Lu Ping placed the fourth Condensed Blood Bead in his mouth.

His overwhelming foundation bloodline stripped everything from the Condensed Blood Bead, swallowing it completely. Soon enough, a torrent of arcane energy swept across his whole body along with the powerful pounding of his heart.

The three Condensed Blood Beads in his heartspace finally grew to their maximum size. Then, with a ripple of energy, the fourth Condensed Blood Bead was formed in the space.

The arcane energy and bloodline essence in his body flowed directly into the solidified Condensed Blood Bead and enlarged it to half the size of the other three Condensed Blood Beads.

After forming the fourth Condensed Blood Bead and successfully entering the Mid Blood Condensation Realm, the essence of spiritual energy in his blood finally reached every part of his body.

Finally, after this pulsating essence strengthened Lu Ping’s body, it seeped out from his skin and gathered at the top of his head, forming a cloud of essence!