Besides refining artifacts, Zhang Ling was also using this time to adjust his state of mind, while also being able to take some time to carefully cultivate the Earth Spirit Bees, allowing them to evolve again and produce mature honey.
After making his decision, Zhang Ling left Fire Cloud Island and went to Myriad Manifestation City. There, he purchased a large number of artifact refining materials, preparing for the practice of artifact refining.
In the process of collecting artifact refining materials, he also collected some good artifact refining books, including several image-recording beads, which recorded the artifact refining processes of several artifact refining masters. This cost him a lot of spirit stones.
For these books and materials, Zhang Ling also sold a lot of pills in exchange for spirit stones.
He hadn't been to Myriad Manifestation City for several years, so he naturally didn't forget to inquire about auxiliary spiritual objects for Core Formation, preparing for his next breakthrough.
To Zhang Ling's surprise, he saw the "Snow Moon Tower" in Myriad Manifestation City. He didn't expect this organization to have a presence in Myriad Manifestation City. He collected some useful information and some recent major events that had occurred in the Flowing Cloud Sea.
The Snow Moon Tower was originally a force that sold intelligence, and it did a very good job in this regard.
However, the spiritual talismans for breaking through to Core Formation were not ordinary. Generally, only some advanced cultivators and some large auctions would have these things.
A large auction was held in Myriad Manifestation City a few years ago, but there haven't been any such spiritual objects appearing recently.
However, this was also within Zhang Ling's expectations. At the Snow Moon Tower, he also spent some spirit stones to post a long-term message, collecting auxiliary spiritual objects for Core Formation.
After returning to Fire Cloud Island, Zhang Ling laid out a kind of dark cyan boulder in the volcanic stone house. This was a high-temperature resistant stone, which was used to build a ground fire house.
Of course, to build a ground fire stone house, one had to draw out the ground fire and finally imprint formations in the stone house to stabilize the ground fire before the ground fire house could be built.
Fortunately, he was not weak now, and he could use his spiritual power to draw out the ground fire. As long as he could draw out a small ground fire, the ground fire house could be built successfully.
After all, he only needed a large ground fire stone house and didn't need to draw out all the ground fire. In this way, he busied himself for a few days and built the ground fire house.
In the following years, Zhang Ling spent half his time in the ground fire house.
Regarding the hundreds of arts of cultivation, Zhang Ling had only practiced alchemy.
Now, not to mention third or fourth-grade pills, he could refine first and second-grade pills with a success rate of over 50% to 60%. It wasn't that great, but he could refine the pills needed for his usual cultivation.
He had also refined some simple third-grade spiritual pills.
However, Zhang Ling could be said to be completely ignorant of other crafts such as talisman-making, artifact refining, and formations. These hundreds of arts of cultivation would take a lot of time.
However, his situation was special now. It was difficult to break through through meditation and hard work, so Zhang Ling thought of studying these skills.
The first thing he thought of was artifact refining.
Not to mention anything else, basically every high-level cultivator had mastered some of this art.
This was because high-level cultivators had to refine their own natal magic weapons. These natal objects were generally only refined by themselves, and rarely by other cultivators.
Natal magic weapons were the most valued treasures of high-level cultivators. With the nourishment of the cultivator's essence, energy, and spirit, their power would continue to increase.
It could be said to be the trump card of high-level cultivators. The power of this treasure was naturally better known to fewer people.
In order to prevent being targeted by someone with ulterior motives.
Zhang Ling asked himself that he was not far from entering the Core Formation stage, and choosing to practice artifact refining now was also for the sake of his future natal magic weapon.
Zhang Ling first studied artifact refining classics for more than a month. He also practiced several special fire control techniques.
He began to refine the lowest-level magical artifacts.
Before, in Azure Water City, he had studied this art in order to refine a special magical artifact. He had spent some time at that time, so it wasn't without any foundation.
Now that he was focusing on practicing alchemy, after reading a large number of related books, Zhang Ling had a better understanding of artifact refining.
In general, artifact refining was roughly divided into several steps. The first step was to design the style and characteristics of the magical artifact.
The appearance of magical artifacts such as knives, guns, swords, halberds, axes, hooks, forks, shields, treasures, flying boats, and flying needles could be said to be varied.
In addition to designing the simplest style, there were also the characteristics of the magical artifact, whether it was for attack, defense, rare auxiliary magical artifacts, or specific magical artifacts, there were even more kinds.
Like shields becoming attack-type magical artifacts, giant swords used for defense, and even sets of magical artifacts, were even more powerful.
As long as you could think of a magical artifact, it could be designed.
This was just the first step, the design of the magical artifact.
The second step was to refine the magical artifact embryo, which involved what material was suitable and what other materials should be used.
This depended on the knowledge of each artifact refiner.
Often, the same material, when refined by different artifact refiners, the power of the magical artifact was even mutually restrained.
The most important step was to engrave array patterns on the magical artifact embryo. These array patterns could be said to be the meridians of each magical artifact. It was also the foundation for cultivators to control the magical artifact.
The power of a magical artifact generally relied on the material itself, and half of the power was stimulated by these array patterns.
This involved a lot of formation knowledge, which was not easy to master.
Some artifact refining materials were very fragile, such as treasure beads, porcelain bottles, and other types of magical artifacts. It was not easy to engrave array patterns on them. If you were not careful, you would destroy the magical artifact.
This step consumed the most materials and was also the standard for judging the skill of an artifact refiner.
In addition to focusing on artifact refining, Zhang Ling also took a lot of time to use the mysterious little bead to catalyze a large number of rare spiritual herbs and continuously cultivate the Earth Spirit Bees.
Although Zhang Ling's every day was basically spent on artifact refining and other external things, he also took two hours every day to meditate and cultivate, day after day, year after year.
One day, Zhang Ling happily took three jade bottles and entered the quiet room of the cave again. After closing the cave door, for a long time, Zhang Ling's踪跡 was no longer seen on the entire Fire Cloud Island.
Until one day.
Zhang Ling was shrouded in a layer of white mist. What was amazing was that some flashing spiritual light could be seen in the mist, constantly entering his body.
An unusual aura also appeared on Zhang Ling's body, and invisible fluctuations emanated from him.
The white mist was all transformed from spiritual power.
As the fluctuations and aura on his body became stronger and stronger, the surrounding spiritual power also began to change and be drawn. With Zhang Ling's body as the center, the rich spiritual energy in the quiet room swirled like a tornado.
At this moment, the two-tailed cat spirit beast, which was lying on a boulder outside the cave and sleeping soundly, suddenly jumped up and looked in the direction of the cave.
Meow… Meow
The kitten meowed a few times, and this spirit beast seemed to sense something.
……
In the quiet room, he was naturally aware of the condition inside his body. As more and more spiritual energy entered his body, Zhang Ling also opened his eyes.
With a wave of his hand, two jade bottles, one blue and one red, appeared above his head.
The red jade bottle was turned upside down, and a stream of crimson liquid flowed out, instantly covering his entire body.
A blue pill flew out of the blue jade bottle and was swallowed by Zhang Ling.
The spiritual objects in the two jade bottles were exactly the Jade Chill Pill and the Fire Toad Liquid. He had taken them once before. Now, when breaking through the bottleneck again, these spiritual objects would naturally not be missing.
These two spiritual objects only had an effect when taken together. And there were no restrictions.
He had obtained three Jade Chill Pills from Elder Chen, and a portion of Fire Toad Liquid from that woman Huang Ying.
Although he had used one Jade Chill Pill and Fire Toad Liquid for the first breakthrough, these two spiritual objects were easier to collect than other auxiliary spiritual objects.
During this time, although he had not obtained other Core Formation spiritual objects, a few years ago, he had exchanged another portion of Fire Toad Liquid from the Snow Moon Tower for a rare thousand-year-old spiritual herb. He could use these two spiritual objects again.
As the medicinal power of the Jade Chill Pill and the Fire Toad Liquid was exerted, the spiritual power in the dantian boiled and continued to roll. The spiritual power in the meridians throughout his body also surged like the water of a river.
This step lasted for an unknown amount of time, and Zhang Ling was covered in a layer of sweat. At this time, he was wrapped in a constantly rotating spiritual storm.
This spiritual vortex continued to expand, guiding the spiritual power within seven or eight miles of the entire Fire Cloud Island to gather towards his cave.
The surrounding spiritual energy became more and more concentrated, forming a faint mist.
Zhang Ling closed his eyes tightly and kept running the Dry Earth Skill. With the entry of a large amount of external spiritual energy, his entire body's meridians were expanded several times.
This step was what a cultivator had to go through to form a golden core. This was the cleansing of the entire body by the spiritual power of heaven and earth. There was originally some danger, and if he could not withstand it, all the meridians in his body would be damaged.
He had failed in this step during his first breakthrough.
But now it was different, and he had a lot of experience with this step.
This time, he only felt some heat in his meridians and dantian. Although he felt a little uncomfortable from being stretched, his meridians did not rupture.
This was because the Dragon Tiger Qian Yuan Pill he had taken during his first breakthrough had already tempered his entire body's meridians once.
At the same time, he had taken the honey of the Earth Spirit Bees for decades, and his meridians had become exceptionally strong and resilient.
As Zhang Ling quickly absorbed the spiritual power of heaven and earth, the spiritual energy near the entire Fire Cloud Island was guided. This naturally formed some celestial phenomena.
With his cave's mountain peak as the center, a spiritual vortex appeared. Accompanied by it were bursts of dragon roars and tiger howls.
And if there was a cultivator nearby at this moment, as long as they sensed with their divine sense, they would discover that the spiritual power around Zhang Ling's cave had begun to become chaotic.
The spiritual power of gold, wood, water, fire, earth, wind, thunder, ice, and other attributes was constantly evolving, and constantly devouring and transforming.
The dragon roars and tiger howls that came from the air were produced by the collision of these spiritual powers.
As the spiritual power continued to roll, a surge of powerful aura was born out of thin air. The thick fire clouds that had originally gathered over the entire Fire Cloud Island were also rolled away.
As the spiritual power cleansed his entire body, Zhang Ling once again sprayed out a layer of black and gray impurities from his body. As soon as these impurities appeared, they emitted an indescribable stench.
But the impurities that covered the surface of his body were instantly transformed into strands of black by the spiritual energy and dissipated. After expelling the impurities, Zhang Ling felt relaxed all over, and even his skin seemed to have become a few points whiter.
But these were just changes on the surface of his body, and he didn't know it at all at this moment.
Now, all of Zhang Ling's mind was focused on his dantian. Due to the rapid absorption of spiritual energy, it also triggered the condensed spiritual power that Zhang Ling had originally cultivated in his dantian.
The spiritual power rolled together, forming a pool of rolling water. This was the second step of forming a golden core, condensing the elixir liquid.
The so-called elixir liquid was the pure true yuan power formed after the spiritual power in the body was crazily compressed again.
From the Qi Refining stage to the Foundation Establishment stage, the spiritual power was simply compressed into true yuan. And Core Formation was to further compress the spiritual power. This step took different amounts of time for different people, but generally there was no danger.
Just like that, a full two days passed. Zhang Ling was shrouded in a layer of condensed yellow spiritual light, and the true yuan in his dantian had shrunk several times in size.
In the center of the dantian, only a ball of constantly changing light yellow liquid was left, which looked only the size of a thumb. But it contained terrifying spiritual power, which was not comparable to before.
Next, he entered the last step of forming a golden core, forming the core.
This step was also the most uncertain. If he was not careful, this small ball of elixir liquid would burst and damage his dantian. Which would announce the failure of the breakthrough.
A cultivator's breakthrough in cultivation, advancement, and crossing of major realms was a transformation.
This step stopped many cultivators.
A cultivator's golden core was not only formed by the solidification of spiritual power in a liquid state, but the golden core was formed by the combination of all of the cultivator's essence, energy, and spirit.
…
And at this time, in the outside world, in the southeast direction of Fire Cloud Island, a cyan spiritual light flashed, and a middle-aged man came out.
This man was wearing a green robe, a feather crown, and was dressed as a Confucian scholar. But seeing him standing in mid-air without the aid of any magic weapon, he was obviously a high-level cultivator.
This man looked at the lonely peak of Fire Cloud Island with some surprise, and a look of astonishment appeared in his eyes.
"Hehehe, I didn't expect that on this small island, there is a cultivator who can condense a golden core. It's really rare."
He was originally going to Myriad Manifestation City, but in the territory, he suddenly discovered abnormal fluctuations of spiritual energy in this direction, so he came here to investigate.
Looking at the fluctuations of spiritual energy within a few miles of Fire Cloud Island, with his experience, he recognized at a glance that this was an anomaly formed by a cultivator forming a golden core.
And he had already passed the most dangerous stage, and there was a 70% to 80% chance that this person had succeeded.
Another fellow cultivator appeared. The green-robed Confucian scholar looked at the direction of Zhang Ling's cave without moving, and didn't know what he was thinking for a while.
"Yo, why is Daoist Li here?"
Suddenly a laugh rang out from behind. The green-robed Confucian scholar's eyes moved, and he turned around to look behind him. He saw a white escape light coming towards this direction not far away.
"Madam Hong, a pleasure to meet you, a pleasure to meet you. It's been more than ten years since we last met, and you are still so beautiful and moving."
A beautiful woman appeared in the white light. This woman was wearing a light gauze red dress, revealing her white jade shoulders and smooth back, and only a split red silk skirt was wrapped around her lower body, exposing her calves and jade feet.
As soon as this woman appeared, she rolled her beautiful eyes and threw a wink at the green-robed man, giggling twice.
