Qi Refining Cultivation

On the Qi Plane, the silver-haired Yaan entered secluded cultivation. Elia not only assured him that she would be able to protect him during his seclusion, but she also allowed him to use the most powerful cultivation chamber in the sect and provided him with an abundance of resources to accelerate his progress.

There were various things that Yaan wanted to do after returning home, such as improving the sect-protecting formation on this mountain, investigating the strange tree that he had seen in Lightstone Village, and of course, annihilating Ghu Lin and the Ghu Clan. However, all of these things relied on him being strong enough if he wanted to do everything properly. Until he increased his strength, Yaan was of no use to anyone, and for that reason, he entered seclusion and shut his mind off from all thoughts regarding the outside world.

Even if the situation outside wasn't ideal, what did that matter if he didn't have the ability to change anything? It would be better to properly focus on his cultivation, rather than worrying about external matters.

And so, Yaan sat down on a prayer mat in the lotus position, closing his eyes in this dark cave which was carved into the mountain peak, directly below Elia's abode. This cave siphoned spiritual energy not only from below the mountain, but also from above, making it into a very suitable chamber for Qi refining cultivation – that said, Yaan had never actually cultivated the Qi refining path via orthodox methods, aside from those couple of months during his youth, before he had fully accepted his path as a fiend. Because of this, he wasn't actually very familiar with Qi refining cultivation chambers, so he didn't have much to compare this to.

Even so, he could feel that it was more than enough for him to make rapid progress.

The silver-haired Yaan had inherited the Fragment of Qi's Qi refining cultivation talent, as well as his memories of cultivating this path all the way to the Immortal Step. Because of this, his progress would be beyond normal reasoning – rather than cultivating the Qi refining path from scratch, it was more like he was re-cultivating his former cultivation base after returning to mortality. This difference was not small, and as such, his rate of progress could not be considered using ordinary rationale.

Yaan entered the Qi Gathering Realm within minutes of starting his cultivation.

Initial Stage, Early Stage, Mid Stage, Late Stage, Peak Stage…

A ripple spread out from his body three days later, signifying his ascension to the Innate Qi Realm. He did nothing to hide this faint ripple, and although the external sign resulting from the ascension to the Innate Qi Realm via conventional cultivation methods wasn't very noticeable, it was enough to be sensed by Elia, who was sat directly above Yaan in her temple abode.

"He already reached the Innate Qi Realm?!" Elia opened her eyes in shock, hardly daring to believe that such an absurd cultivation speed was actually possible.

"When he said that he would need less than 50 years to reach the Immortal Step, I thought he was somewhat exaggerating, but if he continues at this rate, he really might actually do it…"

When Yaan reached the Innate Qi Realm, his previously gaseous Innate Qi which flowed through his dantian, meridians and Qi Channels, had now condensed into a single droplet of fluid. As he progressed through the Innate Qi Realm, this fluid grew within his dantian, from a droplet, to a pond, to a lake, to a sea, and finally, an ocean.

Possessing a complete ocean of liquid Innate Qi signified the Peak Innate Qi Realm. After this stage had been attained, the next step was to form the foundation of the Qi Temple or Qi Palace. In the past, Yaan had formed a Qi Palace, as this was the path of demonic Qi refining. Now though, he would be forming a Qi Temple. This wasn't a problem though, after all, he had the Fragment of Qi's experience to guide him through the process.

Others would encounter a large bottleneck in their progress at this point. Developing the foundation of the Qi Temple was a large step and would take most people many years to understand. However, for Yaan, who already knew exactly what to do, this bottleneck simply didn't exist.

It could even be said that his only limitations in his progress were his talent for refining energy, the surrounding Spiritual Energy for him to refine, the resources which he could use to accelerate his absorption of this energy, and the rate at which his foundation settled down with each step.

Well, his talent was monstrous, the Spiritual Energy in this chamber was plentiful, and he had a surplus of resources to accelerate his progress whenever it slowed down below an acceptable speed. Given all of this, really, his only limitation was the time needed for his foundation to settle.

Yaan did not know how long he had been cultivating by the time he formed the 1st Layer of his Qi Temple. He was paying full attention to his cultivation, so he had long since lost track of the passage of time.

In the past, his Qi Palace was eery and dark. When the Fragment of Qi formed his own Qi Temple, it was pristine white, akin to Qi in its purest form.

As for the silver-haired Yaan's Qi Temple?

It was red – not red like blood, but red like his robe. In fact, the colour of his Qi Temple was identical to the colour of the silk robes that he had worn for practically all of his life, the same robe that he was gifted by his first teacher back when he was brought into the Heavenly Path Sect's core sect.

The aura exuded by the base of his Qi Temple also contained the feelings of longing and yearning to return home within his heart. But not only that…now that Yaan had finally returned home, the powerful desire to protect his home could also be felt from the base of the temple, giving it an extremely sturdy feeling.

After the base layer of the temple was formed, Yaan's dantian became peaceful for some time. He continued to refine the surrounding Spiritual Energy after consuming a medicinal pill which was specifically designed to accelerate to stabilisation of the Qi Temple's foundation. He wasn't cultivating further Innate Qi right now, but focussing wholly on his foundation.

He remembered that when his main body had formed his Qi Palace in the past, he had been forced to rush through the process, resulting in a seriously unstable foundation that almost got him killed. There was no reason to be so rushed like that now, so Yaan made sure to do things properly.

He found this sort of thing to be extremely peaceful, but that was no surprise – this Dao Clone contained the part of him that enjoyed the more peaceful side of cultivation, such as orthodox Qi refining, learning spells, comprehending dao, and so on.

Once the base of the Qi Temple was fully stable, Yaan immediately continued his cultivation. Before long, the Qi Temple had developed its 2nd Layer.

Stabilising the subsequent layers of the Qi Temple didn't take as long as the base of the Qi Temple, after all, the 1st Layer was the temple's foundation, everything else was just built on top of this. Because he had spent some time properly stabilising the 1st Layer, his progression through each subsequent layer was quite rapid.

3rd Layer, 4th Layer, 5th Layer, 6th Layer, 7th Layer, 8th Layer, and finally…

The 9th Layer.

Yaan had formed the 'legendary' 9th Layer Qi Temple, but for someone with his talent, why would he settle for anything less? A 9-Layer Qi Temple might be incredible in the eyes of the ignorant masses, but in Yaan's eyes, ascending to the Spirit Core Realm with anything below a 9th Layer Qi Temple simply meant that you had developed a flawed foundation.

The bottleneck between the Qi Temple Realm and the Spirit Core Realm was a large one, and in many sects, this separated the normal elders from the great elders.

But to Yaan, this bottleneck didn't exist; forming his Spirit Core was merely a matter of condensing a sufficient quantity of Qi into the highest layer of his Qi Temple. After using the medicine supplied by Elia to help him accelerate this process, Yaan broke through to the Spirit Core Realm.

Stabilising his Spirit Core also took some time, and once again, Yaan did not rush this process. He ensured that his Spirit Core was as stable as it could possibly be, before continuing on with his cultivation.

Others would find progress through the Spirit Core Realm to be painfully slow, and more often than not, they were forced to constantly use medicinal resources to push their progress half a step further.

This was merely due to their lacking talent – Qi refining talent defined how rapidly a Qi refiner could absorb and refine Spiritual Energy into their own Qi. Even though Yaan's Qi had now transformed from the rudimentary Innate Qi into the higher level Spirit Qi, his speed was still so terrifying that even immortals would stare at him with slack jaws were they to witness his rate of progress.

So naturally, Elia, who could feel each of Yaan's breakthroughs since he was cultivating in the chamber below her, was left feeling dumbfounded.

After 10 years of secluded cultivation, a shockwave spread out from below. Elia, who had been meditating to comprehend the dao of light, suddenly opened her eyes and looked down in shock.

"H-He…he actually…he reached the Origin Soul Realm in 10 years? This…is this even possible? I struggled for over 200 years before reaching this realm…he did it in 10 years…and this is just a clone? Yaan, I can see now that you really are just as terrifying as Zue Yin insisted you are…"

The transformation of the mortal soul into an Origin Soul was a chasm that most cultivators could never cross in their lives, no matter how talented they were. It wasn't anything so simple like refining more energy, it was a complete transformation of the soul!

But Yaan…had already done this before. Twice, actually. Once as the Fragment of Qi, and once in Namuh Village, when he allowed Rui to refine him into the medicinal pill that she had originally desired.

In fact, Yaan's experience with the soul was simply too far beyond any normal Qi refiner for multiple reasons, so this ascension felt quite easy to him.

When it came to his progression through the Origin Soul Realm, it was only natural that Yaan's speed of cultivation slowed down – regardless of a person's talent, their speed of cultivation would slow down with each following realm compared to the previous realm, and at the Origin Soul Realm, there were very few resources that could accelerate their progress.

Ascending through the Origin Soul Realm was a matter of refining more of the surrounding Spiritual Energy into his Origin Soul, growing the strength of his Origin Soul and its Soul Force.

An Origin Soul would never be as powerful as a soul cultivator's Spirit Soul, but there was something unique to Origin Souls, something that even Yaan only learned about following his death…

Origin Souls were the closest entities to the Origin itself, giving them the greatest intuitive perception over dao – or more accurately, Origin Souls were the least hindered type of soul when it came to perceiving dao.

When Yaan's soul ascended into an Origin Soul and became seated within the 9th Layer of his Qi Temple, he could immediately feel that his perception of dao had reached a new height. However, despite this feeling being quite enjoyable, he focussed whole-heartedly on increasing his cultivation…

He did this all the way until he reached the Peak Origin Soul Realm.

At this point, others would spend as long as possible preparing for their Nirvana Ascension, but Yaan saw no reason to waste his time doing this.

And so, after spending just 32 years in seclusion, Yaan's Dao Clone of Qi stepped into the Nirvana Realm.