A hundred years, for cultivators with long lifespans, are but a fleeting moment.
Holding a vast amount of spirit stones, occupying spirit vein nodes, isolated from external disturbances, is enough for Chu Zheng to steadily push his cultivation to the sixth order of Returning to Void and even the seventh order of Dao Integration, completing the accumulation before becoming a Heavenly Immortal.
At that time, whether it is the enhancement of his own strength or coping with potential risks, he will be more confident.
After staying in the tree hollow for only half a month, she already felt uncomfortable. Though this deep valley is more spacious than the tree hollow, and the spiritual energy is more abundant, essentially, it is still a cage.
For someone like Chu Zheng, who has always been chased by tribulation qi, peaceful secluded cultivation is a completely comfortable thing. Without external interference or resource shortages, he even wishes to find a place to directly go into seclusion and cultivate to become a Primordial Golden Immortal.
However, for martial cultivators, the accumulation brought by quiet cultivation is far less effective than a thrilling, evenly matched life-and-death battle.
It seems Xue Qing cannot stay.
Martial will, like a peerless divine weapon, refines its edge in the line between life and death. Away from killing, even the sharpest blade will gather dust, and the hottest battle intent will cool.
This isn't weak will, but the need of martial origin. Forcefully suppressing is like rowing upstream, which could fatally damage the martial momentum, continuing , the ancestral realm, let alone the Nine Realms Great Saint, might also be difficult to cross.
A hundred years of dormancy, feasible for him, but for Xue Qing, it's a shackle. He cannot sacrifice Xue Qing's path for his own stability.
Yet should he let her go out to seek higher intensity battles for sharpening, the risk would suddenly increase, completely uncontrollable, and could bring unpredictable dangers.
Deeper concerns originate from his own self; regarding Xue Qing's memories, he remembers too little, only some fragments obtained within the Heart Burning Corridor.
Even by today, the first segment of memory within the Heart Burning Corridor, he has not recollected.
That segment of memory remains in the mind, not completely washed away by the river of space-time, yet continually remains shrouded by a thin veil, difficult to discern.
Concerning Xue Qing's life's experiences, he understands truly little.
For a moment, Chu Zheng's heart surfaced with some doubt, has his act of keeping Xue Qing by his side already altered her fated trajectory?
He cannot even confirm entirely whether forcefully keeping her beside him in seclusion is truly the best choice for her, or just an unrealistic need or desire to protect her?
This uncertainty about the future is more frightening than any formidable foe.
He seems to be leading someone in the dark, yet doesn't know why she is willing to follow, nor whether this road is truly the place she desires to reach.
A quiet valley, spiritual mist wafting, cold pond mirrors like a glass.
In a blink of an eye, time flies, and more than forty years quietly passes in this ancient, desolate forest.
Forty-some years passed like the ceaseless mountain stream in the wilderness, silently flowing, leaving indelible marks only in certain places.
Outside the valley, ancient towering trees grew increasingly robust and twisted, their thick branches coiling like dragons, the dark green crowns layer upon layer, blocking the sky like a sieve, leaving only countless scattered light spots like shattered gold.
In the valley, the permeating spiritual mist became increasingly dense and sticky, moving heavily as if gaining substantial weight, each breath carrying a penetrative chill and pure spiritual essence.
The cold pond remained, the water deep and dark as an emerald mirror, reflecting the spiritual mist above and rugged stone walls below, unfathomably deep.
By the pond, on a jade-smooth green stone, Chu Zheng sits cross-legged.
The aura around him is as steady as the rock beneath him, and like the deep pool before him, unfathomably profound.
A faint aura, centered on him, pulsates incredibly slowly, drawing the surrounding spiritual mist to flow around.
Each of his subtle breaths seems to move the entire valley, and the spirit vein deep under the ground breathes along with him.
In more than forty years, his cultivation has undergone earth-shattering changes.
Starting from the Jade Bone Mid-Stage, a vast amount of top-quality spiritual stones being refined into the purest original spiritual power continuously injected into his limbs, hundreds of meridians like a surging river washing over the riverbed, broadening the channel and steadily advancing his cultivation.
He successively passed through Dao Embryo, coagulated the Nine Orifices Golden Core, advancing all the way to Golden Core Completion, and then breaking through the Golden Core Barrier.
To this day, the Golden Core ascends like the rising morning sun, suspended above the Dantian Qi Sea, achieving Yang God Great Success, fifth rank in the Refining God Realm, already nearing completion.
At this moment, deep within his Sea of Consciousness, a cluster of pure radiance quietly suspends, that is his Yang God True Form, which is still somewhat immature.
Under the radiance of the Yang God, his entire Divine Soul exudes a kind of translucent and robust quality, the various obstacles caused by chaotic memories are all cleansed under the divine light of the Yang God, like ice and snow melting.
Forty years of sitting in seclusion, he has refined qi into spirit, time like a whetstone has polished his once slightly fluctuating dao heart increasingly pure and firm, like the stubborn rock at the bottom of the deep pool, unyielding under the sweeping stream.
However, in this valley, it wasn't just traces left by his cultivation, yet it's hard to feel another familiar aura's prolonged stay.
Unclear since when, she was rarely remaining in this spirit-rich secluded valley. Tʜe source of this ᴄontent ɪs NoveI-Fire.ɴet
At first, it was a few days, later it was several months, and then, it became years without a trace.