After returning to his residence, Wei Yuan produced the duplicate copy of the Supreme Yin Lunar Essence Myriad Manifestations Chapter and reread it from the beginning.

It was a cultivation method that allowed one to become an immortal without fail. Naturally, its depths were limitless. Every time he reread it, he would gain new insights—even if these insights sometimes contradicted one another.

The Supreme Yin Lunar Essence Myriad Manifestations Chapter was famed for its infinite flexibility. Naturally, it was immeasurably complex. The cultivation method alone comprised tens of thousands of words, but the masters who successfully cultivated it added numerous annotations, supplementary notes, and interpretations as well. The masters who left behind these notes rarely agreed with each other as well, refuting each other’s views while leaving behind traces of Dao essence as proof. If these debates spanning across different time and space were included into his reading as well, then the duplicate copy easily comprised over hundreds of thousands of words.

It was worth noting that Wei Yuan was just holding one of the three duplicate copies. Naturally, the insights in those copies were markedly different from the one he was reading, and the debates were no less fierce.

This was just a duplicate copy. The original copy contained a lot less comments, but a lot more Dao essences. First, the vast majority of Palace Lords and Deputy Palace Lords had left behind their Dao essences in the copy. Most of the Immortal Lords had done the same thing as well. These Dao essences were really meaningless; it merely proved that they had reviewed the cultivation method much like a traveler sometimes left a message on an object that stated, “XXX was here.” The Supreme Yin Lunar Essence Myriad Manifestations Chapter was the renowned method left behind by a senior Immortal Lord. Marking it with one’s Dao essence was like stamping one’s private seal on a treasured painting.

Thankfully, everyone’s Dao essence was unique. Otherwise, the jade wall might not have been big enough to fit everyone’s Dao essence. They might have had to set up a different wall just to store the Dao essences, and this wall might have turned out to be far bigger than the jade wall containing the original copy.

Even for Wei Yuan’s unusually powerful primordial spirit, it took him an entire half a day to memorize hundreds of thousands of words and all of the Dao essences. As for mastering it all, it simply wasn’t something that could be done in a matter of years.

The Dao essence the Immortal Lord had left behind in the original copy was deep and vast. The insights Wei Yuan had gleaned from his first reading did not even amount to one-ten-thousandth of the whole thing. Worse, the Dao essences the True Lords had left behind in the duplicate copy were markedly different or even contradicted one another. As if that wasn’t enough, Wei Yuan’s own insights were different from the True Lords. If he was an average beginner, he would be struggling to learn anything right now.

In fact, the essence of this immortal method lay precisely in its diverse interpretations. The reason the Dao essences left behind by every True Lord was different was because the energy of Supreme Yin was infinitely transformative. In essence, the method required the cultivator to construct a nucleus within their sea of consciousness with Supreme Yin energy and use it as a foundation to absorb worldly origin qi. The nucleus of Supreme Yin might manifest in various forms, but a full moon was generally viewed as an excellent manifestation. After a nucleus was constructed, the cultivator would need to plant the seeds of their Avatar in it. Then, they would gradually absorb their Dao Foundation and ultimately form an Avatar.

Every time he read until this point, Wei Yuan could not help but think: Can my Supreme Yin nucleus really absorb my Dao Foundation? However, he was just a greenhorn in cultivating immortality. If the Immortal Lord believed he could absorb it, then he should just assume he was right until proven otherwise.

This was the first time he cultivated after entering the Dao Foundation stage. He did not use a pill. In fact, there were pills that specifically facilitated the cultivation of the Dao Foundation stage, but he couldn’t afford them. It wasn’t just him. No one besides a descendant of the Seven Surnames and Thirteen Honors could afford such an expensive resource. Unfortunately, the Mother Nature Monastery staunchly refused to lower their prices even though they knew that practically no one in the Palace could afford them. They truly did not deserve to be called the children of Man! 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Before he began cultivating, Wei Yuan sincerely asked himself: Why do you cultivate?

At this moment, the answer was simple and clear to him: To obtain more territories for the human realm, and to put an end to all foreign races.

Wei Yuan settled into his specially equipped cultivation chamber and quickly entered a state of deep meditation. As his Dao Foundation cycled, he began absorbing the ambient spirit qi and converting them into Supreme Yin energy using his cultivation method. Then, he used the Supreme Yin energy to construct his nucleus.

There was something Wei Yuan failed to take into account, however. Although he could only manifest an exceedingly tiny portion of The Great Realm, he was utilizing the entire thing when absorbing the ambient spirit qi!

At the moment, Wei Yuan’s mind was clear, untainted, and free from worldly dust. Seated atop a spirit vein, he faced toward the world and took in a deep breath!

Inhale… inhale… inhale… inhale… gag!

All of a sudden, Wei Yuan gagged as if he was sucking on vacuum. At the same time, the terrible sense of suffocation jolted him out of his meditative stance. When he looked around, he discovered that the ambient spirit qi in his surroundings had completely vanished!

The spirit qi are gone? How can this be? This is the Palace of Absolute Beginning!

Wei Yuan looked around in confusion. He was still inside his cultivation chamber, sitting on a praying mat weaved from Iceheart Grass. The abode he was residing in was specifically prepared for Dao Foundation stage disciples, and each cultivation chamber was built atop a spirit vein. The indoor spirit qi concentration was far richer than it was inside the Green Cliffs That Hang Over An Empty Valley. Outside, a blessed land-tier sect might only have one or two such cultivation chambers, and only an elder or a core disciple would be allowed to use them.

The Palace of Absolute Beginning firmly adhered to certain principles. One of them was ensuring that each and every disciple was afforded basic cultivation conditions. Thus, every Dao Foundation stage disciple enjoyed more or less the abode. Not even Zhang Sheng’s abode was much better than Wei Yuan’s. That said, the Palace did not stop their disciples from using external force to improve their conditions. For example, Bao Yun had torn down her own abode and rebuilt it from scratch.

The cultivation chamber should be fine, but Wei Yuan felt as if he had only taken a small gulp of spirit qi. However, not only was the ambient spirit qi gone, the spirit vein beneath him had dried up as well!

Wei Yuan’s perception entered the praying mat and slipped deep into the spirit vein. It would venture a hundred zhang deep before he finally sensed streams of spirit qi slowly making its way up the spirit vein.

Wei Yuan let out a sigh of relief. The spirit vein was fine after all. Closing his eyes, he once again entered a meditative state and waited for the spirit vein to fill up completely. Then, he took another deep breath.

Inhale inhale inhale inhale inhale…

The mountain where the Dao Foundation stage abodes were founded suddenly shook violently. At the same time, the great spirit gathering array used to maintain the spirit qi concentration of the mountain became visible like a giant bowl that covered up the whole area. For some reason, it was flickering and shuddering violently like it was—no, it was showing signs of collapsing!

Silhouettes emerged from their abodes one after another including those who had secluded themselves in cultivation for a time. Everyone was wearing a shocked expression on their face.

“What’s happening? Why did the spirit qi suddenly disappear?”

“I just probed my spirit vein with my perception. It’s completely dry!”

“Is someone attacking the mountain??”

Inside his cultivation chamber, Wei Yuan had once again hit a wall after taking only half a breath or so. He could do nothing but wait for the spirit vein to fill up again. Meanwhile, a colossal full moon had risen in his sea of consciousness, floating high above the land and silently illuminating its boundless, desolate expanse.

Internally, Wei Yuan relaxed when he saw the full moon. The cultivation method had described constructing a Supreme Yin nucleus as a colossally difficult task. How to build the structure, how to stabilize the framework, how to accumulate, how to refine—his seniors had talked endlessly about the subject. However, it would seem that their comments were exaggerated. After all, it had only taken him two and a half breath to manifest the ultimate Supreme Yin full moon, had it not?

Then, Wei Yuan thought deeper into the subject and believed that he understood his forebearers’ good intentions. They were probably afraid that the future generations would grow complacent if they discovered that the cultivation of the method was too easy. That was why they had exaggerated the difficulties to intimidate their juniors, thereby ensuring that they would not dare to neglect their cultivation.

Wei Yuan had nothing to do while waiting for the spirit qi to return to full. So, he decided to observe the full moon. It was at that moment he discovered that the full moon was observing him as well.

A distinct shadow was looming over the full moon. It was both a familiar and unfamiliar sight. He couldn’t get a clear look of it before he formed his Dao Foundation, but now, both the moon and the shadow were several times bigger than before. He could clearly see the shadow slowly moving across the moon like it had its own life and thoughts.

At first glance, it looked like it was entrenched at the center of the moon. However, Wei Yuan’s senses told him that the shadow was seemingly connected to another world, deep and unfathomable.

Suddenly, Wei Yuan captured a fleeting thought from the shadow. It felt utterly absurd yet undeniably real.

The shadow thought:

Do what you want, chick. I’m watching you.