A Record of a Mortal’s Journey to Immortality c1-2248

by Translator: Johnchen

  Soon after, Han Li started to shift his fingers, causing the spirit threads to rotate and deform the ball of liquid.

  Under the manipulation of the spirit threads, a small ball of green liquid separated from the main body that floated nearby.

  A second ball separated, then a third ball, and...

  After Han Li finished the last division of liquid, there were twelve equally sized green balls of liquid arranged into a circle.

  Chapter 414: Shaping

  Han Li slightly narrowed his eyes and shook his fingers, cutting off the ten spirit threads.

  He then patted his storage pouch and twelve streaks of white light flew out, stopping underneath the floating balls of green liquid.

  The white lights faded away to reveal twelve small boxes, flawlessly crafted from white jade but only a few inches in size.

  With a light wave of his sleeve, the jade boxes all opened. Han Li then uttered, “Drop,” causing the green balls of liquid to fall into their respective boxes.

  After resealing all of the boxes, Han Li was finally able to relax. Even with the aid of spirit stones and medicine pills, his magic power had been completely exhausted by the refinement.

  As such, Han Li quietly meditated for several days to return to his peak state before continuing the refinement of the other stalks of Heavenly Lightning Bamboo.

  Three months passed in the blink of an eye, and Han Li had finally managed to refine all of his Heavenly Lightning Bamboo into an extremely pure liquid.

  After a moment of rest, Han Li started to place down an extremely complicated spell formation in his hidden room.

  Han Li didn’t know the name of this magic formation; he only knew that it was required to refine the Bamboo Cloudswarm Sword. The golden page’s refinement method had mentioned over and over that it absolutely had to be prepared.

  As a result, Han Li took extreme care when setting up the formation despite his familiarity with it even while having practiced setting it up several times in the past. After all, a single error in the symbols could cause any number of mishaps to occur during the refinement.

  As such, it took Han Li half a month of great care to finish laying down the formation. Only after testing it by placing several mid-grade spirit stones around it and feeling that the formation worked as expected, could Han Li finally relax.

  Han Li didn’t set out to immediately start refining his magic treasure. Instead, he decided to leave his hidden room for the time being.

  After continuously making use of his core flame for half a year and maintaining full concentration up until now, Han Li found it difficult to continue, even as a Core Formation cultivator. He needed a change of pace, as the next step was the most crucial in the magic treasure refinement process.

  After Han Li left the room, he encountered a rather pleasant surprise.

  Under the irregular feeding with the Rainbow Skirt Grass, the Gold Devouring Beetles had finally started to devour each other once more. Ever since the Gold Devouring Beetles numbered in the several tens of thousands, it was difficult to get them to lay more eggs and evolve using his small amounts of Rainbow Skirt Grass. In addition, most of his green liquid in the past years had been spent on maturing the Heaven Lightning Grass. It shouldn’t have been possible for the Gold Devouring Beetles go undergo any change.

  However, after the Heaven Lightning Bamboo maturation finished, Han Li had Crooked Soul focus on breeding the beetles. After all, Han Li still held large hopes towards these exotic insects.

  After Crooked Soul brought Han Li up to date, he immediately headed to the insect room.

  The surviving Gold Devouring Beetles had gold specks that enveloped less than half of their shells. He supposed that the next generation would have a slightly larger concentration of gold specks.

  But as Han Li gazed a while longer, his happy expression disappeared and was replaced with a frown. At this rate, it would be unlikely for the Gold Devouring Beetles to ever evolve to become fully golden.

  After every evolution, their number increases by several times, as does the amount of Rainbow Skirt Grass that was required for their next evolution. As his green liquid could only mature so much Rainbow Skirt Grass, it was impossible for the massive number of Gold Devouring Beetles to all evolve at once. It would take a very long, unknown amount time before the next evolution would be possible.

  Han Li sank into deep thought as he stood outside the insect room.

  It seemed he would have to focus on breeding only a portion of them; otherwise, he may never have the chance to see to see any fully golden “Gold Devouring Beetles”.

  With that in mind, Han Li suddenly came to a decision.

  However, this must be done after the Gold Devouring Beetles laid their eggs. Han Li could only set it aside for now and first focus on refining his magic treasure.

  As such, Han Li rested for an entire month before finally deciding on the day he would act. He first lit incense in his bedroom and prayed for two days, causing his heart to enter a state of tranquility. He then returned to the hidden room and stood at the very center of the formation spell.

  With a solemn expression, he raised his arms while dropping several tens of boxes of the refined Heaven Lightning Bamboo onto the magic formation, seemingly in a specific arrangement

  Afterwards, all sorts of boxes flew out of his storage pouch in quick succession and dropped down in front of Han Li with their lids open, revealing the supplementary materials that he had acquired.

  After taking a look at these materials, he took a deep breath and sat down cross-legged with his eyes closed, slowly entering a state of meditation.

  After the time it took to finish a meal, Han Li opened his eyes with his body covered in a mist of azure light.

  Just as the mist appeared, the spirit stones embedded in the spell formation began to shine dazzlingly and released a low hum.

  Although Han Li’s body remained motionless, his fingers were quickly shifting, drawing out the refined balls of liquid Heaven Lightning Bamboo from their boxes.

  Then with a series of whooshes, bowl-thick pillars of light shot out from the formation, enveloping the balls of liquid and completely restricting their movements.

  Han Li closed his eyes once more after seeing this and calmly released his powerful spiritual sense, bringing the light pillars under his control. The light pillars suddenly appeared alive and started to flicker while incessantly changing their color.

  This strange scene continued until the light pillars eventually matched after an unknown number of fluctuations.

  After the final color change had occurred, all the light pillars were a fiery-red color, providing an even stronger contrast with the alluring emerald-green liquid contained within them.

  Still expressionless, Han Li opened his mouth and spat out a thread of dark green core flame towards one of the light pillars.

  Woosh. The light pillar wildly combusted, becoming a scarlet pillar of flame in an instant.

  Han Li continued to release core flame without the slightest hesitation, igniting all of the light pillars. As a result, there were eventually seventy-two six meter tall pillars of flame, filling the hidden room with a blinding red light.

  He let out a gentle sigh.

  With regards to the power of flames, a core flame was far more powerful than these flashy pillars of fire. Unfortunately, more powerful flames weren’t the slightest bit better at flying sword refinement. As such, it seemed that he had no choice but to temporarily injure his Origin Qi and squander much of his core strength.

  Ceasing these gloomy thoughts, Han Li used his spiritual sense and the power of the formation to influence the green liquid within the flame pillars to slowly undergo a change. Their round shapes became longer and thinner bit by bit. Afterwards, they formed the initial core of a sword, each five inches in length.

  While this was quite easy to describe, it actually took Han Li an entire day of focused control to shape the seventy-two balls of sparkling green liqu
id inside the fire pillars into the form of swords.

  Han Li let out a gloomy breath and took a brief moment of rest. He felt his head slightly ache, and couldn’t help but bitterly smile in response.

  Even with a spiritual sense as powerful as Han Li’s, simultaneously controlling the shaping of seventy-two flying swords was only barely possible.

  Although he was nearly finished with the shaping stage that centered around his spiritual sense, Han Li didn’t dare to relax.

  He formed an incantation gesture with his hands, causing the flame pillars to flicker several times before suddenly disappearing. Only the small, emerald-green swords remained, floating in the air.

  As Han Li’s hands blurred with motion, the many small swords, slowly flew toward him and formed a circle around him.

  Seeing that the seventy-two swords had gathered nearby, he suddenly bit down on the tip of his tongue and spat out a mouthful of blood essence, condensing it into a ball of blood that was the size of an egg.

  Under Han Li’s control, he dripped a few drops of blood onto each of the swords.

  As soon as the drops of blood essence touched the flying swords, they quickly seeped into them and disappeared without a trace.

  After finishing this, Han Li tapped a box of silver powder on the floor, immediately scattering it. The powder evenly distributed itself among the swords, causing them to become a sparkling silver.

  Following that, Han Li continued with a box of fine black dust, and then a...

  Han Li carefully followed the instructions of the refinement, continuing to add supplementary materials onto the seventy-two sword cores. Afterwards, he enveloped the swords into pillars of flame once again and refined them once more.

  This time, Han Li didn’t need to simultaneously refine all of the flying swords at once and took great care to carefully hone them in small sets.

  Then, in strict accordance to what was described in the golden page, Han Li engraved a miniature spell formation that he didn’t completely understand on each of the swords with his spiritual sense.

  It's mad fire, yo.

  Chapter 415: Inside a Pearl

  Han Li eventually left the hidden room two months later.

  Although his appearance was haggard, he was filled with excitement. Once he thought of the seventy-two Bamboo Cloudswarm Swords he had absorbed into his body, Han Li couldn’t help but smile, unable to contain his joy.

  In order to refine this set of magic treasures, he had spent twenty years to meticulously refine them without any flaws. Although he hadn’t tested the power of the treasures, he was sure that after nurturing them awhile, even a single one of the swords would have power that far surpassed common magic treasures like the Green Brilliance Sword.

  As he was feeling pleased with himself, Crooked Soul informed him through his spiritual sense that the Gold Devouring Beetles had laid eggs, which improved Han Li’s already joyful mood.

  Han Li returned to his bedroom to rest and recuperate for a day before heading over to the insect room. A large portion of the room was covered in the sparkling white eggs of the Gold Devouring Beetles.

  Without the slightest hesitation, he created another insect room beside the first with the exact same layout. He then laid down a huge spirit controlling magic formation in the new insect room and dripped a large amount of blood essence onto the formation.

  Afterwards, he moved a majority of the insect eggs into the spell formation in the new insect room and proceeded with the spirit controlling ceremony.

  As for the original insect room, he left the thousand beetle eggs with the most vigorous auras inside.

  Having finished, Han Li finally relaxed. While he was restoring his cultivation, he decided to pay a visit to a few nearby Core Formation cultivators he had previously befriended.

  While Han Li was immersing himself in the mortal world, a series of grand events had occurred throughout the Scattered Star Seas, causing much unease and turmoil. The most influential event amongst them was how the Six United Palaces and the eight other various powers experienced a sudden rebellion by subordinates and disciples, removing their original leadership from power and replacing them with previously unknown individuals.

  There had been another event where a few unremarkable, small sects were exterminated and their treasures seized.

  During this time, the powers of the Scattered Star Seas simultaneously pulled back their men and glared at one another with mutual suspicion.

  The most terrible among the events was when at an unknown time, the Heavenly Star Sages had experienced cultivation backlash[1.Qigong Deviation]. It was rumored that they had been completely crippled.

  When this rumor began to spread, an uproar suddenly arose. Nearly everyone concerned with the matter seemed to be waiting for the Heavenly Star Palace to address these rumors.

  But much to everyone’s astonishment the Heavenly Star Palace didn’t address it, neither giving a confirmation nor denial, causing even greater alarm across the Scattered Star Seas.

  At the same time, a few ambitious and hidden powers began to stir.

  There were a few that plotted conspiracies and others that started to form wicked, nefarious alliances. However, not long after the rumors had spread, the chaos suddenly disappeared without a trace as if everything had returned to normal.

  But the more observant cultivators knew that this was only the calm before the storm.

  When Han Li paid his Core Formation neighbors a visit, they had all revealed a trace of worry during their chats.

  However, Han Li didn’t care about any of this in the slightest. Regardless of whether the Star Palace continues their reign over the Scattered Star Seas or another power emerges to overthrow them, it would have little to do with him. He was someone who treaded the solitary path of a lone cultivator. So long as he was careful and didn’t involve himself in the turmoil, he would make it out just fine.

  In accordance to Han Li’s own plans, he would spend the next few years nurturing his flying swords and refining a few relatively impressive formation setup tools before heading out to sea and hunting a few grade six demon beasts.

  After all, only medicine pills created with a grade six demon core would prove effective at progressing a Core Formation cultivator’s cultivation.

  Thus, Han Li spent his days delving into the Dao of tool refinement and formation spells while meditating at night, using his core flame to slowly temper the seventy-two Bamboo Cloudswarm Swords stored within his body.

  But not long after he started this routine, his Gold Devouring Beetles finally hatched.

  Han Li summoned the beetles and happily stored them into several high-grade spirit beast pouches. As the beetles had recognized him as their master, they obeyed his summon. During Han Li’s free time, he slowly trained them so that they would be useful when confronting enemies later.

  Han Li was fully content with his life of peaceful and steady cultivation.

  Ever since he had achieved Core Formation, he started to set his eyes on the Nascent Soul Stage, pondering whether or not his cultivation would one day reach such heights.

  But one day as Han Li was tempering his flying swords in his home, his expression suddenly changed, and he slowly walked out of his residence.

  A forty-year-old man that had a gentle, refined appearance with fair skin, slender eyes, and long eyebrows had appeared outside of his cave residence.

  “Sorry to bother you, Fellow Daoist Han!” When the middle-aged man saw Han Li appear, he made a gentle greeting.

  “Brother Jin! How did you find the time to visit my humble abode? Please come in!” Han Li didn’t dare to delay and immediately saluted him before inviting the middle-aged man inside.

  This person was Jin Qing, one of the Core Formation cultivators that lived nearby. He was an upright person and had given Han Li a few pointers right after he had entered Core Formation. He could be considered Han Li’s closest friend at the moment.

  When Han Li had last paid a v
isit to his home, he discovered that Jin Qing wasn’t present and later found out that Fellow Daoist Jin had yet to return from his last few years of travel. Han Li naturally felt happy at his sudden appearance.

  “There is no need. I just want to say a few things before I have to go and take care of other matters.” Jin Qing shook his head and faintly smiled.

  “Please, don’t hesitate to speak, Brother Jin. I’m all ears.” Han Li quipped.

  Jin Qing revealed a slight smile and slowly said, “Not long after I returned, I heard from the nearby Fellow Daoists that Fellow Daoist Han had spent these past few years diligently studying the Dao of Formation Spells and acquired some success in the field. I offer you my sincere congratulations! As it so happens, I’ve come across a difficult matter during my travels, a formation spell restriction that must be removed. Thus, I have come here to request Fellow Daoist Han’s aid. I hope you will not decline.”

  Han Li blankly stared for a moment before asking with a calm expression, “Restriction? Do you know what kind?”

  “Please, take a look at this!” Jin Qing didn’t give him an answer, instead he took something out of his storage pouch and handed it to Han Li.

  Han Li saw that it was a white pearl the size of a thumb.

  “What’s this?” Han Li looked at Jin Qing with surprise.

  “Fellow Daoist will know what it is once he pours a bit of spiritual power into it.” Jin Qing chuckled and revealed a mysterious expression.

  Han Li frowned and begrudgingly poured a bit of his spiritual power into it. In the next instant, the pearl glowed with a blinding white light.

  If mortals saw this light, they would forcefully turn their gaze in fear of going blind. But to a Core Formation cultivator like Han Li, he viewed it as a common white light.

  As a result of his examination, Han Li’s expression slightly changed. At that moment, something had appeared inside the pearl.