Chapter 78: Advancement Comes as Easily as Drinking Water

When Wang Li regained consciousness, he found himself no longer in the void.

He was lying on a flat, massive rock, and before him yawned a pitch-black abyss.

There was no time to ponder his predicament; the first thing Wang Li did was to check the state of his body.

“My head’s still attached…”

“Hmm, all limbs are intact… let’s take a look inside…”

“Heart, liver, spleen, lungs… all good, kidneys too.”

“My spiritual sea is whole, my soul is intact… wait… what in the world is this!”

Wang Li stared, stupefied, at his Nascent Soul.

…There were exactly twenty-two little figures!

He had anticipated that his Nascent Soul might suffer the same fate as his Golden Core—perhaps shattering completely.

But the sight before him was even harder to accept than seeing his Nascent Soul reduced to dust.

—His twenty-two Nascent Soul avatars had been divided into two teams; one wore red, the other blue, and under Master Sheng’s command, they were chasing after a small ball, playing a match inside his dantian!

Wang Li recognized this formation: twenty-two people racing after a single ball—this was… soccer!

Could you believe that his Nascent Soul avatars had been turned into two teams playing a football match?

Wang Li shook his head. “I must be dreaming!”

“It seems I’ve been badly injured this time. Who knows when I’ll recover.”

“Sigh, if I’d known this would happen, I wouldn’t have listened to that old man…”

“You rascal, cursing me to my face! You’ve got some nerve!” said Master Sheng, waving his hand. The twenty-two Nascent Soul figures stopped their chase, watching Wang Li with great interest.

“I’m not dreaming?” Wang Li pinched his arm. Ouch—it hurt. So, he really wasn’t dreaming!

“Master Sheng, where am I right now?”

Wang Li showed no sense of embarrassment at being caught speaking ill.

“Hey, you’ve grown thicker skin! I like that!” Master Sheng said. “This is the Chosen’s Ruins. You’ve successfully smuggled yourself in, reconstituted your body, and everything went smoothly.”

“Then let’s go back to the city!” Wang Li checked himself over; finding nothing amiss, he was eager to return. His sudden disappearance must have thrown the city into chaos.

Master Sheng shook his head. “You can’t go back.”

Wang Li was taken aback. “But I made it in—why can’t I leave?”

“Look behind you,” Master Sheng said. “That’s where the Sacred Artifact lies. Do you really think you can just walk away?”

“The Sacred Artifact is in the abyss?”

“Yes—a rather exquisite little thing. Are you interested?”

Wang Li shook his head. Was he joking? That thing was meant for Ling Xiao. How could he even consider taking it?

Master Sheng nodded approvingly. “Good, you’re not blinded by the Sacred Artifact. That’s how you should be. The path of cultivation is full of temptations. Some can be seized, some can’t. If you take the wrong one, death is never far behind.”

“I understand,” Wang Li replied. “But why did I end up here? And why can’t I leave just because the Sacred Artifact is here?”

“There was a minor mishap during your crossing—I won’t go into details; it’s not really related to you,” Master Sheng said, a fleeting hint of embarrassment crossing his face. “As for why you can’t leave, it’s quite simple.”

“The space here is sealed. There’s no gap for you to slip through. If you try to force your way out, you’ll attract the attention of the world’s will. Is that reason enough?”

Wang Li grew anxious. “What about the disciples outside?”

“The world will keep spinning, no matter who leaves. Those youngsters have their own destinies. You’ve helped them enough. Without you, they’ll continue cultivating and growing just the same.” Master Sheng, understanding Wang Li’s concern, offered comfort: “Before you left, the strength of the new city was already sufficient to meet the coming trials. Being trapped here, you wouldn’t be able to help anyway, so stop worrying.”

Wang Li thought it over and realized it was true: he had already entangled himself with his disciples enough, and in the end, fate would resolve itself here. Whether he was present or not hardly mattered.

Having understood this, Wang Li put all else aside and began to stabilize his cultivation.

He had always thought that, compared to other Nascent Soul cultivators who had but one Nascent Soul, his twenty-two would make progress much more arduous.

But as it turned out, his rate of absorbing spiritual energy was more than enough to sustain the growth of his Nascent Souls—and even faster than that of ordinary cultivators.

Still, to Wang Li, this cultivation speed was somewhat lacking.

Since he now intended to wait at the Chosen’s End, he had at least four idle years ahead of him. Why not use this time to advance his strength as much as possible? Especially since there might be Divine Transformation candidates among the Chosen. If he wished to help Ling Xiao secure ultimate victory, he’d need the strength to hold off Ling Xiao’s rivals.

Wang Li didn’t believe Ling Xiao could reach the Divine Transformation stage on his own within a few short years. Thus, he had to rapidly improve his own level and power.

Once he confirmed his cultivation speed could sustain his Nascent Souls’ growth and stabilize his realm, Wang Li immediately set about upgrading his cultivation methods.

Now in the Nascent Soul stage, he was confident he could synthesize higher-level techniques.

Over seven days, he classified and combined several hundred methods, successfully elevating all his Five Elements techniques to the upper Profound grade.

When he operated all five techniques together, Wang Li realized that even within the same Profound grade, the gap between lower and upper levels was unfathomably vast.

If, in the same realm, a cultivator practicing a lower-grade technique advanced as if walking on foot, then Wang Li, running the upgraded versions of Thunderous Justice, Soul Suppression, and Eastern Purple Qi, was flying on a sword. Operating all five upper Profound-grade Five Elements arts was like wielding spatial magic—the speed of his breakthroughs was simply outrageous.

In the first month, Wang Li advanced straight to the fourth stage of Nascent Soul. On the surface, his pace wasn’t much faster than his jump from Qi Training to Foundation Establishment. Yet as a cultivator’s level rose, so did the difficulty of advancing. Quantitatively, if the step from Qi Training to Foundation Establishment had a difficulty coefficient of one, forming a Golden Core from Foundation Establishment was two point zero, and each further stage in the Golden Core realm also two point zero, then shattering the Core to form the Nascent Soul was three point zero, and every substage advancement in the Nascent Soul realm also had a coefficient of three point zero.

Clearly, the higher a cultivator climbed, the harder progress became. Normally, advancing one or two substages in a hundred years at Nascent Soul would be considered miraculous, yet Wang Li broke through four substages in a single month—while cultivating twenty-two Nascent Souls at once! His progress was simply absurd.

It was as if Wang Li had broken the rule that cultivation only grew harder with advancement; for him, ascending was as easy as drinking water.

As long as he cultivated, he advanced—those bottlenecks that plagued other cultivators never appeared for him.

In the second month, Wang Li reached the seventh stage of Nascent Soul, and then he stopped.

Not because he didn’t want to keep going, but because… he had run out of resources.