CHAPTER 363: CHAPTER 109 PAY-TO-WIN CULTIVATION

"Immortal Relics."

Li Mo suspected it might be Immortal Relics for good reason. It wasn’t just the resemblance in the appearance of the brainstem but also the dramatic shift in heaven and earth.

During the upheaval of heaven and earth, even Tian Chenzi managed to ascend during daytime together with numerous disciples. There’s a good chance that No-Life Mother could obtain immortality as well.

"But... why would Immortal Relics attract the attention of both Daoist and Demon factions?"

Li Mo felt completely puzzled.

While Immortal Relics sound glamorous and seem remarkably valuable, they’re merely worldly mortal remains discarded during ascension, their essence long drained, and bear no traces of so-called immortals.

Li Mo once believed that Tian Chenzi’s Relic from the Heart Beast Sect was an extraordinary spiritual material.

Yet, after countless years of probing with the No-Life God Statue, he found no peculiarities aside from its equivalence to top-grade spiritual material.

But that was its limit.

From the attitude of the Sub-Device Sect during their arrival, where they blatantly ignored Tian Chenzi’s Relic, it was clear that being linked to immortals wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

If you’re unafraid of death, you’re welcome to refine artifacts or practice alchemy using Immortal Relics.

But one day, if an immortal shows even the slightest notice of the anomaly? Perhaps just a casual glance would result in mortals’ deaths and the disappearance of their Dao.

Li Mo had personally witnessed the arrival of two indescribable immortals.

Tian Chenzi and Chen Tiangang.

"Could No-Life Mother’s Relic possess an indescribable uniqueness? Or is my judgment lacking, mistakenly identifying these Relics?"

Senior Sister Zu Xiuyun’s schemes, the eerie cooperation between the Daoist and Demon factions—all seemed to herald something, though it was faintly obscured as if hidden behind a paper screen.

Li Mo pressed his temples, knowing that large sects surely understood the truth behind the upheaval of heaven and earth.

"Let’s hope that contacting the Heavenly Sword Sect will unveil everything and provide a path to ascend to the Immortal Realm."

Even if Chen Tiangang desperately sought to return to the mortal world, Li Mo was unwilling to abandon the pursuit of immortality.

After all, only by becoming an immortal could one seize the chance to transcend.

Li Mo temporarily suppressed the doubts he had been harboring for centuries.

Just by living longer, one could inch closer to the truth.

Boom, boom, boom.

A thunderous sound erupted from No-Life Mother’s brainstem.

Li Mo quickly exited the Seclusion Room, witnessing an extraordinarily dense wave of spiritual energy descending from the heavens, drawing droves of Loose Cultivators rushing to collect it.

"What the hell?"

He transmitted a thought to inquire of Han Cai, discovering it was the monthly Spiritual Tide occurring in the Secret Realm.

Thanks to the Spiritual Tide, Loose Cultivators were able to cultivate within the vicinity of the brainstem, leading to a stockpile of canned spiritual energy in the black market.

"Spiritual Tide? Isn’t this just making fools of Loose Cultivators?"

Li Mo activated the Cave God’s Eye and discovered the origin of the Spiritual Tide—it was not from the brainstem, but a certain Magic Treasure containing a miniature world spilling its energy.

Clearly, the Daoist and Demon factions intentionally detained Loose Cultivators to accelerate the recovery process of the remains.

"Well, at least with cheap canned spiritual energy available, I might as well utilize this to complete my Nascent Soul Stage cultivation and directly use Spirit Stones to accelerate the progress."

Ordinarily, Li Mo would have thought about consuming an unlimited amount of canned spiritual energy.

But since the stockpile across all black markets was limited, now faced with the generosity of Daoist and Demon factions, he felt the need to expend his accumulated Spirit Stones.

After contacting Han Cai, Li Mo dove into the Seclusion Room.

With a Divine Separation Stage cultivation technique available, promoting to that stage naturally became his top priority, followed by restoring the Substitute Dao Page of No-Life Mother.

Han Cai busily handled affairs in the black market to support Li Mo’s cultivation.

The black market was named [Purple Mansion].

He outsourced Qinghong Workshop’s Medicine Field to Loose Cultivators, keeping just a thousand Poison Martial Artists within.

Using profits from the Medicine Field, Han Cai quickly solidified his standing in the black market, tying numerous Loose Cultivators to Heart Beast Sect’s vessel.

With a mix of coercion and temptation, Heart Beast Sect had already disrupted Purple Mansion’s black market alliance.

Despite the Secret Realm hosting tens of thousands of Loose Cultivators and three massive Poison Beasts,

most Loose Cultivators were only at the Weak Crown Period stage, and even the forces managing the Poison Beasts dared not offend Elder Qing Shan.

With a carrot and stick approach, warring factions came one after another to Qinghong Workshop to pay homage.

Fearful of catching Elder Qing Shan’s attention, they competed to offer profits to Heart Beast Sect.

Han Cai gladly accepted, conquering half of Purple Mansion’s black market bloodlessly.

He didn’t fixate on the yield from the Medicine Field, instead maximizing the Four Seas Commerce’s strength—its resource management.

Leveraging the Several Refinements High-Grade Array improved countless times by Li Mo, ensured mutual resource exchanges between black markets.

The Purple Mansion black market’s greatest lack lay in Magic Artifacts capable of resisting mutation; any casual artifact refined by Li Mo during his seclusion produced hundreds of items to meet the demand.

As Loose Cultivators traversing the Secret Realm grew in numbers,

They donned various measures to prevent mutation and stayed relatively distant from the brainstem, barely ensuring their bodily integrity wouldn’t fall apart entirely.

Once mutation occurred, they’d immediately retreat back to Purple Mansion Black Market.

There was no need to fear sudden death or Dao disappearance, as Han Cai and a team of doctors provided surgeries, acquiring expensive mutated organs in return.

With Heart Beast Sect’s assurances, Loose Cultivators worried less about the downsides of mutations.

Who cared about mutations affecting one’s foundation or compromising Golden Core quality?

For most Loose Cultivators, they couldn’t even touch Core Formation Techniques; raising their realm to Weak Crown Perfection came first, then they’d consider breaking the Golden Core and forming the Nascent Soul.

The Purple Mansion Black Market had morphed into a money sinkhole, drawing teams of Loose Cultivators hunting deceitful objects together.

Li Mo observed this.

As the Loose Cultivators developed mutated traits, the brainstem indeed became more active, seemingly extracting something intangible from the atmosphere of living beings’ mutations.

Of course, this also rendered it more suitable for Li Mo’s secret supplementation of the Substitute Dao Page.

To remain undetected, he activated the Creation Book only once every hundred days and made sure to close it before the brainstem’s condition deteriorated.

Progress was slow, but Li Mo preferred not to gamble with his life.

Behind No-Life Mother’s remains lurked an enormous entity, hiding the presence of Land Immortals within major sects.

The concept of Land Immortals was unimaginable; even the Divine Separation Stage was worthless in their presence.

Having witnessed Zu Xiuyun firsthand, Li Mo became increasingly resolute in avoiding contact with Land Immortals.

Zu Xiuyun single-handedly orchestrated the birth of No-Life Mother; while the upheaval of heaven and earth played a role, her strength was undeniable.

Excavating centuries or millennia-old corpses, reviving them; parasitizing No-Life Mother, nearly succeeding in body seizing...

Li Mo exhaled long and hard.

Even after advancing to the Divine Separation Stage, achieving the level of Land Immortals would still require the Void Refining Stage, whereas the Nascent Soul Stage was only the Fourth Realm among the Nine Realms of Immortality.

"Step by step—let’s proceed to the Divine Separation Stage first."

A massive influx of spiritual energy surged within him, the three Nascent Souls tirelessly digesting it, his apprehension transforming into an obsession with power.

Outside Li Mo’s Seclusion Room, barrels of canned spiritual energy were continuously delivered.

While Han Cai profited from Spirit Stones, he also helped Li Mo procure resources, particularly the somewhat prolific canned spiritual energy from Purple Mansion Black Market.

High risk always translates to high reward.

The Chaos Beast Child consumed spiritual energy while soaking in Fetal Heart Wine, gulping Beast Blood to nourish the Ancestor True Body.

No resources were spared for auxiliary cultivation.

Li Mo refused to overlook any elixir related to Nascent Soul Stage cultivation.

Whenever the Nascent Soul faced issues like poor digestion, he simply resorted to consuming Innate Essence.

Though extravagant, the effects undeniably proved worthwhile.

The three Nascent Souls swelled dramatically, particularly the Chaos Beast Child, whose body started manifesting bizarre features resembling the scale armor of various birds and beasts.

The estimated century-long Nascent Soul Stage was compressed down to roughly forty years, though this came at the cost of depleting half his accumulated wealth.

"Money can be re-earned; at least there’s Corpse Wine."

Li Mo’s main worry was the possibility of discord between the Daoist and Demon factions during their spoils’ division, plunging the cultivation world into prolonged internal strife, making resources scarce even with money.

His annual expenditure could probably sustain the entire Heart Beast Sect’s cultivation for a hundred years.

Li Mo felt a twinge of pain in his heart.

Just as he contemplated scaling back the intensity of his cultivation, Golden Core Stage cultivators began appearing in the Purple Mansion Black Market, solely for aiding the brainstem’s healing process.

The patience of Daoist and Demon factions seemed to wane—he wondered how Senior Sister would respond.

Meanwhile, the Substitute Dao Page was only 30% restored.

The Chaos Beast Child neared saturation, the Nascent Soul lay in his Dantian with a bloated belly.

Li Mo sighed in relief, now needing only persistence in nurturing the Chaos Beast Child with Spiritual Power until the Nascent Soul broke through naturally.

Before he prepared for deadlock seclusion, Han Cai delivered something to him.

The item, sealed within a Hundred Refinements High-Grade Magical Tool, immediately attracted Li Mo’s attention—his Creation Book’s Earth Attribute Spirit Root Page began reacting differently.

Li Mo’s expression grew subtle as he glanced at Han Cai, unable to resist asking, "Top-grade Spirit Stone?"

"It’s fragments of a top-grade Spirit Stone. Isn’t your inventory marking an Earth Attribute top-grade Spirit Stone? This was recently auctioned off at the port."

"Thank you, Master Han."

Han Cai waved off the gratitude and left, diving back into other tasks in the black market.

To accommodate Li Mo’s secluded cultivation, Heart Beast Sect’s black market operations surged, funneling a continual supply of resources to Purple Mansion Black Market.

Watching Han Cai depart, Li Mo opened the sealed container.

Moments later, the Creation Book absorbed the Earth Attribute top-grade Spirit Stone fragments in their entirety, finally completing the once-incomplete Spirit Root Page obtained from the Sub-Device Sect.

Li Mo could sense the substantial costs Heart Beast Sect undertook for the fragments of the Spirit Stone.

A complete top-grade Spirit Stone was undoubtedly beyond Heart Beast Sect’s reach, evident from aiming solely at shards of the Earth Attribute Spirit Stone from the start.

Presently, the Creation Book held three blank pages—the Blood Spirit Root Page for Gold and Earth attributes, one Raiding Page, and the still-replenishing Substitute Dao Page.

The Spirit Root Page’s application remained undecided, leaving it idle for now.

"Aided by the righteous, abandoned by the wayward, indeed."

Heart Beast Sect’s mutually beneficial principles with Li Mo would never waver.

Given Li Mo’s multi-technique cultivation framework, achieving synergy among multiple Nascent Souls would’ve been almost impossible without Heart Beast Sect’s cooperation.

The Chaos Beast Child burped contentedly, showing signs of growing instability.

Li Mo didn’t cease the spiritual energy baptism; instead, he ramped up canned spiritual energy consumption, employing boundless resources to seize precious time.

Loose Cultivators within the Purple Mansion Black Market also started noticing Heart Beast Sect’s formidable presence.

Whenever they brought their external gains into the black market, it would take barely half an hour for those resources to be sold out and reintroduced elsewhere, only for Heart Beast Sect to reclaim their newly earned Spirit Stones using other resources.

Heart Beast Sect’s coordination abilities left factions in awe.

Of course, to medium-to-large sects, Heart Beast Sect’s willingness to conduct business remained trivial—a minor pursuit unworthy of any serious acclaim.

For over a decade, until the moment Li Mo’s Chaos Beast Child faced bottlenecks, Heart Beast Sect’s relentless procurement for dozens of black markets finally stabilized.