Originally, when a cultivator died their Golden Core would shatter, dispersing into world spiritual energy that returned to the heavens and earth.

But when Xiang Ruyu had started to self-detonate, her soul had instantly perished, causing her connection to her Golden Core to be severed. Thus her Golden Core was preserved, and Qin Yu now obtained it.

Faintly, the aura of a Golden Core leaked out. This was a seventh level Golden Core.

In the future when he fought with others, he could sacrifice this Golden Core and have it explode; this could be considered a tremendous trump card! Of course, handling the Golden Core of a high level cultivator like this was forbidden in the cultivation world. Although there really wasn’t some punitive force that wandered about enforcing this, it was still best if he didn’t use this weapon in public.

Qin Yu took out a jade bottle and placed the Golden Core inside. After sealing it with a talisman to prevent spiritual strength from leaking out, he stored it in the storage ring.

The virulent poison had disappeared and the little blue lamp was put away. With a deep breath, Qin Yu struggled up to his feet and started to repair the array formation. With his current situation, he was weak to the extreme. If others were to discover him here then the consequences would be inconceivable. Even though he had the strong Purpleback Bluewing Ants guarding him, there was no such thing as being too careful.

An hour later, Qin Yu’s field of vision began to blink black. As his chest started becoming soaked in blood, the array formation finally resumed operating.

Thick fog covered the mountain valley once more!

Finally, Qin Yu couldn’t withstand it any longer. He sat down-crossed legged, ate some pills and started to recover from his wounds.

The life of a pill-rich person would always be better than that of others. If an ordinary cultivator were to suffer such injuries, they would be lucky if they could get out of bed on their own in half a month. But Qin Yu was able to stabilize his condition in two to four hours. And with the potent regenerative abilities of the Demon Body, as the sun fell and the moon rose high into the skies, he opened his eyes.

Although he was still weak, his injuries had stabilized. There was still stabbing and aching pain transmitting from his chest and limbs, but this was the pleasant pain of his bones regrowing.

Letting out a long breath, Qin Yu walked up to the bloodstained ground in front of him and picked up Xiang Ruyu’s storage bag. Sifting through it, he discovered that she was an incredibly wealthy lady; she had nearly 100,000 spirit stones alone! And, there were even more things inside. There were also two different piles of items that were placed haphazardly apart from each other.

One pile was filled with pots and bottles and another pile was filled with jade slips and talismans. Qin Yu inspected them and determined that they were Daoist Wuyuan and Gu Shengping’s items. And indeed, in another pile of ruined, blood-drenched clothes, he found two other storage bags. It seemed that even though these two people had managed to make it out from the ancient cultivator’s cave dwelling alive, in the end they weren’t able to escape the fate of being hunted down and killed.

But with things having come to this, Qin Yu’s problem of studying the path of array formations would be easily solved. The many jade slips and talismans that Gu Shengping left behind would be more than for him in the meantime. Moreover, with the many bottles that Daoist Wuyuan left behind combined with the powerful poison immunity offered by the little blue lamp, he could even have his own poisonous finger back if he wanted.

Unfortunately, the bronze mirror that Xiang Ruyu obtained in the ancient cultivator’s cave dwelling wasn’t anywhere to be found. It seemed she had hidden it away in some unknown place. Shaking his head, he decided not to dwell on these things for the time being. He placed the items into the storage ring in separate piles, and finally he walked over to War Bear’s location. As a powerful and established Golden Core master, his wealth left Qin Yu anticipating even further.

And in truth, War Bear didn’t leave Qin Yu disappointed. There were 200,000 spirit stones, enough for a small hill! Qin Yu had no idea how many other cultivators War Bear had killed in order to accumulate so much wealth, but now all of this had become Qin Yu’s. There were also several magic tools, and although they were inferior to that heaven-defying Soul Burying Arrow, they were still good items. After refining, they would be enough to help solve Qin Yu’s issue of battling others and lacking magic tools.

But this could be set to the side until he recovered from his injuries.

Continuing his search, he found that there really were a variety of items. If there was one thing that Qin Yu found unexpected, it was that War Bear actually had a great number of women's garments in his storage bag. If these were items he obtained from battle, then that was one thing, but if this was because War Bear was actually hiding a soft and feminine soul deep in his heart…Qin Yu shivered and quietly put away these clothing items.

This simple search left Qin Yu dripping with sweat; he was just far too weak. He picked up the Soul Burying Flag and jade pendant fragments which had lost all spiritual strength, ordered the Purpleback Bluewing Ants to keep guard, and then walked into his training room.

As for War Bear’s corpse…gathering the corpse of your enemies and burying them might be a heroic and righteous thing to do, but Qin Yu’s current bodily condition didn’t allow this. Moreover, War Bear had already died, so even if Qin Yu didn’t respectfully bow to him, War Bear wouldn’t curse him from the grave anyways. So he chose to let the Purpleback Bluewing Ants deal with the corpse.

As for the specifics on how they would deal with it, he didn’t specify.

Ten days later, Qin Yu’s eyes popped open in his training room. His stagnant aura violently stirred, whipping up howling winds in the void.

Golden Core, seventh level!

As he thought, after these past dangerous experiences came a stroke of good fortune.

Experiencing the cave dwelling of a Nascent Soul, violently fighting with War Bear, these things had stimulated the strength of the Demon Body hidden within him, allowing his cultivation to rise a step further.

The seventh level. This was considered truly stepping into the late Golden Core realm.

The quality and quantity of his magic power had increased. In terms of absolute strength, he had risen a small level from before. If he were to fight War Bear now, in a contest of pure strength, he would absolutely suppress him.

Qin Yu probed the changes in his body. After making sure that there wasn’t anything wrong, he faintly smiled. With a flip of his hand, an ordinary jade slip appeared; this was the wolf-shaped jade slip. After its spell was undone it had melted away into its true form. Without anything else hindering him, Qin Yu started to look through it. Disbelief filled his eyes at first, and then he began to go wild with joy!

No wonder there would be an inexplicable summoning of magic power! This was it! This was it!

Qin Yu opened his eyes and laughed out loud.

From the journey into the ancient cultivator’s cave dwelling, this jade slip was his greatest harvest!

Great Divided Heaven Sutra. Countless years ago, this technique was created by a man who referred to himself as Daoist Divided Heaven. This was a cultivation technique that had gone far off the path of ordinary methods. It could divide a cultivator’s magic power, allowing their magic power to rapidly rise and far outstrip those at the same level of cultivation. The Great Divided Heaven Sutra had an extremely high threshold for learning; one needed to have at least a Golden Core level cultivation. And, the method for increasing one’s magic power was extremely simple. It was to divide one’s source of magic power from one to two, three, four, or even five.

As for how many times this was possible, it all depended on how strong a cultivator’s soul was. Upon learning that he could divide the source of his magic power, Qin Yu immediately recalled something, and that was exactly the Five Element Sword Diagram’s fourth condition. It could be said that the appearance of the Great Divided Heaven Sutra perfectly solved this problem, and it would help Qin Yu overcome his final hurdle!

But this wasn’t the most mysterious coincidence of all. No, the greatest and most inexplicable coincidence was that Qin Yu had already crossed the threshold for training the Great Divided Heaven Sutra and had done so for many years.

Yes, that was right, the Eastern Mountain Sect’s three incomplete pages of the extremely rotten True Wood Arts was the most basic foundation of the Great Divided Heaven Sutra. The True Wood Arts he had learned were below average without any unique characteristics. In almost all aspects it was horrible. But, when placed amidst the entire Great Divided Heaven Sutra, one could see just how important it was.

The most basic threshold portion focused on cultivating one’s foundation. Through the mediocre technique, what was created was an incomparably stable and solid foundation. Only like this could a person withstand and survive splitting up their magic power as described in the latter sections! And it was also because of this stability that it wouldn’t leave behind restrictions on a person’s future cultivation. This was the reason why the Eastern Mountain Sect had long ago taken it as the most basic cultivation technique for their disciples.

The Great Divided Heaven Sutra explicitly stated that one needed to cross the threshold and cultivate for a full three years to further solidify their foundation. Only then could they continue towards the next step. If there was a condition, then it would be that one needed to cross the threshold for at least five years, and eight years would be the best. Without mentioning, Qin Yu’s foundation could be said to be as good as it could be. He could immediately start the portion where he could divide the source of his magic power, and this was also the most important section of the Great Divided Heaven Sutra.

He took a deep breath to calm down his racing emotions. Then, he tried to revolve the Great Divided Heaven Sutra. It proceeded smoothly, without any hindrance in his cultivation. He could even hear the magic power rapidly flowing through his body and cheering in happiness.

The world spiritual energy from all around started to rapidly flow into Qin Yu’s body. Compared to the rate it was when he cultivated the True Wood Arts, it was over ten times faster. The Great Divide Heaven Sutra allowed one to simultaneously train multiple magic sources, so when it came to absorbing spiritual strength it was naturally incredibly strong. This Great Divided Heaven Sutra was absolutely a top cultivating technique!

Qin Yu’s eyes flashed open, his gaze incomparably bright. He finally might be able to begin cultivating the Five Element Sword Diagram in the future.

Several days later, after thoroughly studying the Great Divided Heaven Sutra and understanding all the intricacies around it, he discovered that his original thoughts were too simple.

Yes, the Great Divided Heaven Sutra could indeed create more sources of magic power. But because these magic power sources were created from the same origin, their quality would also be the same.

Simply put, Qin Yu could not gather the five elements. So even if he were to successfully cultivate this and his magic power was a heaven-defying five times over others of his step, he still wouldn’t be able to cultivate the Five Element Sword Array.

It was impossibly difficult to satisfy all the conditions required to cultivate the Five Element Sword Diagram. But, Qin Yu had seen how great its might was and was only a step away from the front door, so how could he possibly give up? As for how he could use the Great Divided Heaven Sutra to cultivate five magic sources of different elements, this became Qin Yu’s most critical and perplexing problem.

After bitterly mulling over this puzzle for half a month, Qin Yu had no choice but to stop. He had gained nothing during this time. This simply wasn’t a matter that a cultivator of his rank would be able to solve.

But within Immortal Eclipse Valley, even the strong individuals like Pill Crucible and Jiang Li had searched for years and yet had been unable to find a method to develop five different elemental sources of magic power. If they couldn’t, then was there anyone else in the entire Southern Empire or Northern Dynasty that could?

Qin Yu wrinkled his eyebrows.

…Heavenseek Pavilion.

At first, he had already been on guard against this mysterious influence. And after being warned by Pill Crucible and Jiang Li, he became even more wary of them. If there was some other way, he truly wouldn’t want to entangle himself with Heavenseek Pavilion. But now it seemed as if they were his only hope in resolving this question of five elemental magic sources.

Thinking over this again and again, Qin Yu still decided to give it a try. But before he went, he would first upgrade his own equipment.

He carefully sifted through War Bear and Xiang Ruyu’s items and chose three magic tools to refine. One was a small defensive shield, one was a spear, and the last was a one-time use magic tool, a Bloodstained Lock. There was no need to describe the first two items, and they were top quality even amongst Golden Core realm magic tools. As for the Bloodstained Lock, that was considered a treasure of the demonic path. After being activated by blood it could erupt with a terrifying killing potential.

As for Daoist Wuyuan’s bottles, Qin Yu waited for night to arrive. Then, he pinched his nose and began to either drink or breathe them in without any restraint. His right hand’s index finger became increasingly clear, almost jade-like in appearance. However, as long this finger touched someone, they would truly taste what it was like, and it was sure to not disappoint.

He took several of Gu Shengping’s talismans and put them away. Although they weren’t too strong, they could be used in critical moments to defend.

Finally, there were the evolved Purpleback Bluewing Ants. No…from today on, he should call them Yinyang Twin Ants. He summoned them into the imperial spirit bag. But as he thought of it some more, he decided not to take them all. He ordered the ant king to leave behind a portion of the ants where they would go into hiding around the Radiant Red Wood.

This was to guard against any possibilities.

At the same time, he conveniently cut off a small branch section and placed it in the same space as the little blue lamp.

He poured magic power into the bamboo dragonfly. Then, after walking another circle around the valley and making sure he hadn’t missed anything, he tapped his feet and flew into the sky.

His figure vanished from sight.