After setting up the plans for the Dragonblood Legion, Long Chen had Gu Yang handle the rest. Originally, Guo Ran was more suited to management, but he was busy with his own mission.

Time was short and Long Chen urgently needed to enter seclusion. But there was still one more thing he needed to do first. That was to refine the Spirit Ascension Pill.

The Spirit Ascension Pill’s main ingredient was the Qilin Fruit. It was a heaven-defying medicinal pill that could increase the quality of a person’s Spirit Root. If one of them appeared, countless Houtian geniuses would go crazy to obtain it.

The reason why Long Chen gave Zheng Wenlong a Qilin Fruit was because he wanted to display his trust and appreciation for him. He knew that as a businessman, he definitely would understand to keep the matter secret.

By cooperating with Zheng Wenlong, Long Chen was sure he would obtain many benefits, and that was why he had given him such a precious Qilin Fruit.

Going through his Pill Sovereign memories, Long Chen chose to refine the Jade Cliff Spirit Ascension Pill. That pill had an extremely bizarre pill formula that used the Qilin Fruit as the main ingredient and the Jade Wind Grass and Spirit Cliff Mushroom as secondary ingredients.

Originally, the Jade Wind Grass and Spirit Cliff Mushroom’s medicinal natures clashed and were unable to merge together. But with the Qilin Fruit’s essence, these two Yin and Yang ingredients became harmonious and fully activated the Qilin Fruit’s spirituality.

The Jade Cliff Spirit Ascension Pill was a fourth tier medicinal pill. Refining it wasn’t difficult for Long Chen. With the assistance of a peak fifth tier pill furnace, he refined over a thousand of them in just three days.

He gave the majority of them to Gu Yang, having him distribute them. For now, each person could only consume three.

However, the Spirit Ascension Pills he had refined were extremely powerful. The majority of these disciples’ Spirit Roots were only at the bronze grade, but after three Spirit Ascension Pills, their Spirit Roots would undergo a heaven-toppling transformation.

A bronze grade Spirit Root would definitely advance to the silver grade, while a silver grade Spirit Root had a fifty percent chance of advancing to the gold grade. That was the same grade as Tang Wan-er.

It had to be known the reason Tang Wan-er’s cultivation speed was the greatest out of everyone was because of her Spirit Root. It allowed her to advance twice as fast with half the effort.

Promoting everyone’s Spirit Roots was incredibly important, but Long Chen didn’t have that much time. He refined enough for them to each have three, and then he went into seclusion himself.

There was also a portion that he gave to Meng Qi and Tang Wan-er, and also some that he sent to Chu Yao in the Skywood Palace.

As for Guo Ran, well, he didn’t need them. His cultivation path was different from other people’s, and it had nothing to do with his Spirit Root.

As long as he maintained a flawless Dao-heart, Long Chen could use medicinal pills to continuously push his cultivation base higher.

After handling the matter of the Spirit Ascension Pills, Long Chen finally relaxed. At the same time as he needed to increase everyone’s power, he also needed to increase his own.

...

“Slow down… slower… SLOWER…! … Fuck.”

Long Chen sighed. Looking at the ashes in the pill furnace, he felt a bit powerless.

“This Earth Flame is too hard to control. For now, I can’t use it to refine pills,” he sighed.

Just now, he had tried using the Earth Flame to refine a fifth tier medicinal pill, but it had ended up in failure at the very start. The medicinal ingredients in the pill furnace had instantly been turned to ash.

“Using it to fight is alright, but with my current soul energy, it’s impossible for me to control it down to the finest detail.”

Long Chen couldn’t help shaking his head. This was like having a five-year-old child swing a hundred-pound hammer to smash open a walnut.

Even if the child possessed divine strength and could lift the hammer, once it was smashed down, then let alone the walnut, even the ground would be smashed to bits.

The other thing was that the Earth Flame had yet to mature. It was like a child that was still learning to walk, and it staggered and stumbled. It couldn’t cooperate perfectly with Long Chen.

Unlike other pill cultivators, Long Chen had not transformed the Earth Flame into his core flame. That would damage the Earth Flame’s spirituality, and it would end up losing its soul, becoming a mindless tool.

Instead, he allowed it to grow and cultivate in his body. In fact, he would even allow it to grow stronger than himself. That would be dangerous since the Earth Flame could rebel, and pill cultivators generally wouldn’t risk such a thing. That was definitely playing with fire.

However, Long Chen wasn’t afraid. He handled matters according to his feelings, his gut. That was similar to how he hadn’t placed a slave imprint on Little Snow all that time ago. He hadn’t wanted to treat Little Snow as a tool.

It was the same with this Earth Flame. Long Chen was unable to treat it as just a tool, because he could sense it had its own emotions. It had its own life, and a sentient, albeit infantile, consciousness. Long Chen had a premonition that it would become one of his greatest strengths in the future.

However, the current Earth Flame couldn’t be used to refine pills, and so all Long Chen could do was continuously feed it his Pill Flame for it to slowly grow.

This Earth Flame had originally lived underground, absorbing the energy from the lava to grow. But that kind of growth was extremely slow.

It was said that for an ordinary Earth Flame, from the day it was born to the time it gained its own spiritual wisdom would require several millennia, and for it to fully mature would require dozens or even hundreds of millennia.

However, Long Chen’s pill flame was condensed from the spiritual qi of heaven and earth, and it was extremely beneficial to it.

That was also why the Earth Flame had attacked him back then. It had been an instinctual reaction upon seeing food.

With the support of his divine ring, the rate at which he condensed his Pill Flame was now greater than the Earth Flame could eat. Without fear of running out, he allowed the Earth Flame to eat until it was full. Then it fell into a deep slumber for a few days.

Furthermore, after just a few days, the Earth Flame was noticeably stronger. That delighted Long Chen, as that kind of growth rate was too shocking.

On one of his arms was a tattoo of a blue serpent. He had another serpent tattoo on his other arm.

That was something he had only noticed after a while. This tattoo was extremely detailed, and it was even possible to see the serpent’s tiny scales.

A careful examination would reveal that those weren’t scales but formed from countless, tiny, flickering lightning runes. It was extremely bizarre.

“My thunderforce has actually all condensed into my left arm.” There were no longer any thunderforce runes in his blood. All of it was in that one arm.

That arm’s tattoo was like another Dantian to him, one that could only contain thunderforce. That transformation was extremely surprising to Long Chen.

Crackle. Long Chen extended a hand, and a ball of lightning appeared on the tip of his finger. He pointed it lightly in front of him.

BOOM!

The rock in front of him broke. Not only that, but even a small mountain a mile away was pierced through.

“What a sharp attack!” Long Chen was shocked and delighted.

After escaping from the jaws of death, he had actually obtained such a large gain. His thunderforce had completely transformed.

This serpent tattoo naturally reminded Long Chen of the final two lightning pythons that had descended from the heavens back then. That attack had been one that could shake the entire world.

Just thinking about it made Long Chen feel some lingering fear. He had truly just been the tiniest bit away from being destroyed by that terrifying lightning tribulation.

Each lightning tribulation he underwent was more terrifying than the last. By now, he no longer had the slightest wishful thinking towards it.

Last time, he had only survived because of luck. If he didn’t think of a way to resist the lightning tribulation, next time he would definitely die. He had to think of some way to strengthen his physical body.

With a thought from him, his lightning tattoo lit up and a terrifying destructive aura soared. Countless bolts of thunderforce covered his body.

Crackling and rumbling rang out. Arcs of light drifted chaotically over his body, making him look like a lightning god.

“Nice, this can count as a Lightning Battle Armor. But it can only passively cover my body, and I still don’t have a good technique to control my thunderforce.”

Long Chen couldn’t help but feel that it was regretful as he looked at the thunderforce drifting over his body. The Thunderization Art he had was unable to control his thunderforce. He had to find some other way.

But one thing that made him excited was that just by activating the Lightning Battle Armor, endless thunderforce would rush around his body, and it felt as if lightning hammers were constantly striking his body, helping him to temper his flesh.

However, he only managed to last an incense stick’s worth of time before feeling sore and numb all over. Unable to continue bearing the thunderforce tempering, he returned his thunderforce back into the lightning tattoo.

He looked at the two tattoos on his arms and clenched his fists. Now he had two more powerful trump cards.

Furthermore, they were both trump cards that could continue growing. Whether it was the thunderforce or the Earth Flame, they were both extremely terrifying, and even Xiantian experts could be killed if they were caught off guard.

Currently, his thunderforce was even slightly stronger than the Earth Flame. But that was just because the Earth Flame was still too immature and needed time to grow.

Looking towards the lightning serpent tattoo on his left arm, Long Chen suddenly laughed. Not far from the lightning serpent tattoo was a crescent moon tattoo.

The lightning serpent’s mouth was currently directly facing that moon, seeming to be playing around.

Long Chen couldn’t help smiling, and a beautiful face appeared in his mind. That pair of soul-stealing eyes was something he would never be able to forget.

Then when he thought of how the two of them had lain on each other in their exhaustion, when he thought of her soft body and faint scent, he couldn’t help feeling a bit of melancholy. He had no idea if he would ever see her again.

In regards to Yue Xiaoqian, Long Chen felt an indescribable emotion. In the beginning, when she had first saved him, he had been filled with gratitude, thinking her to be a peerless expert.

But the second time they met, within the Abyss of Fiends, that opinion had ended up completely toppled.

Battle Skills so powerful that they would shock a person to their core, but so little experience that it would make a person incredibly worried for her. Sometimes she was so calm that it was frightening, and sometimes she was so immature it was funny. She truly was capable of stealing away a person’s heart.

Putting that aside and calming himself back down, Long Chen rested and then continued using thunderforce to temper his body. He wanted to use his thunderforce to bring his body to the greatest possible level before he underwent bone tempering.

But he had only been in seclusion for seven days when Tu Fang called him out and gave him a mission to attend the yearly sect leader official meeting.

When he heard that, he was dumbfounded. Wasn’t Tu Fang the sect leader? What did a sect leader meeting have to do with him?

But Tu Fang had just laughed and said that he was just sect leader in name and that Long Chen was the real sect leader. If he went himself, then he would probably be ridiculed by countless people. But if Long Chen went, at the very least, no one would dare insult him.

Previously, Long Chen had killed two sect leaders, shocking everyone. In theory, there shouldn’t be anyone who would dare be disrespectful to a youth that was currently soaring.

Long Chen thought about it and simply decided to accept his fate. For Tu Fang to treat him like this, he couldn’t possibly just watch as Tu Fang was humiliated. He thickened his skin and agreed, changing his robes, and following several Elders. Obediently sitting in a transportation formation, he waited to be sent to the supermonastery.