This pearl-like object was the fruit pit of the Heavenly Underworld Vermillion Fruit. A thin layer of some sticky material covered it.

The pit emitted a thrumming lifeforce. When it rolled onto the wooden table, the table began to creak as sprouts grew out of the wood.

“What a powerful lifeforce,” exclaimed Meng Qi.

“Of course. Without it, this Heavenly Underworld Vermillion Fruit would just be poison. Whoever ate it would die.” Long Chen wiped off some sweat from his forehead. He had been intensely cautious just now. If he had broken the protection of that thin layer protecting the pit, all the fruit’s value would be lost.

What Long Chen wanted was the pit. He sent it to the primal chaos space and buried it in the soil.

However, even after waiting a long time, there was no reaction. In the end, Long Chen carefully buried it in the core of the primal chaos space, a region of black soil. That was a land of death that swallowed any lifeforms.

Within this land of death, the Heavenly Dao Tree in the middle was flourishing. It wasn’t affected by the death energy at all.

The Heavenly Dao Tree had Heavenly Dao Fruits littering it. Many of those were of rank nine Celestials and below. Long Chen couldn’t even be bothered to pluck them.

The curious thing was that even when he killed Empyreans with awakened manifestations, he didn’t receive stronger Heavenly Dao Fruits.

At the edge of the black and yellow soil was a black and white grass group. The grass had grown tall and was filled with life and death energy.

This grass was the Yin Yang Immortal Grass he had obtained in the Yin Yang World. Back then the Yin Yang Immortal Grass had cut off one of its roots for him, and now it had spread.

Long Chen planted the fruit pit into the black soil, his heart clenching. This was a crucial ingredient to condensing the Nethergate Star. Just one fruit was useless to him. He needed an endless supply of them.

The fruit pit cracked. Some kind of white liquid flowed out of it and was absorbed by the black soil.

That white liquid was filled with endless lifeforce, but when landing in the black soil, it was like a drop of water landing in a desert, instantly vanishing.

Long Chen stared closely at the fruit pit. After an incense stick’s worth of time, all its life energy had faded. From its withered pit, black roots suddenly began to appear.

“It worked!” Long Chen immediately became emotional. When the pit’s life energy was fully exhausted, it actually began to grow once more.

An hour later, the pit had become a tiny sapling. This sapling was pitch-black and covered in sinister-looking spots.

“Hahaha, success!” Long Chen was delighted. He directly began to send his spiritual yuan into the primal chaos space, urging on the sapling’s growth. He also took out a corpse of a Magical Beast and tossed it into the black soil.

The black soil devoured the corpse. Life energy filled the primal chaos space.

The sapling quickly grew to three feet. At that time, it finally began to split into nine branches.

It then began to flower, but its growth clearly slowed down. He found that all the corpse’s energy had been used up.

Taking out a jade knife, Long Chen began cutting away the roots. Although the tree was still small, the roots were very long, stretching deep into the soil.

He split one of the roots into foot-long segments and buried them into the soil. Seeing the roots also begin to shoot sprouts, he relaxed.

Like this, he wouldn’t need to wait until it bore fruit. He could directly plant a mass of them.

In one go, he planted hundreds of the roots and tossed in a dozen Magical Beast corpses.

Those Magical Beasts had been the spoils from the Wild World. They were mostly at the eleventh rank because Wilde didn’t care for eleventh rank Magical Beasts. Now he only liked twelfth rank Magical Beasts.

There were also some Magical Beasts that didn’t have much energy in their meat, so Wilde didn’t eat them. He preferred the physically powerful Magical Beasts. He had said that they could sustain him for longer.

Seeing the Heavenly Underworld Trees rapidly growing, Long Chen retreated from the primal chaos space, feeling comfortable after he no longer needed to keep an eye on them.

As for the Heavenly Underworld Vermillion Fruit which pit he had plucked out, he took it and placed it into his pill furnace. He summoned his Pill Flame, beginning to refine the fruit’s essence.

As the heat inside the furnace rose, the Heavenly Underworld Vermillion Fruit began to dissolve. Black qi floated out of it, filled with death energy.

“Long Chen, can this really be used in medicine?” Meng Qi felt a chill as she looked at the death mist. Her intuition told her that she absolutely could not touch it.

“It’ll be fine. The Heavenly Underworld Vermillion Fruit is too toxic, so I have to expel a bit of it first until I can use the energy that I can endure. With other precious medicines mixed in, it can be consumed,” said Long Chen. Meng Qi felt a natural aversion to the Heavenly Underworld Vermillion Fruit because she was a soul cultivator, while the fruit targeted the soul.

After an incense stick’s worth of time, the pill furnace had turned fully black.

Long Chen hesitated. Theoretically, he should expel this toxic vapor now, but after thinking about it, he decided to leave this with Guo Ran.

He took out a translucent pill and placed it on the furnace. As the pill passed over the furnace, the black qi was rapidly sucked inside. The pill instantly turned pitch black.

This was also an antitoxin pill, but it was not to be used inside the body. Instead, it absorbed poison into it.

Long Chen used seven of those pills before he could absorb all the black qi. Now, a black powder lay within the pill furnace. That was the essence of the Heavenly Underworld Vermillion Fruit.

Long Chen then took out three hundred and eighty medicinal powders he had already prepared. He had only been lacking the Heavenly Underworld Vermillion Fruit.

Long Chen looked at Meng Qi. Seeing her nod, he began heating up the furnace once more, slowly merging the medicinal powders.

However, when they merged with the Heavenly Underworld Vermillion Fruit, the pill furnace shook. All the medicinal powders inside exploded.

“What…?” Meng Qi was startled by the failure.

Long Chen looked at the powders. Swiping a hand across the powder, he tasted the result and immediately spat it out, cursing, “That bastard Tian Xiezi, he did something to the Heavenly Underworld Vermillion Fruit. He added something strange to it.”

There was no problem with the medicinal powders. However, the death energy seemed to have been broken by some kind of energy. He wasn’t able to figure out what it was exactly for now.

He hadn’t expected Tian Xiezi to be so crafty as to have even tricked Zheng Wenlong. Even Long Chen hadn’t sensed it until he tried refining it into a pill.

In other words, if someone else had tried consuming the Heavenly Underworld Vermillion Fruit, there would have been no effect of comprehending life and death. They might instead lose their life.

“Tian Xiezi might have sensed something and so he tried to con the buyer. Fortunately, I only wanted the pit,” snickered Long Chen.

He had Meng Qi rest while he returned to the primal chaos space. The Magical Beast corpses had been consumed, and the trees had grown. They started to flower and bear fruit.

However, the fruit was still too small and was a cyan color. The first one he had planted was a bit bigger, but there was still some time until it was fully ripened.

Long Chen tossed in more Magical Beast corpses, and the trees rapidly grew. On the border of the black soil and the yellow soil, the Yin Yang Immortal Grass were also growing larger and even faster than the Heavenly Underworld Vermillion Fruit.

Fortunately, the World Trees had reached their peak and couldn’t absorb any more life energy, or the growth of the rest of the vegetation would have slowed down.

Although the Yin Yang Immortal Grass was absorbing the majority of the life energy, Long Chen continued supplying more corpses. Two hours later, the first Heavenly Underworld Tree he had planted finally bore fully matured fruit.

There were only nine Heavenly Underworld Vermillion Fruits growing on it. If none of those nine was plucked, no more fruit would ever be born.

Furthermore, thanks to Long Chen’s efforts in planting, he now had tens of thousands of Heavenly Underworld Trees. Feeling that this was enough, he stopped planting.

He plucked the mature fruit and returned to refining.

This time, everything went very smoothly, but he still didn’t dare to be the slightest bit careless. He could not make a mistake.

The medicinal powder of the Heavenly Underworld Vermillion Fruit needed to go through nine mergers. When the final one was completed, Long Chen closed the lid. He realized that his back was covered in sweat.

He had been too nervous. This would decide whether he could condense the sixth star. Only then would he have the power to beat these heavenly geniuses.

If Zi Yan had not helped him stop the Pill Fairy, then with Evilmoon still not awake, he would not have been able to beat the Brahma Divine Diagram. Long Chen needed power to control his own fate. He didn’t feel like leaving his life to others.

If it weren’t for Zi Yan, he would have suffered a terrible defeat this time. That made him feel a strong sensation of crisis. He had to get stronger, and this Nethergate Pill he was refining right now was his greatest hope.

Suddenly, the pill furnace began to shake intensely. Long Chen’s expression changed. These fluctuations came much earlier than he had expected.

“Meng Qi, help me!” Long Chen shouted and slammed both hands down on the lid.