Nine Transformations of the True Spirit

In the southwest of Renzhou, the Chongde Mountains stretch for thousands of miles, like a giant dragon lying on the ground.

In the center of the mountain range, thousand-foot peaks can be seen everywhere, and there are several three-thousand-foot towering peaks, as if connected to the sky. From the halfway up the mountain, it is shrouded in clouds and mist, and its true appearance cannot be seen all year round.

But these giant peaks can only be viewed from a distance, not approached.

This is the gate of the Haoran Sect, which is protected by the sect protection formation. Although there is no cloud and mist to cover it, no one dares to peek.

No one knows how many years the gate of the Haoran Sect has stood in the Chongde Mountains, but since tens of thousands of years ago, the Haoran Sect has been one of the ten major sects, quietly watching the clouds rolling and unfolding in the Nine Immortal Continents, and overlooking the rise and fall of the world of immortal cultivation.

The Haoran Sect occasionally has ups and downs, but has never encountered a crisis of destruction. When it was at its most desolate, it also controlled half of Renzhou.

With the support of Haoran Sect, the Daren Dynasty has also lasted for at least tens of thousands of years, but the royal bloodline has changed several times, and the surname has changed several times.

However, even Haoran Sect cannot completely control the vast Renzhou, and the other ten major sects are the same, leaving room for survival for the large and small sects in Jiuxianzhou.

Haoran Sect also disdains to compete for cultivation resources such as small spiritual veins and small spiritual stone mines. They occupy the only giant spiritual vein in Renzhou and open up most of the Chongde Mountains as a spiritual medicine garden.

They also control several giant spiritual stone mines and plunder the most talented disciples in the entire Renzhou. There are many geniuses, and there are more than a dozen Yuanying elders alone.

The masters of all generations are great cultivators with profound cultivation and means to reach the sky and the earth, and they overwhelm Renzhou.

Haoran Sect is the holy place for cultivation in Renzhou, and naturally a large number of cultivators gather at the foot of Chongde Mountains.

Even the ten major sects could not give up the huge benefits of opening a market. The Chongde Market established by Haoran Sect had the most stable order and the most precious treasures among all the markets in Renzhou.

Every day, an endless stream of cultivators poured into the Chongde Market. Haoran Sect simply built a city with a radius of fifty miles and named it "Chongde City".

This is a city of cultivators, where tens of thousands of cultivators gathered, and everyone can find the treasure they like.

At the Chongde Auction held every twenty years, there are all kinds of treasures such as thousand-year-old spiritual herbs, high-level magic weapons, and top-grade spiritual materials. Even Yuanying cultivators are eager to buy them.

On this day, Chen Yuan descended the light of escape outside Chongde City and looked at this magnificent city with a deep gaze.

He flew for six days in a row, crossing tens of thousands of miles, and finally arrived at this famous city of cultivators.

The wall of Chongde City is about ten feet high, with sixteen gates. Outside each gate, there are foundation-building monks on duty.

Chen Yuan, wearing a gold-threaded hollow mask, came to a city gate in the northeast, spent thirty low-grade spirit stones, bought a pass token, and walked into Chongde City.

The city gate is very large, ten feet wide. There are many monks entering the city, but many of them have pass tokens and can pass through on their own. Not many people need to buy tokens.

When Chen Yuan passed through the city gate, an invisible wave swept over him, and the pass token tied around his waist lit up white light slightly, and the invisible wave quietly dissipated.

After entering the city, the streets were crowded with people, and the street shops were of different styles, either elegant attics or magnificent halls, and each shop occupied a large area.

There are no dilapidated buildings in Chongde City. Every shop is made of thirty, fifty or even eighty years of spiritual wood, at least a hundred years immortal.

On the outskirts of Chongde Mountains, Haoran Sect has opened up a large number of spiritual fields, recruited Qi-refining monks to cultivate spiritual herbs and spiritual trees, and also recruited low-level Qi-refining monks to mine the two giant spiritual stone mines in the mountains.

Ninety percent of the Qi-refining monks in Chongde City make a living from this.

Otherwise, they simply cannot survive in the prosperous Chongde City.

These Qi-refining monks gathered from all over Renzhou. They usually cultivate spiritual herbs, mine spiritual mines, earn spiritual stones, and then return to their residences in the city to practice, over and over again.

Most of them have poor qualifications and are pseudo-spiritual root monks. If they stay in the mountains and practice on their own, they may not be able to build a foundation for their entire lives. Only by coming to Chongde City to fight, there is a possibility of building a foundation.

The low-level spiritual herbs cultivated by these Qi-refining monks with their own spiritual energy will be transplanted by the monks of Haoran Sect to the spiritual medicine garden in Chongde Mountains to absorb the pure spiritual energy of the giant spiritual veins.

After a few decades, these spiritual herbs will grow into 100-year-old, 300-year-old, or even 500-year-old spiritual herbs, and be refined into elixirs, either for cultivation by Haoran Sect monks or sold to Renzhou monks.

In fact, after these spiritual herbs take root and sprout, they can grow with the help of the spiritual energy of the giant spiritual veins, but it is obviously more cost-effective to use cheap Qi-refining monks to ripen them first and then consume the spiritual energy of the giant spiritual veins.

The same is true for giant spiritual stone veins. Mining requires huge spiritual pressure, which mortals cannot bear. Only monks can dig out spiritual stones. It is not only hard, but also quite dangerous. Haoran Sect disciples will naturally not do it. Recruiting Qi-refining casual cultivators is the best choice.

The Confucian and Taoist monks, who were full of benevolence and morality, used the most stringent formation to monitor the casual cultivators who came out of the dark mine and were covered with stone chips. They would let them go only after ensuring that they did not hide any spiritual stones...

Chen Yuan's mind was filled with records about Chongde City in the classics. The cultivator who left his consciousness in the jade slip might have been a casual cultivator who had dug spiritual mines and cultivated spiritual herbs for Haoran Sect. The words contained resentment towards Haoran Sect.

But these had nothing to do with Chen Yuan, and he could not change this situation.

In the world of immortal cultivation, strength is respected. Low-level cultivators have no dignity at all in front of a behemoth like Haoran Sect.

This book was seen by chance by Chen Yuan in a shop selling jade books when he went to Fanyang to buy demon pills. It gave a very detailed introduction to Chongde City.

Chongde City, like other large markets, prohibits flying in order to facilitate the restraint of foreign cultivators.

But not long after Chen Yuan entered the city, a light of escape flew over his head and flew to the center of Chongde City.

The light of escape was very faint, but all the cultivators who noticed it showed awe in their eyes.

Only Yuanying cultivators can be free from the restrictions of the no-fly order.

After the light of escape disappeared, Chen Yuan retracted his gaze, turned around several busy streets, performed the light body technique, came to the northwest corner of Chongde City, and stopped in front of a three-story building with the three words "Sifang Pavilion" written on the plaque.

Behind the small building is a verdant bamboo forest, with more than a dozen courtyards.

This is where Haoran Sect welcomes guests. If there are cultivators visiting, they must enter from here.

It is said that Sifang Pavilion was not originally in Chongde Market, but near the gate of Haoran Sect.

However, Haoran Sect had tens of thousands of disciples and many visitors, which was annoying, so they simply moved to Chongde City.

Chongde Academy is also in Chongde City, with a hundred-foot-high hill in the south of the city as the center and scattered around.

Haoran Sect will send Jindan cultivators to Chongde Academy to teach, and any Confucian and Taoist cultivators who meet the requirements can enter the academy to practice.

If these cultivators can form a golden elixir, they can join Chongde Academy or Chongde City and become a guest official to serve Haoran Sect.

In this way, Haoran Sect can select talented cultivators to enrich its own strength and consolidate its control over Renzhou.

Those cultivators who leave Chongde Academy will also become closer to Haoran Sect because of this experience, and establish sects and families in various places, and naturally become supporters of Haoran Sect.

…

There are many cultivators coming in and out of the Sifang Pavilion. After all, even the Qi-refining cultivators who come to visit Haoran Sect have to pass through here.

When Chen Yuan revealed his cultivation, a Qi-refining cultivator came to meet him and led him to a quiet room, where he met a middle-aged deacon in the early stage of Jindan.

He felt the aura of Chen Yuan's false infant realm, and his expression was quite respectful. He asked Chen Yuan about his purpose.

Even the cultivators of Haoran Sect did not dare to be disrespectful to the false infant cultivator.

Chen Yuan still had a gold-threaded mask on his face. Yan Tongchun was also a true disciple of Haoran Sect. If he met him in Chongde City, there might be trouble.

The gold-threaded mask was only a low-grade magic weapon, which could not prevent others from spying on him with their spiritual consciousness.

But Chen Yuan had set up a spiritual consciousness barrier around him. With his current spiritual consciousness strength, anyone who wanted to spy on him secretly would not succeed if he was below the Nascent Soul.

Chen Yuan took out the jade pendant Zhang Wushan had given him and said with a smile: "I want to visit your sect's Yuexinghu true disciple Zhang Wushan. Please inform him and say that an old friend is visiting."

The middle-aged deacon took the jade pendant and smiled even more: "So it's an old friend of Junior Brother Zhang, so he's not an outsider. Please wait for a moment. I will send someone to invite Junior Brother Zhang."

After that, he called a young Confucian scholar and handed him the jade pendant: "Take this jade pendant, go back to the mountain gate, go to Yuexinghu and tell the true disciple Zhang Wushan that an old friend is visiting. Go and come back quickly."

"Yes!" The young Confucian scholar immediately agreed, took the jade pendant with both hands, bowed to Chen Yuan again, and then turned and walked out of the quiet room.

After the foundation-building monk left, the middle-aged deacon smiled and said, "My fellow Taoist, our sect's mountain gate is too large to deliver the message in a short time."

"And Junior Brother Zhang may not be in the mountain gate, maybe you have to wait for some time."

"How about I arrange a courtyard for you to stay in temporarily and wait for Junior Brother Zhang's reply?"

Chen Yuan bowed and said, "Then I'll trouble you."

The middle-aged deacon then called another foundation-building monk and arranged a quiet courtyard with two entrances for Chen Yuan.

Under the guidance of a Qi-refining monk, Chen Yuan came to the courtyard to live. A spirit gathering array was engraved in the training room. After being stimulated, the spiritual energy was quite rich, comparable to a small spiritual vein.

There is a branch of a giant spiritual vein in Chongde City. The spiritual energy is as rich as a large spiritual vein, providing spiritual energy for the monks in the city.

For example, the courtyard where Chen Yuan lives, the concentration of spiritual energy in the spirit gathering array is comparable to that of a small spiritual vein. It is a ground-level cave in Chongde City, and ten high-grade spiritual stones are required to rent it for a year.

As for the higher-level heaven-level cave, which is also the highest-level cave, the concentration of spiritual energy is comparable to that of a medium-sized spiritual vein, and one hundred high-grade spiritual stones are required to rent it for a year.

There was a false infant cultivator who wanted to use the heaven-level cave to form an infant, but although the spiritual energy in the heaven-level cave was rich, the scope was only one training room. Through the control of the spirit gathering array, the spiritual energy supply was stable and slow, and it was impossible to burst out a large amount of spiritual energy in an instant for the cultivator to form an infant.

Chen Yuan sat upright in the training room, meditating and breathing, restoring his true essence.

He flew all the way here. Although the journey was long, after refining Kunpeng's true blood, his flight speed increased, and his true essence consumption was reduced a lot. The speed of absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth doubled again. In just one hour, his true essence was fully restored.

Another two hours later, the gate of the courtyard was knocked. Chen Yuan stood up and walked to the main hall. He raised his sleeves and the heavy wooden door slowly opened.

The young scholar who returned to the mountain gate to deliver a letter walked into the main hall quickly, clasped his fists and bowed, and said respectfully: "Senior, Uncle Zhang left the mountain gate three months ago and went out to travel. He has not returned yet. Please wait for a few days."

As he said this, he flicked the storage bag on his waist, took out the jade pendant, and presented it with both hands.

Chen Yuan frowned, took out two high-grade spirit stones from the mustard seed ring, flicked his fingers, and slowly flew to the young scholar.

He smiled and said, "Please accept these two spirit stones. I'll put this jade pendant in your hands for the time being. Please keep an eye on the whereabouts of Taoist Zhang. If he returns to the mountain gate, please tell me in time."

The young scholar showed a happy expression, took the spirit stones with both hands, and bowed deeply: "Don't worry, senior, I will ask my familiar fellow disciples to keep an eye on the whereabouts of Uncle Zhang. As long as Uncle Zhang returns to the sect, I will immediately go to see him with the jade pendant and report to Uncle Zhang about your visit."

He only has the cultivation of the initial stage of foundation building. Two high-grade spirit stones can be exchanged for 240 medium-grade spirit stones. For him, it is an absolute windfall.

The young scholar withdrew with satisfaction, and Chen Yuan also stood up and left the courtyard, slowly walking towards the most prosperous street in Chongde City.

Zhang Wushan will not return to the sect for a while. His cultivation has reached the limit, and meditating in the courtyard is useless. He simply goes to Chongde Market to stroll around and adjust his lonely state of mind after years of hard cultivation. (End of this chapter)