Chapter 314: Chapter 287: Spirit Soul and Essence

Refining Spiritual Artifacts is extremely difficult, far more so than Profound Artifacts.

Although "heretical" methods like the Devouring Spirit Dao offer rapid progress, their requirements are often incredibly demanding.

Take the Devouring Spirit Dao, for example. It requires a constant supply of life essence as nourishment.

The moment the devouring stops, the Sword Pill’s advancement will immediately slow down.

The orthodox method of refining a Spiritual Artifact is to first forge a top-grade Profound Artifact, then implant a Spirit Seed into it. After that, it must be nurtured day and night with Divine Sense and Magical Power, allowing it to gradually transform and grow over a long period of time until it finally crosses that threshold.

This method is time-consuming.

It can take anywhere from several hundred to over a thousand years.

However, its advantage lies in its stability, and its conditions are not as demanding as the Devouring Spirit Dao—it doesn’t require hunting down living creatures for sustenance.

As for the so-called Spirit Seed, there are generally two options.

Essence or a Spirit Soul.

Essence is a spiritual crystal formed under specific conditions after a powerful being perishes. It’s a deep fusion of the being’s soul essence and the Power of Law they cultivated in life.

Integrating it into a Profound Artifact can greatly enhance the artifact’s nascent consciousness, giving it the potential to advance into a Spiritual Artifact.

Besides forming naturally, Essence can also be created artificially through a Secret Technique.

A Cultivator can use a Secret Technique to forcibly extract the soul essence of a Spirit Beast at the moment of its death, condensing it into Essence.

Anton’s method of refining the Sword Pill using the Devouring Spirit Dao is, in essence, an extreme Secret Technique that refines a dragon’s Essence along with its flesh and blood. It follows this very path.

A Spirit Soul, on the other hand, is different from Essence.

A Spirit Soul is not born from the death of a living being. Instead, it is nurtured during the transformation of a "wondrous item" from an inanimate object into a Spiritual Object.

These so-called "wondrous items" include, but are not limited to, totem poles that have borne the incense and wishes of supplicants for many years.

Clan holy relics that have absorbed the faith of countless generations.

Strange stones and rare treasures naturally formed in places with a high concentration of the Power of Law.

Heirloom Divine Soldiers into which generations of craftsmen have poured their heart, soul, and obsession...

And so on and so forth.

Over long eons, these items gradually nurture a faint, hazy trace of the spiritual.

And a nascent trace of the spiritual is a Spirit Soul.

Although a Spirit Soul, a Profound Artifact’s nascent consciousness, and a Spiritual Artifact’s Artifact Spirit are all related to the spiritual, they are fundamentally different.

The relationship between the three can be roughly compared to wood, a flickering spark, and a stable flame.

Simply put, a Spirit Soul is a type of spiritual material that can be extracted, transplanted, and refined.

Theoretically, if a Spirit Soul has existed for a long enough time, there is a chance it can grow into a Spiritual Artifact on its own.

Such Spiritual Artifacts are also known as innate Spiritual Artifacts.

However, such cases are exceedingly rare, and one can count them on one hand throughout the history of the Cultivation Realm.

Let alone on the Dawn Continent.

Compared to a Spirit Soul, Essence is clearly easier to obtain.

As for the Essence used as a raw material, it must come from a peak Legendary Tier creature at the very least.

A Saint Level one is even better.

The more powerful the Essence, the shorter the time it takes for an Artifact Spirit to be born.

Anton currently did not have a suitable Essence on hand, so he could only focus on upgrading the Heaven-Overturning Seal and the Nine Dragon Divine Fire Shield to the level of top-grade Profound Artifacts first.

Afterward, he would find a way to obtain a suitable Essence to act as a Spirit Seed, paving the way for the two Magical Treasures to advance.

Reining in his thoughts, Anton turned his attention back to his spoils of war.

Among these rare materials, many could be used to refine Magical Artifacts and Profound Artifacts.

For example, the Death Breath Stone.

This was a strange crystal formed when a natural ore was steeped for thousands of years in an environment with an extremely high concentration of deathly aura. It contained an incredibly dense Yin Attribute energy.

It was perfect for refining Yin Attribute Magical Treasures.

There was no shortage of similar rare materials.

’As expected of the Dragon Race. Their reserves are truly astounding.’

Anton gazed at the mountain of supplies before him, an indescribable sense of satisfaction welling up in his heart.

The value of these resources far exceeded his prior estimates.

Besides, a moment’s thought was all it took to realize this was certainly just a small fraction of the Dragon Race’s ten-thousand-year accumulation.

When the Dragon Court arranged for the Giant Dragons’ escape, it would have been impossible for them to bring all of their resources.

They had to make choices, selecting only the most valuable and portable items.

The bulky, large-scale resource nodes that couldn’t be moved quickly had to be left behind in Holy Dragon City, ultimately falling into the hands of the allied forces.

Moreover, the Dragon Court wouldn’t have put all their eggs in one basket.

They must have split the resources among multiple teams, with each carrying a portion to reduce the risk of being wiped out in one go.

Even so, not every Giant Dragon in the teams carrying resources managed to escape the Storm Rift Abyss alive.

Many Giant Dragons must have fallen in that forbidden land of death.

In that kind of environment, the survivors absolutely could not have stopped to retrieve the Space Rings from the fallen Giant Dragons.

After all these successive losses, it would be considered fortunate if even a tenth of the resources taken from the Dragon Court remained.

And now, this portion of the resources had fallen into his hands.

After a moment of joy, Anton collected his thoughts and began to plan how to use these resources.

The enhancement of the Heaven-Overturning Seal and the Nine Dragon Divine Fire Shield was the top priority.

If the two Magical Treasures could be promoted to Spiritual Artifacts, his combat power would soar once again.

The materials for refining the tower-shaped flying Magical Treasure were now secured.

There was no longer a need for the Clan to painstakingly search everywhere; the materials in this haul alone were more than enough to refine a hundred such towers.

In addition, he could use these resources to refine more Profound Artifacts and arm the Clan’s Legendary Powerhouses.

With Profound Artifacts at their side, their strength would rise to a new level.

In the coming turmoil, their chances of survival would also be much greater, allowing them to play a larger role on the battlefield.

As for the remaining materials, he would leave them for the Clan to handle.

Whether used for trade or production, they would greatly promote the Clan’s development and lay a more solid foundation for the future of the Silver Moon Race.

After planning the use of his spoils, Anton immediately began to consider his next steps.

Besides refining the Profound Artifacts, he needed to integrate the remaining four Laws into the embryonic True Seal one by one.

If he proceeded step-by-step at his current pace, it would take him at least twenty years.

And that was assuming everything went smoothly, without hitting any bottlenecks.

He didn’t want to wait that long.

’It would be best if I could shorten this process.’

The most direct method was to place himself in an extreme environment corresponding to the Laws he was studying.

For instance, an Elemental Origin Plane.

The Power of Law there was so dense it was almost tangible, making it a natural holy land for comprehending the Laws.

In such a place, Elemental Power was no longer an abstract concept but a tangible substance that could be touched and perceived, like air and water.

Cultivating in that environment, his speed of comprehending the Laws would be several, or even dozens of times faster than in the outside world.

But with his current strength, rushing into an Elemental Origin Plane was no different from seeking death.

The place was filled with violent energy storms, and elemental spirits were everywhere.

Ordinary elemental spirits weren’t a big deal, but the elemental titans that had survived for thousands of years each possessed Legendary Tier strength.

The Giant Spirit Elders were even Demigod Level beings.

Once they targeted him, even escape would be a fool’s hope.

However, there was a compromise.

For example, he could open a rift in the material plane that connected to an Elemental Origin Plane and use the Elemental Power seeping out of it to cultivate.

The advantage of this was that he could enjoy highly concentrated elemental energy without having to venture deep into the Elemental Origin Plane and face those terrifying beings.

Although the Elemental Power leaking from the rift wouldn’t be as dense as in the Origin Plane itself, it would still be far more abundant than anywhere in the material plane.

This method might sound incredible, but in fact, someone on the Dawn Continent had already done it.

The Heart of the Mountains.

To obtain powerful bloodline strength, this group of Dwarves crushed Fire Element crystals or cores. Then, under high temperature and pressure, they used a complex rune-based channeling system to infuse the substance layer by layer into selected Dwarves, giving rise to the Furnace Dwarves branch.

The prerequisite for this practice was obtaining a large quantity of Fire Element cores and crystals.

Furthermore, the Furnace Dwarves subsequently needed to periodically ingest large amounts of Fire Element cores to maintain the stability of their bloodline power.

Relying on routine procurement was clearly not enough to meet the demand.

Thus, the Dwarves of the Heart of the Mountains researched a solution.

Namely, opening a rift in the material plane connected to the Fire Elemental Origin Plane, luring out fire elemental spirits and titans, and hunting them.

By doing so, they secured an endless supply of Fire Element crystals and cores.

’If I could obtain the technique for opening an Elemental Origin Plane Rift from the Heart of the Mountains, it would undoubtedly save a lot of trouble.’

After a moment of thought, Anton had a plan.

Just then, his expression shifted, and his figure vanished from the spot.

When he reappeared, he was already in the Celestial Essence Hall, where he immediately saw the Elf Maiden waiting in the main hall.

Upon seeing Anton, a smile blossomed on Eleanor’s face. "Clan Leader, when did you get back?" she asked joyfully.

"Not long ago."

With a wave of his sleeve, Anton sent hundreds of Space Rings drifting toward Eleanor.

Aside from the resources he was keeping for his own use, he planned to hand the rest over to Eleanor for the Clan’s development.

Eleanor was startled by the sheer number of them. After she took the Space Rings and saw what was inside, her eyes widened in astonishment, her expression filled with disbelief.

"Clan Leader, this... this is..."

Considering he would need Eleanor’s cooperation to periodically harvest resources from the Dragon Race in the Netherworld Sea Trench in the future, Anton didn’t hide anything and explained the whole affair.

After hearing his account, Eleanor was completely stunned and couldn’t recover for a long time.

She had, of course, heard of the fearsome reputation of the Storm Rift Abyss.

No living creature had ever made it out of that forbidden land of death alive.

Yet the Dragon Race had actually broken this ironclad rule.

What shocked her even more was that her own Clan Leader had actually killed the leading Saint-level Giant Dragon and intercepted the resources the Dragon Race had brought out.

Although she knew her Clan Leader was powerful, she had never imagined he could kill a Saint on his own.

That was a power that stood at the very pinnacle of the Dawn Continent!

It took a long while for Eleanor to recover from her shock.

She took a deep breath, suppressing the tempestuous waves crashing in her chest, and her gaze fell back on the Space Rings.

’Although I still have so many questions...’

’For example, how did Anton know that Giant Dragons would be escaping from the Storm Rift Abyss?’

’And how did he know they would be heading to the Netherworld Sea Trench?’

But Eleanor was tactful enough not to ask.

"With these resources, our future development can speed up significantly."

Eleanor’s eyes lit up.

The Silver Moon Race’s development had always been limited by resources.

Although their trade network brought in substantial profits each year, the Clan’s expenses were equally enormous.

Expanding the legions, refining Daoist Soldiers, providing the cultivation resources needed by the disciples of Taichu City, nurturing the Spirit Plant Garden and the Beast Garden, settling the Vassal Races...

Every single item required a massive investment of resources.

Over the years, Eleanor had put in a great deal of effort just to balance the books.

But now, with this windfall of resources, she could finally let loose.

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