Chapter 43 The Assistance of Divine Trace Purple Gold in the Evolution of the Chaotic Body

During this time, Li Yao had repeatedly considered giving up. After all, with the Heavenly Book in his possession, even if his weapon had slight flaws, it wouldn't affect his future achievements.

Yet, in the end, he persevered. A voice in his mind kept telling him that if he couldn't even endure this, then in the face of even greater hardships in the future, would he simply continue to give up?

Furthermore, if he were to truly quit now, his Dao heart would likely become tarnished.

If he couldn't even tolerate this bit of pain, his so-called firm determination to seek the Dao was complete nonsense, nothing more than empty talk.

Moreover, without a strong mind, who was actually mastering whom between himself and the Heavenly Book?

After resting for a moment, Li Yao recovered. Instead of going out immediately, he took out a piece of purple divine source.

This was the purple crystal source he had cut out from the stone gambling house. No larger than a corn kernel, it belonged to an extremely rare variant of the source.

Though small, this piece of source was immensely valuable—worth at least a thousand catties of ordinary source. Because it could enhance a cultivator's divine sense, purple crystal source was constantly in high demand on the market.

Having spent four days trying his utmost to resist the flames and ten days enduring the agony of being burned by the fire, Li Yao was utterly exhausted, his divine sense chaotic and drained.

This moment was the optimal time to use the purple crystal source.

The purple essence merged into his body, surging straight toward the location of his Niwan Palace. The golden lake, which had grown somewhat dim, began to rapidly regain its luster under the nourishment of the purple crystal source's essence, growing brilliantly radiant.

Like a gentle spring breeze sweeping through, ripples formed across the golden lake. Li Yao felt an incomparable lightness wash over him; not only had his divine sense recovered to its peak state, but it had also grown stronger by a fraction.

Even the surface area of the lake had expanded, becoming much more solid and condensed.

After a moment, Li Yao opened his eyes, and two piercing beams of holy light shot forth, several feet long. That was the exceptionally condensed power of his divine sense.

"Just a corn-kernel-sized piece of purple crystal source has increased my divine sense by thirty percent. If I had a piece the size of a fist, it would probably allow my divine sense to undergo a direct sublimation."

Indeed, cultivation ultimately depends on resources!

At this thought, Li Yao couldn't help but recall Ye Fan. Although Ye Hei had indeed faced a rather difficult initial period, he certainly accumulated a massive number of incredible treasures.

Back in the Life Spring realm, he had the Demon Emperor's sacred heart blood to temper his flesh and strengthen his physique, as well as the holy fruit of the Nine-Miracle Undying Medicine to cleanse his divine sense.

With a setup like that, let alone being a Sacred Body, even an ordinary mortal body enjoying those benefits would be enough to look down upon all heroes with arrogance.

Despite the considerable resources Li Yao had spent in the Wheel and Sea realm, in terms of true value, it didn't even amount to one-thousandth of Ye Fan's.

What was the value of the Demon Emperor's sacred blood? Such a supreme treasure was simply never put up for sale; otherwise, people would fight tooth and nail for just a single drop of essence blood, even if it cost tens of blocks of divine source.

And then there was the holy fruit of the Nine-Miracle Undying Medicine. Although divided into nine portions, the fruit it bore remained a miraculous creation capable of seizing the fortunes of heaven and earth. The moment it was put on sale, countless people would smash their cauldrons and sell their iron just to buy it.

These two major fortunes laid an extraordinarily solid foundation for Ye Fan, paving the way for his future might.

"Now that I possess a certain level of strength, it seems I must slightly alter my strategy. I can no longer continue playing it so safe and steady," Li Yao mused.

For the past half-year or so, he had played every step safely and steadily, but that was because he genuinely lacked the power to protect himself. Stepping out of the Jade Light Sacred Ground, any random storm could very well have wiped him out.

However, things were different now. His cultivation had broken through to the Divine Bridge realm, and Han Lin, who was reputed to be comparable to those in the Other Shore realm, would not even last a single exchange against him if he got serious; he could easily take Han Lin's life.

Using Han Lin as a unit of combat power for comparison, his current battle strength was likely among the upper echelon even within the Other Shore realm.

Withdrawing his thoughts, Li Yao did not dwell excessively on the future, instead focusing his attention on the Divine Trace Purple Gold Furnace.

This was a small furnace, merely an inch high and exceedingly thin, yet this failed to conceal its dazzling splendor. The purple light was brilliantly eye-catching, and its surface was covered in numerous patterns, each brimming with the rhyme of the Dao, as if carved by deities themselves—natural and without a single flaw.

As an exclusive sacred material of the Great Emperors, although Divine Trace Purple Gold was used sparingly, it did not imply weakness.

Before weapons genuinely crafted entirely from immortal gold materials, the Divine Trace Purple Gold Furnace might lack a deep foundation and prove unable to contend with them, but aside from those, it already belonged to the tier of the strongest weapons.

At least for the present, the Divine Trace Purple Gold Furnace was completely sufficient. Before Ye Fan forged the Cauldron of the Mother Qi of All Things, very few weapons belonging to peers of the same generation actually incorporated immortal gold.

Aside from its destructive power, what satisfied Li Yao the most was the ability of Divine Trace Purple Gold to capture the rhythms of the Dao.

To others, this trait might not be overwhelmingly useful, because until a Divine Trace Purple Gold artifact was nurtured to the point of sentience and spiritual connection, the scriptures it captured would merely be fragmented pieces and stray words, yielding at best a degree of inspiration.

Yet for Li Yao, it was entirely different. He possessed the Heavenly Book; as long as he had the fragmentary texts, he could use the Heavenly Book to deduce and complete them.

One could say that Divine Trace Purple Gold and the Heavenly Book were an absolute match made in heaven—no better partnership could possibly exist.

"If I wish to walk the path of the Chaos Body, I must forge a furnace capable of nurturing a hundred scriptures."

The scriptures of this world are vast as an ocean, and the potentials unlocked by each volume differ. When one has thoroughly comprehended ten thousand scriptures, it is not entirely impossible to evolve into the Chaos Body.

The later figures Ye Fan and the Heavenly Empress had once proposed a similar thesis.

"The mortal body is the most powerful constitution and the foundation of everything."

"This statement is correct, yet at the same time, it is wrong." Li Yao held his own perspective on this quote.

Cultivation possesses three realms: in the first stage, mountains are seen as mountains, and waters are seen as waters; next is the second stage, where mountains are no longer mountains, and waters are no longer waters; and finally, in the third stage, mountains are once again mountains, and waters are once again waters.

The mortal body is the most powerful and the foundation of everything only when you reach the third stage, having comprehended the simplicity of the Great Dao—where mountains remain those same mountains and waters remain those same waters, and your understanding has transcended superficial phenomena to reach a higher level of comprehension. Only then is the mortal body truly the most powerful.

Take Li Yao himself, for instance. At this moment, he was still in the first realm, which was why he truly failed to comprehend where the power of the mortal body lay; he lacked the far-reaching vision and the insight to pierce through to the essence of all things.

Yet there was one point Li Yao clearly understood: the mortal body is the foundation of everything.

This statement was easy to comprehend. There are numerous special physiques in this world: the Divine Body, the King's Body, the Yin and Yang Physiques, the Innate Dao Embryo, the Supreme Immortal Body... the Chaos Body, the Innate Sacred Body Dao Embryo.

All the special physiques mentioned above transcend the mortal body, yet their most fundamental, deepest origin is none other than the origin of the mortal body.

These special physiques are all evolved on the basis of the mortal body. In Li Yao's own understanding, special physiques are akin to high-level programming languages, while the mortal body is the most fundamental binary code.

No matter how those high-level programming languages change and transform, they are all ultimately evolved upon the foundation of binary language.