Chapter 625: Integrating the Flower Branch

A few minutes later, a faint thump rang out, and the entire purple bamboo forest shuddered slightly, following which the layer of faint purple light over the pavilion quickly receded before fading into the ground.

Only then did Daoist Xie's eyes spring open, and it proposed, "Let's go in and take a look."

With that, Han Li and Daoist Xie made their way up the staircase in front of the pavilion, then pushed the bamboo doors open.

Upon entering the bamboo pavilion, they were immediately greeted by a cool and refreshing sensation that struck them with a sense of relaxation and reinvigoration.

"This pavilion is able to draw upon the power of the lotus flowers in the pond to draw in all of the surrounding world's origin qi, resulting in a significantly heightened abundance of spiritual qi. I must say, I'm really impressed with the innovative mind of whoever created this domain," Daoist Xie suddenly praised.

"This pavilion can gather spiritual qi, but it doesn't trap it, so the circulation of the world's origin qi in the domain isn't affected. On top of that, the spiritual qi that seeps out of this pavilion will nourish the nearby bamboo forest, making this the area with the most abundant spiritual qi in the entire domain. This would be a perfect place to set up a spirit medicine garden," Han Li said.

Daoist Xie nodded in agreement.

The first floor of the bamboo building was rather barely furnished, with an antiquated scroll hanging on the wall directly opposite the entrance. A large "zen" character was inscribed onto the scroll in a rather wobbly script that resembled a piece of artwork more so than a piece of calligraphy.

At the foot of the scroll was a cushion woven out of coarse linen, and judging from the severe wear and tear that it displayed, it appeared to have been used very frequently.

To the left of the main hall was a side room, within which was a purple bamboo bed, upo which was a small square table that carried an unlit oil lamp, a black teapot, and a pair of matching teacups.

To the right of the bed was a staircase that led to the second floor of the pavilion.

On the second floor, Han Li and Daoist Xie discovered three storage cabinets, all of which were sealed using secret techniques.

After unraveling the seals, Han Li was ecstatic to discover that the first cabinet contained a huge amount of spirit medicines and spirit materials, among which were some Fire Vein Ganoderma and Jade Marrow Polygonatum that were hundreds of thousand of years old, as well large quantities of Heavenly River Stardust, Ice Soul Frost Crystals, and Nine Yang Flint.

These were the only materials that Han Li was able to identify, while the rest were all things that he had never seen or even heard of before, and he presumed that they could be used for refining certain high-grade pills and treasures.

Han Li stowed all of the materials into his storage bracelet, then moved onto the second cabinet, which contained around a dozen cultivation arts, only a small number of which were fit for human cultivators, while the vast majority were meant for demonic cultivators and other foreign cultivators.

Han Li only briefly flipped through these cultivation arts and didn't study them in any fine detail. At the moment, he was already far too busy working on his time-attribute cultivation arts and his Spirit Refinement Technique, so he had no time to look at anything else.

As for Daoist Xie, it took interest in a cultivation art by the name of the Righteous Lightning Technique, and Han Li was more than happy to let it take the cultivation art.

After stowing all those cultivation arts away as well, Han Li opened the third cabinet, and just as he had anticipated, it was filled with immortal treasures, but all of them were damaged to different extents.

One of them was a bright longsword forged out of exceptional materials, and it had most likely been a very formidable Acquired Immortal Treasure, but there was a long crack that extended all the way down the blade of the sword, much to Han Li's disappointment.

The giant rat true spirit's physical body would've been sufficient to stand up against immortal treasures, so it most likely wouldn't have required such weapons. Hence, these were most likely the spoils that it had reaped from battle.

At the bottom of the storage cabinet, Han Li discovered a gray storage pouch, and after refining the pouch and opening it, he discovered that it contained dozens of transparent crystals that contained extremely pure immortal spiritual power.

"This is a huge haul of mid-grade Immortal Origin Stones! I barely saw any of these during all my time in the Northern Glacial Immortal Region," Han Li exclaimed with an elated expression.

"Mid-grade Immortal Origin Stones are far more difficult to create than normal Immortal Origin Stones, so it's no surprise that they're extremely rare. The Northern Glacial Immortal Region didn't even have many High Zenith Stage Jade Immortals, so mid-grade Immortal Origin Stones will naturally be in very short supply there," Daoist Xie said.

"Even in the Black Mountain Immortal Region, only some major sects are in possession of mid-grade Immortal Origin Stones, and all of them are cherished like precious treasures," Han Li said.

𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

After that, Han Li carefully examined the entire bamboo building to ensure that he wasn't missing anything, then re-emerged from the bamboo forest with Daoist Xie.

He swept a sleeve through the air to release around a dozen giant ape puppets, and they immediately sprang into action at Han Li's behest, with some of them cutting down trees, while others dug out rocks from the ground, and before long, a large plot of empty land was created.

The puppets then used the felled bamboo trees to construct a fence around the entire plot of land, following which Han Li began to set up restrictions around the fence.

He was only setting up a simple array that sucked in the spiritual qi seeping out of the nearby purple bamboo pavilion, so it didn't take him very long at all to complete it.

After that, he summoned two large vats of spirit liquid that he had prepared in advance, but had never gotten a chance to use, then gave them to two of the giant ape puppets so that they could water the garden.

"It'll take at least a few decades for the soil to absorb the spirit liquid and become a spirit field fit for growing spirit plants, so let's get out of here for now," Han Li said, then made a hand seal, and the door of silver light hovering outside the forest instantly appeared in front of him.

As the connective point between the two spaces, it was impossible to close a domain treasure while the owner was still in it. This was something that Han Li had failed to notice while exploring the Fish Branch with Daoist Master Jingyang, but it had become quite apparent to him after he entered the Flower Branch.

On top of that, he could open up this door of light in any location in the domain as he pleased.

With that, he and Daoist Xie stepped through the door of light and returned to the cave abode together.

Standing inside his secret chamber, Han Li grabbed onto the Flower Branch again, and by the time he turned around, the door of silver light had already vanished.

He took a glance down at the Flower Branch, and a hint of elation flashed through his eyes.

"I'm very interested in that lightning cultivation art, so I'm going back to study it," Daoist Xie said.

Han Li nodded in response, and after Daoist Xie returned to its secret chamber, Han Li sat down with his legs in his own secret chamber.

As he gently massaged the Flower Branch, the thought of a cultivation art that he hadn't used for a very long time sprang into his mind, namely the Hundred Meridian Refinement Mantra.

This bone was a little too large to be made into a necklace or pendant, so it would be quite cumbersome to carry around, and given the enormous space that it contained, he didn't dare to put it in any storage tool.

Seeing as the giant rat was able to refine this item to become a section of its tailbone, then he should be able to do the same. On top of that, the Hundred Meridian Refinement Mantra came from none other than the Hundred Creations Mountain, and the giant rat had perhaps used a similar cultivation art to refine the domain treasure as well.

With that in mind, Han Li immediately went into seclusion to cultivate the Hundred Meridian Refinement Mantra.

Over thirty years flew by in a flash.

In the northern part of the Floating Cloud Mountain Range, a streak of radiant swordlight suddenly descended out of the sky. The swordlight was enveloped in a layer of golden lightning, and it crashed into a forest like a golden lightning dragon.

A resounding boom rang out as a vast expanse of golden lightning erupted in all directions, and all of the trees in the wake of the lightning were instantly incinerated out of existence, while the entire ground in a radius of several dozen kilometers had been charred black.

However, there was an ancient tree at the center of the charred area that remained completely unscathed, and atop the tree stood an azure-robed man with the index and middle fingers on his right hand joined together and pointed up at the heavens.

The man was none other than Han Li, and those two fingers of his were as translucent as jade, with silver flower design flashing upon them.

Clasped between the pair of fingers was the sharp edge of an azure longsword that was still flashing incessantly with golden lightning.

"I didn't think that refining this domain treasure into my fingers would have such an extraordinary effect. Even an attack from my Azure Bamboo Cloudswarm Sword can be withstood with ease! No wonder even Jin Tong wasn't able to devour the domain treasure," Han Li remarked to himself as he stowed his longsword away, following which he sped away into the distance as a streak of azure light.

Upon returning to the secret chamber in his cave abode, the floral design on Han Li's two fingers flashed momentarily at his behest, following which a burst of silver light shot out from within to form a door of silver light.

Han Li immediately entered the Flower Branch domain through the door, but instead of flying through the air, he made his way down the small bone path on foot.

Over the course of the past few decades, he had been solely focused on cultivating the Hundred Meridian Refinement Mantra to fuse the Flower Branch into his fingers, and he hadn't entered the domain during this time.

Upon entering the domain, he discovered that the giant ape puppets in the spirit medicine garden had dispersed themselves around the forest to look after the spirit medicines growing there after watering the plot of land with the two vats of spirit liquid.

After a brief moment of contemplation, Han Li discovered them to pick all of the spirit medicines littered along the small path in the forest before transferring them to the spirit medicine garden.