Chapter 289: A Hero in Life, A Ghostly Legend in Death (I)

Time, like waves brushing against the sky, faded all too easily; even the warmth of a single fleeting moment was difficult to preserve.

For mortals, its passage often went unnoticed. Only after countless days had passed, with hair graying and faces weathered, would they glance back and murmur in quiet realization, "Oh... so many years have already passed..."

But for those who had truly stepped onto the path of the Great Dao, time was something else entirely. The slow and silent grind of time was the sharpest blade of all.

So when Luo Chen finally stepped out of his long seclusion, it felt like only a moment had passed. Just a brief flicker of disorientation... before the world returned.

In just the blink of an daze, three years had already passed.

“So much time has gone by?” Luo Chen muttered to himself, his voice tinged with disbelief.

For a moment, he simply stood there in a haze, caught between reflection and reality.

Then, with a slow and steady breath, Luo Chen gathered himself, drawing his focus back to his cultivation state.

At last, his realm had fully stabilized.

He opened his long-neglected status panel.

A series of statistics unfolded before him like an ink wash painting, gently blooming into view.

[Status Panel]

Name: Luo Chen

Lifespan: 35/160

Spirit Roots: Gold, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth

Realm: Foundation Establishment Stage Two (1/100)

Achievement Points: 7

[Techniques]

Medicine King Codex of Yimu: Perfection (375/500)

Divine Breaker of Malevolence: Perfection (400/500)

Myriad Beast Sutra: Beginner (10/100)

[Spells]

Second-Tier

First-Tier

Perfected Mastery Spells (Click to view details)

[Alchemy]

Jade Fracture Hand: Perfected Mastery

Unadorned Heart Hand: Grandmaster (513/1000)

Flowing Creek Hand: Skilled (125/200)

Cloud Transformation Hand: Skilled (112/200)

[Martial Arts]

Mountain Cleaving Monument Breaking Palm: Perfected Mastery

Heavenly Maiden Scatters Flowers: Perfection (360/500)

[Skills]

Second-Tier Alchemist

Perfected Mastery Pills (Click to view details)

The very first thing Luo Chen noticed was the subtle yet undeniable increase in his lifespan.

At the sight of this change, the lingering concerns in Luo Chen's heart instantly vanished.

"As I expected," he murmured. "Even with my innate shortcomings, once my Dao foundation was forged, the limitations were broken.

"Now that my cultivation has advanced slightly, my lifespan ceiling continues to rise." The corners of Luo Chen’s lips lifted faintly, revealing the joy he felt at that moment.

However, if the so-called "slight advancement" in cultivation were heard by other Foundation Establishment cultivators, they would likely curse him outright.

In just three short years, he had progressed from the first to the second stage of Foundation Establishment. Such progress, unfathomable to most, was nothing short of monstrous talent in the eyes of others.

But Luo Chen knew himself well enough to understand that this pace was a fleeting rarity, one that would likely never come again.

Over these three years, although he hadn’t taken any pills besides fasting pellets, his newly reforged dantian from his Foundation Establishment breakthrough had been brimming with residual medicinal power. All he had done now was fully refine it.

Moreover, achieving this level of efficiency owed much to the abundant spiritland beneath him. This was, after all, the very cultivation ground that the Golden Core Adept Pang Renxiong had prepared for himself. At its peak, it had undoubtedly been a third-tier spirit land.

However, after the great battle, the formations across Fallen Phoenix Mountain had been utterly destroyed. This temporarily elevated spirit land had gradually begun to deteriorate.

By the time Luo Chen arrived, it had already degraded from third-tier to second-tier quality. Yet even in its current state, it still far surpassed ordinary second-tier spirit lands.

After three years of relentless absorption, the quality of this spirit vein had continued to decline.

Now, it barely held onto its second-tier.

A cultivation land like this will be nearly impossible to find again.

Luo Chen thought as he shook his head, not greedy in the slightest.

His gaze fell to the other status entries.

His main cultivation method, the

Medicine King Codex of Yimu

, had reached Perfection level. That came as no surprise. After all, he had the Perfected Mastery Long Spring Art as a foundation, and the transition had been seamless.

In fact, Luo Chen even felt that his proficiency increase had been too slow.

𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

"It is a second-tier technique after all. It takes many full cycles just to gain a bit of proficiency.

"To push it to Grandmaster level... it'll only get slower from here. But that's only natural. Whether it's realm or technique, the further one goes, the slower the progression becomes."

That, however, was not what Luo Chen truly cared about.

What concerned him was his current rate of cultivation.

After fully refining the medicinal power that had accumulated within his dantian, Luo Chen had begun deliberately measuring the rate at which he advanced. Initially, the statistics had been inconsistent as his core cultivation technique kept rising in proficiency.

But as time passed and the

Medicine King Codex of Yimu

at the Perfection level, the data needed for the calculation settled. Eventually, he came up with a more precise and approximate figure.

"If I rely solely on cultivation with no pills and remain in a spirit vein like this one, standard quality second-tier..." Luo Chen muttered quietly, his eyes calm. "It would take me at least two thousand years to reach the Perfected Mastery of Foundation Establishment."

A terrifying number, delivered in the calmest of tones.

Such extreme disparity failed to stir any great waves in Luo Chen’s heart. Or rather, the initial shock had already struck him when he first calculated this number. Now, he merely accepted it with calm composure.

To be honest, the figure wasn’t all that exaggerated. He had used cultivators with the legendary heavenly spirit root as the baseline for comparison.

According to records in the cultivation world, those born with such a root could, without the aid of a single pill, reach Foundation Establishment in ten years, form a Core in one hundred, achieve Nascent Soul in two hundred, and attain Divine Transformation within five hundred years. It was a terrifying pace, a speed that justified why major sects would go to any lengths to fight over a disciple with that kind of root aptitude.

With that as the upper limit, it became much easier to measure and compare the cultivation efficiency of all other root types. Luo Chen didn’t know how others did their calculations, but he had devised a personal, quantifiable scale.

If a five-spirit-root cultivator was considered the baseline with a cultivation efficiency of one, then a four-spirit-root would be rated at two, a three-spirit-root at four, and a dual-spirit-root at eight. Heavenly spirit root cultivators, by contrast, would clock in at a staggering twenty units.

Whether this system was accurate or not, no one could say for sure. But during his time in the Qi-Refining Realm, Luo Chen had found it to be surprisingly consistent with the calculations.

As for its validity in Foundation Establishment? That remained to be tested.

Yet despite the daunting "two thousand years", Luo Chen felt no despair. The reason was simple.

All these calculations were made under the assumption that no external resources were used, not a single pill, not one array formation, not the spirit land, and not even any kind of esoteric secret arts. And yet, such things were the bread and butter of the cultivation world.

Luo Chen had already proven that during the Qi-Refining Realm.

“Two thousand years is just an illusion,” he said quietly. “So long as I can continue consuming pills, that timeline will shrink dramatically.

“Which means, the only thing troubling me now is the pills themselves.”

Luo Chen’s gaze flickered with thought. He wasn’t pondering which pills to take, he knew that already. There were plenty of second-tier pills designed for Foundation Establishment cultivators. He had personally mastered the recipes for three of them: the Blood Fiend Pill, the Jade Dew Pill, and the notoriously expensive Imperial Nectar.

What troubled him was the side effects brought on by consuming too many of them. He couldn’t just recklessly consume pills until he reached the peak of Foundation Establishment, only to face the same nightmare he experienced when breaking through Foundation Establishment.

The number of pills consumed during Qi-Refining was but a drop in the ocean compared to Foundation Establishment.

With such a massive quantity, the resulting pill toxin barrier would become unimaginably dangerous. If it happened again, Luo Chen had no confidence whatsoever that he could push through to the Golden Core Realm.

Even with fifty sets of Core Formation spirit medicines, let alone five, it still wouldn’t be enough.

“I must find a method to neutralize pill toxins!”

Only by resolving the side effects of pill consumption could Luo Chen rely on external resources to accelerate his cultivation. Otherwise, he might never reach the Golden Core Realm before death caught up with him.

Thus, finding a pill detoxification method had become his most urgent and important mission. He engraved the thought into the depths of his mind.

Fortunately, it wasn’t a challenge beyond his reach. He had discussed this very topic with Nangong Jin shortly after his initial breakthrough into the Foundation Establishment Realm. In the vast world of cultivation, there were countless ways to deal with pill poison, ranging from healing arts, alchemy, and spells.

It could be said that the flourishing of the "Hundred Ways to Immortal Ascension" was born precisely from the countless hardships faced along the path of cultivation.

When difficulties arose, cultivators solved them. If one method didn’t work, they would devise another. Over time, these problem-solving techniques became distinct branches of the craft, passed down through generations. Thus forming the so-called "Hundred Ways to Immortal Ascension".

Now, with his cultivation stabilized, a growing power structure beneath him, and his identity as a distinguished alchemist, Luo Chen had more advantages than most.

Under such conditions, finding a suitable pill detoxification method wasn’t an insurmountable challenge.