After the talk with Zhu Tiandao, Su Yu wasted no time and returned to the research center with Wu Lan.

While on the way, Su Yu learned that Wu Lan had only reached the 17th floor. He thought for a very long while before finally mustering some words to comfort her, "You're a researcher. That is what you're good at. It's not surprising that you're not too good at climbing."

"..."

Wu Lan didn't even deign to give a reply. He was better off not saying anything to her. After all, he was a researcher as well!

Su Yu laughed and said, "In truth, that is a very good result. The 20th floor is basically the same as Great Xia's top 3. The 19th floor is Great Xia's top 30. And the 18th floor is the equivalent of top 50. With your result, you're now a top 100 student of Great Xia."

Wu Lan asked gloomily, "Is it so impressive to be in the top 100?"

She didn't feel like that was the case at all. Even previously, she had nearly entered the ranking. And a few months had passed since then.

"Everyone else is growing as well."

Su Yu looked at Wu Lan. She had actually been growing quite fast. She was already an eighth-stage Great Strength cultivator with around 95 percent willpower. She only seemed weak when compared to someone like him.

Su Yu said, "You can actually switch out of the War God Art. I suggest you cultivate the Source Soul Acupoint Opening Art instead. With this art, you only need money to open acupoints. It's not like you lack money. Just buy more earthly source fruits. At 500 merit points per fruit, buy like 30 or 50 of them and open 50 or 60 new acupoints to complete your cultivation of the Source Soul Acupoint Opening Art."

Wu Lan rolled her eyes. That would cost her tens of thousands of merit points. She wouldn't stupidly listen to him. How was she supposed to afford that much money? Also, earthly source fruits could indeed help with opening acupoints, but they were expensive. Furthermore, the effect would weaken the more one used.

Seeing her expression, Su Yu said, "Just buy what you need. If you really don't want to buy, it's fine. I have some left. They will all go to waste soon so I might as well give you some..."

"No!"

"Just consider this as your dividend." Su Yu said, "The Source Soul Research Center has earned a lot of money. As the leader of the Breakthrough Team, you are naturally entitled to a dividend of around ten or twenty thousand merit points. Isn't that normal?"

"You paid me with the Source Soul Cultural Art!"

"But that thing isn't worth much nowadays. You can buy one with only a hundred merit points." Su Yu said, "The fusion art is also quite cheap nowadays. It will be worth a lot before being distributed, but after distribution, it is only worth around a hundred merit points per copy. Thus, your previous payments aren't really that big of a deal anymore.

"This does not only apply to you. I'll compensate the others as well. I did not plan to distribute these cultivation methods so early previously. Now that it has happened, Jiang Mu, Xia Huyou, and the others will all receive their compensation packages."

He was telling the truth. Back then, he had not expected himself to start distributing these cultivation methods so soon. Sure, those people had learned those arts in advance, but those arts were no longer valuable enough to pay for their work in the research center.

After all, they had invested a lot of resources and energy into the research center. Even the Mutual Aid Club members like Zhang Hao and Hu Zongji would be compensated as well. For them, learning these arts in advance was in itself a benefit. But for Su Yu, that was not the payment they deserved. He was someone who remember his grudges and gratitude well. He would compensate them fairly.

As for Wu Lan, she had traveled such a long distance to join him. He would naturally treat her well. He had an entire chest of earthly source fruits. And those fruits weren't useful to him. It would be a waste to let them lie around gathering dust.

There were hundreds of them in that chest. A hundred of them could be sold for fifty thousand merit points, but Su Yu did not intend to sell them. He planned to keep some for his father as well.

Naturally, heavenly source fruits were even better. The essence of heavenly source fruits was essentially heavenly source qi. And if he could find a way to extract and preserve heavenly source qi, these earthly source fruit would be even more useless for him.

Then again, it probably wouldn't be cheap to extract and preserve heavenly source qi. He would need at least Skysoar blood essence. And even the weakest Skysoar blood essence wouldn't be too cheap. He also couldn't pick only weak blood essence as the heavenly source qi composition would be too low. He might still need to buy some better-quality blood essence. That would be an expensive endeavor.

Hearing that this was compensation, Wu Lan finally smiled and said, "Am I really entitled to so many earthly source fruits?"

"Of course. You're the leader of the Breakthrough Team!"

"So I need to switch to the Source Soul Acupoint Opening Art?"

She had previously heard from Su Yu that after learning this art, one would be able to open acupoints much faster than before.

Su Yu nodded, "This is an excellent cultivation method. If you feel like it's too weak offensively, you can even find some heaven-grade martial techniques to make up for it. With this cultivation method, you won't need to worry about opening more acupoints. Since you can also fuse acupoints quickly, it will take you no time to reach the ninth-stage Infinite Strength Realm. If you continue at your current speed, you might fail to reach the Infinite Strength Realm even after two years."

"I'm a cultural researcher, not a warrior." Wu Lan did not seem too bothered. She said, "I want to reach the Skysoar Realm. I won't be able to be unrivaled within the same level. In that case, I might as well aim to grow faster..."

"But you don't have that many apertures opened, right?"

"I have eight opened!"

Su Yu was rendered speechless. Why was she thinking of breaking though when she had only opened so few apertures? But this was actually quite fast. She had only received the cultural art about two months ago. In that span of time, she had opened eight apertures. That was a decent speed. No, that was actually very fast. She had probably absorbed quite a lot of willpower for her cultivation.

"It's better to open all 72 apertures before attempting a breakthrough." Su Yu advised, "With 72 apertures, you won't even stay in the Skysoar Realm for long."

Wu Lan had a troubled expression as she said, "But if I don't break through, my willpower will be too weak. My working efficiency is too low. I've recently found that I can't even read properly anymore. After forming six characters, I need to use a lot of willpower to maintain them."

Six characters? That was fast.

While Su Yu was blanking out, Wu Lan complained gloomily, "This is so weird. After reaching Great Ming, my character formation speed seems to have increased. And my cultivation speed each night is also faster. Two days ago, I was reading a random willpower text when a character formed out of nowhere."

Why did those characters insist on appearing? She never even planned to form that many!

After a short moment, Su Yu finally understood what was happening. It was all thanks to the fire character. For him, the effects weren't too obvious. But Wu Lan had benefited significantly from its daily activation.

Due to her growth, her willpower was unable to keep up. Because of that, she had been having trouble paying attention when reading. This was very normal. A large amount of resources would be required to keep these characters nurtured. That was why the multiple character faction was known to be expensive to raise.

𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

And she was only at six characters. Things would be a lot more troublesome at ten or twenty characters.

His senior sister, Wu Jia, had formed a lot of characters. That was why she didn't like to read. Cough, cough. There was no helping it. She had really terrible attention span due to the pressure on her willpower.

"Try to bear with it for now. I'll think of something."

Su Yu placated her. He knew that not everyone was like him. For most people, having more characters was the same as having a bigger burden. Jin Sheng was the perfect example of that. Because of his characters, he remained stuck below the Cloudbreach Realm.

Back at the research center, Su Yu locked himself in the cultivation room.

"Heavenly source qi, body forging art, source soul acupoint."

He needed to link the 180 apertures and see if the source soul acupoint would appear by itself. The 180 apertures had not linked automatically after forming. Was that because he had yet to reach the limit? Did he need to form 360 apertures as well?

Forget it. Even if that was the case, Su Yu did not feel like waiting anymore. There were too few races cultivating only the willpower path out there. Even after looking for so long, he had only found the five elemental race. He didn't even know where to find more apertures.

He couldn't be stuck forever, right? No matter how strong he was, there was still a limit to the strength of a Mental Tempering Stage cultivator. And he was currently touching that limit.

"My willpower won't materialize after linking 180 apertures, right?"

He was quite worried. Whatever. He decided to make some heavenly source qi first. The biggest issue was preservation.

Characters...

"Which character is capable of preserving heavenly source qi?"

He took out a random drop of blood essence. He wanted to see if any of his characters were capable of doing so.

The blood essence was consumed and the book was activated. A body forging art was activated through the book. A strand of heavenly source qi appeared within his body. He started sending his characters into his body as well.

The blood character did nothing. It was good against blood essence, but it had no effect on heavenly source qi.

The lightning, battle, and saber characters did nothing either.

But soon, he found one effective character. He was quite surprised. It was the deceit character. The shadow barriers it created could store heavenly source qi in the form of a ball! Then again, that was understandable. The shadow barriers were capable of sealing his source qi and preventing any leakage. And heavenly source qi was basically a form of source qi.

Su Yu was pleasantly surprised. Previously, he had believed that the beast character with a beast space within would be the one to work. He gave it a try and that was indeed the case. He could store heavenly source qi within the beast space, but he had no way of taking it out.

"This will be useful when it comes to raising beasts."

Su Yu had a pensive look. The beasts inside would benefit greatly if he stuffed a large amount of heavenly source qi in there.

"Since the shadow barriers work, I can save some time..."

A black ball slowly took form in his hand. When the deceit character was still at the first tier, it could only form a small barrier enough to cover some of his acupoints. At the time, Su Yu had thought that this was a useless character.

Thanks to his nurturing, this character had finally reached the second tier. It had even reached the peak of the second tier inside the Hundred Dao Pagoda. The growth of this character was why even Elder Yun was having trouble determining his cultivation level. After reaching the peak second-tier, this deceit character had become much more useful.

After thinking about it, Su Yu decided to form a black ball the size of an apple. Then, he swallowed a drop of iron-winged bird blood essence. That was a drop of Skysoar blood essence.

The blood essence of even a regular divine or devil would cost him over a thousand merit points. That was too expensive. The iron-winged bird blood essence was more worth it.

If he could find a proper supplier, he could get a drop of early Skysoar blood essence for twenty merit points. This was a lot cheaper. Even a drop of late Skysoar blood essence could be purchased for fifty merit points. Of course, to get such a price, he needed a supplier at the level of Xia Huyou.

The iron-winged bird blood essence was around fifty times cheaper than divine and devil blood essence. And compared with first divine and original devil blood essence, it was around a hundred times cheaper.

If he could extract at least one-fiftieth of what he could get from first divine or original devil blood essence, then this would be a massive profit. After all, divine and devil blood essence was too rare while iron-winged bird blood essence could be purchased easily.

Comparatively, he would probably need to pay around the same amount of money to get the same amount of heavenly source qi, but one was easy to get while the other was extremely hard to get. There was simply no comparing the two.

Su Yu stopped thinking and started working on the blood essence. Gradually, a strand of heavenly source qi was extracted. Through his finger, it entered the black apple. Eventually, a strand of source qi appeared in the apple. It was gold in color. That was the so-called heavenly source qi!

"Only this much for twenty merit points?"

Su Yu was unhappy. He had absorbed a lot of heavenly source qi during the furball's breakthrough. That portion was probably a thousand times larger than what he had in hand. Did that not mean that he had mooched off twenty thousand merit points from the little furball?

And the furball had absorbed ten times more than him. He didn't even dare to think about that number. Forget it. There were things that even merit points couldn't buy.

"How much heavenly source qi can I find in a heavenly source fruit?"

Heavenly source fruits were very expensive as well. Then again, that was a rare treasure, so it was expected. He once read about Great Zhou King's son, Zhou Potian, who had opened nine Source Opening acupoints in three days relying on only one heavenly source fruit.

But these fruits were so rare that he wouldn't be able to purchase any even if he could afford them.

"It's rare and unattainable. Thus, extraction is still better for me."

Efficiency was irrelevant if this was his sole option. Next, Su Yu tried a drop of fire hog blood essence. It was also an early Skysoar blood essence, but the heavenly source qi it produced was much lesser in amount than the iron-winged bird blood essence.

The blood essence was slightly cheaper, but in terms of price per heavenly source qi extracted, the iron-winged bird blood essence was the better option. He tried a few other types of blood essence and eventually found out that the blood essence with the best value was actually the mountainbreak bull blood essence.

An odd look covered Su Yu's eyes. He had consumed the blood essence of at least ten healthy mountainbreak bulls. Was he supposed to start buying Skysoar Realm mountainbreak bull blood essence as well?

Those poor bulls. Should he pick a different blood essence?

He finally understood why the mountainbreak bull blood essence was so good at opening acupoints. Their cultivation method was good, but they also had a high amount of heavenly source qi in their blood essence.

"There must be a location with plentiful heavenly source qi in their homeland."

Definitely. Mountainbreak bull blood essence wasn't cheap. A drop of early Skysoar mountainbreak bull blood essence was worth more than fifty merit points. Su Yu decided to ask around and see if he could get a discount if he purchased in bulk. He also planned to see if early Cloudbreach or middle Skysoar blood essence were better options.

"My apologies, poor bulls. You can only blame yourself for being too delicious."

Su Yu felt rather helpless. He really didn't want to do this. Way too many mountainbreak bulls had been sacrificed for the sake of his growth. But...they were really too attractive. For the same price, a drop of mountainbreak bull blood essence provided four times the heavenly source qi of what the iron-winged bird blood essence could provide.