The Blessed of the Sealed Regions were awakening as the eve of the Chosen King Competition approached, and they sought fortune and reputation through fortuitous encounters and risky struggles to ready themselves. The Secret Realms of the Golden Life Pavilion, opened by the dozens, accepting all across the Grand Cyclic Stellar Region, served as the most effective flame to these moths of Karmic Luck.
Very little effort was put in before Karmic Luck deductions flashed across the Grand Cyclic Stellar Region over the last three years, bringing countless hopefuls to their destiny. Yet the shadowy hands of a certain someone were present, guiding these Blessed to encounters that even the Heavenly Daos couldn't resist.
At those times, these Blessed were met by various challengers of superb strength and outrageous talent; they were tested through battle, wits, and fortune. Fortunately, those challengers never sought to slay these Blessed, merely establish contact and glance at their gains through various means.
Li Yungu, a member of the First Commander's Unit, even found a Blessed with an ancient, discarnate demon soul tethered to an amethyst necklace. Her efforts caused the demon soul to violently retaliate, exerting powers of the Soul of Mysticism Phase, and she swiftly escaped shortly after using a profound Ever-Starlight Pellet, deeply stunning demon soul and Blessed alike. With the Ever-Starlight Pellet, even the low-quality version, it was difficult for Second Stage Ascended beings to hinder their escape.
Many of the Ascendants were given tasks or assigned targets, and a few met unbelievably surprising resistance. From unique treasures, exquisitely powerful arts and spells of ancient lineages dating back to the Grand Cyclic Stellar Region's pre-Sealed Region era where the Worldly Saint, the Grand Cyclic Titanic Emperor had reigned supreme, and discarnate souls resembling Wu Yu.
It was clear that the Heavenly Daos, like any other being, was quite predictable. Wu Yu wasn't the only discarnate soul that was present. Wei Wuyin had long since deduced that the Sealing Array was affecting the natural cycle of reincarnation, even hindering the Impartation of the Heavens in many areas.
Most of the time, the Ascendents defeated their targets. Other times, they scurried away at the first encounter with an impossible obstacle. At the times they claimed victory, some were spared and sought to gain their trust, learning about their origins and fortunes. Then, they would leave behind good fortune that would have these Blessed surging with endless happiness, and then mysteriously vanish like profound seniors.
Quite a few of these Ascendants were hundreds of years old, so in actuality, many were genuinely acting as benevolent seniors that didn't fight over these youngsters' good fortune nor had greed over their fortuitous encounters. They were patient, merciful, and relatively kind—in their own way.
However, while they scoured and reported back their numerous findings and pleasant discoveries, the true target of their search remained elusive.
-----
Ancient Sky Realm, Everlore Domain.
This was a small-sized World Realm with a white-colored dwarf-sized Solar Star with a faint, illusory Mystic Radiance Belt. This belt gave a sense of incompleteness, yet the essence provided by the Solar Star, filtered through it, vastly exceeded the peak-quality essence, more akin to pinnacle-quality essence.
The surface was a planet with a maintained ecological system with flourishing flora and fauna, freshwater lakes, mountains, and white clouds. The entire world gave off a magnificent feeling of richness and purity. This was San Luoyang's personally cultivated World Realm.
Unlike others, this was his personal project, kept secret and only a select few had access to it or was even aware of its existence. As such, in his downtime he would treat it as his World Garden, caring for it and letting it grow as a mortal would a typical garden. The hobbies of an Ascended being would scare any mortal.
At the moment, by a crystal clear lake filled to the brim with pure water energies of the pinnacle of mortal energies, three auras were present, each a distance apart. They belonged to the trio that had stolen from the Evil Blessed, seizing good fortune at the conclusion of a Chaosnova—San Yongli, Highlord Spiritwalker, and Highlord Frostwind, also known as Bing Tian!
They were each cultivating their own way. Bing Tian was absorbing an ice-attributed mystic stone; Highlord Spiritwalker was meditating with a ghastly pale complexion; San Yongli's hands hovered over a spherical shadow enveloped in a misty exterior. The Heavenly World Core!
San Yongli was, with great effort, extracting fine, string-like wisps of Heavenly Mana from the core using a unique method. Her mouth struggled to open as the wisp entered through it and down her esophagus. It traveled until it reached her Dantian Region, illuminating her body in resplendent light.
After several hours, her forehead was drenched with sweat and her fingers trembled. Her normally beautiful expression was incredibly tense, throbbing veins could be seen pulsating on her neck and temples.
For the last eight years, she's been carefully extracting the Heavenly Mana, at least one each year, and then refining it through continuous effort using her Spirit of Cultivation. This was all for the efforts of evolving her Spirit of Cultivation from its Mortal State to its Origin State. While this might seem slow, it was best to compare Jing Jiu's two hundred years of effort to formulate an incomplete Origin State.
Just from this, it could clearly be seen that the Heavenly World Core's Heavenly Mana was world-shaking!
After finishing the refinement, she breathed out lightly. "One more!" She told herself, reinvigorating her ambitions. After one more wisp, according to the method, she should form an Origin State Spirit. She couldn't predict its initial grade, but considering she had a Zenith Mortal State Spirit prior, it should reach the 2nd or 3rd Origin State.
She looked at the Heavenly World Core, her eyes glistening excitedly. If she could refine this entire Heavenly World Core, reaching the 7th Origin State might be possible!
"Cough!" Highlord Spiritwalker had suffered immense damage to her body and cultivation base, and despite cultivating for the sole sake of recovery in this pure environment, she wasn't even ten percent recovered. She lacked Mystic-Earth grade recovery products, and not even San Yongli had any.
As a Demi-Mortal Lord, given the extent of her injuries, her recovery period could be roughly estimated to be eighty to a hundred years. She sighed heavily in her heart; as cultivators grew in strength, the recovery process was similarly costly. If she was still in the Soul of Mysticism Phase and suffered these damages, she could recover in fifteen years at most.
She gritted her teeth, only soothing her depressed emotions due to now possessing over twenty thousand years of lifespan. While she lost a few thousand due to the depths of her injuries reaching her Life Source, she was alive, and she had thousands more.
Bing Tian was still recovering, her arms had been fully regrown, and she simply needed to cultivate her energies once again. However, she kept feeling a faint pressure laying on her chest, an ominous feeling lingering over her heart.
-----
Everlore God Realm, Everlore Domain.
The Central World Realm of the Everlore Association and home of Evergod. It had a dwarf-sized Solar Sky with a seven-colored Mystic Radiance Belt, tangible and spinning. Currently, the Everlore Association's top Alchemists were fully focused on their concocting efforts of the Neo-Dawn Eclipse Pill and the Sharded God Domain Pill.
They were termed the number one Alchemist Organization of the Grand Cyclic Stellar Region for a reason; Shortly after completing their first concoction of the Neo-Dawn Eclipse Pill, they went into overdrive, vastly exceeding the quantity that the Golden Life Pavilion could produce. They soon dominated the market over the last five years, the majority of the Neo-Dawn Eclipse Pill's currently out, roughly 60%, was theirs by the eighth year.
Despite the three-year head start, the Golden Life Pavilion was unable to match the prowess of the Everlore Association. That said, this success was strictly regarding raw production numbers. In terms of quality, 100% of the high and peak-quality products belonged to the Golden Life Pavilion.
This only caused the Everlore Association to invest more time and energy into perfecting the concoction process, putting everyone on it to devise various ways to elevate its quality. While the public was largely unaware of it, the Everlore Association's intentions to dominate the market of the new era were clear in their actions!
While Evergod himself never gave direct orders, he tactfully allowed his Alchemists to send out their Alchemic Knights and disciples to find Wei Wuyin's products to examine! In fact, it was through this that they succeeded after three years.
The products of Wei Wuyin severely lacked a typically present component in completed products—Spiritual Aura!
They soon realized that they couldn't oversaturate the cauldron with Spiritual Aura from Spiritual Sense, causing a volatile process thanks to the material compositions. So, while they couldn't remove Spiritual Sense and its resulting aura entirely from the process, Evergod devised a way to use Alchemic Force to contain the Spiritual Aura during the process!
Through this, he found instant success!
Since then, they've strived to find out Wei Wuyin's concoction methods through any means!
-----
At the borders of the Everlore God Realm, the Spatial Walls that stabilized the realm, a wisp of shadowy smoke penetrated through it without causing the slightest bit of disturbance. As it did, the tiny hole that the smoke generated flickered with a profound power of time vastly exceeding anything the Sealed Regions was familiar with, reversing the damage as if it didn't exist.
As the observation array and alarm formations swept across the area, it kept going without stopping.
The shadowy smoke fell weightless towards the lands below, seemingly carried by the light energies of the Solar Star, and arriving at the atmospheric layer of the planet. It soundlessly penetrated the layer until it landed on the surface of the planet.
It shook slimpossibleightly, then burrowed into the nearly -to-perceive cracks in the planet's crust, vanishing completely.
Among the numerous powerful Ascended beings or Ever-Knights was aware, but the Everlore Vault that served as the core of the planet was about to have its first unpermitted visitor.