"Hmm?"
Vincent, who controlled the battlefield, had clearly noticed the strange crow that had suddenly crashed into the fight.
He immediately cast True Insight to probe, but the feedback made his brow crease—no useful information could be detected. Mana feedback indicated that this really was just an ordinary crow, at most a bit cleverer than average.
His eyes narrowed as his gaze swept to Chen Yu, who was flying toward the crow, then to the bulging leather pouch clutched in the crow's talons.
A thought flickered through his mind; he seemed to have caught onto Chen Yu's intention.
Vincent abandoned the long-range spell exchange with Louisa, tapped his staff lightly at midair.
Complex silver magic patterns flowed and intertwined like living things, quickly forming an arcane gate for short-distance precision teleportation.
And two or three kilometers away, directly along Count Bran's flight path, another identical arcane gate appeared out of thin air.
Vincent thrust his left hand into the arcane gate before him, and miraculously that arm extended from the other arcane gate two or three kilometers away, reaching out to grab the incoming Count Bran.
"Little assassin! This count isn't afraid of you!"
The talons instantly left several searing cuts on Vincent's arm. Vincent gritted his teeth against the pain, thrust his arm forward, and finally seized Count Bran's flapping talon.
"Little crow, I will use you as sacrificial material." Vincent's voice came through the arcane gate, cold and hard.
Count Bran thrashed his wings desperately but couldn't escape Vincent's palm.
Just as Vincent was sure of victory and half his body began to pass through the arcane gate, a crafty gleam flashed in Bran's small eyes.
He immediately ceased struggling. With a "boom" his body exploded into countless black feathers, dissipating like smoke and slipping from Vincent's grasp.
From within the plume of feathers and smoke, Count Bran reappeared, his talons slashing toward Vincent's face.
"Ah—!!"
Deep, painful scratches streaked across Vincent. He felt intense pain in his eyes and hastily shut them; blood seeped from between his fingers.
"Damn mutt-bird!" His face twisted with fury—an uncharacteristic loss of composure, his voice warped by anger.
Count Bran had already dived down, snatched up the dropped leather pouch again, and darted toward Chen Yu, cackling proudly, "Gahaha! As expected of me, think you can catch me? Keep dreaming for another hundred years!"
But before he could get far from the arcane gate, Vincent opened his eyes again.
Compared to his previous blue eyes, they had turned blood-red, pupils like molten lava, flowing with a tangible infernal flame.
He had evidently cast some demon spell from the Abyss, temporarily sacrificing his sight in exchange for heightened mana sensing or another power.
His gaze locked onto the fleeing Count Bran. Without hesitation he raised his staff; the gem at its tip glowed an ominous dark green.
[Plague Insect Swarm]
A vast swarm of locusts exuding pestilence and rot materialized and hummed menacingly, coalescing into a black, oppressive cloud that surged toward Count Bran.
Where they passed, even the air darkened and became contaminated.
Seeing that, Count Bran turned and squawked in panic, terrified by the black, surging insect mass.
"Your Majesty! Help! I'm being eaten by bugs!!"
Chen Yu flapped his gel wings with all his might, flying toward him, but the gel wings weren't particularly fast.
Just as the pestilence-scented swarm was about to envelop Count Bran, a teasing female voice suddenly sounded beside them.
"Oh, isn't this our honorable Count Crow? Looks like you need a little help."
The giant eagle form of Celeste flickered in front of Count Bran in an instant. She beat her enormous bluish wings, whipping up a fierce gust that swept away many locusts and tore a large hole through the black mass.
But Celeste knew the danger of Vincent's spells all too well and dared not linger.
She transformed back into a lithe half-elf and scooped up the still-flailing Count Bran, plunging toward the ground in an attempt to evade the swarm's follow-up attack.
"Ka!!" Count Bran shrieked. In the moment of free fall, something clicked in his head.
"You wicked woman! You're manipulating Count Bran's fate?!"
Both Celeste and he were followers of the Lady of Contrariety, and she knew the nature of that power well.
To influence, even to arrange, a companion's fate trajectory to a degree was not difficult for other worshippers of Contrariety.
Her timely arrival clearly meant she had calculated his impending misfortune, or perhaps fate had guided her intervention at this moment.
Gah! That wicked woman must have planned this since their first meeting at Shield River City!
Celeste waved the simple staff in her hand, a smirk at her lips. "Don't put it so nastily, Count Crow. This is the Lady's will."
While descending she hurriedly added, "Contrariety did hint that a 'black aristocrat' would come to Shield River City... but I never mentioned the second half at the time."
"It also revealed that your fate would become closely linked to the Crown of Ignis."
"I don't know what you plan to do with that broken crown, but clearly that crown is the key to contrariety's thread."
"Gah! This infuriates me!" Count Bran felt like a pawn in a game as he squirmed in her arms.
But he soon spotted Vincent near the arcane gate. The wizard's staff once again emitted an even more dangerous red glow.
"Gah! Wicked woman! Quick—"
Before he could finish, it was as if all the locusts were injected with berserk magic. They grew bloodthirstier and faster, charging forward heedless of Celeste's gust.
Even though Louisa cast a timely magic shield around them from afar, at the crucial moment Celeste used her own back to block most of the locusts' onslaught to protect Count Bran and the pouch.
"!" Celeste groaned inwardly as a searing corrosive pain erupted across her back. Her falling body lost balance and accelerated toward the ground.
"It's over! We're done! We're going to become crow pancakes!" Count Bran shrieked as Celeste clutched him and plummeted toward the hard earth.
However, the imagined crushing pain never arrived.
Count Bran actually felt as if he and Celeste had landed on a warm, springy cushion and even bounced a little.
Huh? Gel?
He cautiously opened his tiny green eyes and saw beneath them a large patch of stretched, deformed emerald gel with round, gleaming eyes blinking at him.
Chen Yu gave a rebound; the gel quickly snapped back into a round, bouncy shape and flung them outward.
"Ka! It's Your Majesty!!" Count Bran was ecstatic. He scooped up the leather pouch that had fallen nearby, hopped over to Chen Yu with jaunty steps, puffed out his chest, and began to boast, leaving the injured Celeste behind.
"Your Majesty, look, it's all here. The crown fragments are all here. I did not fail in my mission!"
"Indeed, Count Bran, you are the kingdom's most reliable minister." Chen Yu genuinely praised him this time.
Sneaking past a mage of Vincent's caliber was truly impressive.
Celeste pressed her aching chest and struggled to rise, complaining, "You little crow sure know how to flatter."
Count Bran hopped back and waved his wings magnanimously. "Wicked woman, in light of that last rescue, I won't hold your manipulation of fate against you!"
Celeste rolled her eyes and ignored the noisy crow.
She glanced at Louisa, who was still locked in a fierce spell duel and growing pale, and at Vincent, whose aura remained strong. Cutting to the point, she said to Chen Yu:
"Lord Slime, His Highness's spiritual energy is at its limit. He won't hold much longer. What do you intend to do? Please hurry."
Chen Yu wobbled his gel body to indicate he understood.
He did not dawdle. He had Count Bran reach into the leather pouch and pull out a crown fragment that shimmered with dim golden light.
Once exposed to air, the golden fragment seemed to awaken and suddenly flashed with a brilliance like the noon sun.
Pure golden flames burned across the fragment's surface, like a miniature sun. It floated toward Chen Yu.
Huh? Why is this thing so proactive?
Chen Yu blinked his small eyes, only to see the crown fragment tremble and then thrust itself into his gel body.
Next came the second fragment, then a third... Most of the crown fragments in the pouch seemed summoned. They flew out as golden streams and one by one struck Chen Yu's gel body.
"Chew!!!"
Chen Yu's entire gel form was instantly enveloped in dazzling golden light. He seemed to transform into a true sun, radiating blinding brilliance and a vast, warm, sacred aura.
The surrounding Gray Mist was driven back; the demons gave uncomfortable hisses and instinctively retreated.
"His Majesty... His Majesty turned into the sun?!" Count Bran cried out in panic, using his wings to shield his eyes from the glare.
But at this moment Chen Yu had already entered meditation, immersed in his Yellow Court inner landscape, gradually losing most perception of the outside world.
......
Yellow Court inner landscape, the deepest realm of a cultivator's consciousness.
Foundation Establishment is the first true threshold on the path of cultivation.
When yin and yang harmonize, when dragon and tiger converge in the Yellow Court and the Five Elements are complete, the three treasures—essence, qi, and spirit—condense into an immortal Dao Seed. Only then does Foundation Establishment begin.
After all the crown fragments merged into the gel, Chen Yu's inner landscape suddenly spawned a lump of undifferentiated "innate primordialness."
As he had guessed, the Crown of Ignis fragments, containing solar divine power, truly could combine with the World Tree to act as the Two Treasures of Yin and Yang.
This innate primordialness was clearly established by the Two Treasures as a formless cauldron in his inner landscape, using its vast essence-qi as fuel to refine and thus naturally produce an originary substance.
Looking more carefully, the original meridians and core pathways in his inner landscape had vanished. The surroundings became a chaotic darkness, as if before the universe opened.
Only at the center of that boundless darkness did essence, qi, and spirit coalesce into a tiny seed emanating three-colored radiance—a Three Treasures Dao Seed.
Once the Dao Seed formed, for a Dao-base-stable slime cultivator like Chen Yu, the subsequent steps were relatively simple.
He only needed to use the Dao Seed as a vessel to break through the three Foundation Establishment gates, assimilate the innate primordialness, harmonize yin and yang and the Five Elements, and construct an inner mini-world inside his inner landscape to complete Foundation Establishment and leap to a new tier of life.
The three Foundation gates divide into Heaven, Earth, and Human, corresponding to the cultivator's essence, qi, and spirit—the Three Treasures.
Each breakthrough would grant the Three Treasures Dao Seed an extreme sublimation, gradually approaching the nature of the innate primordialness.
It was said these three gates were the most perilous part of Foundation Establishment: heart demons proliferate and carelessness could shatter the Dao Seed and ruin cultivation.
But for a Slime Lord whose health points cap exceeded 400,000 and who possessed enormous spiritual power, it was child's play.
He imagined himself standing in the inner landscape's dark chaos, facing that small Dao Seed, and boldly waved his hand.
"Break for me!"
"Boom!"
It was like the first thunder of creation.
The Earth Gate, located at the tail vertebrae end and corresponding to the essence root, was instantly shattered by his vast, oceanic life essence. The stagnant yin pollution in the gate was completely cleansed and transformed into pure energy that merged into the Dao Seed.
The Three Treasures Dao Seed burst into brilliant radiance, its volume swelling slightly, already beginning to illuminate a small patch of surrounding darkness.
But it wasn't enough.
"Break again."
Essence and qi were drawn upward and surged like a heaven-splitting great axe, directly cleaving the Human Gate located at the mid-spine, the pivot of qi.
There, heart-demons formed from the seven emotions and six desires—the greedy dragon, the shadow of fear, the phantasmal temptress of lust—had only just begun to appear when Chen Yu imagined his round gel posterior and dropped a plump sit upon them.
"Plop—"
All the heart-demon illusions popped like soap bubbles in sunlight.
The Three Treasures Dao Seed blossomed again, becoming denser and larger, its brilliance sweeping across a wider area of darkness.
But it was still lacking.
"Final gate, break!"
Spiritual power gathered at the Fengfu point at the back of the head, the celestial gate corresponding to spirit, and charged straight through.
"Boom!!!"
When the Heaven Gate opened, Chen Yu immediately felt his mind clear; thinking speed, perception range, and control over his own power leapt up a tremendous rung.
His mind became far more lucid, as if dust had been wiped from the lens of his wisdom.
At that moment he felt as though he had become the Dao Seed itself, expanding and expanding and expanding.
Finally he held against the chaotic innate primordialness and actually split it cleanly in two.
Pure qi rose and transformed into a high, azure sky studded faintly with stars.
Impure qi sank and became deep, solid earth that could bear all things.
A tiny but complete inner landscape world took initial shape.
Above the sky, the body's five organs became five shining stars, glittering brilliantly.
The Heart-Fire star burned hot and leapt, opposed by the deep, tranquil Kidney-Water star—fire and water balanced.
The Liver-Wood star bristled with life and was harmonized by the Lung-Metal star's sharp austerity—wood and metal generate and restrain each other, maintaining growth and contraction balance.
The Spleen-Earth star was steady and stable, centered and governing transformations, reconciling the other four stars like the earth that supports everything.
Thus, this nascent inner small world contained the Five Elements—deep within the earth, the molten terrestrial fire began to stir and flow like the world's lifeblood, bringing warmth and energy.
Clear springs welled from the earth veins, converging into winding streams that flowed eastward, eventually entering a serene, deep inner sea that symbolized rivers returning to the ocean, energies stored away.
Tender green shoots broke through wet soil, sprouted and rapidly grew into lush forests and grasslands bursting with life.
Veins of ore quietly formed under the soil and rock, gleaming faintly with metals, jade, and crystals—signs of hidden potential and wealth.
Yet the land remained dark.
The sky had no sun or moon; the land lacked the alternation of light and dark.
Though the Five Elements existed, yin and yang were not yet separated.
The most crucial yin and yang were still missing.