Chapter 287 | Cultivating Through a Game, Becoming Unstoppable

“Thank you for your praise, Master!”

Inside the Sea Market Dragon Palace, Ao Mingzhu dismissed the others. Holding the treasure mirror, she sat upright on her couch, her lower half transformed into her original dragon tail, the tip of which stretched out comfortably.

Receiving praise from her master, who treated her like a mother (?), she suddenly felt a burst of joy. She hurriedly injected spiritual energy and sent over three glazed boxes before speaking aloud:

“Master, your affairs are numerous and complex, and I know I truly shouldn't disturb you. However, the Three Great Sects have arrived in grand fashion. Although they can temporarily join forces with my twelve nations of the Sea Market to eradicate the Sky Demons, if I do not show some backing, I fear they will see right through me.

This subordinate boldly begs Master to bestow a wondrous method to relieve the citizens of our twelve nations of the four directions from the suffering of being plagued by the Black Mist Poison for so many years.”

—The rulers of the twelve nations had long been suppressed by her, so she could still keep them under control for now.

But if someone from the Dragon Palace arrived in the future, or if high-level Sky Demons invaded again, she would need to produce more trump cards to counter them.

After speaking, when she didn't see any reaction from the Mirror of Two Realms for a long time, Ao Mingzhu lowered her eyes, her heart filled with anxiety.

This time, she had indeed been too insatiable.

Any cultivator who had ever come into contact with the black mist of the Wuwang Sea stood a chance of contracting the Black Mist Poison.

The Black Mist Poison was even worse than a poison that seeped into one's bones.

Once a cultivator was corroded by it, their cultivation would inevitably plummet, and they would never have the chance to ascend to immortality again.

Over the years, members of the Three Great Sects had naturally tried to cure this Black Mist Poison using pills, formations, and talismans, but unfortunately, all had yielded negligible results.

In the past, there were naturally unlucky cultivators among the Three Sects who had unfortunately contracted the Black Mist Poison.

Yet regardless of their level of cultivation, and regardless of gender, once they contracted this poison, the grand path of longevity and the long journey of cultivation would have nothing to do with them ever again.

Ao Mingzhu's shrimp soldiers and crab generals patrolled and swam in the waters around the Wuwang Sea all year round, and they suffered greatly from it.

If she could obtain a method to cure the poison, she would have the confidence to have the cultivators of the twelve nations compete for the top spot in this Four Directions Assembly and completely suppress the Three Sects.

But since the Three Great Sects had failed to crack the Black Mist Poison for hundreds of years, could her master truly have a way?

Ao Mingzhu was about to apologize for her presumption, but a celestial voice suddenly entered her ears.

“Three days.”

The Mirror of Two Realms flashed slightly, and the Great Witch's indifferent, deep voice drifted through, as if resolving these difficulties was merely a casual effort:

“In three days, there will be a solution.”

There was truly a solution?

Ao Mingzhu's dragon eyes widened slightly, and her dragon tail froze mid-air due to her utter shock, leaving her unsure of how to respond.

Very few people knew that the Sect Master of the Qingjing Sect, a grand Great Completion stage cultivator, had entered death seclusion precisely because he had been afflicted with the Black Mist Poison.

Furthermore, her father, an enfeoffed god of the Heavenly Court and the Dragon King of the North Sea, was currently guarding the Heavenly Pillar with bitter dedication, precisely out of fear that the black mist would one day invade it.

Originally, she had merely wanted to test the waters, but who would have thought that her master actually had a way?

Could it be that her master really had a way to resolve the Black Mist Poison, which even Great Completion cultivators and enfeoffed gods of the Heavenly Court were helpless against?

Then just how high was her master's cultivation?

A True Immortal? A Golden Immortal?

Or... an even higher Taiyi or Dalao?

The gods and Buddhas of the heavens had all vanished, immortal traces were impossible to find, the path to ascension was severed, and the heavenly gates were tightly shut.

For hundreds of years, not a single person on the Four Provinces Continent had ascended.

No one knew what had happened in the upper realm, nor did anyone know why things had turned out this way.

On the surface, the major sects appeared calm and tranquil, but in reality, each harbored its own hidden motives.

The sect ancestors who had been unable to ascend for a very long time were especially anxious, willing to pay any price to reopen the heavenly path and seek the ultimate method of ascension.

—Cultivators did not share the same lifespan as the heavens; even if they advanced to become immortals, there was still the concept of the “Five Decays of Heaven and Man.”

If they were unable to advance to immortality for a long time and remained trapped in the lower realm, they would sooner or later run out of spiritual energy and perish.

If her master was truly a living True Immortal in this era...

Did that not mean there was still a method of ascension left in the world?

Ao Mingzhu's breathing grew slightly heavier, and a trace of wild ecstasy rose in her eyes.

Seek immortality, seek immortality, seek immortality!

...

The three glazed treasure boxes sent by Ao Mingzhu were precisely what Nan Zhi currently needed.

The first was the Huodou Tail Flame, a fire born from the tip of a deceased Huodou's tail, which could be used for crafting artifacts and refining pills.

Legend had it that as long as a cultivator nurtured it long enough and achieved a heart-to-heart connection with this fire, they could even birth a newborn Huodou from this clump of tail flame.

The second was the Snowy Mountain Earth-Core Vine Fire, a fire nurtured within the inner core of a ten-thousand-year-old spirit vine that only grew in the core of snowy mountains. Although it was a cold fire, its power was boundless.

Shaped like a clump of ice flame, this fire could nourish the physical body, detoxify, and cure illnesses. Staying in its company for a long time could even refine one's internal organs until they were as clean and transparent as glazed glass.

As for the third item, though it was only a cluster the size of a thumb, it was the most valuable and hardest to obtain among them—the Bodhi Buddha Fire.

Legend had it that “even the Buddha gets angry.” The Buddha was not blindly benevolent; when encountering the extremely wicked, the unrepentant, and the utterly heinous, the Buddha would descend the Bodhi Buddha Fire to burn their bodies as a punishment.

Although this fire could not be used as a pill fire, it was extremely effective at suppressing evil spirits and heart demons. The reason why disciples of the Wuwei Sect had a lower chance of suffering from heart demons during cultivation compared to other sects was precisely because of this fire.

The Bodhi Buddha Fire could be said to be the very foundation of the Wuwei Sect.

Rumor had it that outside the Wuwei Sect's main hall, there was a bodhi tree that had lived for fifty thousand years. Its trunk was hollow, and it nurtured the Buddha fire.

This fire had burned brightly day and night for fifty thousand years without ever extinguishing.

Wuwei Sect disciples fed it spiritual items and rare ores day and night, yet they were only able to nurture a single fingernail-sized wisp of spiritual fire each year.

Yet a cluster of Bodhi Buddha Fire like the one before her eyes could dispel heart demons simply by being carried around.

If some deity transformation stage cultivators found out that a wisp of Buddha fire was wandering out in the open, they would likely stop at nothing to murder her and seize the treasure.

Nan Zhi put away the three glazed boxes and seriously pondered the dragon girl's request.

The Rakshasa Sea Market belonging to Ao Mingzhu was equivalent to it being used by her.

The rulers of the twelve nations were outwardly compliant but inwardly rebellious. If Ao Mingzhu hadn't been suppressing them all these years, how could only the two nations of Yaksha and Sea Dragon be at war?

If, at this time, Ao Mingzhu could produce a method to eliminate the Black Mist Poison—

She guaranteed that the rulers of the twelve nations would definitely raise both hands, wildly shouting “Long live the Queen,” and in passing, support the first female Dragon King in history to ascend her throne.

Nan Zhi hadn't been talking big earlier either.

A method to eliminate the Black Mist Poison had not yet been discovered by anyone.

However, five hundred and eighteen years later in the original history, there would be an alchemist named Nie Hongmei. After her parents were killed by a great demon, her entire clan migrated to the South Province continent.

This person had a bit of madness in her; she treated herself as a pill, devouring the black mist. Before her death, she actually managed to develop a pill recipe to eliminate the Black Mist Poison and made it public.

The Locust God, Ma San, had also received her favor and memorized this pill recipe.

Now, it was quite a bargain for Nan Zhi.

But...

Nan Zhi spread her hands.

The pill recipe wasn't the issue; the issue was that her current alchemy level was utterly abysmal.

Fortunately, there were still three days, which was enough for her to use a cheat first.

【Strange Pause Button】, activate!

————————————————————————

The rented apartment had been unoccupied for too long, and a thin layer of dust had settled on the floor. Nan Zhi did not use magic. Instead, like an ordinary person, she opened the windows to ventilate and let in fresh air.

Then she released Corn, who had been slacking off for dozens of chapters, and nudged it onto the hamster wheel to lose weight.

She hadn't brought Hongluo with her this time.

Turning on her long-unused phone, she found the user interface somewhat unfamiliar. WeChat notifications were chiming endlessly, and someone downstairs was shouting through a megaphone: