Gu Yang took a deep breath. As a wisp of the emanating chaotic fragrance drilled into his nose, the vitality and blood in his body, which had been turbulent due to the teleportation, instantly calmed down.
[Ding. Successfully intercepted the golden fortuitous encounter: Chaos Five-Element Lotus.]
[Reward: 100 Destiny Points.]
[Current Talent Points: 300]
There was no time to savor the joy of the system's reward.
Getting the treasure was only the first step.
Only what was swallowed into the stomach truly belonged to him.
Who knew if there were any secret techniques that could track the aura of this Five-Element Lotus?
He had to refine it immediately. Delay would only bring unexpected changes.
Gu Yang adjusted his breathing and circulated the Great Sun Heaven-Burning Sutra.
He waited until his essence, energy, and spirit climbed to their absolute peak.
"Heavenly Dao Foundation Establishment..."
Gu Yang's gaze hardened. He reached out, grabbed the Chaos Five-Element Lotus, and without the slightest hesitation, stuffed it directly into his mouth!
There was none of the refreshing fragrance one would expect from a spiritual herb.
The moment it entered his mouth, Gu Yang felt as if he had swallowed a collapsing star!
Boom!!!
In that instant, he could not even let out a scream.
The seemingly delicate lotus, the moment it slid down his throat, transformed into an extremely berserk torrent of chaos, instantly destroying his esophagus and stomach!
It was not melting; it was annihilation.
Gu Yang's chest visibly caved in, and then frantically swelled up like a balloon!
"Ugh!!"
Gu Yang clenched his jaw so hard that his teeth instantly shattered.
Blood spurted madly from his seven orifices, instantly dyeing him into a bloody man.
Pain!
An indescribable, excruciating agony.
It was like having every inch of the bones in his entire body smashed to pieces, thrown into a millstone to be ground into powder, and finally mixed with magma to be remolded.
That chaotic energy was too overbearing. It looked down upon Gu Yang's mortal flesh. It wanted to completely destroy this body and use it as nourishment to reforge a Dao Foundation!
"You want to destroy me... you are not qualified!!"
Gu Yang roared madly within his sea of consciousness, his surviving will desperately guarding his spiritual altar.
"Great Sun Heaven-Burning! Refine it for me!!"
Boom!
Deep within his dantian, the dormant Golden Crow Origin Fire seemed to have been provoked.
That was the pride of the ancient sun.
Since you are chaos, then I am the light that splits the heavens!
The golden flames instantly surged, flowing upstream along Gu Yang's broken meridians, and fiercely clashed with that gray torrent of chaos.
Sizzle...
Gu Yang's body became a battlefield.
With every collision, his flesh and skin would explode into a mist of blood, revealing the ghastly white bones beneath.
If anyone else saw this scene, they would certainly be frightened out of their wits.
How was this cultivation? This was clearly death by a thousand cuts!
However, within that destruction, a new life was quietly gestating.
The bones that had been washed over by the chaotic energy, originally a pale white, now actually began to glow with a miraculous, five-colored jade hue.
The severed meridians were reborn in the flames, becoming wider and more resilient, like roaring dragons surging forward.
Fifteen minutes.
Thirty minutes.
Two hours.
Gu Yang was like a stubborn piece of iron, repeatedly tormented in the depths of fire and water.
His consciousness had already blurred. Only that obsession with becoming strong remained like a nail, firmly driven into the depths of his soul.
Finally.
The moment the last wisp of chaotic energy was forcibly refined by the Golden Crow True Fire and merged into his dantian.
Crack.
A sound, as if some sort of shackle between heaven and earth had been broken, rang out within Gu Yang's body.
The originally liquid sea of spiritual energy began to frantically rotate and collapse.
A towering, ancient lotus Dao platform, radiating five-colored divine light, slowly rose in the center of his dantian's sea of qi!
Heavenly Dao Foundation Establishment, complete!
...
Boom!
The dead silence of the subterranean rift was instantly torn to shreds.
Gu Yang abruptly opened his eyes.
In that instant, it was as if a blazing sun had risen within the pitch-black underground cave.
It was no longer the superficial spiritual light of the Qi Condensation Realm, but a tangible, terrifying coercion carrying an aura of primordial desolation.
Inside his body, the newly forged five-colored Dao Foundation was slowly rotating.
Every rotation let out a muffled rumble, like a millstone crushing the void.
The five elements circulated, generating life endlessly.
And at the very peak of the Dao Foundation, a cluster of dark golden flame coiled like an emperor, purifying and compressing all the mottled spiritual energy, transforming it into billowing, magma-like liquid spiritual energy that washed through his limbs and bones.
"So this is... Heavenly Dao Foundation Establishment."
Gu Yang clenched his fists, feeling the power that was so abundant it was almost overflowing.
Suddenly, with a stir of his mind, the five-colored lotus platform within his dantian trembled violently, and a stream of profound information flooded into his mind.
"Hm? This is..."
A trace of wild joy flashed through Gu Yang's eyes.
This Chaos Five-Element Lotus had not only reforged his foundation, but it had actually birthed an Innate Divine Ability!
"Rise!"
Gu Yang shouted in a low voice.
Hum!
Within a ten-foot radius around him, the air abruptly twisted.
A gigantic, translucent phantom of a five-colored light lotus emerged out of thin air. Unlike ordinary shields, this light lotus was not blooming. Instead, it was inverted, resembling an upside-down glazed pagoda, firmly protecting Gu Yang within the heart of the flower.
Its five massive petals rotated slowly, while the five-colored radiance of cyan, red, yellow, white, and black flowed ceaselessly.
Innate Divine Ability: Chaos Lotus Platform!
Gu Yang casually grabbed a hard piece of black iron ore, channeled fifty percent of his spiritual energy, and viciously smashed it against the inverted light lotus.
"Bang!"
The force, sufficient to shatter a low-grade magical artifact, was like a clay ox entering the sea the moment it touched the light barrier of the lotus platform.
The rotating five-colored radiance merely brightened slightly before instantly breaking down and dissolving this berserk power, turning it into pure five-element spiritual energy to feed back into himself.
"The five elements rotate, and myriad spells cannot invade."
Gu Yang looked at the indestructible inverted lotus platform, and the corners of his mouth finally curled into an unbridled smile.
This divine ability not only possessed astonishing defense, but even more terrifying was that it could deflect an enemy's spiritual energy attacks through the principle of the mutual generation of the five elements. Unless the opponent's realm was vastly higher than his own, allowing them to overcome absolute skill with absolute power and instantly burst the five-element cycle, otherwise...
Within the same realm, he already stood in an invincible position!
...
Above Soul-Severing Valley.
The pale poisonous miasma that shrouded the area year-round seemed to have encountered something terrifying at this moment, frantically fleeing and dissipating in all directions.
It was replaced by a boundless clear sky.
Immediately after.
Hum...
The boom of a Dao bell, seemingly originating from the primordial era, resounded across a radius of a thousand miles.
The cultivators who were fighting and hunting for treasures on the outskirts of Soul-Severing Valley, whether they were of the righteous path or demonic cultivators, all froze simultaneously, raising their heads in absolute horror.
"What is... that?"
High up in the sky, endless purple qi came from the east, vast and mighty, blotting out the sky and covering the sun.
In the center of the purple qi, the phantom of an unimaginably colossal five-colored lotus slowly bloomed.
Above the lotus, a three-legged Golden Crow could be faintly seen flapping its wings and taking flight, scattering tens of thousands of golden rays.
The Five Elements stabilize the universe; the Golden Crow suppresses the firmament.
Under this majestic pressure of heaven and earth, all demonic beasts within a thousand-mile radius, regardless of their level, prostrated themselves on the ground, shivering as they kowtowed and worshipped in the direction of the blooming lotus.
Even Foundation Establishment Realm cultivators felt the flow of spiritual energy in their bodies stagnate, their divine souls seemingly taking a heavy blow from this sight.
"An anomaly of heaven and earth! This is someone forging a supreme Dao Foundation!"
"Thirty thousand miles of purple qi from the east... Could this be the legendary Heavenly Dao Foundation Establishment?!"
"Which ancient almighty has reincarnated?"
Shock, greed, reverence.
Countless gazes were locked intently upon the epicenter of the erupting anomaly—the depths of Soul-Severing Valley.
...