Chapter 1674: Three-Step Saint King
The sacred techniques on the stone wall could make martial artists fight desperately to seize them; the pill formulas on the stone wall could drive alchemists mad with obsession; the talisman crafting methods on the stone wall could keep talisman masters awake all night, forgetting to eat or sleep...
Zhang Ruochen, however, was not particularly interested. Withdrawing his gaze, he said, "Where are the sacred fruits and sacred medicines I need?"
"Follow me."
The Thousand Star Celestial Maiden walked ahead, her purple robe emitting a captivating fragrance that, with just a light sniff, could stir feelings of enchantment.
Following behind her, he arrived at an extremely cold storage chamber, filled with various jade boxes, wooden cases, and porcelain bottles. Zhang Ruochen did not step into the storage chamber, because he discovered that, using hidden methods, dense arrays of formation inscriptions had been carved into it.
Barging in rashly would certainly trigger a formation attack.
Zhang Ruochen had seen a Formation Saint Master before. The formation inscriptions carved here, compared to those inscribed by a Formation Saint Master, were on par in both complexity and linking technique.
With his current cultivation level, if he stepped inside, he might not be able to escape unscathed.
The Thousand Star Celestial Maiden noticed Zhang Ruochen stopping. Her crimson lips curled slightly upward, and she said, "The formation inscriptions I've carved here—can they meet your standards?"
"Have you already reached the level of a Formation Saint Master?" Zhang Ruochen asked.
The Thousand Star Celestial Maiden stepped in a specific pattern, walked to the base of the stone wall, and began taking down jade boxes and wooden cases one by one. With a proud tone, she said, "My ambition is to become a god. A mere Formation Saint Master is not such a remarkable achievement. Zhang Ruochen, as a controller of the Eternal Dao, we should set our sights further."
Formation Saint Masters were rarer than Great Saints and held an exalted status in any major world.
Any sect, great religion, or city could not do without formation protection, and Formation Saint Masters were figures they absolutely had to invite.
A Formation Saint Master could sit on equal footing with a Great Saint.
But the Thousand Star Celestial Maiden said it was not a remarkable achievement. No matter how Zhang Ruochen heard it, it carried a hint of showing off and smugness.
The Thousand Star Celestial Maiden carried a tall stack of jade boxes and wooden cases as she walked out and handed them to Zhang Ruochen. Without the lofty aura of a celestial maiden, she instead had a delicate, gentle temperament like a girl from a small family. She said, "You already have twenty-one thousand sacred dao rules in your body, and your spiritual power has reached the middle stage of the fifty-sixth rank. These sacred medicines and sacred fruits should be enough to let you cultivate to the Three-Step Saint King realm and raise your spiritual power to the fifty-seventh rank."
The Thousand Star Celestial Maiden's Source-Origin Divine Eyes gave Zhang Ruochen a major headache. In front of her, no secret could be hidden.
Sometimes, Zhang Ruochen even wondered, standing before her, was he completely naked?
Taking the jade boxes and wooden cases, Zhang Ruochen opened them one by one to inspect.
He had to admit, the Thousand Star Celestial Maiden was quite generous. The sacred fruits and sacred medicines she gave were even more than he had expected. As long as no bottleneck appeared, breaking through to the next realm was inevitable.
Suddenly, the Thousand Star Celestial Maiden asked a question: "Zhang Ruochen, do you drink alcohol?"
Zhang Ruochen was somewhat surprised, then shook his head. "Not often."
"How about having a drink with me?"
The Thousand Star Celestial Maiden walked to another storage chamber, which was filled with various famous wines and sacred brews collected from different major worlds. Each had an age of over a hundred years, and their value was hard to estimate in sacred stones.
Who would have thought that the gentle and mysterious Thousand Star Celestial Maiden was actually a woman who loved alcohol?
"This is 'No Broken Vow,' brewed by a Bodhisattva from the Western Buddha Realm. I went to great lengths to buy a bottle. I've never found a friend worthy of sharing this wine with. As the controller of time and space, you have the qualification to taste it."
The Thousand Star Celestial Maiden's slender, jade-like hands untied the seal on the wine bottle. Instantly, a fragrant aroma spread out, filling the entire ancient carriage.
Even Zhang Ruochen, who always reminded himself to drink sparingly, was captivated by the wine's fragrance. He couldn't help but take a light sniff. When he opened his eyes again, the Thousand Star Celestial Maiden had already filled a cup in front of him.
She, with her nearly perfect jade hands, lifted the cup, her red lips lightly touching its edge. "Not bad. Truly worthy of 'No Broken Vow.' It hasn't disappointed me."
Zhang Ruochen did not pick up the cup. He felt the atmosphere was very strange, making him find it hard to believe.
Zhang Ruochen said, "Are we friends or enemies?"
"Of course we're friends. Otherwise, how could I invite you onto my carriage and bring out 'No Broken Vow' for you to taste?" The Thousand Star Celestial Maiden sat opposite him, her long skirt spread on the ground like a purple sacred flower, her starry eyes breathtakingly beautiful.
Zhang Ruochen said, "Then will you kill your friend in the future? Seize your friend's Truth Esoterica?"
"Friends come in many kinds. The two of us can only be considered drinking buddies."
The Thousand Star Celestial Maiden raised her cup, making an elegant toasting gesture, and smiled with bright eyes and white teeth. "Of course, among men, you are one of the few I don't dislike. If you cherish this friendship, when the time comes, you can voluntarily hand over the Truth Esoterica to me. Who knows, our friendship might even deepen. Drink up. Are you afraid I've poisoned the wine?"
The fragrance of 'No Broken Vow' was like Qing Mo's cooking—it had an irresistible allure for any living being.
Zhang Ruochen picked up the cup, took a small sip, then downed it in one gulp. "Good wine. I know an old fellow who loves alcohol like his life and is also a master brewer. This 'No Broken Vow' can already compare to the wine he makes."
After a few rounds of drinking, the Thousand Star Celestial Maiden finally asked the question that had been lingering in her mind. "By the shore of the Truth Sea, you and Feng Yan were secretly discussing me. At the time, you said, 'This woman is indeed very strong, and she knows how to make choices, always picking the right path. She's clever, very clever, but unfortunately...'"
"You didn't finish. I really want to know what the 'unfortunately' was."
"So this is why you invited me to drink." Zhang Ruochen suddenly understood.
From childhood to adulthood, the Thousand Star Celestial Maiden had always been more outstanding than any of her peers. She learned everything at a glance and did it even better than her teachers. She had received countless praises and compliments.
Everyone thought she was flawless, without any weaknesses, and that she would surely become an emperor and achieve godhood in the future.
Only Zhang Ruochen, when commenting on her, said the word "unfortunately." Naturally, the Thousand Star Celestial Maiden had kept it in her heart and constantly pondered what he meant to say next.
Then, Zhang Ruochen said something that made the Thousand Star Celestial Maiden quite annoyed.
He said, "Unfortunately, your character is not tough enough. When faced with a true great calamity, you may not dare to rise to the challenge. One with an emperor's heart does not bow to others. One with a god's heart is indomitable. Your state of mind is still far from being unyielding."
After saying this, Zhang Ruochen did not indulge in more wine. He stood up and walked out of the ancient carriage.
Arriving at the alchemy and artifact refining pavilion where the cultivators of the Thousand Star Civilization had gathered, the carriage drove inside. Under the guidance of Big Beard, Zhang Ruochen was arranged to temporarily stay in a cultivation secret chamber.
From start to finish, Zhang Ruochen did not see the Thousand Star Celestial Maiden again. Clearly, she was still inside the ancient carriage.
"Dawn is about to break. There are still four hours until noon. Using the inner space of the Time-Space Crystal, it should be enough to fully refine all these sacred fruits and sacred medicines."
Zhang Ruochen still had some sacred fruits and sacred medicines on him, taken from the Saint Kings of the Heavenly Realm Faction. Even if they weren't enough to cultivate to the Three-Step Saint King realm, they wouldn't be far off.
Asking the Thousand Star Celestial Maiden for sacred fruits and sacred medicines was just a way to take advantage of her.
Zhang Ruochen entered the inner space of the Time-Space Crystal, took out one of each sacred fruit and sacred medicine that could enhance cultivation and spiritual power, and began to refine and absorb them with full effort.
Several hours passed. Zhang Ruochen had refined all the sacred fruits and sacred medicines on the ground.
In his Qi Sea, the Heavenly River formed by sacred dao rules had widened somewhat, and its flow speed had noticeably increased.
The total number of sacred dao rules in the Heavenly River reached forty thousand seven hundred and sixty, nearly doubling.
With such a massive number of rules, it was certain that he had broken through to the Three-Step Saint King.
Of course, Zhang Ruochen was still far from the Four-Step Saint King. According to many records, the number of sacred dao rules needed to reach at least one hundred thousand to possibly enter the Four-Step Saint King realm.
Only by reaching the Four-Step Saint King realm could a cultivator perfectly unleash the power of a Mid-rank Sacred Art.
Cultivators below the Four-Step Saint King could only bring out a fraction of the power of a Mid-rank Sacred Art when using it, far from its perfect form. It was like the gap between a Saint and a Half-Saint.
Thus, the gap in combat power between a Three-Step Saint King and a Four-Step Saint King was enormous. Many cultivators with extraordinary talent could not fight across realms.
At the Saint King realm, each step eliminated a large number of mediocre talents. Those who could advance to the later steps were all formidable.
For this reason, the further one went, the harder it became to fight across realms.
Zhang Ruochen muttered to himself, "Since entering the God-Sealing Platform, I've consumed nearly a hundred kinds of sacred fruits and sacred medicines. Even if there are other different types, they definitely won't let me break through to the Four-Step Saint King realm. Unless I find a few rare treasures on the level of the True Marvel Sacred Fruit, or a hundred-thousand-year ancient sacred medicine, I can break through quickly. The halls on Wind Summit might hold such opportunities."
With his realm breakthrough and greatly increased strength, Zhang Ruochen was in a fairly good mood.
However, Zhang Ruochen's spiritual power hit a bottleneck, stuck at the peak of the fifty-sixth rank. After swallowing more than a dozen types of spiritual power-enhancing sacred medicines in a row, he could not advance further.
Zhang Ruochen felt a sense of crisis, worried that the peak of the fifty-sixth rank might be his lifelong limit.
How many spiritually talented cultivators, brilliant in their youth with the potential to become Spiritual Power Great Saints, were stuck at a bottleneck for hundreds of years, unable to advance a single step, and eventually died of old age?
Such "late-blooming" geniuses were everywhere.
Zhang Ruochen quickly calmed himself down and summarized the reason: "It must be because I've been swallowing pills too quickly recently, breaking through in spiritual power too fast, but lacking insight and experience, leading to this situation."
Compared to those old fellows who had lived for hundreds of years, Zhang Ruochen was still too young and had experienced too little. That he could break through all the way to the peak of the fifty-sixth rank before hitting a bottleneck was thanks to the seven lifetimes of life he had experienced in the *Seven Lives Seven Deaths Diagram*, which had broadened his experience and tempered his spirit.
Otherwise, with his cultivation speed, the bottleneck would have arrived long ago. How could it have waited until now?
Suddenly, Zhang Ruochen sensed something and stepped out of the Time-Space Crystal. He saw a little fellow in the cultivation secret chamber, wearing a Daoist robe, with a round, plate-shaped mushroom hat on its head.
It was the Spirit-Connecting Sacred Mushroom, the True Marvel Little Daoist.
Zhang Ruochen observed the secret chamber and found that the formation inscriptions had not been damaged. Quite surprised, he said, "How did you find your way here? And, with formations set up in the secret chamber, how did you break in?"