137: Chapter 137 Returning Home

Seeing that soft tactics wouldn't work, Wang Shouyi suddenly raised his hand to wipe his face, squeezed out a smile that was uglier than crying, and transmitted his voice, "

"Qingcheng, put it away, don't let outsiders laugh at us, we have guests at home today."

He nudged his chin in the direction of Dan Linger, and his voice transmission carried a bit more urgency.

"Did you see that? Brought back by your second brother, Dantuzi's granddaughter, she might be your second sister-in-law in the future. With such a big display, if you scare her away, how are you going to explain it to second brother?"

Dan Linger was cracking melon seeds. Seeing Wang Shouyi nudge his chin at her, she tilted her head in confusion and leaned closer to Wang Shoudong, like a little sparrow that was startled but reluctant to move away.

On the surface, she looked demure and dependent, but inside, her heart was already churning with towering waves.

Is this the small border Family that Wang Shoudong talked about?

Following Wang Shoudong along the way, she had listened to him casually say phrases like "our Family business is small" and "we just raise fish and sell Puppets," and she had even imagined a shabby scene of dozens of mu of spiritual fields, a few broken tile-roofed houses, and being dirt poor.

Yet the fifty Second-Stage combat Puppets before her eyes were not a small number even in her grandfather's Lingdan Sect—no, placed in any Sect in the Yue Kingdom, they were a force that could walk sideways.

With no Core Formation experts coming out, who could contend with them?

No wonder Shoudong used that furnace to smash people so smoothly; it turns out he had been influenced by it since childhood.

...

Deep within the Wanshou Mountain Range, Misty Marsh.

This place was shrouded in black-green poisonous fog all year round, with foul water flowing everywhere and miasma surging like tides.

Let alone beast hunters, even the thick-skinned Yao Beasts in the mountain range didn't dare to step foot here for half a step.

Only some monstrous creatures naturally fond of poison entrenched themselves here, living on rotting meat and miasma, rolling in the mud, and threading through poisonous weeds.

Yet these past few days, even these poisonous creatures had started fleeing outward like mad.

Swarms of poisonous lizards poured out from the depths of the marsh, devouring all living things along the way, and tearing at each other as they fled into the dense forest.

Several Second-Stage poisonous pythons charged toward the outer fringes of the mountain range without even looking back, as if something in the deepest part of the marsh made them unable to care about their instinctive territorial awareness.

One hundred zhang deep beneath the marshland, a secret chamber had been artificially excavated.

The surrounding stone walls were carved full of isolation Formation runes. With Wang Shouren at the center, a layer of pale cyan light barrier completely isolated the entire secret chamber from the outside world.

There was no light, no sound, and not even a trace of Spiritual Qi fluctuation could be transmitted out.

Right in the center of the secret chamber, a white figure sat cross-legged in mid-air. His sleeves fluttered without any wind, and his Aura surged and ebbed like the tide.

Wang Shouren abruptly opened his eyes, and two beams of purple light burst forth from the depths of his pupils, illuminating the entire secret chamber as bright as day.

Those purple lights carried a heart-palpitating sense of destruction, like a heavenly tribulation about to descend from the Nine Heavens, forcefully suppressed within this tiny square inch.

He slowly exhaled a breath of foul air, which actually condensed into a red-gold thunder cloud that rolled in front of him for a moment before slowly dissipating.

"Ten years of bitter cultivation, a hundred days of precipitation—current me is at my absolute Peak."

He raised his eyes to look at the rock above his head covered by the Formation, his gaze seeming to pierce through a hundred zhang of soil, reaching directly to the firmament above the marsh.

"Foundation Establishment—open for me!"

The moment his voice fell, the last formless shackles within his body shattered with a bang.

The spiritual power vortex in his Dantian that had hung suspended for ten years suddenly contracted, contracting fiercely and rapidly, as if it wanted to compress all the spiritual power accumulated over ten years into a single point.

Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi surged toward him crazily like a breached flood, passing through the poisonous fog of the marsh, through the mud layer, and through the stone wall. Although it was forcibly blocked for a moment by that isolation Formation layer, it still poured into his limbs and Meridians with an unstoppable momentum.

If anyone were here, they would definitely be terrified out of their wits by his Aura at this moment, causing their Soul Flying Away and Spirit Scattering.

This was clearly not the Aura a Qi Refining Cultivator should have, nor was it even the Aura an ordinary Foundation Establishment Cultivator could have.

That Aura was as vast as an abyss and as violent as thunder, far stronger than an ordinary Early Stage Foundation Establishment. It was as if the half year he had suppressed himself was not standing still, but rather accumulating power like an avalanche and tsunami for this very moment.

Foundation Establishment was divided into three grades. Those who achieved it by taking a foundation establishment pill attained Human Grade Foundation Establishment, which had the lowest quality and the shallowest Foundation.

Those who did not rely on external Medicinal Pills and purely broke through realms with their own skill achieved Earth Grade Foundation Establishment, which could only be encountered by chance and not sought.

As for true Heaven Grade Foundation Establishment, it required spiritual objects of Heaven and Earth as a guide to integrate the power of those spiritual objects into the Foundation, making the attainment of the Golden Core Dao not entirely hopeless.

Throughout the entire Yue Kingdom in the past nearly one hundred years, those who could achieve Heaven Grade Foundation Establishment could be counted on one's fingers.

Wang Shouren did not take a foundation establishment pill; he didn't even carry the Medicinal Pill his father had shoved back into his hand.

Human Grade Foundation Establishment—he did not want it.

"black lotus, appear for me!"

When the Aura around his body climbed to its Peak, he suddenly let out a long roar toward the sky.

The black lotus mark between his brows that had never left his body suddenly lit up. It didn't disappear, but instead peeled away from his flesh, peeling away from the depths of his Divine Soul, from his limbs and Meridians, and from every drop of his blood, condensing into a lotus as pitch-black as ink within this square inch.

That black lotus hovered above his head, dead silent and devoid of light. Its petals were stacked layer upon layer, so black it made people panic.

Yet upon closer inspection, the light around it was indeed being swallowed little by little.

The air in the secret chamber began to distort, as if all bright things were collapsing toward it. Even the cyan light of the isolation Formation layer was sucked to the point of swaying unsteadily, as if it could be sucked away by this black lotus at any moment.

"Using Heaven and Earth spiritual objects to establish the Foundation is Heaven Grade Foundation Establishment. Today, I, Wang Shouren, shall use the accompanying black lotus to establish my Dao Foundation!"

The petals of the black lotus unfolded one by one, and a pitch-black spiritual light of the utmost purity gushed from the depths of the lotus heart, colliding with the thunder Spiritual Qi that had climbed to its limit within Wang Shouren's body.

The two forces blended together with a bang in his Dantian. The thunder light and black Qi intertwined, strangled, Fusion, and were reborn. Every collision caused his Aura to soar by a section, and every Fusion made his Foundation a fraction thicker.

The surface of his skin cracked inch by inch, and what leaked from the cracks was not blood, but red-gold thunder light and ink-black lotus Qi.

His flesh and blood, Meridians, bones, and Dantian were being forged simultaneously by these two forces, compressed to the extreme, and reshaped into an even more perfect form.

That excruciating pain was enough to cause any Qi Refining Cultivator to suffer Soul Flying Away and Spirit Scattering on the spot, yet he didn't even hum, just gritted his teeth tightly, letting that avalanche-like power gallop unrestrained within his body.

Above his head, on the marsh ground obscured by the isolation Formation, heaven and earth suddenly changed.

The firmament within a radius of a hundred miles darkened at a speed visible to the naked eye; black clouds surged, and Dragon roared.

Ten thousand bolts of lightning struck from the depths of the cloud layer, illuminating the entire Misty Marsh in flickering light and shadow. Even the poisonous fog that had lingered for who knows how many years was torn open by this thunderstorm with gap after gap.

That was the might of heaven, the most instinctive rejection and fury of the Heavenly Dao toward those who acted Heaven-Defying, and also the heaven and earth anomaly summoned by Wang Shouren with his Heaven Grade Foundation Establishment.

Deepest within the Wanshou Mountain Range, that was a forbidden zone that even Core Formation Cultivators dared not step foot in.

Yet at the very moment when the heavenly thunder roared and resounded through the mountain range, within the darkness of the forbidden zone, a pair of dark golden vertical pupils as large as millstones abruptly opened.

Those eyes pierced through layers of mountains and dense forests, looking toward the direction of Misty Marsh on the outer fringes of the Wanshou Mountain Range, their gazes reflecting the sky-full of thunder light.

Immediately afterwards, a second pair and a third pair of equally huge eyes opened one after another in the deep darkness, their Auras so terrifying that the air in the entire forbidden zone congealed because of it.

Meanwhile, in the northeast direction of the Wanshou Mountain Range, inside a grand hall of the Spirit Sword Sect suspended above a sea of clouds, Xiao Yunluan, who was discussing matters concerning the mineral vein, suddenly turned his head and looked in the direction of the Wanshou Mountain Range.

The Jade Slip in his hand that was calculating military force slipped quietly, fell to the ground, and shattered into two halves.

Outside the hall, a message-transmitting sword light pierced through the clouds and arrived.