At this point, Li Yan and Zhao Min would naturally not hesitate any longer, but the moment they entered the tree hole, a layer of spirit power shield quietly appeared around their bodies.
As soon as Li Yan entered the tree hole, he found that the entire space was not as narrow as he had imagined. At the same time, his perception of the outside world had been lost.
The space within the tree hole felt much larger than the body of the giant tree outside.
The cave was filled with a bright white light, which made it seem not dim at all, but rather gave a sense of openness.
The space was about seven zhang in size, and the lake water, which emitted a milky white glow, reached up to Li Yan's thighs.
The milky white, glowing lake water carried the unique, fresh fragrance of trees.
The moment Li Yan entered, he felt rich, wood-attribute spirit qi, as dense as flowing water, rushing towards him from his pores.
It seemed to be trying to immediately seep into his body, but it was all blocked by his protective light shield.
Wood-attribute spirit qi was the best spirit qi for both alchemy and healing. It possessed a unique life force.
Although Li Yan had not yet inhaled this spirit qi into his body, he could already feel the five-element spirit power within him suddenly accelerating its circulation, appearing exceptionally active.
This was especially true for the wood-attribute spirit power. The Lotus Throne in his Dantian's Purple Mansion emitted dazzling rays of cyan light.
Li Yan only scanned his surroundings with his Divine Sense before waving his sleeve. A purple formation flag flashed and disappeared, having already laid the Great Dragon-Elephant Formation in the cave.
Feeling the dense wood spirit qi coming from the lake water below his thighs, Li Yan did not immediately enter a state of devouring but just stood there in the lake.
After pondering with a frown for a while, he sighed inwardly and had to give up that tempting idea.
Before entering here, he had thought of letting Zi Kun and Qian Ji out to absorb the wood spirit rhythm.
But after hearing Ting Bixiao's words just now, he began to hesitate, especially after those two urging voices, which made Li Yan not dare to release Zi Kun and Qian Ji.
'There are terrifying spirit trees here that can kill Nascent Soul cultivators. They only allow three people to absorb the spirit rhythm at a time.'
'So many members of the Giant Wood Clan have always abided by this rule, never overstepping. This shows that they don't dare to go against the will of the spirit trees here.'
'If I let Zi Kun and Qian Ji out, the best-case scenario is that they are sent out directly. It might even anger the spirit tree experts here, who might then attack us directly...'
After some consideration, Li Yan could only give up this tempting idea in the end.
Since he couldn't take care of the two demonic beasts, Li Yan slowly sat down cross-legged in the lake water that glowed with a white light.
Only his head remained above the water's surface. After carefully sensing with his Divine Sense for another dozen breaths, he finally withdrew the spirit power shield around his body.
Instantly, streams of spirit qi, like swimming fish, drilled into his body from all over. The spirit power within Li Yan's body was instantly ignited, becoming even more active.
He felt a sense of exhilaration as if all ten thousand and eight thousand of his pores had eaten a ginseng fruit. His consciousness was so comfortable that he felt like he was floating among the clouds, about to become an immortal.
This was a feeling he had never experienced since he began cultivating. Where was the inhuman torture and pain of washing his meridians in the past?
But Li Yan knew that this was just a facade. The wood spirit rhythm here was too dense, containing an unimaginable vitality, which was why he had this extremely comfortable feeling.
At present, these treasures were, in the end, external objects and did not yet belong to him. But once he circulated his cultivation to refine them, washing his meridians and flesh, and cleansing his spirit power, it would surely be excruciatingly painful.
At this time, continuously absorbing the wood spirit rhythm into his body while feeling comfortable, he had to be even more careful.
Under the comfort, a moment of carelessness would lead to absorbing too much wood spirit rhythm. Then, the situation Ting Bixiao had described would occur, and his entire body would be washed away by the wood spirit rhythm.
Li Yan forcibly cleared all distracting thoughts from his sea of consciousness, including that feeling of comfort, and slowly closed his eyes... As Li Yan and Zhao Min entered the Giant Wood Clan's "Wood Essence Pool," a major event occurred in the outside world!
The Tianlan Clan, which had long occupied the Tianlan Prairie in the northeast of the Verdant Continent, underwent a heaven-shaking change. Five Nascent Soul cultivators suddenly raided the Tianlan Clan.
They first shielded their auras and quietly approached the Tianlan Prairie. By the time the two Nascent Soul cultivators of the Tianlan Clan discovered them, the distance between them was already less than ten thousand li.
For Nascent Soul cultivators, this distance was almost covered in the blink of an eye. The five intruders, without any hesitation, directly besieged the two Nascent Soul experts of the Tianlan Clan.
This left the two Nascent Soul cultivators of the Tianlan Prairie both shocked and furious.
Besieging them were two Nascent Soul cultivators from the Tingyun Kingdom, and three Nascent Soul cultivators from the Giant Wood Clan, the Spirit Rhino Clan, and the Thousand Flower Clan.
When they saw the three Nascent Soul cultivators from the Sparrow Plume Pagoda Domain, they instantly understood the reason. Their only option was to fight with their lives.
After a great battle, the Second Heavenly Master of the Tianlan Clan perished. The main body of the Great Heavenly Master was destroyed, and his Nascent Soul escaped with the help of a clone, his whereabouts unknown.
Following this, the Tianlan Clan was met with a boundless slaughter.
The Tianlan Clan, which had once dominated the Tianlan Prairie, suffered countless casualties among its cultivators in this great battle. Very few managed to escape.
This drastic change immediately shook the entire cultivation world of the Verdant Continent.
Nascent Soul cultivators rarely went out, spending most of the year in seclusion. Fights between them were even rarer. But this time, the bizarre event of seven Nascent Soul cultivators dueling at once had occurred.
Moreover, it was several clans besieging one. They had never heard of the Tingyun Kingdom forming an alliance with the Giant Wood Clan, the Spirit Rhino Clan, and the Thousand Flower Clan, nor had they heard of the Tianlan Clan having a feud with the Sparrow Plume Pagoda Domain.
This time, it was unexpected that the Sparrow Plume Pagoda Domain would join forces to attack the Tingyun Kingdom's greatest rival.
It was known to many sects that the Giant Wood Clan, the Spirit Rhino Clan, and the Thousand Flower Clan had a tradition of mutual support since ancient times.
It was just that, as time passed, many of the races within the Sparrow Plume Pagoda Domain were no longer as closely connected as before. They had long since gone their separate ways, each sweeping the snow from their own doorstep.
This time was also the first time they had joined forces in tens of thousands of years.
The occurrence of this event was like the arrival of a world-ending heavenly tribulation in the cultivation world of the Verdant Continent.
Amidst all the rumors, as many major sects and families began to be vigilant, the seven races in the Sparrow Plume Pagoda Domain, led by the Giant Wood Clan, stood up one after another.
They accused the Tianlan Clan cultivators of violating the Heavenly Dao, of cultivators slaughtering mortals on a massive scale, and of perfidiously framing the races that had once helped them escape the slaughter of the Demon Clan, and they made this matter public.
Of the seven clans that had been invited by the Tianlan Clan to protect them back then, only four remained today. Including the mortals, their total number was just over three hundred.
The cultivators and mortals of the other three clans, regardless of age, old or young, had all been brutally killed by the Tianlan Clan cultivators.
Afterward, the seven clans brought out some of the Tianlan Clan cultivators who had not been killed in the Tingyun Kingdom and stated that high-level cultivators from first-rate sects like the Sealing Extermination Sect and the Gaowu Family could come and inspect.
To see if the seven clans and the Tingyun Kingdom were lying, and that Nascent Soul cultivators among them could perform soul-searching on their own mortals who had survived on the Tianlan Prairie to verify.
The reason for doing this was that, with five Nascent Soul cultivators joining forces, there were not many sects or families on the Verdant Continent today that could withstand them on their own.
So, if the Tianlan Clan could be annihilated in a single night despite having two Nascent Soul cultivators, which of the other cultivation sects and families would not be afraid?
They thought that these people had acted because they had their eyes on the rich cultivation resources of the Tianlan Prairie, and that they might target others next.
At the same time, the experts of the Tingyun Kingdom and the seven clans also knew that there were still some Spirit Transformation old monsters hidden on the Verdant Continent.
If they discovered that you were disrupting the balance of the cultivation world and stirring up trouble at will, it was estimated that the experts of the Tingyun Kingdom and the seven clans might one day suddenly die violently in their own clans.
To prove that what they said was true, they naturally had to produce convincing evidence. To prevent their cultivation methods from being probed by outsiders, they only offered mortals for soul-searching. Also considering the feelings of their clansmen, they limited the condition to be carried out by Nascent Soul cultivators.
Only in that case could the pain of the soul-searched be minimized, and they would not become idiots.
As for whether the captured Tianlan Clan cultivators would suffer the torment of soul-searching, the Tingyun Kingdom and the seven clans of the Sparrow Plume Pagoda Domain didn't care. They had no objection to Golden Core cultivators using violent force to soul-search them.
Four days after this news was released, the six major first-rate sects, led by the Sealing Extermination Sect and the Gaowu Family, also jointly issued a kill-on-sight order.
All cultivators of the Tianlan Clan were considered evil cultivators, intolerable by the heavens. Those who could hunt them down and kill them could receive a reward based on the cultivation and status of the Tianlan Clan cultivator.
And at the top of the list was the escaped Great Heavenly Master of the Tianlan Clan...
Subsequently, the Tianlan Prairie was carved up and occupied by the Tingyun Kingdom and the seven clans, including the Giant Wood Clan. This kind of thing was very common in the cultivation world.
Of course, this was because the cultivation resources of the Tianlan Prairie could only be considered not bad, and had not reached the point of being coveted by first-rate sects.
Otherwise, the Tianlan Clan itself would not have been able to hold onto this treasure land for so long!
In the sacred land of the Giant Wood Clan, within Li Yan's Dantian sea, above the floating Lotus Throne, a pill of earthy yellow color was spinning on the five-colored lotus flower. It was Li Yan's Golden Core.
In the Initial-stage Golden Core, it was light yellow; in the Mid-stage, it was earthy yellow; and in the Late-stage, it would be golden yellow.
When one reached the Pseudo-Core Realm, the Golden Core was already golden yellow with a hint of crimson, which was the step-by-step transformation of the Golden Core into a Nascent Soul.
Only at the final moment of successful Nascent Soul Formation would the crimson become meridians and blood vessels, and the golden yellow would condense into the body of the Nascent Soul.
Every time Li Yan's Golden Core rotated, it would scatter five-colored light into the Dantian sea below.
And at this time, the five vines hanging down from below the Lotus Throne, like a root system, were also continuously drawing spirit power from the Dantian sea, ceaselessly delivering this spirit power to the five-colored lotus petals.
The color of Li Yan's Dantian sea had already turned azure-green. This was the manifestation of his five elements returning to one.
After the wood spirit rhythm entered Li Yan's body, apart from keeping the lotus flower five-colored, Li Yan had converted everything else into pure wood-attribute spirit power.
The wood spirit rhythm that entered his body immediately found a sense of common origin and traveled even more actively.
The compatibility of Li Yan's refinement reached almost one hundred percent. This was something only a wood-attribute Saint Spirit Root could achieve.
Half of this wood spirit rhythm entered the Dantian sea, and half entered the flesh and meridians. Li Yan did not use the wood spirit rhythm solely for body refining.
Under the circulation of his cultivation, the wood spirit rhythm began to continuously wash his flesh and meridians. Every washing was like being scraped by ten thousand steel knives.
The milky-white lake water around Li Yan's body constantly rippled in circles. This was due to the trembling of his body, which he could not control in his pain.
The wood spirit rhythm, time and time again, bit by bit, combed out the impurities from his flesh. Li Yan's entire physical body began to become thinner.
At the same time, the meridians in his body also began to become thinner and wider. At this time, Li Yan needed to divert several portions of his spirit power to nourish them bit by bit.
Otherwise, meridians that were too thin would break inch by inch under the normal circulation of spirit power.
The veins on Li Yan's forehead throbbed. This phenomenon had not stopped since he began refining the wood spirit rhythm.
After every breath, dark gray substances would be squeezed out of his pores from the surface of his body and then immediately dissipated by the milky-white lake water...
At this time, Li Yan had no time to notice these things. If he saw these dark gray substances, he would definitely be very surprised.
His current physical body, due to absorbing the essence blood of the "Undead Nether Phoenix" and cultivating the Qiongqi Purgatory Art, was different.
After the last Core Formation, the impurities expelled from his body were no longer the oily, dark black substances they were during Foundation Establishment, but were now gray. This showed that the impurities in his body were already very few.
But this time, under the washing of the wood spirit rhythm, dark gray substances were still being expelled, which showed the strength of this wood spirit rhythm!