After forging solely in the created embryonic heavenly furnace for a few days, Mo Wen's cultivation of Yin Yang Qi was now on a par with practitioners at the pinnacle of the Primordial Soul Realm. This was all done without the shackles of the realm, exceeding the regulated breakthrough. The cultivation of a practitioner was like a well. Those who were at a higher realm had deeper wells, and breaking through to a realm was the process by which the well deepened.
But the size of the well opening varied from person to person as well, and this hinged on their talent and growth process. For a regular person, the opening of their well was about as big as a millstone, whereas Mo Wen's was as big as a pond. Though both were equally deep, the amount of water that could be stored was vastly different for each of them.
"On the Path of Creation, there will be an amazing reward waiting for you if you attain the highest score. But what would happen if you cleared all six tests with the best score?"
Mo Wen's eyes were aflame with fire. The prize for any of the tests were something you could only find by accident and not on purpose, so the prizes for all six tests must be much more shocking. If he went out again this time, it might not be a reach to say that he could kill Xue Chu with just a flick of his wrist.
Up in the air above the ancient hall, a beam of spiritual light suddenly descended. That light morphed into an ancient rune and made its way into Mo Wen's hands, disappearing without a trace in a split second.
It seemed like attaining the best score for one test would garner him such a rune. From the beginning till now, Mo Wen had already attained four runes, though he was not too sure what purpose they served. In the information that Mo Qingge had handed him, there had been no mention of this.
It was similar to what had happened before. After he attained an ancient rune, a wave of power descended onto Mo Wen's body and sent him out of the ancient hall.
When he reappeared, Mo Wen found himself sitting alone on a platform made of white jade. The white jade platform had an antique color and scent to it. Beautiful patterns were carved on it, and it was quietly suspended in the air. Right in front of him were stone columns that emanated a spiritual light. Those stone columns were hazy, making them seem intangible.
"Primordial Soul pillars!"
Mo Wen naturally knew what the fifth test of the assessment was about, and he knew what those circular columns were.
The fifth test assessed the soul of the practitioner, and the Primordial Soul pillar was the item used to do so. Practitioners who had made it this far could release their soul power to strike at those Primordial Soul pillars. The greater the number of Primordial Soul pillars they struck down, the greater their achievement.
Mo Wen sat on the white jade platform, looking at the Primordial Soul pillar in front of him. Pillar after pillar were placed in front of him, and they seemed to extend out endlessly into the far distance. It was difficult to see where the end was, and it probably went on for thousands of miles.
The further away the Primordial Soul pillar was, the more difficult it would be to destroy it. It was difficult to destroy a Primordial Soul pillar from thousands of miles away, and it was no exaggeration to say that level of difficulty was abnormal.
But if you wanted to attain the highest achievement in the fifth test, then you had to destroy all of the Primordial Soul pillars regardless of their distance. They had to be destroyed, regardless of whether they were thousands or tens of thousands of miles away.
The good thing was that the furthest Primordial Soul pillar was not tens of thousands of miles away—it was about a thousand or two miles out. Otherwise, not even a practitioner at the Supreme Profundity Realm would be able to claim they could destroy the columns, let alone Mo Wen.
The difficulty level of the fifth test was, unfortunately, higher than that of the fourth test. In regular circumstances, the soul of the practitioner would not be stronger than their cultivation, unless they were special. And it just so happened that Mo Wen was one of the most special kinds of people. He had cultivated an innumerable number of Divine Souls and had even attained First Layer Heaven. His deified soul was perhaps on par with that of practitioners of the Tide Changing Realm. As such, the fifth test was perhaps rather easy for Mo Wen.
Mo Wen sat on the ground. He was unmoving, but his eyes were abruptly aglow with a deified soul. It swept out just like a tempest, terrifying as it plowed through anything in its path.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Primoridal Soul pillar after Primordial Soul pillar was cut down and destroyed by the deified soul tempest. It was as if it was a collapsing city. In the blink of an eye, more than five hundred miles of Primordial Soul pillars had been completely destroyed.
The greater the distance, the higher the requirements of the deified soul. After the five-hundred-mile mark, the speed at which the Primordial Soul pillars were being destroyed had started to stall, but the destruction process did not stop. It pushed forward ceaselessly.
After a quarter of an hour, all the Primordial Soul pillars within a thousand miles were destroyed, and quite a few of those outside of the range were shaky, suggesting they could collapse at any second.
Mo Wen's complexion was pale, and he slowly recalled the deified soul that he had dispersed. He had depleted too much of his deified soul with that round of destruction and even he was not immune to being overwhelmed. It was at least ten times more difficult to destroy the Primordial Soul pillars that were more than a thousand miles away from him than it was to destroy those less than a thousand miles away from him, even if they were only about two hundred miles apart from each other.
"It's a shame. I've only just broken through to the First Layer of Heaven, but I'm still not able to do much in the face of Primordial Soul pillars a thousand miles away from me."
The fatigue on his face was as clear as day. If a veteran Tide Changing Realm practitioner had been doing this, it would have been easy for them to destroy a thousand and two hundred miles' worth of Primordial Soul pillars. But for Mo Wen, who had just broken through to the First Layer of Heaven and had not had enough time to consolidate his new strength, there was, naturally, still a gap between him and the practitioners of the Tide Changing Realm.
He rested for four hours before releasing his deified soul to attack once again.
After a quarter of an hour, all the Primordial Soul pillars within a thousand and a hundred miles were thoroughly destroyed. All that was left were the Primordial Soul pillars in the last hundred miles.
"I actually can't destroy those."
Mo Wen blanched. Not only were the last hundred-mile stretch of Primordial Soul pillars further away, but they also seemed to be much more reinforced than the average Primordial Soul pillar. When his deified soul spread out to them, they had already been weakened by 80 percent. The remaining 20 percent of his power was not enough to destroy the reinforced Primordial Soul pillars.
He had initially thought that it would not be too difficult to attain the highest score in this test, but things rarely played out as he wished, and the difficulty level far exceeded what he had expected.
"If it wasn't for this soul injury, I could probably destroy those Primordial Soul pillars regardless of the consequences. But this soul injury is no trivial matter."
Mo Wen seemed to be hesitant. After all, he had only just broken through the Divine Soul Trillion Layers to reach the First Layer of Heaven. Had he had more time to consolidate, he might have been able to solve this puzzle effortlessly. But now, without the time to consolidate his soul, this was not something he could wrap up in just a few days. In regular circumstances, he would need at least a few years.
"That's enough for now. Perhaps I could try to cultivate the secret technique of the Divine Soul Trillion Layers."
Mo Wen would never give up on the chance to secure the highest achievement. It was clear from his earlier experiences that the benefits from attaining the highest achievement on any round were unimaginable.
The Divine Soul Trillion Layers was no simple way of cultivating one's soul. It was a great magical power that had the records of quite a few soul techniques.
But one had to have at least attained the First Layer of Heaven of the Divine Soul Trillion Layers before they could cultivate that technique. Before this, Mo Wen could only stare at it without being able to train.
But now that he had attained the First Layer of Heaven, there were techniques that he could cultivate.
In the Divine Soul Trillion Layers, the technique that caught his eye was the Divine Sword of the Primordial Soul. As the name implied, this technique forged a divine sword after repeated cultivation of one's Primordial Soul. This divine sword was invincible, and there was nothing it could not pierce. It was terrifying, and it was one of the three greatest techniques recorded in the Divine Soul Trillion Layers.
Cultivating to the later stage using the Divine Soul Trillion Layers allowed for one to abandon their corporeal being and exist solely as a Primordial Soul, all because of the remarkable power of the Divine Sword of the Primordial Soul. The Divine Sword of the Primordial Soul was everchanging. It was as precious as immortal treasures and indestructible.
If Mo Wen could cultivate this technique, he could easily destroy the Primordial Soul pillars a thousand miles out from him with the sword forged of deified soul.
"There's not much time left."
Mo Wen shut his eyes immediately. He started meditation and understanding the technique of the Divine Sword of the Primordial Soul. He was afraid that, if he let time drag on for too long, this space would eventually force him out.
The entire space fell silent yet again. Mo Wen sat with his eyes closed, and time passed by slowly.
Mo Wen was not sure how much time had elapsed, but subtle waves started emerging from around his body. It seemed like it was the Sword Qi that contained an innumerable number of spearheads, but its aura was misty and vague, making it difficult to grasp.
All of a sudden, Mo Wen opened his eyes, and two sharp beams of light shot out from them. They seemed like two ultimate swords that could tear apart the heavens and the earth.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
From a thousand miles out, the final hundred-mile stretch of Primordial Soul pillars were blown up, and every single last one of them was destroyed in a split second.
"The Divine Sword of the Primordial Soul lives up to its name!"
Mo Wen exhaled slowly, and a smile appeared on his face. As expected, one of the three great techniques of the Divine Soul Trillion Layers was truly terrifying beyond compare.
It was natural that he could not fully cultivate the Divine Sword of the Primordial Soul technique to forge a divine sword with his Primordial Soul in just the span of a few days; he still had a long way to go. All he did this time was to focus his deified soul to manifest Sword Qi. Even that Sword Qi had been unstable and on the verge of collapse due to how hastily it had manifested. However, be that as it might, it was still a powerful force.
If he could master the technique, it would be difficult for anyone to take his life.
Ji Wuya had risen to fame after he mastered this technique and had earned himself the title of Medicine Sage. It was just a shame that he had run into the Demon God Devilshart, a Heavenly Path ultimate strong practitioner, during the war that year. Otherwise, he would not have died so tragically in the forbidden land.
After all the Primordial Soul pillars were destroyed, pristine, white flowers started to descend from the air above the white jade platform. Those flowers were incomparably pure and clean. It was as if they were the last clean thing in this world.
The flowers scattered and slowly gravitated towards Mo Wen before enveloping him completely in a sea of flowers.
Some time had elapsed before the glittering, translucent flowers scattered bit by bit and turned into stars, disappearing into the air.
Mo Wen was still in the same position, sitting with his legs crossed on the ground. He was now completely serene, and his lips were turned up into a smile. He looked like he was having a sweet dream. The surface of his body was wrapped in a layer of glittering white light for a long, long time.
After quite a while had passed, Mo Wen finally opened his eyes slowly. Like a person who had stirred from a deep slumber, there was no sharpness and ferocity to him.
"Sea of Spiritual Flowers!"
Mo Wen smiled. In that instant, he understood what the flowers that had floated down were. The Sea of Spiritual Flowers was a divine item of the legends. The mystery of the flowers lay in its power to give someone a thousand-year-long dream and have them experience the passing of time. The strange thing was that, after waking up, they would not feel different from waking up after a regular dream. There would be no impact on the individual.
They would not be able to recall what they had dreamed about, but their soul would undeniably have gone through a million lives worth of rotations.
These flowers were mystical beyond words. Mo Wen's deified knowledge had been increasing too quickly before this, and this had led to an insufficient foundation and unsteady base. This was also why the average Tide Changing Realm practitioner could easily destroy those Primordial Soul pillars but Mo Wen could not—because he did not have the solid foundation those Tide Changing Realm practitioners did.
But things were different now. After going through a million lives, Mo Wen's soul had learned a lot. The hidden dangers that had been present before were not just absent - they were now completely stable. Aside from that, the surface of his Primordial Soul seemed to be coated in another layer of the sea of spiritual light. This sea of spiritual light could protect the Primordial Soul and stabilize his deified soul, and it was as good as his Primordial Soul wearing reinforced armor.