Since arriving in the Primordial World, the most and longest thing Qing Ling has done is cultivate!
Although he couldn't break through realms quickly due to his vast inner dantian, his deep foundation had its inherent advantages.
Golden Immortal Venerables, while precious, could still be cultivated through the methods of the three tribes.
However, beings with such vast dantian fields were few among the myriad races of the Eastern Wasteland. Like the Phoenix Tribe's Saint Son, whose dantian was tens of times wider than that of an ordinary Golden Immortal, as Qing Ling's tear of Ten Thousand Sorrows had vaguely perceived.
Among the billions of beings under the Phoenix Tribe's dominion, those who could become Saint Sons were naturally of supreme strength and profound foundations, one in ten thousand.
Qing Ling's current dantian was ten thousand times wider than that of an ordinary Heavenly rank! Although the difference in dantian size would diminish after advancing to Golden Immortal, his dantian would still be a hundred times larger than that of an ordinary Golden Immortal!
The stronger the foundation, the vaster the accumulation of spiritual energy, and thus the higher the potential ceiling for future achievements.
It was highly unlikely that cultivating a thousand Golden Immortals at great cost would yield even one Great Luo Supreme, but nurturing a miraculous being like Qu had a high probability of achieving Great Luo Golden Immortal, and likely among the elite!
Even a thousand Golden Immortals could not compare to the importance of a single Great Luo Supreme.
Therefore, Qing Ling enjoyed the immense resource advantages provided by Xi Mountain, and not a single Golden Immortal Venerable in the tribe objected; only support was offered.
Qing Ling once again entered seclusion to cultivate. He did not know about his past life, but in this life, he could definitely be considered a shut-in!
Having been born in the Primordial World for tens of thousands of years, he had only left the Xi Mountain tribal land once. Although Xi Mountain spanned millions of miles, it was still like wandering in his own courtyard.
Qing Ling took out a drop of Nine Yuan Heavy Water and swallowed it. Instantly, a massive amount of water-element spiritual energy threatened to burst his meridians, which were already dozens of times wider than those of ordinary beings.
The tiny primordial spirit in his brow began to work busily again, its divine sense tirelessly roaming and refining the surrounding spiritual energy. Under the transformation of his divinity, water transformed into wood, and the wood energy converted from the Nine Yuan Water spiritual energy was extremely pure, even three parts purer than the spiritual power he cultivated through arduous effort.
Water vapor permeated his dantian world, and it began to rain spiritual energy again, which had not occurred for over five hundred years. During the five hundred years of torment from the Nirvana Flame, his dantian's spiritual power had only flowed out and not in, receiving no replenishment.
Now, it finally received the long-awaited nourishment.
The torrential rain fell ceaselessly. The small green sprout floating on the spiritual energy lake swayed with the ripples of the lake. Its roots were less than half an inch below the water, growing on the surface, and its sprout was only half an inch above the water, emerging from it.
The primordial spirit seated at the Xuan Gate was enveloped in a continuous drizzle. Within the misty rain, green grass sprouted, and vibrant small flowers bloomed among the green grass. Butterflies fluttered, and bees buzzed, accompanied by the gentle breeze and rain, and trickling streams flowed around. Trees grew, seeds were sown in spring and winter, emerging after ten years, growing into trees after a hundred years, and forming forests after ten thousand years. There were vast wetlands, and all things coexisted in harmony, born in spring. Warm sunlight from the sky cast gentle rays, presenting a vibrant spring tableau.
This spring artistic conception was a divine ability he had comprehended from his Golden Immortal primordial spirit, his auxiliary Spring God divinity, and the innate Dao prohibition of the Vastness Coercer. The artistic conception of myriad springs within the picture would nourish the primordial spirits of beings within it, providing truly beneficial nourishment, thus making it difficult to provoke instinctive vigilance. However, to enter my picture and receive my spring life, one must exchange it with vitality.
Entering my picture, in an instant, you make a pact with the gods, gambling your very life force!
The vitality absorbed into the picture was divided. Half of it merged into the vibrant spring artistic conception, and the other half descended into the dantian to nourish the Xuan Tian Vine. This was the first time the picture was displayed, and it absorbed the ten thousand years of vitality from two Golden Immortal Venerables. Half was given to the Xuan Tian Dao Vine, and the small vine's green sprout rejoiced, stretching upward by a sliver, and its roots also delved downward by a sliver, growing in both directions simultaneously.
Qing Ling remained in seclusion for five thousand years. In these five thousand years, spring winds and rain nurtured the land of Xi Mountain, silently benefiting all. His dantian's spiritual power also grew in tandem.
Although the gradual increase of spiritual power was delightful, the passage of time could become tedious.
Qing Ling then rose to walk within the Hundred Springs. As for venturing beyond the Hundred Springs Valley, he was too lazy to do so, as trouble might arise the moment he stepped out.
As long as he did not leave, no one in the entire Xi Mountain would disturb him; he could remain in his cave dwelling in the Hundred Springs Valley until the end of time.
The Hundred Springs Valley was where Qing Ling had grown up since arriving in the Primordial World. It was his most cherished dwelling. The valley was filled with a hundred flowers and a thousand grasses, each being a peculiar spiritual herb. Although useless to a prodigy like him, they had been nurtured by the accumulation of tens of thousands of years in a spiritual land of the three elements, providing significant benefits even to Earth rank beasts if consumed.
With him, the God of Spring, present in the valley, there was no talk of a hundred flowers withering and fading.
However, in the vast and spacious spiritual valley, there were only flowers and grasses, not a single large tree. There were many ten-thousand-year-old spirit vines hanging from the cliff. He remembered that when he was young, he and Qi had competed on the cliffs, played on the flowers and grasses of the Hundred Springs Valley, and frolicked in the spiritual pond. He had also experienced a happy childhood.
Qing Ling watched You, who was coiled at the bottom of the pond, bathed in the blue light of the Dinghai Divine Pearls, his aura slowly rising.
He suddenly had an idea and released eleven spiritual essence puppets, submerging them into the pond to absorb the spiritual light of the water element.
These eleven spiritual essence puppets were the puppets he had refined with the most care in his early days. His only puppet, the eldest, which had just broken through to the Heavenly rank, was still on Miao Zhu Island, and he assumed Qu must have dismembered it into pieces.
He intended to cherish and cultivate these remaining eleven puppets dearly. For the puppets he meticulously nurtured, he did not intend to interfere with their growth but rather to nourish and harmonize them with spiritual objects. Qing Ling, who cultivated the Wood Dao, knew best that all living beings, even a single flower or tree, possessed sentience.
He aimed to cultivate the natural sentience of these eleven puppets. As for You, it was different. If You gained sentience, would it still actively shield him from attacks and save his life every time? After all, he could only possess one puppet for bearing calamities in his lifetime, and each use required at least ten thousand years of nurturing. The greater the damage sustained, the longer the nurturing period. If he reached the Golden Immortal realm, one use might require a hundred thousand years of nurturing.
Apart from these eleven spiritual essence puppets, Qing Ling also planned to refine a vast army of puppets!
If he had tens of thousands of puppet armies, he would be an army in himself, a thousand armies and ten thousand horses, with a single shout, the armies would move in unison. What might and what divine abilities that would be!
He did not possess the divine ability of scattering beans to create soldiers, but refining puppets was his forte. Because he cultivated the Wood Dao, Qing Ling was exceptionally skilled in refining Profound Wood puppets.
Therefore, in his leisure time, Qing Ling would pluck mountain vines and wood, collect spiritual water from the pond, and spiritual soil from the valley, and use his primordial spirit divine art to refine puppets.
Using the fertile spiritual soil of the Hundred Springs Valley, accumulated over a million years, as their bodies, vines, wood, and leaves as their sensory organs, meridians, and spines, and the spiritual water from the pond as their internal blood, he would mold them from the earth!