Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

At first, he didn’t find anything odd about the tree branch outside of the spiritual qi coursing through it, indicating that it was a spiritual tree and not a normal tree, though… That wasn’t surprising considering the size of the tree and the fact that it was tall enough to soar above the clouds.

If he calculated the strength of the spiritual tree compared to the standard cultivation realms, its strength would be somewhere between the Early and Middle Stage of the Dao Seed Realm. Powerful, but not strong enough to pose any challenge to him, let alone powerful enough to affect someone in the Celestial Immortal Realm. Not to mention, the trees themselves might be powerful, but they were ultimately not conscious and couldn’t move

So, with that in mind, the trees themselves wouldn’t be powerful enough to cause the demon beasts to fall into their current state, there had to be something different… And as he continued investigating the tree whose branch he was currently standing on, he soon found a clue in the form of a gentle mist that was constantly being produced by the spiritual tree.

The mist itself looked harmless on the surface and only served to increase the density of spiritual qi where it existed, but as he observed this gentle and almost invisible mist that was present throughout the treetops that the demon beast kingdoms existed in, it quickly became obvious that the mist did more than just increase the density of spiritual qi.

Absorbed by the demon beasts as they went about their everyday lives, the mist began to subtly influence the soul of the demon beasts, changing it little by little.

This change was almost impossible to detect without him using the full strength of his divine sense to observe the soul of one of the weaker demon beasts as it breathed in the gentle mist, but after noticing it, it became rather clear that this mist should be the reason behind the strange state of the demon beasts.

After all, even though Celestial Immortal Realm demon beasts would be more than strong enough to resist the subtle influence of the mist, they would have already been affected by the mist before reaching the Celestial Immortal Realm.

Although the change taking place to the souls of the demon beasts was incredibly slow and would most likely take thousands of years before reaching the state where they were rendered completely oblivious to everything around him, the only way for these demon beasts to escape from the influence of the mist was through reaching the Celestial Immortal Realm or the Profound Immortal Realm.

Even with talent, reaching the Celestial Immortal Realm or the Profound Immortal Realm was already difficult to accomplish in tens of thousands of years for most demon beasts, let alone in a few thousand years while also being under the influence of the mist that would make their thought process more sluggish.

Of course, it didn’t mean that the weaker demon beasts had been able to escape from the influence of the mist, but instead just that there was a chance of escaping from the influence if they could reach the Celestial Immortal Realm or the Profound Immortal Realm before their soul was fully transformed by the mist, something that the Celestial Immortal Realm demon beasts he had encountered so far had been unable to accomplish, as they were still stuck following the simple routine of daily life inside the demon beast kingdoms they lived in.

In simpler words, all the demon beasts existed under the influence of the mist that had changed their soul and made them follow a simple unchanging script for their daily life.

With that in mind, it was understandable that all the Celestial Immortal Realm demon beasts he had encountered so far already had their soul fully transformed by the mist. After all, it wouldn’t just take an ordinary prodigy to reach that kind of realm in a few thousand years while also being under the influence of the gentle mist.

Even more so for demon beasts who were well known for taking longer in their cultivation compared to humans or other humanoid species.

Although they would normally make up for this with their longer lifespans, in this kind of situation, it was a worst-case scenario and likely also the reason why he hadn’t found any demon beasts who had managed to escape the influence of the gentle mist before their soul was transformed.

Speaking of their soul being transformed, Xuan Hao found a demon beast in the Domain Lord Realm that had already lived for over thirteen thousand years, a lifespan already beyond that of human cultivators in the Domain Lord Realm, to see what a fully transformed soul would look like

After all, only a longer-lived demon beast would be able to survive long enough for the full transformation of the soul to take place…

”Hm? Is the soul bound to the spiritual tree? No… A spiritual tree with strength in the Dao Seed Realm is far too weak to handle a demon beast in the Celestial Immortal Realm…” Muttering this to himself as he investigated the fully transformed soul, Xuan Hao soon took off and followed the faint connection he had sensed between the soul of the demon beast and the spiritual tree he was currently on top of.

Although this connection was understandable when it came to a Domain Lord Realm demon beast, as the spiritual tree was far stronger than the spiritual beast in the Domain Lord Realm, the same could not be said for a demon beast in the Celestial Immortal Realm.

Even the strongest spiritual tree he had encountered had at most reached the Late Stage of the Dao Seed Realm in terms of strength… And while powerful, it was far from enough for it to handle a Celestial Immortal Realm demon beast. Making it clear to him that the connection shouldn’t be directed at the spiritual tree, but something different using the spiritual trees to establish this connection with the demon beasts.

Whoosh~

As he continued following the faint connection he had locked onto, Xuan Hao found himself descending back towards the ground where the base of the towering trees was located. Leaving behind the sprawling demon beast kingdoms above, as he soon found himself digging into the ground. Moving deeper underground following the connection that was hidden inside a large root that went even further down than the spiritual tree’s height above ground.

And from sensing the situation around him, it was clear that the rest of the spiritual trees were in a similar situation, as most of their mass was located underground in their root systems.

However, as he continued moving further down, he noticed that the root he had been following merged together with a root belonging to another tree, causing the faint connection to the demon beast far above the clouds to strengthen, becoming clearer and easier to sense.

At the same time, the increased strength of the connection after merging with another spiritual tree’s root only continued as more spiritual tree roots merged into the now growing root that grew from being a few meters wide to being more than a dozen meters wide.

Even more interesting, Xuan Hao could clearly sense the presence of other connections inside the growing spiritual tree root. Counting them, there should at least be a few million connections present inside the root. Accounting for the total population of around five or six demon beast kingdoms above the clouds.

Among these connections, there were three that stood out as being far more powerful than the rest, belonging to demon beasts at the Celestial Immortal Realm.

Under normal circumstances, it would have been impossible for the spiritual trees to handle this kind of powerful being even if they worked together, but it seemed that by merging into one and leveraging the millions of other connections, they had managed to stabilize the connection with the celestial immortal realm demon beasts.

In a sense, the larger spiritual root and the millions of spiritual connections with demon beasts below the Celestial Immortal Realm all seemed to serve the singular purpose of restraining the three demon beasts in the Celestial Immortal Realm and ensure that their spiritual connection remained intact.

Now that he had managed to figure out how the Celestial Immortal Realm demon beast were able to be kept under control from such a distance, the only question left in his mind was what had established this system of control in the first place and more importantly why.

After all, given the ability to leverage the spiritual trees into doing something like this and at the same time control Celestial Immortal Realm demon beasts with ease indicated that the artifact or creature behind this was by no means weak. At the very least, it wasn’t anything he would be capable of doing with his current strength.

The only way to figure it out was to continue following the now massive root further down below ground…