Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

Getting back to the surface without any problems after being thrown out of the celestial gate, Xuan Hao didn’t immediately redeem the reward from the quest but instead focused his attention on his current situation or more specifically his current small size.

Part of him had expected something like this to happen, while another part of him had been hopeful that the celestial gate would remove the entirety of the seal that had been placed on him instead of only the part that restricted his use of the Dao of Space.

Now that he did find himself shrunk down and without any way to reasonably increase his own size back to normal with his current comprehension of the Dao of Space, he couldn’t help feeling that the reward from the quest regarding increasing his comprehension of the Dao of Space should be focused on figuring out how to return his size back to normal again.

Even if it wouldn’t directly improve his strength by that much, it would still deepen his understanding of the Dao of Space and bring him closer to breaking through to the Origin Realm in the future. In a sense, focusing on a different aspect of the Dao of Space that he hadn’t tried to comprehend yet could strengthen his foundation in the Dao of Space and bring about more benefits compared to him focusing down the current direction that mainly focused on using the Dao of Space for movement and destruction.

Outside of this, there was also the simple fact that he didn’t want to return to the sect in this kind of state. Especially considering he would be trapped in this shrunk-down state until he either comprehended a way to get himself back to normal or found someone capable of helping him return to normal.

The problem was that finding someone capable of returning him to normal would be something close to impossible considering that it involved an extremely high comprehension of the Dao of Space along with a focused comprehension that didn’t go down a path that would increase one’s strength far less than if one went down a more traditional path like he had done.

With that in mind, it seemed like the only realistic path would be to comprehend a path out of his current situation himself. Although it wouldn’t directly improve his strength by much, one clear positive outside of strengthening his foundation in the Dao of Space would be that he would have an easier time constructing an independent space like a secret realm in the future, as it did involve this kind of fundamental principle of the Dao of Space to do so. In a sense, he should be able to make larger secret realms with less resources by relying on his comprehension of the Dao of Space.

As for why he suddenly had a focus on secret realms… Well, it had to do with the fact that the current Star Shattering Sect’s growth would be requiring more space to develop and the best way to create more space for the sect to grow would be through creating different secret realms that fulfilled different needs for the sect.

Of course, the most pressing one that Elder Song had even reminded him about a few times before he had left the sect to go into the mystic realm was secret realms focused on raising demon beasts that could be used to train the younger generation of the Star Shattering Sect. Not much different from how the mystic realm worked for the Mirage Sect in the past, just on a much smaller scale.

The reason for this wasn’t that the Star Shattering Sect was lacking opponents for the younger generation to fight with, as the territory of the Star Shattering Sect was still in a period of initial conquest and had several demon beasts and other problems for these disciples to take care of. Not to mention the endless stream of demonic cultivators that could be found at the borders of the sect.

Instead, the reason was that Elder Song saw the long term need to establish these kinds of secret realms for when it became unsustainable for the sect to send out their disciples whenever they wanted to gain some combat experience. After all, the territory would stabilize with time and the demonic cultivators wouldn’t continue throwing themselves towards the Star Shattering Sect’s borders forever.

When things calmed down, the sect would need somewhere to send the younger generation of the sect to experience that wasn’t too far away from the sect. Even if this happened to be decades or potentially hundreds of years into the future, it took time to grow demon beasts and Elder Song was planning to start as fast as possible to ensure that the sect would have a way to continue providing for their disciples in the future when the time came.

Outside of that, secret realms would also be useful for growing spiritual herbs or creating special spaces suitable for comprehending specific Daos.

Although the latter was far more difficult to create and more resource intensive, Xuan Hao felt that it should at least be possible for him to create something like that for the Dao of Ice, Space and the Sword. For anything other than those three Daos which he had reached the Perfection Realm in, he would have to test out and see.

”But… For now, I should probably first find somewhere safe to receive the redeem the reward from the main quest…” Muttering this to himself as he quietly shook his head while looking into the distance, Xuan Hao soon flew off in the direction of the small independent space where the Tower of Secrets was located.

Not just because he was curious about how many celestial coins he now had after getting through the tenth celestial trial on the highest difficulty, but also because it was the one safe location he knew about inside the mystic realm where he felt confident to slowly consume the gains from the system quest without being disturbed….

And so, after a few hours flying through the mystic realm, he soon arrived back in front of the Tower of Secrets. Wasting no time as he found a place far away from the Tower of Secrets to redeem the first reward from the main quest, the enhancement of the spiritual sea. Deciding to redeem this first, as it had an expiration date of less than 20 hours by the time he reached the Tower of Secrets.

RUMBLE-!

No sooner did he feel an overwhelming power emerging in the empty space above his spiritual sea before forming a cascading waterfall of spiritual qi that poured into his spiritual sea, causing an immediate change to take place, as his calm spiritual sea began growing at a visible rate while also becoming more turbulent.

Finally, by the time the spiritual sea reached a circumference of 10 kilometers, it seemed to reach some kind of invisible barrier that prevented it from growing any further-

BOOOM-!

However, with the constant flow of spiritual qi being funneled into the spiritual sea, this barrier barely stopped the growth for a few seconds before being forcibly broken through. Almost instantaneously, causing his strength to go through a qualitive improvement.

”Middle Stage of the Sea Formation Realm…” Even without knowing what had just happened, it was clear to him that the barrier he had just felt should be the barrier between the Early Stage and the Middle Stage of the Sea Formation Realm. Meaning that he had just broken through to the Middle Stage of the Sea Formation Realm.

Rumble~!

However, the expansion of his spiritual sea didn’t just spot at 10 kilometers but continued to expand from 10 to 20 before soon breaking through 30 where it finally began to slow down expanding until finally calming down at around 37 kilometers.

At the same time, his spiritual sea had also grown far more turbulent compared to the past, but with his current deep foundation, he felt that he should be able to stabilize it and return the spiritual sea back to its former calm state.

This did make him a bit confused, as he had clearly learnt that the spiritual sea of someone in the Middle Stage of the Sea Formation Realm should be considered wild and not as calm as he felt he should be able to make his own spiritual sea, but then again, he also realized that the categorization might not be entirely accurate.

Filled with doubts, he quickly stabilized the situation inside his dantian before going back to retrieve the information on the Sea Formation Realm. Curious about potentially having missed something earlier that could explain his current situation, as the barrier he had encountered should have served as a very clear distinction between the Early and Middle Stage of the Sea Formation Realm instead of the rather abstract one talking about the state of one’s spiritual sea that he had learnt about from the Tower of Secrets.