Cultivating Disciples to Breakthrough

While the three Dao Seed Realm cultivators from the Explorer Union were all feeling thankful that they hadn’t attempted to try and plead the spiritual tree for mercy like the now dead city lord, Xuan Hao arrived at a location far away from where the spiritual tree had been recovery its strength in hiding. Still inside the borders of the Eastern Central Region, but far enough away that it would be impossible for the spiritual tree to track him down easily without having reached the Perfection Realm in the Dao of Space like he had.

Then again, if the spiritual tree had reached the Perfection Realm in the Dao of Space, he would not have been able to escape as easily as he had done...

Shaking his head as he thought about how he had managed to easily slip away before the spiritual tree had managed to fully wake up from its recovery state, Xuan Hao turned his attention towards the five spiritual fruits he had managed to steal away successfully with a smile on his lips.

The five spiritual fruits were all relatively small, being no bigger than a smaller apple. Even the appearance of the spiritual fruits wasn’t anything special and if it wasn’t for the terrifying power he could feel from them, they could have easily been mistaken for a few normal apples that could be found throughout the continent.

As for the use of these spiritual fruits? It was rather simple to tell from the large quantity of spiritual qi stored inside of them; they were perfect for expanding the spiritual sea of someone in the Sea Formation Realm.

That wasn’t to say that the spiritual fruit was useless to someone below the Sea Formation Realm, as the spiritual fruit could also be used to increase one’s comprehension of the Dao of Life and help in breaking through a bottleneck.

Of course, with the large quantity of spiritual qi inside the spiritual fruit, it couldn’t be used recklessly by someone below the Dao Seed Realm, as the dantian of someone below that realm was far too small to handle such a large quantity of spiritual qi. Even slowing down the absorption of the spiritual qi inside the spiritual fruit wouldn’t be an option, as it was pretty much impossible for someone below the Dao Seed Realm to control it in the first place.

Maybe with the assistance of someone else, it might be possible to consume the spiritual fruit below the Dao Seed Realm, but there wouldn’t really be anyone who would willingly give up this kind of spiritual fruit that was even useful to someone in the Sea Formation Realm like himself.

Even if someone might not need the spiritual qi inside of the spiritual fruit, there was always the option of using it to comprehend the Dao of Life, a Dao that was by far one of the most sought after due to how comprehending it could seriously boost someone’s ability to stay alive.

Maybe out of all the Daos out there, outside of the Dao of Space, the Dao of Life could be considered among the greatest Daos for someone who wanted to stay alive.

After all, outside of increasing someone’s survival abilities, the Dao of life was also well known to have the wonderful side effect of increasing someone’s lifespan, something that made any cultivator who had lived for long enough want to learn it.

In a sense, because of this side effect of increasing one’s lifespan, the Dao of Life could be considered the most popular Dao throughout the continent, as even if someone didn’t comprehend it as their main Dao, they would have certainly added it as a Dao to comprehend on the side.

Because of this, almost everyone who had reached the Dao Seed realm had managed to reach the Elementary Realm in the Dao of Life.

In that sense, he himself had been a bit behind when it came to learning the Dao of Life, though, the main reason for that was simply because his lifespan wasn’t much of a concern given how young he was.

Lost in his own thoughts as he was looking over the five spiritual fruits that he had managed to successfully get his hands on; Xuan Hao suddenly froze on the spot as he turned to look at the space a few hundred meters.

Rumble~

There, the space began to tremble violently before a familiar looking green root broke through the fabric of space and began reaching out towards him.

”The spiritual tree... It followed me!” Frowning visibly as he saw that root stretching out from the crack in space towards him, Xuan Hao didn’t dare wait around for the rest of the spiritual tree to show up as he directly tore through space and left without looking back. The spiritual fruits he had been about to consume had been thrown to the back of his mind for now as his full focus was placed on figuring out how the spiritual tree had managed to track him down.

After all, from what he had sensed just now, he was clear that the spiritual tree’s comprehension of the Dao of Space was nowhere near his own. Having only reached the Peak of the Small Success Realm with one step already into the Large Success Realm from what he could tell. Far from enough to track him down through space like it had ended up doing.

As for how it could use the long-distance teleportation technique without having reached the Large Success Realm in the Dao of Space? He guessed that it was either using some kind of special artifact or had a racial ability related to the Dao of Space that allowed it to use some abilities that it normally shouldn’t be able to use in its current realm. Not much different from his ability to collapse space using the Divine Void Eyes he had awakened.

Whoosh~

Vanishing into thin air the next second just as the spiritual tree fully emerged from the torn space that its tree root had widened enough for it to fit, Xuan Hao decided to not move at full speed and instead slow down his travel speed through space. Planning to try and test the spiritual tree and confirm whether it could really track him.

If it could indeed track him, he would be in a bad situation, as he had no idea how it was tracking him. One way to track him would be through some kind of connection to the spiritual fruits he had taken away, while another would be through some kind of artifact that had been able to lock on to him through the faint spatial ripples he had left behind when he had first escaped.

The first of these two methods of tracking was understandable and expected, while the latter was far harder to deal with.

All he had to do to deal with the first was consume the spiritual fruits while he was escaping from the spiritual tree, as for the other... He had no way to deal with it and would be forced to continue escaping from the spiritual tree until he found a way to get rid of the spiritual tree chasing after him.

One such way could be to continue moving through space for an extended period of time until he got so far away that the spiritual tree would no longer be able to follow him.

The problem with that kind of extended travel through space would be that he would have no idea where he would end up and there was a very real chance of him accidentally running into a forbidden zone of some kind along the way, thus ending up in a potentially far more deadly situation where he not only had to escape from some kind of unknown forbidden zone, but also deal with the spiritual tree that was chasing after him...

”For now, I should first consume the spiritual fruits and see if the spiritual tree can continue to follow after me...” Muttering this to himself as he sensed the spiritual tree chasing after him from behind like he had already expected it to do, Xuan Hao slowly focused his attention back on the spiritual fruits.

Although he wanted to just consume them now, he also understood that doing so would be risky, as he planned on using them to expand the spiritual sea in his dantian.

Using it to comprehend the Dao of Life wasn’t really an option with the spiritual tree chasing after them, while at the same time also wasn’t what he wanted to use the spiritual fruits for, even if he could potentially raise his comprehension of the Dao of Life to the Small Success Realm.

The main reason for this being that it would take him far longer to expand his spiritual sea through normal accumulation compared to comprehending the Dao of Life. The spiritual fruits would save him a lot of time and bring him close to reaching the Turbulent Sea Realm or Late Stage of the Sea Formation Realm.