At this point, Xia Li truly found himself speechless.
The former Ninth Holy Son, who by all rights ought to have become the greatest obstacle before him, was now probably the person with the highest opinion of him in the entire Holy Land apart from the Second Holy Maiden Lingying.
Yet from the few words the man had spoken, one could already sense just how terrifying the Holy Land's open scheme truly was.
Grant you everything.
Grant you a new life.
With that, why would you not devote yourself wholeheartedly to the Holy Land?
"By the way, Daoist, how should I address you?"
"My name is Kang Renquan. It's my old name. A very plain one, and my parents' greatest hope for me. As long as I lived healthy, free of disaster, and grew to full adulthood, that was enough."
"Then congratulations, Brother Kang, on finding your way back to the proper path."
Xia Li was honestly rather envious of Kang Renquan now.
To be able to step down in this manner...
He himself could not step down at all, which was why he had been forced all the way into the Holy Land.
So could some prodigy please crawl out of the woodwork and knock him off his perch? He would reward the person with a mountain of spirit stones on the spot. He would even be willing to go burn incense in a temple for them and pray for lifelong peace.
"Thanks to you, from now on in the Holy Land I'll be guarding your gate. And I won't even take your things. On the contrary, I'll give you a thank-you gift!"
Kang Renquan had fully decided to work while paying for the privilege. Not only would he guard Xia Li's door, he would even offer spirit stones in return, so long as Xia Li did not drive him away.
With things already put so plainly, and his position lowered to such a degree, all Xia Li could do was nod helplessly in agreement.
Afterward, Xia Li entered the palace.
Following Kang Renquan's directions, he prepared to bathe and change clothes. Upon entering the right-side hall, he found a pool of spiritual liquid at its center, so clear it was almost invisible.
That should have been Primordial Spirit Liquid.
It had the effect of cleansing the sinews and washing the marrow and was a treasure exceedingly hard to come by on the body-refinement path.
Only...
lower-level cultivators used merely low-grade, diluted Primordial Spirit Liquid, and even then they drank it rather than bathed in it.
This entire pool before him was supreme-grade Primordial Spirit Liquid.
And it was for soaking.
From that alone one could see both how extravagantly wealthy the Holy Land was and how willing it was to spend on its own people.
How many spirit stones must a whole pool like this be worth...
[Estimated market value: approximately one million spirit stones.]
The Heaven Chip immediately answered Xia Li's question, which made him freeze on the spot halfway through taking off his clothes. His heart ached so badly he wanted to pack up the Primordial Spirit Liquid and haul it back to Earth to sell.
[At present, I do not recommend that you act frugally. This is not an item you actively requested. It is a buyer's market in which the seller is manufacturing value. The more you care about it, the more valuable it becomes.]
The Heaven Chip advised Xia Li not to treat the pool as too important. The less he cared, the lower its value became. Taiyi Holy Land would also understand from that that Xia Li was not someone so easy to deal with.
"So in that case, this counts as a kind of warning shot."
Once he understood that, Xia Li no longer hesitated. He stripped completely and stepped into the pool.
The Primordial Spirit Liquid immediately traveled through his spiriton nerves to every part of his body, beginning a deep refinement of his flesh, meridians, and acupoints.
At that moment, Xia Li discovered that after gaining spirit roots, even the way he refined spiritual objects seemed to have changed. His absorption efficiency had grown much higher.
The difference between having spirit roots and lacking them really was not something outsiders could explain for you. Only by personally experiencing it could one understand.
Before long...
the clear liquid of the pool rapidly turned foul.
Impurities and filth were expelled from Xia Li's body, but some of those "impurities" could hardly even be called impurities at all. They were formed from flesh that had never fully spiritualized and could still count as spiritual material. If a low-realm cultivator obtained them, they could refine them to raise their cultivation.
This process was no different from old flesh dissolving and new flesh being born.
A full three hours later...
Xia Li completed this cleansing of marrow and body. The entire pool of Primordial Spirit Liquid was now covered in a blackish-red viscous layer, and it gave off a rank odor.
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Xia Li stepped out at once and began changing clothes.
The garments had been set beside the pool: a treasure robe dominated by gold, adorned throughout with dark cloud patterns in profound black.
This Holy Land robe was the same heavy garment the former Ninth Holy Son had once been unable to cast off.
Now it rested on Xia Li's own body.
The style was unique, and the materials lavishly chosen. Wearing it gave Xia Li the sensation that his entire body was being gently massaged. His meridians and acupoints even resonated with the power contained in the robe, and his blood and qi began growing of their own accord.
[Analysis of spiritual treasure complete. Strength has reached A-grade Armed standard. Additional unknown power is in operation and may increase affinity toward all spiritual attributes.]
The Heaven Chip finished analyzing the quality of the Holy Son attire.
A-grade Armed standard meant a Soul Transformation-level treasure.
On Earth, that meant a market price beginning in the millions.
And this was only a piece of clothing, yet it was already so miraculous.
But Xia Li's attention was elsewhere. He turned back once more to look at the pool of Primordial Spirit Liquid.
At that moment, he remembered an idea Liu Sheng Qianzao had once mentioned to him.
The Ship of Theseus.
"Thinking about it carefully, everything in this pool is my flesh and blood. It was me from three hours ago. Put bluntly, it's my corpse-water..."
Those materials had once together composed the Xia Li of three hours before.
Then could one say that he had died completely once already?
But was not the washing of sinews and cleansing of marrow always like this?
Whether one used Primordial Spirit Liquid or something else, the body would always expel impurity.
No!
Even when mortals bathed, were the things washed away not also dead skin cells shed from the body?
"To die continuously, to be reborn continuously, to repeat that without end... is that what it means to live?"
Xia Li felt as though he had touched upon something.
High-realm cultivators could continue existing after shedding their fleshly bodies, while the Earth lineage could even reside in a fully prosthetic shell and discard flesh entirely.
Yet in this very path of cultivation that so often proclaimed flesh short and bitter, Earth's lineage still insisted that after Soul Transformation one must forge a Golden Body that did not decay.
Would that realm called Golden Body bring some essential change to the flesh-and-blood body that lived by constantly dying and being remade?
[Partial crystallization has appeared in your spinal column. Congratulations. Your body-refinement cultivation has broken through Aperture Opening and reached Jade Marrow.]
The Heaven Chip reported the results of this cleansing and refinement.
Before formally entering Taiyi Holy Land, Xia Li had gained spirit roots, and his body-refinement cultivation had broken through as well, not to mention that he had already strengthened his soul cultivation on the journey back.
The Xia Li of now and the Xia Li who had only just defeated Mo Ye were no longer on the same level.
His strength had reached a new height.
Both his body-refinement martial path and his telekinetic Divine Path had attained the level of Nascent Soul.
Only his Profound Path cultivation remained a drag.
But was it really a drag?
That golden core of his was no ordinary golden core.
Xia Li closed his eyes and clenched his fist, feeling the changes brought by the Martial Jade Marrow realm.
He had an instinctive sensation, as if something within him were urging him to gather strength and repair the flaws in his body.
As he was now, he could already regrow severed limbs.
[Heaven Chip, check the condition of all prosthetic connection points. Suppress nerve and flesh regeneration.]
Xia Li now needed the Heaven Chip to block his body's self-repair. Otherwise, the interfaces with his prosthetics would start developing problems.
His thinking had already changed from before.
He now even had the strange feeling that going without prosthetics left him somehow incomplete.
Thirty percent prosthetic ratio.
That was a very good ratio.
It was also the balance point between the path of augmentation and the path of nature.
Xia Li lowered his head and looked at his own hands.
His left hand opened.
His right hand clenched.
His left eye was lively and expressive.
His right eye was cold and hard as steel.
In that left and right...
lay the difference between emotion and reason.