Long Chen smiled. “No one taught me or warned me. I was essentially leaving things up to fate before. After fighting with the other nine star heir, I realized that I had deviated from the Nine Star Hegemon Body Art’s cultivation path. Now that it’s fully deviated, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It means that starting from the sixth star, I’m in charge.”
“That’s quite a lofty ambition. Although I don’t know the origin of your Nine Star Hegemon Body Art, it’s definitely the most frightening cultivation technique I’ve ever seen. When my power merges with you, my soul is bound tightly by it without the slightest ability to resist. It’s such a terrifying cultivation technique, but now you’ve decided to mess around with it near its end. Do you think you have the ability to create a new Nine Star Hegemon Body Art building on its foundation?” asked Evilmoon.

  “If I said that I do, would you believe it?” asked Long Chen lightly.

  “No,” said Evilmoon without hesitation.

  “I don’t believe it either.”
“What kind of time is it for your fucking jokes?!” raged Evilmoon.

  “Hahaha, who has the time to care? No matter what, the Six Star Battle Armor has already formed. It corresponds to the realm above Netherpassage. As for the path above Netherpassage, well, a way will show itself once I get there,” laughed Long Chen. Having changed the path of the Nine Star Hegemon Body Art, he felt like he had caught sight of a new path for himself, a path of limitless possibilities.

  He had never managed to fully comprehend the Nine Star Hegemon Body Art, so he had been forced to cautiously guess around. However, now this cultivation technique belonged to him, and his future path was in his own hands. He preferred this feeling.

  Although he knew that the Nine Star Hegemon Body Art was an extremely terrifying cultivation technique, and that trying to blaze a new trail for it was practically as difficult as ascending the heavens, he liked having his fate in his own hands.

  After resting a bit and recovering thirty percent of his Spiritual Strength and spiritual yuan, Long Chen returned to consuming pills to increase his cultivation base.

  Seeing that he was fine, Guo Ran got back to mining with Zhao Ritian. Three days later, Long Chen’s divine ring began to rumble once more.

  The five-point star appeared again, only to be shattered by the power of the six stars. Its energy was consumed by the six stars, and that energy bathed Long Chen’s astral spaces in divine light.

  As a result, Long Chen’s aura soared once more, and he could sense his physical body growing stronger. He knew that due to the strengthening of his astral spaces, his world energy and physical body were growing as well.

  This was one special aspect of the Nine Star Hegemon Body Art. As his world energy grew, his six stars unleashed energy that nourished his body, allowing him to control his new world energy. This mysterious connection allowed him to fully use his new power.

  “The eleventh Heavenstage.” Long Chen finally realized that the final three Heavenstages were used to balance the power of his physical body and his 108,000 astral spaces.

  At this moment, Long Chen clenched his fists and it brought forth a thunderous sound. Upon unleashing a single punch, the void shattered, and the wind blasted through the mountain in front of him. This was a mountain containing extremely tough immortal vein ore. Although Guo Ran had absorbed plenty of its immortal metal, it still crumbled from the wind of Long Chen’s punch.

  “I’ve increased my realm by two levels, and my physical strength has increased by around thirty percent. Based on my previous experience though, every realm increase after the ninth Heavenstage should cause my physical strength to double…”
Long Chen’s mood started to fall. Clearly, the reason the increase this time wasn’t so high was because the efficiency of his new Nine Star Hegemon Body Art had fallen. This was not a good start.

  “Whatever. Let’s keep going.” Long Chen shook his head. Since he had chosen this path already, there was no point in regrets. He could only figure things out along his way.

  Just the fact that he had three more realms than other people meant that he had a huge advantage.

  Ten days later, Long Chen had yet to reach the twelfth Heavenstage, but Guo Ran had essentially finished sucking away the ores of this vein. They then switched locations.

  The new location was a desert, and the ore vein was located beneath it. Since that was the case, Guo Ran brought Zhao Ritian underground to continue mining, while Long Chen continued consuming pills.

  After seven days, the six stars lit up once more, a sign that he had reached the twelfth Heavenstage.

  To test his strength, Long Chen then unleashed multiple punches, resulting in a whirlwind of sand exploding. After a while, Long Chen stopped and smiled. “My physical strength has almost doubled compared to before I started.”
He had essentially consumed all the pills he had accumulated during this time. Fortunately, the Moon and Star Refining Furnace and the Demon Moon Furnace were busy refining more pills. Once he had enough, he could attempt to break through to the realm above Netherpassage.

  Originally, Long Chen had been worried about not being able to keep up with everybody else’s realm. If Ye Ming, Feng Fei, and the others advanced before him, it would be troublesome.

  However, he was no longer worried about that. No one would attempt to advance beyond the Netherpassage realm within the Star Field Divine World. All he knew was that the old man and Qu Jiangying had warned him more than once that advancing beyond the Netherpassage realm would have to wait until he returned to the Martial Heaven Continent.

  However, no one had mentioned why. It seemed that there was some taboo. In any case, Long Chen’s twelfth Heavenstage could be considered equivalent to everyone else’s ninth Heavenstage, so he was now just one step from the next realm.

  This realm was very mysterious, as no one had brought up what this realm had to do with. Even the senior generation refused to answer questions about it, making their disciples quite curious.

  During the next few days, Xia Chen also came over. He had come out of seclusion and immediately joined forces with Guo Ran.

  With Xia Chen’s formation, Zhao Ritian’s mining efficiency multiplied. Ten days later, they had sucked away the majority of the ores in the four largest veins.

  According to the mother tree, they should not suck away all the ores. Those veins had their spirituality. If they weren’t all sucked away, they would leave the seed for more ores to be born. This way, it would not destroy the balance of the world.

  Guo Ran and the others were quite ashamed to hear about this. Before this, they had always mined all ore veins that they found until they were empty.

  After that, they returned to the mother tree. Guo Ran and Xia Chen got to work, and it was to undergo a second refinement of the immortal metals. Of course, their main tool was still Zhao Ritian.

  Zhao Ritian was not just capable of gathering metal ores. He also had the powerful technique of refining immortal metal. Otherwise, his source metal wouldn’t be so powerful.

  With Xia Chen and Guo Ran taking turns, they forced Zhao Ritian to refine the immortal metal. The metal that they beat out of him would be even stronger than his normal source metal once they forged it into armor and weapons, adding the corresponding runes.

  With Zhao Ritian present, everything went extremely smoothly. Hundreds of pure immortal metal ingots went through Guo Ran’s forging, becoming incredibly precious swords and sets of armor. He was able to create hundreds of them a day.

  As for Zhao Ritian, he cursed and screamed every day, but Guo Ran and Xia Chen simply laughed. They continued squeezing him of his metal, not giving him even a moment of rest.

  Zhao Ritian even had an urge to die. He thought of killing himself several times, but with a formation master like Xia Chen present, as soon as showed any signs of that, Xia Chen would be alerted and stop him.

  After several attempts at this, Xia Chen set up a new formation. Now, every time Zhao Ritian started accumulating energy for an explosion, he would be automatically struck by a hammer. In Guo Ran and Xia Chen’s hands, Zhao Ritian was truly living a life worse than death. He had been cast into hell.

  Zhao Ritian hated the two of them to the bone, but Xia Chen and Guo Ran loved him to death. With Zhao Ritian, their life felt beautiful. They were able to gather and purify precious metals in the fastest, most efficient way possible.

  This time, the Dragonblood warriors’ new weapons and armor were all made thanks to Zhao Ritian. Their power was many times greater than before since the new material that they were made of was capable of enduring stronger runes. Even Guo Ran and Xia Chen were unable to calculate just how much stronger they were.

  As for Guo Ran’s own weapons and armor, he had further purified the metal that had come out of Zhao Ritian to make them.

  Zhao Ritian’s source metal that they hammered out of him was already at an extremely high level of purity. Moreover, Guo Ran had spent a great deal of time and effort to further purify it twice. With such high-quality material, his new armor was definitely his strongest battle armor ever.

  As Guo Ran and Xia Chen worked on the equipment, Meng Qi, Chu Yao, Tang Wan-er, and the others began to come out of seclusion. They were all clearly refreshed and had reached the full circle of Netherpassage, possessing the power to break through to the next realm.

  What Long Chen hadn’t expected was that Nangong Zuiyue and Beitang Rushuang had also returned. The two of them were still in seclusion on top of the mother tree.

  However, the two of them had brought back a startling piece of news. They had encountered Dongfang Yuyang.

  “What?”
Long Chen was shocked to hear that. How was that possible? He had clearly killed Dongfang Yuyang.

  “Lady Nangong said that this matter is absolutely true. The two of them even fought with Dongfang Yuyang. Because of it, Lady Beitang was injured, so the two of them returned here,” said Zi Yan. She was also shocked by this matter, but Beitang Rushuang and Nangong Zuiyue couldn’t possibly be wrong about this.

  They had even fought against Dongfang Yuyang. With their power, they would have seen through a disguise.

  “Dongfang Yuyang? So he has some tricks.” Long Chen nodded. There was definitely something queer about this. He had actually been fooled. “But it’s fine. I could kill him once, so I can kill him twice.”
“No need. I’ll kill him next time.” Liu Ruyan’s icy voice rang out.

  Hearing her voice, Long Chen looked toward her and jumped. Liu Ruyan’s aura had changed, becoming extremely cold and sinister. She was like a different person.

  Now, her long and narrow eyes vaguely had black runes appearing and fading in them. Looking into her eyes could make a person feel like their soul was being sucked inside.

  “Boss, let’s go hunt down Ye Ming and the others!” proposed Gu Yang, instantly causing the Dragonblood warriors’ eyes to light up.