Han Li's Azure Essence Sword Art had already been cultivated to its absolute limit, and there was no way to push it any further.
His other divine abilities were immensely powerful, but the Myriad Distance Divine Light grew in might as his cultivation increased after reaching the Great Completion stage. As for the Spirit-Consuming Heavenly Flame, it enhanced its own power through evolution. Neither could provide any substantial help in advancing his cultivation.
Without a suitable technique to guide his training, a cultivator who simply consumed spirit pills would only end up with an excess of spiritual energy in their body, resulting in a fatal backlash.
For Han Li, who now wished to push his cultivation a step further, there were two paths before him.
The first was to follow the route of ordinary cultivators — to seek out a new set of high-grade cultivation techniques and continue training that way. However, abruptly switching to an unfamiliar technique midway was no small matter. It required extensive study and contemplation, and a careless misstep could cause conflicts with his existing techniques, resulting in twice the effort for half the result.
The second approach was one Han Li had only learned about after reading through the experiences of numerous Body Refinement practitioners — a path rarely taken by anyone.
It was the dual cultivation of body and magical power: seeking out high-grade body-refinement techniques from demonic sects or demon clans.
Once these demonic or demon-clan techniques reached an advanced stage, they strengthened the physical body while simultaneously advancing one's magical power.
However, such techniques were exceedingly rare in the outside world, and their cultivation was extraordinarily difficult. While some human cultivators had chosen this path, those who succeeded were vanishingly few.
The fundamental reason was that the human body's potential was inherently inferior to that of demon clans and ancient demons. Pushing one's physical body to a certain level of strength — unless one was born with extraordinary talent — made further breakthroughs nearly impossible.
Yet if one truly managed to cultivate the dual path to an extremely high level, not only would one's strength be astonishing, but the probability of breaking through bottlenecks would far surpass that of cultivators at the same level who followed ordinary techniques.
This made Han Li's choice a difficult one.
As it happened, he already possessed precisely such a dual cultivation technique — the series of arts from the "Heaven-Bearing Demonic Art" and the "True Saint Scripture," which complemented his "Myriad Manifestation King Art."
Han Li had long confirmed that these three sets of techniques were indeed complementary to one another.
Each could be cultivated independently, granting its own unique powers, or they could be treated as a single integrated set of techniques, cultivated progressively in sequence.
If practiced separately, the latter two without the foundation of the preceding arts would barely display one or ten percent of their true might. However, if cultivated from the beginning as a whole, they would reform into a powerful dual cultivation method. Although this set of techniques originated from an extremely formidable demonic art of the True Demon World, it had been modified and revised over countless generations by experts of the human Buddhist sect, the demonic path, and the demon clans. As a result, it had become something entirely different — the energy infused into the body was no longer the Qi of True Demons, but the vital essence of heaven and earth.
Han Li had studied the matter on his own and felt that cultivating the three sets together should be feasible. In reality, however, no one had ever actually cultivated the complete set as he possessed it.
The Buddhist Myriad Manifestation King Art and the demonic Heaven-Bearing Demonic Art had each been modified as independent techniques, and the True Saint Scripture — a legacy technique of a demon lord from the mortal realm — was undoubtedly missing the preceding two parts, which surely could not be identical to the Myriad Manifestation King Art or the Heaven-Bearing Demonic Art.
So what problems might arise from cultivating this pieced-together technique — only the heavens could say.
There was no doubt, however, that this True Saint Scripture method was far beyond any ordinary dual cultivation technique. Having already cultivated the Myriad Manifestation King Art, Han Li could match a Nascent Soul cultivator through sheer physical toughness alone. Once he successfully mastered the remaining two parts, the power would be unimaginable.
Pure magical cultivation versus dual cultivation of body and magic — each path had its own advantages and disadvantages. The former progressed faster in the early stages, was relatively easier and more reliable, while the latter was excruciatingly difficult to cultivate and carried a certain degree of risk, but once completed, its power was extraordinary, and one's chances of advancing in later stages far exceeded the former.
For this reason, Han Li had remained undecided to this day.
He had been keeping an eye out for high-grade techniques along the ordinary path, but had yet to find anything suitable in the marketplaces. It was not that high-grade techniques of the Void Refining stage were unavailable — rather, after possessing the Myriad Distance Divine Light and the Spirit-Consuming Heavenly Flame, ordinary techniques simply did not meet his standards.
That was why, upon hearing that techniques left behind by a perfected Mahayana cultivator existed, he had become so interested.
If this technique proved truly suitable, then perhaps the arduous path of dual body-and-magic cultivation could be abandoned.
While Han Li's mind churned with these restless thoughts, the red-robed elder on the auction platform had already sold off all the pills held by the ten palace-robed women in one breath, each fetching a price well above the reserve — several times over, in fact.
As each pill was won, a female cultivator carrying a brocade box would float gracefully to the flying pavilion to deliver the pill directly, then collect the spirit stones and return to the stage.
Most of these pills were similar to the "Heart Renewal Pill" — useful only for cultivators at the early stage of the Deity Transformation realm.
Only two were mid-stage pills, and as for those useful for the late stage, not a single one had appeared.
This was hardly surprising.
Even in the Spirit Realm, where spiritual energy was dense and all manner of spirit herbs grew in abundance, the raw materials needed for pills above the Deity Transformation realm still mostly had to be sourced from the Barbarian Wilderness. Artificial cultivation of such ingredients either took far too long or was extremely difficult to keep alive.
Naturally, pills above the Deity Transformation realm were seldom seen.
Moreover, the higher the grade of the pill, the lower the probability of successful refinement.
Even when a late-stage pill was successfully refined, which cultivator would part with it rather than keeping it for their own use?
It was only because Tianyuan City was exceptionally rich in all manner of alchemy materials that even early-stage Deity Transformation pills could be seen here, let alone mid-stage ones.
Once all these pills had been auctioned off, the elder gave a wave of his hand, and the women — who had been holding nothing moments ago — each flipped their palms and produced another brocade box from their storage bracelets.