"The True Inheritance of Tao Zhu..."
Had it been a few months earlier, Fang Yuan might still have been able to leverage Southern Border Gu Immortals as bargaining chips for this inheritance.
But now, nearly all of his Southern Border captives had already had their apertures devoured — he'd essentially torn up the ransom.
Every last one of these Southern Border Gu Immortals had been a Seventh Transformation powerhouse at minimum, and Xia Cha in particular had been an Eighth Transformation cultivator. The Supreme Immortal Aperture devoured them all, along with the numerous immortal apertures and blessed lands left behind in the Marketplace, causing Fang Yuan's cultivation to skyrocket — leaping from the Seventh Transformation to the Eighth in a single bound, bypassing the final tribulation of the Seventh.
Fang Yuan had originally planned to continue capturing Southern Border Gu Immortals in the Five Realms Mountain Range and extort them. But Lu Weiyin's interference had ruined that little scheme of his.
It wasn't merely a matter of increased cultivation. Because the Supreme Immortal Aperture's aperture-devouring came with zero loss, Fang Yuan's Dao Marks had surged dramatically as well!
Through the precise measurements of the Dao Analysis Immortal Gu, Fang Yuan's accumulated Dao Marks proved to be extremely formidable.
Time Path Dao Marks had originally been exceedingly scarce — nearly dead last — but now they had vaulted into first place, totaling over seventy-three thousand. Almost all of them had been contributed by Xia Cha, a textbook case of "seizing by force and growing rich overnight."
With so many Time Path Dao Marks, each of Fang Yuan's Time Path killer moves received an amplification of over seventy-three times. Combined with the Spring Autumn Cicada and its summer counterpart — both Eighth Transformation Gu — the burst combat power he could unleash was truly formidable. Within the Five Realms Mountain Range, he had withstood the combined onslaught of numerous Gu Immortals.
Of course, this also owed to the terrain advantage of the Five Domains World Wall, the poor coordination among the Southern Border Gu Immortals, and the many ways they ended up canceling each other out.
Second came Water Path Dao Marks, surpassing the sixty-thousand threshold.
Water Path had already seen considerable prior accumulation. Fang Yuan had successively slain the rogue immortals Zhou Li, Wu Yihai, You Chan, and others, and the many Eastern Sea rogue cultivators who had perished in the Marketplace had predominantly been practitioners of the Water Path school.
Third was Transformation Path Dao Marks, numbering fifty thousand. This had been the original frontrunner and had always been steadily accumulating, but now it had fallen to third place.
Fourth was Soul Path, exceeding thirty thousand. The immortal aperture's own Dao Marks, combined with the harvests from surviving the Yellow Springs Ghost Martial Image earthly tribulation and the Green Tuoh Divine Martial Image heavenly tribulation, accounted for over twenty-nine thousand. The remaining several hundred had been added through Fang Yuan's soul cultivation. According to the Spectral Soul True Inheritance, there were stages — Million Soul, Ten-Million Soul, Hundred-Million Soul, Desolate Soul — and only when soul cultivation reached the level of Desolate Soul would the Dao Marks on one's soul number in the thousands.
Below that came the common schools — Ice and Snow Path, Rule Path, Metal Path, Wood Path, Flame Path, Wind Path — each with around twenty thousand.
The next tier down — Dark Path, Light Path, Strength Path, Qi Path, Fortune Path, Sound Path, Blood Path, and others — hovered around the ten-thousand mark.
At the very bottom were Food Path, Void Path, and similar schools, each with only a few thousand, a few hundred, or even zero.
Now, the dream realms.
Every dream realm in Fang Yuan's possession had been fully explored during these past months, with each path school seeing different degrees of advancement.
The highest was, of course, still Refinement Path — at the quasi-Supreme Grandmaster level!
Second place was shared between Theft Path and Time Path, both at the Grandmaster level.
The third tier included Blood Path, Strength Path, Star Path, Wisdom Path, and others, all at the Master level. Rule Path and Soul Path had joined their ranks as well.
The numerous schools below were too many to enumerate in detail.
Unlike Dao Marks, where accumulation was straightforward, realm advancement grew increasingly difficult the higher one climbed. The most notable improvements had been in Time Path, Soul Path, and Rule Path.
Beyond Dao Marks and dream realms, Fang Yuan's development of his Supreme Immortal Aperture had also benefited enormously. Thanks to absorbing so many immortal apertures, its development level had surged to fifteen percent.
Worth noting was that within Xia Cha's immortal aperture, Fang Yuan had unexpectedly discovered she had also constructed a Pool of Time!
This meant his Supreme Immortal Aperture now contained two Pools of Time.
Aside from these, Fang Yuan's two greatest acquisitions were yet to come.
The first was the Falling Soul Seal.
This immortal killer move had been under Fang Yuan's contemplation for a long time, and only recently had he completed its full calculation.
The second was a prototype of an Immortal Gu House.