Supreme Immortal Aperture.
The Hairy Refinement Path Grand Formation rumbled with power. Massive quantities of White Lychee Immortal Essence poured into it, forming pillars of flame that soared skyward.
Within the raging inferno, the Dragonman clone sat cross-legged, eyes tightly shut, expressionless, as if soundly asleep.
Yet its body had begun to melt away, like steel just starting to turn to molten iron.
This was, of course, exceedingly painful. But the Dragonman clone's soul had already fled ahead of time, and now stood beside the Langya Earth Spirit.
Fang Yuan's true body personally operated the Refinement Path Grand Formation, with Langya Earth Spirit, Mao Six, and others assisting.
Fang Yuan had mobilized practically his entire roster of Refinement Path Gu Immortals — he was going all out!
Under the scorching flames, the Dragonman clone's flesh gradually swelled and blistered, rapidly losing all recognizable form. It resembled a colloid, or perfectly round beads of oil that had not yet fully flowed free.
"Be careful. Hold steady. This part is up to you, Langya Earth Spirit." Fang Yuan's true body presided over the situation, issuing his instructions.
Langya Earth Spirit nodded.
Fang Yuan did not need to fully burn and melt the Dragonman clone — doing so would be equivalent to killing it.
What Fang Yuan needed was precisely this state: the Dragonman clone pushed to the absolute limit of its endurance, teetering on the very edge of collapse.
Maintaining this state required a Gu Immortal to constantly regulate the flames while monitoring the Dragonman clone's condition with the utmost attention.
Fang Yuan handed this task to Langya Earth Spirit, who had already transformed into a White Hair Earth Spirit — seasoned and composed, with profound mastery of the Refinement Path that even Fang Yuan could not match. This aspect was where carelessness was most unacceptable, and Fang Yuan was perfectly at ease entrusting it to Langya Earth Spirit.
Next, Fang Yuan drove the Refinement Path Grand Formation to condense thread after thread of electric sparks.
These sparks were pitch-black, as thick as chopsticks, crackling with a sizzling hum.
The electric sparks pierced into the inferno as if passing through empty air, utterly unaffected by the flames.
Under Fang Yuan's control, the sparks gently pricked into the Dragonman clone's corpulent body, threading through the already unrecognizable mass of flesh and bone, coming to rest upon the equally softened skeleton.
The pitch-black electric sparks locked onto the bones, then slowly withdrew, drawing out a section of the Dragonman clone's arm bone.
The arm bone was not resistant to the flames' searing heat and immediately showed signs of melting. But at that moment, Mao Six had long been waiting to one side. He activated the Refinement Path Grand Formation, releasing cluster after cluster of bubbles.
Fang Yuan swiftly cast the arm bone into the bubbles.
The bubbles encased the arm bone and rose rapidly, quickly flying above the flames' crown.
There, a hairy man Gu Immortal had been waiting for quite some time, with a pool of Lightning Slurry already prepared. The arm bone was cast into the Lightning Slurry for continuous refinement — this was the first step.
The second step was handled by another hairy man Gu Immortal, who took the arm bone and rinsed it within a stream of emerald-green air currents.
The third step was managed by yet another person. After being seared, washed, and rinsed, the arm bone had shrunk dramatically in size. It was then buried directly into a mass of ghastly-white bone paste.
Following that, the Refinement Path Grand Formation channeled Time Path power, accelerating the passage of time within the bone paste.
The bone paste was steadily absorbed by the arm bone, growing less and less. Once the arm bone had absorbed roughly two-thirds of it, the process halted. The bone was extracted, and three more procedures awaited it.
This was merely a single arm bone. The Dragonman clone had over three thousand bones in total, each one requiring the same treatment.
Beyond the bones, the Dragonman clone's flesh, brain, five senses, nails, and hair all needed to be individually refitted as well.
The workload was immense. Relying on Fang Yuan alone would have been far too inefficient, which was why he had brought his entire Refinement Path team to bear.
Fortunately, while reforging the Dragonman clone was voluminous and tedious, the difficulty was not high. The most demanding aspect — constantly monitoring and maintaining the clone's condition — had already been taken on by Langya Earth Spirit, giving Fang Yuan complete peace of mind.
In this manner, three days and three nights passed within the Supreme Immortal Aperture before the Hairy Refinement Path Grand Formation finally subsided.
Every bone had been reinserted. The fur, flesh, nails, five senses, brain, and everything else had all been thoroughly reforged, rendering the Dragonman clone completely immune to the Dragonman Extinction killer move.
When Dragon Lord had originally devised the Dragonman Life Extension method, he had drawn upon the quintessences of Transformation Path, Qi Path, and Human Path. In all three areas, Fang Yuan was now at least his equal.
Moreover, Fang Yuan himself possessed formidable Refinement Path expertise — in this regard, Dragon Lord could not even begin to compare.
Add to that his strength in Wisdom Path, and given sufficient time, Fang Yuan was certain to be able to crack the Dragonman Extinction killer move.
There was no killer move that could not be broken.
But this inevitably required a process, a relatively lengthy period of time, and constant repeated experimentation.
After obtaining the Dragon Palace, Fang Yuan had gained access to a vast trove of records on dragonman experiments, which had greatly aided his efforts.
In truth, Wu Shuai had come remarkably close to success back then. Although he had not truly cracked the Dragonman Extinction killer move, he had conceived of numerous ingenious methods — he simply lacked the time to test them. In the final days of the dragonman race's extinction, the dragonman Gu Immortals had cooperated wholeheartedly with Wu Shuai, secretly establishing blessed lands across Central Continent to serve as individual testing grounds, each attempting a different approach while also scattering seeds of hope.
The Dragonman Blessed Land that Fang Zheng had previously encountered was one such site. Or, more precisely, it was no longer from the original first batch — it was the aperture of a dragonman Gu Immortal born from the Dragonman Blessed Land that had descended to earth, with generation after generation succeeding one another.