After reaching an agreement with the little golden cicada, Jiang Chen decided to formally allow it to undergo the baptism of the Wood Spirit Spring ten days later.
The little golden cicada, aside from submitting to Jiang Chen, would have to offer a single drop of its ancient bloodline to Jiang Chen once its bloodline evolution was complete.
Don't underestimate that single drop of blood.
A single drop of ancient bloodline, once refined, was essentially a replica of the ancient golden cicada's bloodline inheritance and memories. It would grant the user most of the ancient golden cicada's innate talents.
Jiang Chen thought about those innate attributes of the ancient golden cicada and felt a surge of excitement.
The Golden Cicada Wings would allow him to condense invisible wings and soar through the sky. That was a privilege reserved for Saint-realm powerhouses.
Moreover, the flight ability granted by the Golden Cicada Wings was far more reliable than that of a Saint-realm cultivator. After all, flight for Saint-realm powerhouses came with all manner of restrictions.
Unless one reached the Heavenly Saint level, true free flight powered solely by one's own strength was impossible.
And even for Heavenly Saint-level powerhouses, their flight could never surpass that of someone who truly possessed wings.
The reason was simple: human martial artists relied primarily on spirit power to sustain flight, which placed enormous demands on their own spirit reserves and came at staggering cost.
No matter how powerful a cultivator was, maintaining a state of continuous flight indefinitely was simply not feasible.
Wings were different. Flight became an instinct, a divine talent — one that required nowhere near the same expenditure of spirit power to sustain.
That was the advantage.
Beyond the Golden Cicada Wings, he could also cultivate the Golden Cicada's Shedding Shell technique — a false-death divine ability. For a martial artist, this was tantamount to having an extra life compared to others.
On top of all that, the ancient golden cicada's bloodline granted complete immunity to all poisons and absolute resilience against lightning.
For any martial artist, these were the stuff of dreams.
Any martial artist who obtained even two of these talents would instantly become a top-tier genius of a major sect.
Jiang Chen's ambition was not to rival any single genius on the Divine Abyss Continent. His target lay above the peak of this world — the infinite Heavenly Dao.
Therefore, he was unwilling to let any opportunity to strengthen himself slip by.
As things stood, Jiang Chen already possessed an impressive repertoire of skills.
The Heavenly Eye Divine Pupil, the Wind-listening Ear, the Heart of Rock, and the Seven Apertures Spiritual Resonance — these four divine abilities had been steadily advancing.
The destructive power of the Star-Bursting Finger had surged dramatically since his breakthrough to the Earth Origin Realm.
The Evil Golden Eye's power grew in tandem with his cultivation level. In the field of ocular techniques, Jiang Chen felt there was still vast untapped potential.
Beyond its powerful Petrification ability, the Evil Golden Eye could now attack other ocular techniques as well. But Jiang Chen felt this was far from enough.
The applications of ocular techniques were incredibly diverse — soul bewitching, heart control, consciousness annihilation, and more.
The stronger one's ocular technique grew, the more unfathomable it became at the higher levels.
A single glance could set the myriad heavens churning; a single gaze could topple mountains.
Of course, none of these could be achieved overnight.
Beyond the Evil Golden Eye, Jiang Chen had also cultivated the Nine Transformations of God and Demon up to the fifth stage — the True Essence Refinement stage.
At this point, Jiang Chen had not yet managed to break through further.
It was not that he couldn't break through, but that he was deliberately choosing not to for the time being. The fifth stage of the Nine Transformations of God and Demon was the most critical turning point. Once past this stage, the next step would be the advancement to divine abilities. Everything before that was laying the foundation.
The ideal state for True Essence Refinement was the Convergence of Five Qi — meaning that all five elemental essences of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth had to be cultivated simultaneously and advanced in parallel.
Jiang Chen currently had water and fire covered through his Ice Fire Demon Lotus. For metal, he had the metallic source power from the Primordial Magnetic Golden Mountain. For wood, the baptism from the Wood Spirit Spring had dramatically enhanced his wood-attribute talent.
The only element missing was the fortune of earth.
Once he gathered a source of earth-attribute origin power, Jiang Chen could truly achieve the Convergence of Five Qi.
Reaching that state would be the perfect foundation for the Nine Transformations of God and Demon. Advancing to the divine ability stage afterward would be like a dam breaking — unstoppable.
For precisely this reason, Jiang Chen had never been in a rush to push past the fifth stage. Even if it meant waiting, he refused to give up on the earth element.
The Nine Transformations of God and Demon was not something that could be mastered overnight.
As for the two martial techniques he had initially cultivated — the Ocean-Reverse Blade and the Withering and Flourishing Divine Fist — they had gradually faded into the background.
Both techniques were genuinely formidable, but as his opponents grew stronger, they had begun to fall behind.
"The way of the blade — the Ocean-Reverse Blade has reached its limit, but it is not the limit of the Blade Dao. This path must not be abandoned."
Jiang Chen toyed with the nameless blade in his hand. At first glance, it remained as plain and unassuming as ever, giving off no impression of sharpness whatsoever.
But Jiang Chen knew this blade was extraordinary. He still couldn't understand how such a mysterious and remarkable weapon had ended up in a backwater like the Eastern Kingdom.
And the strangest part was that nobody had ever used it. It had simply sat in a corrupt official's treasury like a pearl buried in sand, its brilliance completely suppressed.
While Jiang Chen was lost in thought, a transmission talisman suddenly flew in from outside the secret chamber.