Very quickly, Fang Yuan set aside the matter of advancing his Wisdom Path realm and continued his contemplation.
"Both the Mad Barbarian Demon Venerable and the Land Bliss Immortal Venerable possessed profound insights into the Food Path. In this regard, the Mad Barbarian Demon Venerable was somewhat inferior to the Land Bliss Immortal Venerable—after all, he only made use of the Gluttonous Great Demon Frog. But his scheme of leveraging the Food Path environment to cultivate totem killer moves was truly brilliant." Even someone of Fang Yuan's caliber couldn't help but voice his praise.
Truly cultivating totem killer moves purely through one's own efforts required Gu Cultivators to constantly calculate and deduce.
But within the Myriad Beast Rainbow Heaven, Gu Cultivators only needed to devour Gu materials, utilizing the Food Path environment to let their bodies naturally filter out the most suitable "nutrition," and then allow the various Dao marks to naturally take shape, forming all manner of totems.
This was equivalent to using the Food Path to cleverly compensate for shortcomings on the Wisdom Path, accumulating a flourishing abundance of countless totem killer moves.
And where did the Gu materials that the Gu Cultivators devoured come from?
Naturally, from the continuous evolution of the Myriad Beast Rainbow Heaven itself.
The Myriad Beast Rainbow Heaven possessed an enormous quantity of Transformation Path Dao marks. The beasts and plants here mutated extensively, having already formed a powerful ecosystem that surpassed the Five Regions.
The fierce beasts and strange plants that inhabited the Myriad Beast Rainbow Heaven were, for the most part, utterly unique—one of a kind, found nowhere else.
When Gu Cultivators devoured these constantly mutating Gu materials, the totem killer moves that formed also evolved and improved ceaselessly. From this perspective, the Gu Cultivators were leveraging the natural evolution of the Myriad Beast Rainbow Heaven to allow their totem killer moves to co-evolve alongside it. In the end, they accumulated astonishing results.
Based solely on intelligence gathered during Zhan Budu's undercover period, the basic totems alone within the Myriad Beast Rainbow Heaven numbered over nine thousand.
The Netherworld Strength Tiger, the Rain Eagle Totem, the Thunder Fish Totem, and the Golden Bell Totem were merely a fraction of them—let alone the personal specialized totems that had been developed upward from these foundations.
"These totem killer moves aren't of much help to me. But the reference value of the various recipes is extraordinarily high!"
Fang Yuan already possessed a portion of the Food Path's true heritage, originating from the Shadow Sect—the most orthodox Food Path lineage. Not long ago, he had also obtained the Southern Border Land Bliss True Heritage, acquiring various Food Path killer moves in the form of tea prescriptions that could enhance specific Dao marks on a Gu Cultivator's body. Now, he had obtained various food recipes capable of outlining totem killer moves.
Combining all these accumulations, the Food Path had already opened its arms and revealed its true, profound mysteries to Fang Yuan.
"All along, I had believed that the Food Path's greatest strength lay in Gu Raising—its ability to reduce the burden of raising Gu. However, in reality, that was merely one facet of the Food Path's advantages. The other truly formidable aspect of the Food Path is helping Gu Cultivators add Dao marks and bolster their foundations!"
The advantage of the Food Path lineage was in sustaining the survival of Gu Cultivators and Gu Insects, and through various specific nutritional supplementation methods, rendering the target far stronger.
Fang Yuan now already possessed the realm of a Wisdom Path Grand Master, so his Wisdom Path calculation abilities would advance by another significant degree. This meant he could absolutely improve upon and deduce various Food Path killer moves from the countless recipes at his disposal.
Food Path killer moves possessed one major distinction from those of other paths: the vast majority of Food Path killer moves were used on oneself.
Fang Yuan had a great deal of immortal materials on hand. Consuming these immortal materials to form Food Path killer moves and applying them to his Supreme Immortal Body would bring about massive Dao mark enhancements!
Fang Yuan calculated inwardly: "If we're truly tallying the gains, merging aperture heavens yielded the most Dao marks—each time producing a staggering quantity of several hundred million. But now the ecosystem within my Supreme Immortal Aperture was on the verge of collapse. If I continued down that path, the losses would far outweigh the gains."
"Using these Food Path killer moves to add Dao marks to myself—though the yield per instance is small, as long as the frequency accumulates, it will build up to a tremendous quantity."
"Additionally, in preparation for the Mad Lair, I'll need to improve and develop some Food Path defensive methods to guard against the Ghostly Soul Demon Venerable."
The Ghostly Soul Demon Venerable's Endure Hardship and Suffer Loss killer moves had left a deep impression on Fang Yuan.
He could not afford to be caught off guard!
At the same time, because the Food Path's transmission was exceedingly rare, ordinary Gu Immortals found it very difficult to mount an effective defense against it. So if Fang Yuan were to develop offensive methods within the Food Path, there was no telling that they wouldn't prove surprisingly effective.
Fang Yuan held some expectations for the Food Path, but only a small degree.
After all, his opponents in the Mad Lair were either the Star Constellation Immortal Venerable or the Ghostly Soul Demon Venerable. The latter's attainments in the Food Path would certainly surpass his own. And the former—a Wisdom Path quasi-Supreme Grand Master who had once led the Heavenly Court—how could she possibly make a misstep in the Food Path, a minor path?
"The opponents are too strong. The Food Path is only a minor means—it probably won't stand on the main stage. But developing some is still necessary. At the very least, I need to have defenses in this area. When the time comes to potentially deal with the Ghostly Soul Demon Venerable, I won't be caught at a disadvantage in the Food Path."
Thinking to this point, Fang Yuan assigned another batch of immortal Gu refining tasks to his Time Path clone.
During this period, the Time Path clone had been presiding over the Four Origin Blood Refinement Pool, continuously refining Eighth Transformation immortal Gu.
The vast majority of Fang Yuan's immortal Gu had been refined to the Eighth Transformation level!
The Four Origin Blood Refinement Pool's success rate for refining to the Eighth Transformation was terrifyingly high. Combined with an extremely abundant stockpile of immortal materials and the copious immortal essence supported by the Eighth Transformation Heavenly Origin Treasure Imperial Lotus, there were no more obstacles in Fang Yuan's large-scale Eighth Transformation refining.
Most of the immortal Gu had already been elevated to the Eighth Transformation.
The Time Path clone had already begun, in its spare time, refining some other Sixth and Seventh Transformation immortal Gu.
Fang Yuan possessed a massive number of immortal Gu recipes. These recipes primarily originated from the Langya Sect, with a portion coming from various other heritage lines. Even without recipes, Fang Yuan possessed increasingly powerful Wisdom Path calculation methods, along with the realm of a quasi-Supreme Grand Master in the Refinement Path—a casual bit of deduction was enough to yield results.
Earlier, the Time Path clone had refined a batch of Theft Path immortal Gu.
Among these, Sixth Transformation Gu made up the overwhelming majority, with a tiny few refined to the Seventh Transformation.
The Four Origin Blood Refinement Pool refining Eighth Transformation immortal Gu was a routine matter; refining Sixth and Seventh Transformation immortal Gu was even easier.
The only thing that could still somewhat restrain Fang Yuan was the fundamental limitation that each type of immortal Gu could exist in only one copy.