Published: August 10, 2026
Chapter 1035: Tribulation and Resolution, Part Two
After that great calamity at Mystic Ice Palace, Ink Plum had temporarily put aside the Dao of alchemy and devoted herself wholeheartedly to cultivation.
But more than a hundred years had passed, and during that time she had explored secret realms and traded for resources. In the end, her cultivation had only barely risen from nascent soul mid stage to perfection.
Though she had reached nascent soul perfection, the basic conditions for attempting divine transformation had only just been met in the two easiest aspects.
The last one was still far out of reach, and perhaps... there was simply no hope at all.
The basic requirements for attempting to break through to the divine transformation realm were: spiritual consciousness reaching a thousand miles, control over heaven and earth spiritual energy, and nascent soul perfection.
As for expanding the nascent soul to two feet, for a considerable number of true lords, that was also an unattainable goal.
Still, so long as one had advanced normally from a superior grade golden core, then by the time one reached nascent soul perfection, this requirement was basically met.
Ink Plum had advanced from an eight-tier golden core, so this aspect naturally was not a problem.
Her cultivation realm had met the requirement. As for controlling heaven and earth spiritual energy, she had also succeeded by relying on high-grade resources obtained from an ancient secret realm, spending a great price to trade for a single Illuminating Candle Fruit and gaining enlightenment from it.
Even though the first two conditions had been achieved, whether she was qualified to push open the gate to the next realm still depended most heavily on Primordial Spirit cultivation.
Most importantly, in terms of Primordial Spirit, Ink Plum was only at about eight hundred and sixty miles right now, and that was only barely achieved thanks to two Green Lotus Seeds and the Illuminating Candle Fruit.
With her spiritual objects exhausted, she now relied only on several secret techniques to maintain her cultivation. Lacking spiritual objects to assist her, her progress had been limited, and the effectiveness of her cultivation was getting worse and worse.
The farther spiritual consciousness progressed, the greater the gap became. The distance to a thousand miles was still utterly remote, and she had no real clue how to bridge it.
As for Primordial Spirit spiritual objects, the divine sovereigns and demonic emperors had long joined forces to seal them off, preventing such resources from flowing into the cultivation world. Even great cultivators could not obtain them easily.
The only option was to go to ancient secret realms and risk one's life in the hope of some luck.
Even when true lord demonic kings occasionally obtained them, they rarely were willing to part with them, and any exchange was usually barter for barter.
At times like this, not even elixirs for raising cultivation were useful. Ink Plum truly had nothing valuable enough to trade.
Moreover, the strength of magical power was also an extremely important hidden condition. Without reaching around twenty-eight points, cultivation at the nascent soul realm was only superficially perfect.
Looking at pinnacle true lords as reference, they were basically all around thirty points.
In this regard, Ink Plum only surpassed ordinary great cultivators by two points, with magical power strength around twenty-two points.
She was far behind pinnacle true lords and would be easily crushed.
Although her realm was superficially perfect, improving magical power strength required a massive amount of time spent tempering magical power.
As for Primordial Spirit, it was even more hopeless.
With all these factors added together, under normal circumstances Ink Plum would most likely be like most true lords: there was a high probability she would never meet the basic requirements for advancing to divine transformation in her entire life.
"Cultivation is a secret matter."