Chapter 4189 — One Year's Time
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
Beneath that strange, unnatural calm, the days slipped by one after another. Old Rags kept at it with dogged persistence, yet no sign of a proper mold ever took shape. Fortunately, thanks to that persistence of his, the situation inside the casting pool did not deteriorate any further—it merely stayed locked in a stalemate at the final threshold, which was a blessing in disguise.
That was not all. Wei Zhao, too, had run into a bottleneck. The peak of the early Golden Core stage was right there before his eyes, so close he could almost touch it, yet no matter how he tried, he simply could not pierce that last layer of window paper. It was truly maddening.
Given that his breakthrough had been perfect, given that he was among the strongest of Golden Core cultivators, Wei Zhao had assumed that advancing through the early Golden Core stage would come as naturally as water flowing into a channel. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined he would get stuck at this very step.
If other Golden Core experts ever learned of such thinking, they would genuinely break down and weep. From forming his core to the present, by the most generous reckoning, only a few months had passed for Wei Zhao—and already he was scheming to climb another rung, without so much as a single elixir to assist him.
What were those legions of Golden Core experts—stuck in place for decades or even centuries, for whom even top-grade elixirs were as good as swallowed for nothing—supposed to feel about that?
Since a breakthrough was out of reach, Wei Zhao knew from past experience that sheer blind seclusion would be useless now; he had to wait for the right opportunity. So he simply eased his mind and stopped forcing a rapid breakthrough in the short term.
With time idling heavily on his hands, Wei Zhao seized the leisure to refine a batch of elixirs. Entrusting them to Hong Zhong, he had them sent through the Hong Clan Merchant Guild's channels to the Tian Dan Pavilion on Middle Island. This was something he had long planned—it would relieve no small amount of pressure on Tian Chan.
Tian Chan, though also a perfect-breakthrough expert of the early Golden Core stage, did not possess Wei Zhao's divine alchemy treasure, the Shennong Cauldron. She could only guarantee the quality of fourth-grade elixirs; refining fifth-grade ones was still far beyond her at this stage.
Along with the elixirs, Wei Zhao deliberately wrote a letter to Di Xingdao, inquiring about the matter of bottlenecks. Though Di Xingdao had not achieved a perfect breakthrough himself, he was, after all, a senior who cultivated the Creation Battle Art as well, and his experience ought to be of considerable reference value.
Before long, Wei Zhao received Di Xingdao's reply. In the letter, Di Xingdao said that although Wei Zhao had broken through perfectly, he had only just ascended to the Golden Core stage and was precisely in a phase of amassing strength before release. He must absolutely not be impatient; so long as he smoothly broke through to the peak of the early Golden Core stage, everything afterward would flow without obstruction.
At this stage, the key lay in consolidating one's realm and accumulating one's foundation. This was something that could affect the entire Golden Core stage to come, and not the slightest carelessness could be permitted.
Therefore, encountering a bottleneck at this time was not in the least surprising, nor was it by any means a bad thing. Of course, that did not mean one could henceforth cease striving for progress; all things required moderation, and if one remained stuck at a bottleneck for too long, that too was hardly a good thing.
What Wei Zhao needed to do now was refrain from forcing a swift breakthrough in the short term, while still making the proper preparations, calmly awaiting the moment when the breakthrough would come as naturally as water flowing into a channel.