Chapter 5014 — Elder Jiao Awakens
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
Even with resistance reduced to its absolute minimum, if the Spirit Convergence Formation had not compressed his primordial spirit into a single point, Wei Zhao felt certain he could not have lasted even a moment in the broken space, let alone achieved a boundary-breaking projection. He would have been scoured to nothing the instant he entered.
His primordial spirit traveled through the broken space for an unknowable stretch of time, until at last, worn down to less than a tenth of its original strength, the way ahead suddenly opened wide and it entered a whole new, stable space. Wei Zhao's heart leaped with joy—this must mean the spirit-projection had succeeded, surely?
Before him stretched a vast, hazy mountain forest. He could not tell exactly where it was, but he soon sensed keenly that this must already be the mortal realm.
This was not mere guesswork. The spiritual energy here was nowhere near as dense and abundant as on Cloud Terrace Island; there was simply no place on Cloud Terrace Island where the spiritual energy was so thin as to be almost nonexistent. So this had to be the mortal realm, without a doubt.
In the past he had not noticed it, but now, after personally experiencing Cloud Terrace Island's environment for so long, Wei Zhao understood at once why Cloud Terrace Island kept itself isolated from the mortal realm, and why the cultivators of the mortal realm pined so desperately to go there.
Even as a common nobody with no backing at all, one's cultivation environment on Cloud Terrace Island would be far superior to that of the mortal realm. Even those ancient sects hidden away beyond all discovery could only look on in hopeless envy. Heaven and earth—such was the difference between them.
Yet a child does not despise a homely mother, nor a dog a poor home. Cloud Terrace Island might be beyond comparison with the mortal realm, but to Wei Zhao this was, after all, his homeland. That long-missed sense of closeness was something no corner of Cloud Terrace Island could match. Even at the North Island headquarters he had rarely known such a feeling of belonging, as though he were home. Now, at last, he was home.
Home though it was, Wei Zhao found his present state deeply uncomfortable. He was nothing but an amorphous mass of primordial spirit, like some ghostly thing that might dissipate at a single gust of wind. There was no sense of security in it at all.
It was too insubstantial a state to endure. Wei Zhao hurriedly began shaping his primordial spirit into a spirit-body formed in his own likeness. In essence there was no difference between the two, but once he had assumed a spirit-body he could recover some familiar sense of having a physical form.
Moreover, a spirit-body was a condensed version of the primordial spirit—in a sense, a substantiated existence. Many things impossible for a primordial spirit in its raw form could be done by a spirit-body, though the transformation would consume more than half of his remaining consciousness. His primordial spirit was already less than a tenth of its original strength; now not even a twentieth would remain.
As he shaped the spirit-body, Wei Zhao carefully observed his own condition. Just as Steward Sun had said, he could clearly sense the faint thread of spirit-link between himself and his true body. The sensation was exquisitely subtle. It was not as distant as he had imagined—unexpectedly near, in fact, as though his spirit and his body were not far apart at all, separated only by a single layer of broken space.
Had anyone been nearby, they would surely have been stunned by the sight. A mass of white mist swirled slowly, resolving into the faint outline of a human form. Torso, limbs, and head grew gradually clear and distinct from top to bottom, until even clothing materialized along with it. In but a moment, there stood a living, breathing man.