Chapter 869 – Star Language

Mo Lan understood perfectly well that every ascension channel she severed was tantamount to plunging a knife deep into the colossal body that was the Immortal Realm.

The Heavenly Dao of the Immortal Realm would never stand idly by — it would inevitably dispatch even more powerful Dao Ancestor realm cultivators to settle the score.

Duan Yan, who had only just stepped into the Dao Ancestor realm, she had managed to take down only through a string of coincidences and his own carelessness, and even then it had been a razor-thin victory.

And above Duan Yan, the Immortal Realm still had sixteen veteran Dao Ancestors with deeper experience and far more terrifying power!

What was even more alarming was that the Immortal Realm held all source power firmly in its grasp. If it so wished, it could produce new Dao Ancestors at any time to replenish its fighting force. Relying on luck was absolutely not a viable long-term strategy.

Even if she managed to scrape by every single time, as long as the Immortal Realm — that fountainhead — remained, it could endlessly attempt to reopen the ascension channels she had severed.

If she couldn’t establish a lasting mechanism capable of continuously blocking the Immortal Realm’s connections, then all her efforts would amount to nothing more than treating symptoms while ignoring the disease.

“If I can’t strike at the butcher directly, then I’ll have to work on the ‘sheep’ instead…” Mo Lan’s thoughts raced.

When she thought about it, those Spirit Realms and cultivation worlds were part of the same cultivation civilization system as the Immortal Realm. Their world consciousnesses would actively transform pure source power into spiritual roots and spiritual foundations, bestowing them upon living beings. This was precisely what allowed the Immortal Realm to use ‘ascension’ as a medium — branding those cultivators and seizing the source power within them for itself.

But what if those worlds stopped walking the path of cultivation altogether?

If the intelligent beings of those worlds no longer practiced cultivation techniques that relied on dense spiritual energy and developed methods to absorb world source power, then even if the Immortal Realm forced open the ascension channels again, it would find no cultivators carrying vast quantities of world source power, waiting to ‘ascend.’

If the sheep in the pen fundamentally changed species and became stones, then no matter how skilled the butcher, there would be nothing to slaughter.

The more Mo Lan thought about it, the more feasible this plan seemed.

Looking across the various cultivation worlds, declining spiritual energy concentrations and increasingly difficult cultivation had become an almost universal norm.

In such an environment, if a cultivation path appeared that didn’t rely so heavily on ambient spiritual energy yet was equally powerful, it would undoubtedly hold enormous appeal for the countless cultivators trapped at bottlenecks.

She couldn’t guarantee this for other races, but for humans, she happened to have a ready-made, time-tested human mage cultivation system — one validated across countless ages in the Valen world!

This path of using psychic power to manipulate elements and cast Magic was the perfect alternative.

However, achieving a complete transformation would still require the cooperation of the world consciousness itself.

If the world consciousness could stop transforming source power into spiritual roots, spiritual foundations, and other cultivation prerequisites for newborn intelligent beings — cutting off the production of cultivators at the source — then the Immortal Realm’s entire system of plunder would be shaken at its very foundations.

“The question now is: how do I contact the world consciousness and reach a cooperative agreement with it!” Mo Lan focused her thoughts.

If she could secure the world consciousness’s help, the benefits might extend well beyond just this one advantage.

Even if a Dao Ancestor realm cultivator descended after she severed the dark-gold pillar of light, she could hide under the world consciousness’s protection and wage a war of attrition against them.

Those Dao Ancestor realm cultivators drew their power from the Immortal Realm.

Once separated from the Immortal Realm for an extended period, cut off from its Heavenly Dao’s continuous support, they would be like trees without roots, water without a source. Once their immortal power was depleted with no way to replenish it, they would be no different from ordinary mortals with slightly stronger physical bodies.

As for her Card Magic, with practitioners in both the Valen and White Crystal Star worlds using it, she could continuously earn disposable Mana.

In a war of attrition, she feared no one.

Mo Lan calmly analyzed the current situation. The Spirit Realm was in the most dire straits — its world consciousness, after prolonged erosion, was on the verge of being completely supplanted. The cultivation worlds were in somewhat better shape; their world consciousnesses had mostly just been suppressed by the ascension channels. Communicating with them was not impossible.

Recorded within Starault Hall was an otherworldly Magic called “Star Language” — specifically designed for actively initiating mental communication with world consciousnesses. Even if the target was extremely weak, had fallen into dormancy, or was being suppressed by external forces as in the current situation, Star Language’s unique and gentle resonance waves had a high probability of penetrating those barriers and establishing communication.

If she could use Star Language to contact the suppressed world consciousnesses, with both sides working in concert from within and without, they could not only leverage the world’s power to contend with Dao Ancestors after severing the ascension channels, but also drive a fundamental transformation of the cultivation system at its roots.

If she failed to contact the world consciousnesses, she could only quietly spread mage Magic among the mortals in each cultivation world — and how much of an impact that would ultimately have on the cultivation system, she couldn’t guarantee.

Mo Lan focused, recalling the key techniques for casting Star Language, and prepared to make her first attempt in the Celestial Profound Realm.

Though the Celestial Profound Realm’s ascension channel had been severed, its world consciousness was still in the process of recovery. If she could reach it, then the other cultivation worlds shouldn’t pose much difficulty either.

But before that, she still needed to deal with the legacy Duan Yan had left behind.

According to Duan Yan’s memories, once Immortal Realm cultivators reached the Golden Immortal level, they could construct their own spirit domain, gaining preliminary access to a greater Dao.

Upon reaching the Taiyi realm, the spirit domain would evolve further, transforming into a more stable and complete “grotto-heaven.”

Duan Yan had comprehended the Dao of Fire, earning him the title of Blazing Flame Dao Ancestor. What he had been nurturing within his dantian was none other than the Blazing Flame Grotto-Heaven.

Now that he had perished in the void, the Blazing Flame Grotto-Heaven had lost its master.

It was a small world brimming with all manner of fire-element spiritual materials, where fire elemental force was extraordinarily potent.

Following her usual practice, the ideal approach would be to feed the entire grotto-heaven to the Book of Cards as card-crafting material. That way, many fire-element spiritual materials unique to cultivation worlds could be incorporated into her Book of Cards’ repertoire.

But the core power constituting the Blazing Flame Grotto-Heaven was source power bearing the Immortal Realm’s brand.

If the grotto-heaven were used as card-crafting material, the Book of Cards would only absorb the knowledge within it, while the source power would completely dissipate when the grotto-heaven shattered.

That power would very likely be drawn toward the Immortal Realm, ultimately returning to it.

For any other world, Mo Lan would have considered this acceptable. But for this Immortal Realm that had been systematically plundering other worlds’ source power, she found the prospect rather wasteful.

Once that source power returned to the Immortal Realm, it would only be used to produce new Dao Ancestors — who would come to hunt her down as she continued severing ascension channels.

Yet the Blazing Flame Grotto-Heaven was utterly unsuitable for keeping for her own use.

Mo Lan’s only option was to turn her attention to Star Refinement.

Star Refinement was originally a forbidden Magic used by Explorers to extract the source power from zero-level or dying worlds and condense it into Source Mana crystals.

She had once resolved never to use it, had only read the relevant materials once, and had never attempted it.

But now, only this Magic could refine the Blazing Flame Grotto-Heaven and forcibly extract and purify the source power within it — source power branded by the Immortal Realm.