Chapter 863 – The Celestial Profound Realm

This world was called the Celestial Profound Realm — a world where cultivation civilization flourished.

The plane containing magical energy was the Celestial Profound Realm’s cultivation plane, while the remaining three were mortal planes.

The spellcasters here were called cultivators, and their aptitude for cultivation was determined by the number and quality of their spirit roots.

Cultivators used their spirit roots to absorb spiritual energy — that is, elemental energy — that matched their spirit root attributes, drawing it into their dantian to refine and store.

The cultivation system was primarily divided into three major tiers: Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, and Golden Core. Advancing in tier not only meant commanding greater spiritual power and casting more formidable techniques, but also brought significant enhancements to physical constitution and lifespan.

Qi Refining cultivators held spiritual energy in gaseous form within their bodies, with lifespans no different from ordinary people — roughly a hundred years.

Foundation Establishment cultivators transformed the spiritual energy within their bodies into liquid form, with lifespans of three hundred years. The sword-riding flight she had seen earlier was a technique that Foundation Establishment cultivators could master, and it was quite common in the cultivation world.

Golden Core cultivators condensed the spiritual energy within their bodies into a solid golden core, with lifespans reaching up to five hundred years.

Once a golden core was formed, the Heavenly Dao would soon send down a guiding light to escort the cultivator to the Spirit Realm to continue their cultivation.

The owner of this memory was a late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator who had originally been in seclusion within their sect. After receiving an invitation to another sect’s ascension ceremony, they had only recently emerged to attend the event.

Cultivation civilization, among the many magical civilizations across the universe, was a well-developed and powerful system, and related materials were quite common in the Otherworld Archives.

Although Mo Lan had never personally set foot in a cultivation-type world, she had systematically read and studied the general rules, cultivation method essentials, and numerous technique manuals of such worlds.

It was only because she herself lacked cultivation-world-specific magical aptitudes such as “spirit roots” or “spirit foundations” that she had never attempted to practice any cultivation methods. Her understanding remained at the theoretical level, though she would occasionally convert her own Mana into spiritual energy of corresponding attributes to cast some cultivation techniques that interested her.

Based on the knowledge she possessed, many cultivation worlds did indeed have layered structures. When a cultivator’s power reached the upper limit of their current layer, they would proceed through methods such as “ascension” to a higher plane with denser spiritual energy and more complete laws to continue their cultivation.

However, within the boundary membrane of the Celestial Profound Realm before her, no such higher plane with denser spiritual energy existed at all.

If anything could be said to exist, it was only the eighth-rank world connected by the dark-gold pillar of light, and the super-Thirteenth Rank giant plane at its source.

But those were other worlds entirely. Ascending to them was no different from handing over spellcasters — cultivated at the cost of a world’s own source power — to another world. It would only cause the world’s source power to continuously drain away with each cultivator’s ascension.

“Wait… source power drain?” Mo Lan recalled the different human silhouettes she had seen multiple times within the dark-gold energy pillar. “Could it really be an ascension channel?!”

She immediately turned the flying carpet around, pushed its speed to the absolute limit, and raced toward the direction of the Celestial Profound Sect indicated in the memory.

In three days, it would be the ascension ceremony of Celestial Profound Sect Elder Perfected Lingxiao!

She had to see for herself whether this so-called “guiding light” of ascension was truly what she suspected.

The Celestial Profound Sect.

The Ascension Platform hung high above the clouds, banners fluttering all around, while spiritual energy materialized into golden lotuses that drifted through the void.

Tens of thousands of cultivators had gathered here, every face bearing expressions of reverence and longing.

At the center of the platform, Perfected Lingxiao stood in a moon-white Daoist robe, the very picture of immortal grace. Eyes closed in concentration, he awaited the sacred moment.

At the third quarter of the noon hour, the heavens and earth fell suddenly silent!

A pillar of pure, radiant golden light descended from the sky, enveloping Perfected Lingxiao with unerring precision.

The pillar contained energy of the utmost purity, radiating the harmonious rhythms of the Great Dao that filled all who felt it with wonder and peace. The crowd below erupted into thunderous cheers and envious exclamations!

“The Guiding Immortal Light! It’s the Guiding Immortal Light!”

“Ancestor Lingxiao’s merits are complete — today he achieves the Dao and ascends!”

…

The Celestial Profound Sect was awash with jubilation. Yet in Mo Lan’s perception, the energy fluctuations of this Guiding Immortal Light were completely identical to those of the dark-gold energy pillar.

As Perfected Lingxiao’s figure gradually blurred within the golden light and was guided away, Mo Lan distinctly sensed the world’s boundary membrane weaken by another fraction — more source power had been lost.

The situation was now perfectly clear. This Guiding Light was, in fact, the dark-gold energy pillar.

Every time a cultivator ascended, a portion of the world’s source power was carried away with them, ultimately falling into the hands of the giant plane.

The golden light dispersed, and the Ascension Platform stood empty.

The crowd’s cheers reached a crescendo as everyone celebrated yet another predecessor’s “successful ascension.”

For the cultivators themselves, “ascending” to a place with denser spiritual energy and a higher world rank was undoubtedly a dream come true — a coveted opportunity beyond measure.

Yet for the Celestial Profound Realm itself, this was a slow bleeding.

Each cultivator that ascended meant the permanent loss of a portion of the world’s source power.

Over time, the world would gradually degrade. When its source power grew so thin that it could no longer sustain the circulation of spiritual energy within its boundaries, when it could no longer give rise to spirit roots among intelligent beings — it would completely degrade into a zero-rank world.

And a zero-rank world at that — one drained of resources to the absolute extreme, requiring eons to have any chance of recovering its vitality.

Mo Lan slipped away from the celebrating crowd without a sound and returned to the mirror space of the Witch’s home. She needed to think calmly about how to break this deadlock.

She clearly recognized that trying to solve this problem at the cultivator level would be futile.

The ascension channel disguised by the giant world using its own boundary membrane appeared no different to cultivators from ascension between different planes within the same world.

They had never encountered the Well of the Sky, could not understand the relationship between world source, world consciousness, and intelligent beings, and naturally had difficulty realizing that “cross-world ascension” and “intra-world ascension” were fundamentally different things.

At present, the only option was to attempt to sever the dark-gold energy pillar extending from the giant world.

If the connection could be cut off and the continuous drain of source power halted, this world’s source power would have a chance to slowly recover, and the world consciousness would eventually regain itself.

But before taking action, there was one crucial question that needed investigating — what exactly had gone wrong with this world’s Well of the Sky?

Under normal circumstances, when a spellcaster’s power reached the upper limit of their world, they should have been guided to the Well of the Sky located within the boundary membrane, where they could continue advancing by completing tasks posted by other worlds.

Even cultivation-type worlds should have had something similar.

If not for the Well of the Sky failing to function, the disguised “ascension channel” would never have had the opportunity to exploit the situation.

“I must find the Celestial Profound Realm’s Well of the Sky!” Mo Lan steeled her resolve. While ordering Clack to activate the Starsea Ark, she simultaneously began using Divination Magic to divine the location of this world’s Well of the Sky.