Han Li smiled as he appraised the Nascent Devil before waving a hand toward it. Spiritual light instantly flashed from the Nascent Devil, and it disappeared into Han Li's body as a streak of black light.
It turned out that after using the precious materials gathered to manifest a substantial form for his golden projection, Han Li unintentionally discovered that his Nascent Devil could easily possess the golden body, and use the devilish Qi within it to continue cultivating its Profound Yin Devilish Qi.
At the same time, the second Nascent Soul could expel its nascent flames to refine this body, which was greatly beneficial to the manifestation of this golden body.
In that case, Han Li was naturally more than happy to let it possess the projection.
After all, his second Nascent Soul was virtually an independent being on its own, so he didn't have to expend any effort into guiding its cultivation or helping it control the golden body.
It was just a pity that this Nascent Devil possessed quite a lowly cultivation base. If it could cultivate to somewhere around Han Li's current cultivation base, then possess the golden body, it would essentially be similar to an avatar for Han Li, which would naturally immensely enhance his combat prowess.
For a normal being, it was of course extremely difficult to cultivate from the Nascent Soul Stage all the way up to the Spatial Tempering Stage.
However, Han Li had already been through all that, so he could pass on all types of cultivation experiences to his second Nascent Soul. Furthermore, he had a virtually limitless supply of precious pills to feed the second Nascent Soul, so its cultivation was definitely progressing even faster than he was.
Cultivation bottlenecks weren't exactly non-existent to Nascent Devils, but there was no doubt that it would be far easier for them to break through their bottlenecks than it was for normal cultivators. After all, the insights and enlightenment attained by a cultivator right before their breakthroughs were very useful resources. This was also why beings would begin to cultivate avatars or second souls after they'd reached a point in their cultivation where they felt that it was quite difficult to progress any further.
However, both refining avatars and second souls required the expenditure of vast amounts of effort and resources, and it was quite often the case that one would only achieve this objective after most of their remaining lifespan had been used up.
This was why most cultivators would only cultivate one or two avatars, despite knowing the immense benefits that avatars could bring to them, and also why most avatars possessed inferior cultivation bases compared to the cultivators themselves.
After all, they didn't have the mysterious small vial that Han Li possessed, which allowed him to infinitely nurture all of the spirit medicines he required at a vastly accelerated rate.
After embroiling itself in the devilish Qi within the golden body and taking many precious pills, the second Nascent Soul had already reached the pinnacle of the mid-Nascent Soul Stage, and a breakthrough to the late-Nascent Soul Stage appeared to be imminent.
However, seeing as the Vast Glacial Realm was about to open, he decided to put a hold on the cultivation of his Nascent Devil. He was going to get the second Nascent Soul to make its breakthrough in the Vast Glacial Realm.
The immense abundance of spiritual Qi in that realm would be far more effective against a mere Nascent Soul Stage bottleneck than any precious pills or medicines.
With that in mind, Han Li cast his gaze toward the other Han Li, and a peculiar light suddenly flashed through his eyes.
"Who would've thought that the body of the immortal zoysia is an ideal material for refining an avatar? On top of that, the liquid in the mysterious small vial can be directly absorbed by this immortal zoysia as pure spiritual power, thereby enhancing its magic power at a rapid rate. In just a few years, its magic power has reached the mid-Spatial Tempering Stage, and bottlenecks simply don't apply to it! That's absolutely incredible! But then again, that does kind of make sense. A spirit medicine that has attained intelligence and a humanoid form like this immortal zoysia had to have been in existence for countless years. During this process, it could only enhance its magic power slowly through constant accumulation. If it had to contend with bottlenecks as well, that would simply be far too unfair for it. The strange thing is, the Ninecurl Spirit Ginseng has also attained sentience, but using the liquid on it will only replenish magic power without being able to enhance it any further. Could it be that only spirit beings like immortal zoysias can absorb this spirit liquid? Or could it be that a spirit medicine can only attain this ability after they've actually manifested an alternate form with its true body rather than just its soul?" Han Li murmured to himself with furrowed brows before shaking his head.
"Hehe, who cares what the reason behind this is? The fact of the matter is that a brilliant opportunity has been placed right before me. I can refine this avatar into a replacement body, then use my Nascent Soul to possess it and use it in battle."
After discovering that the spirit liquid in the mysterious small vial could enhance the immortal zoysia's cultivation base, Han Li's thought process was very simple; he was going to keep using the spirit liquid to nurture this spirit body to see if it could attain Body Integration Stage magic power in the end.
Even though this would only result in a spirit body that simply possessed Body Integration Stage magic power, but not actually an equivalent cultivation base, it would still be more powerful than his current body. If he were to then use his Nascent Soul to possess it, with all of the powerful abilities he'd mastered, he definitely wouldn't have to fear any Body Integration Stage beings.
Furthermore, there may not be an upper limit on the amount of magic power that this spirit body could attain. If he could nurture it to the point where it possessed Grand Ascension Stage magic power, he'd virtually not have to fear anyone in the Spirit Realm.
Of course, it was yet to be seen if that were actually possible.
For some reason, he had a feeling that something that defied the natural order to such an extreme extent simply wasn't feasible. Perhaps he could only nurture this spirit body so it possessed magic power equivalent to that of Body Integration Stage beings or beings at the pinnacle of the Spatial Tempering Stage.
After all, after nurturing his Golden Lightning Bamboo until it was 10,000 years old, the spirit liquid no longer proved to be effective on it.
With this precedent, Han Li naturally wasn't confident that the immortal zoysia would be able to absorb the spirit liquid without any upper limit.
Furthermore, once the pure spiritual power converted from the spirit liquid accumulated to a certain degree, the power would have to be refined using the dantian and the meridians, and this immortal zoysia clearly wasn't capable of accomplishing that on its own.
Thankfully, a flash of brilliance had occurred to him, and he'd thought of a way around this.
With that in mind, a smile appeared on Han Li's face as he instructed the green Han Li, "Thanks for your hard work during this period of time, Qu'er [1], you can come of out this body now. I won't be requiring you to continue refining the spiritual power within it for a while. During the next month, I'm going to stop the accelerated nurturing of all of the spirit medicines, and infuse all of the spirit liquid into this spirit body to be converted into spiritual power. After that, you can slowly refine this spiritual power."
"Yes, Master."
A tender voice rang out from within the immortal zoysia's body, following which it laid a hand onto the top of its own head. It then closed its eyes, and a ball of white light emerged from its body before transforming into a little girl who appeared to be around six to seven years old.
The little girl wore a snowy-white dress and had nine little black braids woven into her hair; she was extremely adorable!
As soon as the little girl appeared, Han Li smiled, and said, "You'll be entering the Vast Glacial Realm with me, and I'll be taking your true body with me as well. Go back and rest now so you can prepare for the upcoming journey."
"I can come as well, Master?" A pure and elated smile appeared on the little girl's face upon hearing this.
"I don't know what's going to happen during this trip into the Vast Glacial Realm, and your soul has already manifested a human form, so of course I can't just leave you here. If someone were to break into my cave abode in my absence, it would be a disaster," Han Li explained in a gentle manner.
"That's great! For some reason, after I've become like this, not only is my brain a lot smarter than before, I also really want to see the outside world," the little girl said in a joyful manner.
"Hehe, you've only just attained intelligence not long ago, so it's no surprise that you're curious about the outside world. However, you have to stay in the medicine garden during this period of time and make sure no one sees you. I'm expecting some visitors during the next month," Han Li cautioned in a serious manner.
The little girl was quite frightened by the prospect of visitors coming to the cave abode, and she immediately replied in a timid and fearful manner, "Alright, I'm going back to rest in the medicine garden right away."
After that, her body blurred, and she shot forth as a streak of white light, vanishing into the ground in a flash.
This little girl was naturally none other than the soul of the Ninecrurl Spirit Ginseng.
The immortal zoysia had told him that it was going to help the Ninecurl Spirit Ginseng attain intelligence and also impart some knowledge, but much to Han Li's surprise, just one year after the immortal zoysia's soul had been released to enter the cycle of reincarnation, the soul of the Ninecurl Spirit Ginseng had transformed from the white rabbit into this little girl.
It appeared that aside from just imparting some knowledge on the Ninecurl Spirit Ginseng, the immortal zoysia had to have also given it some immense benefits prior to its passing.
Needless to say, Han Li was very glad to see this, and he gave Ninecurl Spirit Ginseng the name "Qu'er".
After that, he discovered that Qu'er was also able to enter the body left behind by the immortal zoysia and circulate the enormous magic power within it. This was perhaps due to the fact that she was also a spirit being of heaven and earth, just like the immortal zoysia had been.
In any case, during the spiritual power refinement process, Qu'er herself also benefited immensely from having her body immersed in such a vast amount of spiritual power.
As such, he assigned her the duty of refining the spiritual power inside the immortal zoysia's body.
This decision had proven to be quite a wise one during the past two years, and Han Li was very pleased that this arrangement had worked so splendidly.
After the little girl's departure, Han Li made a grabbing motion toward the immortal zoysia's body from afar, and a burst of grey light immediately swept forth to envelop the spirit body.
The body then quickly shrank to several inches in size amid flashes of purple light the grey light carried it toward Han Li, and in the end, the spirit body disappeared up his sleeve.
Having done all that, Han Li swept his gaze around his empty secret chamber before immediately turning around then striding out the door.
During the next month, Han Li frequently appeared in various large shops in Cloud City, purchasing some materials and rather uncommon treasures.
As expected, Duan Tianren and Qian Jizi also came to visit him during this time, and all of them departed with pleased expressions on their faces after conversing with Han Li for around half a day each.
A period of a month naturally wasn't very long, and it flew by in the blink of an eye.
On this day, Han Li was meditating in the hall of his cave abode when a streak of red light suddenly flew in from outside before revolving around him.
He raised an eyebrow before raising a hand to draw the red light into his grasp, then injecting his spiritual sense into it to inspect its contents.
"It's finally begun," Han Li murmured to himself before abruptly rising to his feet and making his way out of the cave abode.
[1] [The "Qu" in Qu'er is the same character as the "curl" part of the Ninecurl Spirit Ginseng]
