Chapter 450: Preparing for Ascension

Months later, Long Tian was the first to pass the trials of the Ninth Layer Tower and was released by Ye Feng. His progress was even faster than that of Xiao Yu and Xiao Bei, who were already on the ninth layer. Ye Feng even sensed that Long Tian’s cultivation speed was not far behind his own.

Fortunately, he had spent these three months practicing the secret patterns at a thousand-fold accelerated pace. With the help of the formation techniques, his progress in mastering the secret patterns was quite remarkable. While three months had passed in the outside world, over 240 years had elapsed in the Cultivation Realm. Ye Feng had also grasped 150 secret patterns, and he could now assemble more than 300 of the 10,000 formation techniques. This speed was not much slower than when he had mastered the first 81 secret patterns.

Although 300 formation techniques might seem few, they were all the most classic combinations of secret patterns, carefully crafted rather than randomly assembled. Their power far surpassed that of ordinary formation techniques used in the cultivation world.

Ye Feng understood well that the secret patterns he practiced were the essence of formation techniques, akin to the strokes that make up Chinese characters, while formation techniques themselves were the words that conveyed meaning. With the strokes, it was naturally easier to form words—much simpler than trying to imitate others’ characters whose meanings were unknown.

What interested him even more was engraving secret patterns on artifacts. He had accidentally discovered many strange secret patterns carved on the Chongxuan Tower, though he had never seen any of them before. It was no wonder—out of 108,000 secret patterns, the Heavenly Dao had only engraved 3,000 basic patterns in his mind sea. And of those, he could only see a little over 100, less than one-thousandth. This only heightened his motivation to learn more secret patterns.

Long Tian also entered the Cultivation Realm as soon as he emerged from seclusion to begin another round of cultivation.

Ye Feng felt that Long Tian had changed greatly. On Earth, he had always appeared carefree and indifferent to cultivation. Now, Ye Feng guessed that this change might be related to the several times he had been in danger, or perhaps to his past life. Long Tian’s relentless attitude toward cultivation even made Ye Feng feel tired.

However, thinking that there was a terrifyingly powerful demon sealed within him, Ye Feng saw this change as a good thing. Since the Heavenly Dao’s seal had a time limit, the sooner Long Tian mastered the 3,000 secret patterns, the greater his chances of survival.

Days turned into weeks, and soon another two years passed. Xiao Yu and Xiao Bei finally adapted fully to the gravity of the ninth layer and emerged from seclusion as well.

By then, over 2,000 years had passed in the Cultivation Realm.

Ye Feng had also considered placing the Chongxuan Tower within the Refining Realm to accelerate their cultivation. However, although the Chongxuan Tower could be placed there, time could not be synchronized, as both being pseudo-illusory treasures, they could not interfere with each other’s rules. Thus, Ye Feng could only leave the Chongxuan Tower standing in the Refining Realm while he himself studied the secret patterns from a distance.

Two thousand years was ten times longer than the previous two hundred years, yet Ye Feng’s progress in mastering the secret patterns was not smooth. It took him two thousand years to comprehend just three hundred patterns—ten times slower than the first 150. What annoyed him the most was that he found himself stuck on the 301st pattern, unable to complete it despite decades of effort. With secret patterns, once fully understood, their patterns become traceable, and drawing them out requires only a few practices. The key lies in truly understanding the pattern.

For decades, Ye Feng kept trying to comprehend them, but it was as if there was a layer of glass between him and the rules—unseeable, untouchable, and incomprehensible.

It wasn’t until he saw Long Tian also hitting a bottleneck, stuck on the 270th pattern, that Ye Feng suddenly realized the truth. The reason he had no clue before was due to insufficient soul strength. His soul’s cultivation level had always remained at the Main God level. Even though he had now reached the peak of the Main God level, he still hadn’t transcended it. Therefore, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t grasp those rules.

While Long Tian was still struggling to figure out what was wrong, Ye Feng patted his shoulder. “Brother Long, the problem lies in soul strength.”

Long Tian was stunned before quickly realizing, “I see!”

He nodded gratefully at Ye Feng and then plunged back into intense cultivation.

Ye Feng shook his head helplessly and took out several Main God divine essences from his storage ring before sitting cross-legged.

Before long, Long Yue and the others finally completed the third layer’s cultivation and stepped out. With their current divine-level physical strength, the third layer was already their limit. To go further, they would need to reach the True God level.

As for Yi Fan, Tie Niu, Xiao Liu, and the others, after spending decades to reach the sixth layer, they finally withdrew. It was already quite remarkable that their cultivation had risen to the later stages of the True God level in such a short time. To break through further to the Heavenly God level would likely take tens of thousands of years. Only a body with Heavenly God-level strength could endure the seventh layer.

By this time, Ye Feng and Long Tian had already spent over 30,000 years in the Refinement Realm. Ye Feng’s understanding of secret patterns had reached 800, with continued slow progress. As for formations, he could now create more than 2,000 of them.
Long Tian was not far behind either—having mastered 720 secret patterns and 1,800 formations. This made Ye Feng even more determined not to slack off.
At first, Xiao Yu and Xiao Bei didn’t understand why Long Tian and Ye Feng spent their days either meditating with closed eyes or fiddling with stones. After being trapped in a formation by Ye Feng using stones, the two finally stopped disturbing their peculiar training methods.
Using mere stones—without any energy sources—to trap two god-level magical beasts was truly terrifying. If the same formation were created with top-tier divine artifacts, its effectiveness would likely be tens of thousands of times greater.
After Yi Fan and the others finished their training, Ye Feng assessed his own strength:
Soul strength: Late Imperial God level
Physical strength: Early Imperial God level
cultivation level: Early Imperial God level
Understanding of secret patterns: 801
Understanding of formations: 2,132
One Dragon Clan realm
One damaged realm
“The Art of Combat”
Five plants in his mental sea
Two mother insects at mid-Emperor God cultivation level, with a total of tens of millions of insect troops, all at mid-Imperial God level on average
One mutated dragon at the peak of Emperor God cultivation level
…
Just the insect army alone—even gods would likely avoid it, let alone the fact that Ye Feng had taught them several formation techniques and developed a combined attack strategy.
Moreover, despite being only at the peak of Emperor God cultivation, the mutated dragon’s strength was likely comparable to most mid-stage god-level warriors.
After confirming this information, Ye Feng finally left the Refinement Realm and gathered everyone together.
“I’m preparing to ascend to the Divine Realm! Those whose strength allows it and who wish to leave can go together. Those who want to stay won’t be forced!”
Volume 4: The Path of the Strong
The Divine Realm is merely the starting point for the strong…