Chapter 36 Song Lingke
On a planet within a remote star system in the outer stellar regions, Song Lingke was persistently practicing an immortal technique inside a valley.
"Hoo!" Song Lingke exhaled a puff of white vapor. The temperature here was quite low, but for Song Lingke, who had already reached the late stage of the Celestial Immortal realm, it had no effect whatsoever. Looking at the success of today's cultivation, Song Lingke smiled with satisfaction, then turned into a cold white streak of light and flew out of the valley.
"Mother, Ke'er has already brought the Heavenly Ultimate Art to the minor completion stage. Before long, I will be able to meet Brother Tangyi's requirements and go look for him," Song Lingke said to her mother, Wan Maiqing, who was sitting before her.
"Well, Ke'er truly possesses extraordinary talent, reaching the late Celestial Immortal realm in a mere five years. However, you must still practice diligently. Once you meet your Brother Tangyi's requirements, Mother will accompany you to find him," Wan Maiqing said, looking at her daughter with doting eyes.
Years ago, Wan Maiqing and her husband, Song Ziyu, were considered an enviable celestial couple in everyone's eyes. A hundred years ago, Song Ziyu had already attained the late stage of the Ninth-Heaven Mystic Immortal realm, while Wan Maiqing had also broken through to the early stage of the Ninth-Heaven Mystic Immortal realm after a period of seclusion. The two were deeply in love and shared a mutual affection. The upper echelons of both sects were thoroughly supportive, and their union as celestial partners was regarded as a most blissful match. Alas, good times do not last. Ever since she became pregnant with Song Lingke, everything changed.
Wan Maiqing developed a very bizarre affliction during her pregnancy: anyone who came into contact with her would inexplicably lose the celestial elemental energy they had painstakingly cultivated and absorbed. The condition grew increasingly severe until, eventually, even their cultivation realms would plummet upon contact. Because of this, Song Ziyu's realm dropped all the way from the late stage of the Ninth-Heaven Mystic Immortal realm down to its early stage. At the time, even the Supreme Elder with the highest cultivation within the sect could find no solution! With no other choice, as similar incidents kept occurring, the couple could no longer be tolerated by the sect. Song Ziyu had no option but to take Wan Maiqing and leave, drifting along their journey until they arrived at the Tangguang Star System. There, Song Lingke was born. Afterward, when Song Ziyu picked up the newborn Song Lingke, his cultivation realm rapidly plummeted to the late Celestial Immortal realm, followed by an even more rapid aging process. A month after Song Lingke's birth, his hair was completely white. Gazing at Wan Maiqing, whose eyes were filled with tears as she held their daughter, he closed his eyes in peace.
With no alternative, Wan Maiqing took her daughter and eventually drifted to this small planet in the outer domains. Her daughter's peculiar ability was unsuited for contact with others and could only be suppressed in the presence of her mother. However, as Song Lingke grew older, the suppression became weaker. Because immortals settled here very sparsely, they chose to make it their home.
Tangyi's arrival six years ago brought a glimmer of hope to Wan Maiqing. At that time, Tangyi had already perceived their unique abilities, and thus he gifted Song Lingke a jade medallion containing the upgrade functions of the First-Generation Immortal Master, as well as methods for utilizing and self-controlling their respective traits. The Heavenly Ultimate Art practiced by Song Lingke was originally given to Tangyi by the Heavenly Ultimate True Immortal.
"How can you guys justify this to me? I only have so many Versatile Stones, and you've just wasted and squandered them like this! Starting tomorrow—no, starting right now—everything inside the Divine Immortal is off-limits to the five of you!" Tangyi shouted angrily at the five bizarre individuals.
The five of them stared up at the ceiling, showing absolute indifference to his wrath! "...You're driving me crazy! All of you, get out—now, immediately, at once, get—out—of—here!" Amidst Tangyi's fierce roaring, the five of them slowly shuffled out of the Divine Immortal.
With no other option, after driving the five out, Tangyi began retrofitting the Divine Immortal once again. At the rate they used it, no amount of Versatile Stones would ever suffice for their extravagance.
"I can no longer use Versatile Stones as an energy source. What should I replace them with? Petroleum? Nuclear energy? Solar energy? None of these will work; their energy density per unit mass is simply too low! They can't drive the ship! I have no choice but to use immortal stones. Aside from Versatile Stones, only immortal stones possess sufficient grade to serve as energy! Well, it seems I'll have to bustle around for immortal stones in the future! These five little ancestors aren't easy to feed either. Immortal stones, oh immortal stones, you are my only pain... pain..." Tangyi hummed a sorrowful tune while remodeling the vessel!
A month later, New Moon Mountain—the region Tangyi had purchased, which he named New Moon Mountain. The valley where Tangyi resided was called New Moon Valley, and the complex of buildings he constructed was termed New Moon Community. Within this New Moon Community was a dedicated artifact-forging facility. This was precisely why Tangyi had taken a fancy to New Moon Mountain: it allowed the extraction of Earth's core fire. Although it was not as intense as the flames on the planet where Tangyi had last forged artifacts, its greatest advantage was its exceptional stability. The five eccentric characters were currently being forced by Tangyi to perform hard labor—a punishment for wasting his Versatile Stones: forging artifacts without sleep or rest.
"There are massive quantities of materials inside the Divine Immortal. As long as you successfully forge fifty—no, one hundred—immortal artifacts of fine grade or higher, you can earn one day of rest and freely use any function you desire inside the Divine Immortal. Work hard, I have high hopes for you guys!" Tangyi said to the five miserable fellows while forging an immortal artifact.
After a flurry of renovations, the Divine Immortal was successfully upgraded. Accounting for the baseline energy required to sustain the vessel, the upkeep of New Moon Mountain's defensive array, the various arrays across the New Moon Community, and the myriad formations within the spatial-stone immortal dwelling, Tangyi's reserves of immortal stones had been more than halved.
After all deductions and expenses, the immortal stones Tangyi could currently mobilize amounted to only ten million superior-grade immortal stones. Ten million superior-grade immortal stones sounded like a vast sum—certainly an astronomical fortune to ordinary immortals—but for Tangyi, who possessed the Divine Immortal along with five voracious consumers of immortal stone, it was far from enough.
At the mere thought of this, Tangyi even felt the impulse to go rob an immortal stone vein. However, every single immortal stone vein was firmly controlled by major sects and powerful families, making them entirely untouchable for Tangyi at present. Thus, Tangyi had no choice but to force these five great gluttons to forge immortal artifacts, dangling rewards before them in the hope of trading artifacts for an adequate supply of immortal stones.
Having finished forging an immortal artifact, Tangyi inspected it, nodded in satisfaction, and put it away. He then headed toward the other end of the New Moon Community, the seclusion zone. Tangyi required a period of time to refine and perfect the self-created immortal technique he had been developing.
Time always flies swiftly during seclusion. Tangyi originally thought he would be able to emerge within a few months, but to his surprise, by the time he came out of seclusion, it was already January 5th of the 9,820th year of the 9th Era of the 7th Derivative Cycle in the Immortal-Demon Calendar.
During the two years spent in seclusion, Tangyi had finally perfected the immortal technique he wished to practice, and he had also broken through to the early stage of the Great Luo Golden Immortal realm.
When Tangyi arrived at the artifact-forging district and took a look, holy goodness, what on earth was going on here? The artifact-forging area was filled with a large batch of robots, all identical to the ones aboard the Divine Immortal. Looking closer, it was an assembly line; the forging of immortal artifacts had already achieved industrial-scale production. The five big gluttons were now only handling the final condensation and quenching of the artifacts, because this step required the application of celestial elemental energy and could not be replaced by machines.
The process of forging immortal artifacts consisted of several major steps. After determining the artifact type and formula: Step one: batch processing and melting of raw materials. Step two: shaping the outer form of the artifact using the primary material. Step three: fusing and refining auxiliary materials with the primary material. Step four: engraving the artifact's arrays. Step five: the final condensation and quenching of the artifact to complete its shaping process. Step four was not strictly mandatory, as not all artifact refiners possessed array-master skills; often, a successfully shaped artifact would be handed over to an array master to melt and carve the formations. In such cases, steps four and five would simply need to be repeated.
Seeing the piles upon piles of immortal artifacts stacked across the plaza, Tangyi took a brief look and immediately discerned that the vast majority of these items were of fine grade or higher, with a small portion being standard grade, and an even tinier fraction reaching the top-tier three-grade immortal artifact level. The existence of these top-tier items was thanks to little Fire Spirit. After the five of them successfully forged one hundred fine-grade immortal artifacts, they went to the Divine Immortal to enjoy their holiday. Amidst playfulness between Ice Spirit and little Fire Spirit, a video was accidentally triggered—it was a recording of Tangyi's conceptual ideas regarding the industrialization of artifact forging. Ever since Tangyi decided to walk the path of an artifact refiner, whenever he had free time in the artifact-forging cabin of the Divine Immortal, he would forge items, and his spoken musings and formulas during the process had all been meticulously logged by the ship's log system. By sheer coincidence, they had discovered it, and since building internal programs for the Divine Immortal was remarkably simple for the ship's systems—Tangyi himself habitually input corresponding programs into the Divine Immortal whenever such an idea crossed his mind—all these factors combined to create the very scene Tangyi was now witnessing.