Chapter 450: In Accord
Right under my nose?! Hong Yan's pupils constricted violently.
He stared at the Yaoguang standing in front of him and opened his mouth to speak, but in the end all he managed was a trembling, difficult smile. "Se-Sect Master Yaoguang... D-Don't joke with me. W-Where is that person?"
"There was never any mysterious artifact paragon. There has only ever been one true artifact paragon," Yaoguang said with a smile. "Me."
Hong Yan couldn't stop himself from stepping forward, but he barely took a step before his body halted on its own.
His gaze traveled over Yaoguang again and again, a good ten breaths passing before his thoughts came back to him even slightly. Even so, the truth before him was almost impossible to believe. "How could this be... Reaching the Void-Shattering Realm in a mere hundred-odd years and climbing into the top ten of the Dao Lord Candidate Rankings already makes you a genius beyond comparison. In all the history of the North Sea Star, scarcely any prodigy could match you. You have already reached such heights in cultivation, so how could you possibly have had the time to also..."
"To also delve this deep into artifact refinement?" Yaoguang picked up where he had left off and smiled. "Is it not possible that when one art is mastered, all arts are mastered? That once a person's talent reaches a high enough level, everything else they set out to learn comes just as fast?"
As he spoke, he waved an empty hand, and the Wandering Dragon Sword, newly transformed into a high-grade Dao Artifact, appeared beside him together with the Two-Realm Ruler and the Heaven-Sealing Stele, both of which had long since been refined into high-grade Dao Artifacts.
The moment Hong Yan saw the Dao Artifacts Yaoguang had summoned, his attention was seized entirely.
Facts spoke louder than arguments. However extravagant the words, all he needed was hard proof, and then he...
"High-grade Dao Artifacts! All three of them are high-grade Dao Artifacts!" Hong Yan exclaimed.
Hong Yan came forward and took the Wandering Dragon Sword, examining the Two-Realm Ruler and the Heaven-Sealing Stele at the same time, and felt his whole body shivering faintly.
The void power inside these high-grade Dao Artifacts was perfectly compatible with Yaoguang. One artifact might have been tailored by some refiner to suit his life-bound Dao Technique, but having three Dao Artifacts all perfectly suited to him could only be Yaoguang's own work.
Only he knew exactly which Dao Techniques he had cultivated and what kind of Dao Artifact should be refined to match them.
"So it's true?!" Hong Yan studied the artifacts a while longer, then finally lifted his head and looked at Yaoguang, shaken to the core. "These high-grade Dao Artifacts... You really refined all of them? You really are that artifact paragon, the mysterious one qualified to attempt the refinement of a top-tier Dao Artifact?!"
"I think these three high-grade Dao Artifacts are proof enough," Yaoguang said.
Hong Yan looked down at the Dao Artifacts once more, and after another ten or so breaths, the artifact paragon finally settled completely. Then he asked, "May I ask how you refined these Dao Artifacts?"
Yaoguang smiled faintly, aware that the artifact paragon meant to gauge his attainments from his methods. He did not hesitate and laid out those parts of the process that could be put into words.
As the description unfolded, Hong Yan quickly came alive, breaking in now and then to share his own philosophy of refinement. Their exchange began with refining high-grade Dao Artifacts.
Though Hong Yan was only an ordinary artifact paragon who had never produced a single high-grade Dao Artifact, he had always held his own ideas about how it should be done, and whatever those ideas were, Yaoguang followed them with ease.
The Taiyi Immortal Sect primarily cultivated the Great Dao of stars, the Great Dao of streaming light, and the Great Dao of fire. Hong Yan's life-bound Dao Technique was one derived from the Great Dao of stars, supplemented by a Dao Technique of the Great Dao of fire.
Of course, the Great Dao of void was mainstream in every sect, and this artifact paragon understood it well enough; his Dao Techniques in that direction simply had not approached perfection the way his star-type techniques had.
At first, Hong Yan and Yaoguang's discussion focused on the Dao of void, but as they talked, it shifted to the Great Dao of fire, and a while later turned toward the Great Dao of stars.
Taking the Starlight Glass Body as his foundation, Yaoguang laid out his thoughts on refining a high-grade Dao Artifact of the Great Dao of stars, and Hong Yan was completely drawn in.
By the end, the exchange between them had turned almost entirely into Yaoguang expounding and Hong Yan listening, with the artifact paragon offering nothing more than the occasional question.
Anyone who wandered in without knowing better would likely have taken it for a student consulting his teacher.
This one-sided instruction went on for three days before it gradually drew to a close.
Hong Yan's eyes filled with sudden understanding, and his heart held a joy he could not put into words. A vast satisfaction welled up in him, the kind that made a man feel he could hear the Dao in the morning and die content that night.
But as he slowly recovered from that satisfaction and began digesting what the past few days had given him, he realized something else, and could not help but exclaim, "The fact that there is really a man like you in this world, one so nearly omniscient and omnipotent..."
Then he rose and bowed solemnly to Yaoguang. "Thank you for these three days of instruction, Sect Master Yaoguang. I am wholly convinced by your attainments in refinement, and I no longer hold the slightest doubt."
Hearing this, Yaoguang nodded slightly. So the three days of exchange, and the risk of exposing himself, had not been wasted.
"You should know that I am a cultivator of the Dao of void, and the Dao contest is the fiercest of all," Yaoguang said. "To keep the intensity from escalating further, many void Dao Lords will move against any Void-Shattering cultivator capable of completing Dao Integration.
"As for a Void-Shattering artifact paragon, that goes without saying. What faction wouldn't want an artifact paragon of its own to make its Dao Artifacts? If both of those abilities and both of those talents sat in one man, it would set the whole North Sea Star in an uproar, and the void Dao Lords still watching from the sidelines would definitely act.
"By then I would be facing more than one void Dao Lord, with certain death awaiting me. For safety's sake, I had no choice but to conceal my identity as an artifact paragon. I hope you can understand."
"I understand. I fully understand your position, Sect Master Yaoguang. Concealing news of your artifact refinement attainments was nothing but prudence, and we were the ones who overstepped," Hong Yan said, then asked at once, "About refining the top-tier Dao Artifact for the Penglai Dao Lord, are you confident? If you need help, you have only to say the word, and whatever I can do, I will do to the utmost."
"I have some confidence. I just don't know how much time it will take. And if more materials could be prepared as a safeguard, the odds of producing this top-tier Dao Artifact would naturally rise," Yaoguang said.
Three days earlier, Hong Yan would have dismissed such words out of hand. But those three days of exchange had shown him just how deep Yaoguang's attainments ran.
With the refinement skill Yaoguang possessed, so long as the materials were of high enough level, producing a top-tier Dao Artifact was entirely possible.
And if he caught up in cultivation as well, and integrated with the Dao successfully, then an immortal artifact was perhaps too much to claim, but a semi-immortal artifact would be no issue at all.
So Hong Yan answered without hesitation, "The immortal artifact materials our sect possesses have already been brought along. I will have our sect master send them over right away."
"Then you have my thanks. With two sets of materials, even if the first refinement comes out with a few flaws, the second is bound to come together naturally," Yaoguang said with a smile.
"I'll have the sect master send the materials over now," Hong Yan said.
Yaoguang nodded slightly. "Then I'll go arrange the payment. Since I don't have enough Pure Yang Grand Pills or Void Dao Pills on hand, how would Dao Artifacts do as payment instead?"
Hong Yan did not answer immediately. He considered it for a moment, then said, "Actually, before we came, we discussed three proposals with the sect master. I won't go into the first two. The third was that if I confirmed you really possessed the strength to refine a top-tier Dao Artifact, we would offer these materials as payment and ask you to refine a top-tier Dao Artifact for us."
"That works," Yaoguang said. "The Taiyi Immortal Sect has many Void-Shattering cultivators cultivating the Dao of stars, and as I recall, several of them cultivate the Starlight Glass Body. How about I take that Dao Technique as the vessel and refine a top-tier Dao Artifact around it?"
Then he added, "In truth, at the level of a top-tier Dao Artifact, the constraint of any single Dao Technique is no longer so severe."
After all, a top-tier Dao Artifact amounted to drawing down a projection of the Great Dao, amplifying an entire category of Dao Techniques rather than being locked to one particular technique the way ordinary and high-grade Dao Artifacts were.
Hong Yan nodded with a smile. "Nothing could be better."
"Trading for a top-tier Dao Artifact....I'd say I'm the one coming out ahead. Immortal artifact materials go for around a hundred billion at market price, but under normal circumstances, actually buying a set at that price is extraordinarily difficult."
"You're too polite, Sect Master Yaoguang. This top-tier Dao Artifact of ours amounts to a custom-made Dao Artifact," Hong Yan said, then seemed to think of something. "When you attempt Dao Integration, will you need other protectors? If so, I imagine the Sovereign Radiance Dao Lord of our sect would be glad to lend a hand."
As a Void-Shattering cultivator, he naturally had no standing to make decisions for a Dao Lord. But for someone like Yaoguang, who had climbed onto the Dao Lord Candidate Rankings in under two hundred years and possessed the attainments to refine top-tier Dao Artifacts, anyone could see what future awaited him the moment he stepped into the Dao Integration Realm. Building goodwill in advance was hardly a bad move.
Of course, there were risks. If Yaoguang failed his Dao Integration, every bit of that investment would go down the drain. But an investment with a guaranteed return was no investment at all, and set against the returns it stood to bring, this much risk fell well within acceptable bounds.
"If the need arises, I will seek the Sovereign Radiance Dao Lord's help," Yaoguang replied politely.
At present, his only protector was the Penglai Dao Lord. As for the rest, even the Central Heaven Dao Lord fell outside his considerations. The man might be the sect master of the Heavenly Dao Sect, but they had no real trust in each other. They hadn't interacted enough.
Hong Yan nodded, and the two left Nine Cauldrons Peak and headed straight for the Radiant Heaven Hall.
Inside the hall, Zhen Xuanyuan was chatting idly with the Taiyuan Perfected Lord.
The moment the Taiyuan Perfected Lord saw the two return to the main hall, he rose to his feet, his eyes on Hong Yan. The artifact paragon nodded and said with a smile, "Sect Master, please give the Star Abyss World to Sect Master Yaoguang."