Chapter 451: Complete
"The Star Abyss World?" Hearing the material's name, Yaoguang was pleasantly surprised.
The Star Abyss World was the core material for refining the Heavenly Abyss Tower. He had lined up several immortal artifacts as candidates to carry his essence, and of them all, the Heavenly Abyss Tower was the one he personally favored most.
The Heavenly Abyss Tower could absorb and contain any attack. Once its limit was exceeded, the artifact would be destroyed, which, in a sense, made it something close to a single-use immortal artifact, but its performance more than made up for that. Until it broke, you'd be basically invincible.
As for the tower being destroyed, that would certainly affect his cultivation. But he was a powerful refiner. If the immortal artifact broke, he would simply refine another.
It was much like an ordinary man with a formidable capacity for recovery. If he were going to train in martial arts, he would naturally train in the kind of secret art that placed enormous strain on the body but carried astonishing power, since only that way could his personal advantage in fast recovery be pushed to its limit.
Now that he had the Taiyi Immortal Sect's Star Abyss World, refining the Endless Tower, the simplified Dao Artifact version of the Heavenly Abyss Tower, would come naturally.
With that, the conditions required to advance on his path to human immortal had basically been met.
"Sect Master Yaoguang, allow me to wish you and that artifact paragon behind you the fulfillment of your wishes. May he refine that top-tier Dao Artifact and become the foremost artifact refiner of the North Sea Star," the Taiyuan Perfected Lord said with a hearty laugh, producing a peculiar prismatic crystal.
The crystal was a storage treasure of the highest order, but what it held inside was nothing mundane. It held an abyss of stars. Looking through the crystal, Yaoguang, Zhen Xuanyuan, and the others could clearly see the abyss sealed and etched within.
"Thank you very much," Yaoguang said, accepting the crystal.
After that, the two sides exchanged warm pleasantries once more and talked for a while. Yaoguang went further and, leveraging his position as sect master of the Heavenly Dao Sect, signed a mutual defense pact with the Taiyuan Perfected Lord.
The pact stipulated that if either the Taiyi Immortal Sect or the Heavenly Dao Sect came under attack by a third party, the other was obliged to send forces to assist.
As things stood, the Taiyi Immortal Sect clearly had the better end of the bargain. The Heavenly Dao Sect now held two figures in the top ten of the Dao Lord Candidate Rankings, Yaoguang and Perfected Lord Jinghong, while the Taiyi Immortal Sect, though it too had a supreme elder on the rankings, placed only twenty-sixth. In weight and influence, the two sects were simply incomparable.
With the pact signed, the Taiyi Immortal Sect delegation took their leave, completely satisfied, and Yaoguang saw them off in person.
Once everyone had gone, Yaoguang summoned Qi Sha and Chu Gushan, along with the heavenly lineage's leader and the Dao lineage's leader whom several supreme elders had put forward, and instructed them to handle the sect's affairs.
When he had finished, Yaoguang kept Qi Sha behind. "I have important matters to attend to for some time. The affairs of the Heavenly Dao Sect are yours to watch over. You command the battle lineage, so every force in the sect below the supreme elders and peak masters is in your hands, and Lineage Leader Chu is still our man. I imagine the other two lineage leaders will keep the sect running honestly enough."
In truth, it made little difference whether he said any of this. Perfected Lord Jinghong had already given him full support, backing Yaoguang's claim for the role of sect master; opposing factions had long since lost any influence, and were struggling to survive.
Furthermore, after cutting down the nine great fiend lords of the Yin Lunar Sect and then the seven great divine sovereigns of the Light Divine Race, Yaoguang's prestige on the North Sea Star had climbed to a new peak.
Outsiders now constantly mentioned him in the same breath as the top three of the Dao Lord Candidate Rankings, Perfected Lord Tian Xiao, Perfected Lord Kong Xuan, and the Martial Paragon Perfected Lord, arguing over which of the four was the strongest.
Yaoguang was powerful enough to fight a top-tier great sect single-handedly; with the Dao Lords still not returned, he was already no less a deterrent than any Dao Lord.
Under those circumstances, unless the people in the Heavenly Dao Sect had lost their minds, none of them would dare oppose Yaoguang. It would not be an exaggeration to call him a dictator within the sect.
Even so, Qi Sha nodded gravely at the charge Yaoguang had given him. "I understand. I won't let you down, Sect Master."
"Mhmm." Yaoguang acknowledged him, then said, "Ask Perfected Lord Liao Chen to come see me."
"Yes." Qi Sha withdrew.
Soon, Perfected Lord Liao Chen, a supreme elder, arrived at the Radiant Heaven Hall where Yaoguang waited. "Sect Master."
Though both were Void-Shattering cultivators, the supreme elder's bow was distinctly respectful.
Yaoguang recalled what he had recently learned about this supreme elder. The man had never had much presence in the sect, all the more so because his interests ran counter to Zong Wenxian's, which left him among the suppressed.
He had once joined hands with Zhen Xuanyuan and Chi Yun to stand against Zong Wenxian, but compared to those two, who were forceful and clever in their methods, this supreme elder was noticeably milder in temperament.
That made him easier for Zong Wenxian to handle. Even when assigned a mission as dangerous as going out into the starry sky beyond the domain to block the divine race, he had been unable to refuse.
Yet, though he lacked the force of the other supreme elders, he was currently the foremost array caster in the Heavenly Dao Sect.
Unfortunately, on the North Sea Star the strong were revered, and every cultivator poured himself into cultivation, climbing the realms in pursuit of Dao Integration, leaving research into array arts, alchemy, and refinement in a sorry state.
Even Perfected Lord Liao Chen's skill, though he was the sect's best array caster, was no higher than level 12. At best, in some exceptionally favorable conditions, he stood a certain chance of laying down a level 13 array.
"You're here," Yaoguang said, and waved an empty hand. A phantom image of the entire Heavenly Dao Sect unfolded before him. Countless points of light, all interconnected, stood out as especially eye-catching.
Perfected Lord Liao Chen studied the points of light for a moment and could faintly make out what he was seeing. "That's an array..."
But exactly what array it was already lay beyond his ability to say.
Seeing this, Yaoguang offered no explanation and simply began working on the image. In short order, he marked out more than three hundred points. "I need you to lead the sect's other array casters and lay down arrays across these areas. I have already inscribed which arrays go where. You just need to follow the instructions."
Perfected Lord Liao Chen was taken aback, but he agreed quickly enough. "Understood."
Simply setting up arrays according to inscriptions already prepared for him was something he could manage.
"The design plans for each array type and the materials for laying them are all in here." Yaoguang handed a storage item to Perfected Lord Liao Chen. "That is your task from now on. Complete it as soon as possible."
Perfected Lord Liao Chen nodded. Then he swept the materials inside with his psychic thought and cried out in shock. "This is..."
The materials in the storage item were worth no less than ten billion, and there were four full Dao Artifacts among them!
He finally figured out why he had felt a faint familiarity with the array diagram earlier. "Sect Master... Have you brought in a top-tier array grandmaster to repair the Twelve-Fiend-God Heaven-Sealing Array?"
"Just complete the task I've assigned you," Yaoguang said, offering no further answer.
Seeing that, Perfected Lord Liao Chen took it as confirmation of his guess and did not dare press further. "I will gather the sect's array casters at once and finish this as fast as we can."
"Mhmm," Yaoguang answered.
He had taken a good deal of refining material from the Heavenly Dao Sect's stores, and he did not intend to take it for nothing. He planned to upgrade the sect's protective grand array, at least to level 15.
A service of that magnitude was more than enough to cover the cost of the materials he had taken. Of course, other factors mattered too; he wasn't entirely comfortable with the security of the sect's defensive array, as he found the Twelve-Fiend-God Heaven-Sealing Array lacking.
For an inheritance so ancient, a protective array of merely level 14 was just too shabby.
Having handed off the affairs of the Heavenly Dao Sect, Yaoguang finally made his way to Heaven-Forsaken Valley, deep within the sect.
This valley was where the Primordial Chaos Dao Lord had refined the Great Dao Golden Book long ago, and through countless years it had been preserved as the sect's refinement ground.
Add to that the fact that the Heavenly Dao Sect's history had produced the occasional Dao Lord capable of refining high-grade Dao Artifacts, or even top-tier ones, and this valley, dedicated to refinement, had been kept intact all along. Its equipment, and the earth veins it drew upon, stood more than a full tier above what the Southern Capital had to offer.
So Yaoguang left the Nine Cauldrons Sect's facilities untouched and moved his Dao Artifact refinement here. With everything the valley had inherited, his success rate rose by at least ten percent and his efficiency by thirty, a substantial saving in both time and money.
Deep in the valley, arrays laid down and inscribed by Dao Lords drew power from the stellar core's depths through the earth veins, forming nine furnaces, each a full hundred meters tall.
The arrays then guided the energy of those nine furnaces and gathered it toward a circular smiting table at the center.
At present, three masses of streaming light circled above that table, representing the Eight Desolations Mirror, the Endless Tower, and the Human Emperor Sword being refined specifically for the Penglai Dao Lord.
Dao resonance flowed through all three, and it seemed any single ray separated from them could shape a Dao Artifact from nothing. Thanks to the arrays here, though, even the Dao resonance that escaped them stayed confined to a single area.
Of the three, the brightest was not the Human Emperor Sword he had promised to deliver within sixty years, but the Endless Tower.
In theory the Eight Desolations Mirror could do more than subdue souls and resist curses; it could also amplify a cultivator's insight into the Dao of void and soul, which made it the most helpful of all for Dao Integration.
But given the commotion he had caused on the North Sea Star, which was growing ever larger, Yaoguang's sense of safety had clearly decreased compared to what it had been; driven by that unease, he had decided to finish the Endless Tower first, the defensive Dao Artifact that would merge into his own body.
As for the Human Emperor Sword...
"The refinement conditions in the Heaven-Forsaken Valley are far better than in the southern domain. In this environment, I can easily refine two Dao Artifacts at once. If all goes smoothly, in forty to fifty years both the Eight Desolations Mirror and the Human Emperor Sword will finish taking shape. After that, I'll ask the Penglai Dao Lord for help, and both artifacts will go through their final transformation in eight to ten years." Yaoguang tallied up the progress on all three top-tier Dao Artifacts and nodded slightly. "Perfect."