A Farmer's Journey To Immortality

A slow smile appeared on Kalina’s lips.

The frustration inside her heart gradually transformed into fierce determination.

’No wonder this hateful native monkey dared to deceive me. No wonder I felt threatened earlier. He has stumbled upon an extraordinary opportunity.’

Her eyes remained fixed on Aksai.

Although she had lost her Natal Sword and many supporting treasures, she was still a genuine late-stage Lord. She still possessed her Connate Spells.

As long as she kept enough distance to avoid whatever poison tricks he had prepared, she was fully confident that she could kill this deceitful native and seize every secret hidden on his body.

Kalina had also noticed how the suicidal Sentient Fiends had appeared on the battlefield. Judging by their numbers, she could tell that Aksai’s spatial treasure was far from ordinary.

If it could house so many creatures, then the space within it had to be enormous. Usually, the larger the internal space of such a spatial treasure, the higher its grade.

Kalina almost felt sorry for the spatial treasure in Aksai’s possession.

She assumed it was being wasted in his hands.

Perhaps it contained a Fourth Order legacy that Aksai could not unlock because of his limited aptitude and shallow knowledge.

Instead, he was using it as nothing more than a portable storage space to keep his belongings.

Kalina wanted to liberate that spatial treasure from Aksai’s hands so that it could regain its true glory. She wanted to claim the inheritance that was hidden in such a spatial treasure.

Without even realizing it, she had already begun thinking as though she were the rightful owner of the artifact that had supposedly been snatched from her by a country bumpkin.

***

The interval seemed long but it actually only lasted half a minute.

Suddenly, Kalina’s body tensed.

Just as she was about to charge forward, she sensed a fluctuation in the surrounding Spirit Essence.

Her eyes immediately landed on Aksai.

’He’s preparing a Spirit Spell?’

Instead of becoming nervous, she remained calm.

She had already fought against the Purple River Lord.

From that battle alone, she had gained a rough understanding of the cultivation system followed by the natives of the Dadangar Subcontinent.

In Kalina’s eyes, these Innate Spirit Spells were fundamentally flawed.

Without True Meaning, there could be no proper resonance between a Spirit Spell and a cultivator’s Spirit Essence Core.

The natives had indeed created something remarkable by developing Innate Cubes. Those cubes allowed Spirit Spells to be cast much faster than ordinary Spirit Spells cast by the Experts.

However, that was all they achieved.

The Innate Cubes were still nothing more than poor imitations of true Connate Spells.

A genuine Connate Spell did not rely on an external construct.

Its Essence Equation Runes were directly etched into the cultivator’s Spirit Essence Core through the guidance of True Meaning.

Once completed, every spell became one with the Spirit Essence Core itself.

There was no separation.

No delay.

No unnecessary circulation.

Innate Spirit Spells, on the other hand, were different.

To Kalina, they were like someone trying to write an important document on high-quality paper using cheap ink because they lacked the proper ink needed to make full use of the paper.

The Essence Equation Runes formed on Innate Cubes were engraved based on the cultivator’s understanding of those Spirit Spells. Naturally, that understanding contained flaws.

More importantly, those flaws would remain forever because Innate Cubes could not evolve under normal circumstances.

A Spirit Essence Core, however, was different.

As long as a cultivator remained alive, their Spirit Essence Core continued to evolve.

The Essence Equation Runes engraved onto the Core through the cultivator’s understanding also contained flaws in the beginning.

However, those flaws gradually disappeared as the cultivator progressed on their cultivation path.

True Meaning was like the proper ink that allowed a cultivator to continuously refine their Connate Spells.

As their understanding deepened, the mistakes in their earlier comprehension would gradually be corrected.

True Meanings also had different grades, determined by the strength of the Intent they generated for a particular spell or element.

As long as cultivators continued refining their True Meanings through new experiences and deeper insights, their Connate Spells would continue to improve as well. In simple terms, it was like using a higher quality ink to simply override the previous mistakes.

The Intent contained within the True Meaning would continuously amplify the original spell, transforming it into a true Connate Spell.

Every Connate Spell naturally resonated with its cultivator’s Spirit Essence Core. That resonance was something the natives of this subcontinent simply did not possess.

Without access to True Meaning, they could never engrave Essence Equation Runes directly onto their Spirit Essence Cores.

Instead, they had invented the Innate Cube.

After the Mad Immortal’s devastation, the subcontinent had lost almost all of its complete inheritances. The surviving low-level cultivators no longer had powerful seniors capable of passing down True Meanings.

The master-disciple lineages were severed. Those survivors had no choice but to carve out a new cultivation path for themselves. Thus, they created cultivation techniques that no longer depended on True Meaning.

It was likely that the cultivators who created these cultivation techniques unique to Dadangar Subcontinent post Mad Immortal’s departure didn’t have the confidence to make changes onto their Spirit Core, fearing that the failure would result in them losing their realms and even dying in the process. As such, they skipped on experimenting with their Spirit Cores altogether, merely using it as a power source to fuel their Spirit Spells.

It was an ingenious solution born out of necessity.

Even Kalina had to admit that much.

They had successfully found another road after the original one had been destroyed.

Unfortunately...

A substitute remained nothing more than a substitute.

Even though Innate Spirit Spells were much faster than the ordinary Spirit Spells cast by Foundation Establishment Experts, they still could not compare to Connate Spells.

Their casting speed remained noticeably slower.

Taking all this into account, Kalina remained completely confident.

’Hehehe. He still needs time.’

’Even if it’s only a brief moment... that’s enough for me.’

Against another native Lord, such a delay might not matter.

However, against someone like her, a single breath was enough to decide victory or defeat.

She did not even spend half a second formulating a plan to defeat Aksai the moment she sensed that he had begun casting a spell.

Spirit Essence quietly gathered around her fingertips.

She prepared to interrupt Aksai’s casting before it could be completed.

However...

Her confidence suddenly froze.

Her eyes widened.

’What...?’

Aksai was not gathering Spirit Essence.

He was not constructing an Innate Spirit Spell like the other native cultivators.

He had already finished almost everything.

The spell had been prepared long before she sensed the fluctuation. Only the final manifestation remained.

Only now did he begin moving his hands.

One Mudra after another appeared.

So fast that Kalina could barely follow them.

Normally, Innate Spirit Spells did not require Mantras or Mudras. Those steps had already been converted into Essence Equation Runes before being engraved onto the Innate Cubes.

However, Lords could still use Mantras and Mudras to further empower their Innate Spirit Spells.

Although the increase in power was nowhere near the amplification achieved by Connate Spells through the Intent hidden within their True Meanings, it was still far superior to casting ordinary Innate Spirit Spells without them.

Aksai’s fingers blurred through the air.

Each Mudra flowed perfectly into the next without the slightest pause.

His movements were smooth.

There was no wasted motion.

Every Mudra seemed to connect naturally with the next, as though they had become part of his instincts.

Kalina’s pupils shrank.

’Impossible...’

These Mudras were not being used to cast the spell. She immediately realized that the spell itself had already been completed.

The hand seals merely accelerated its activation while further increasing its output. They reduced the final delay to almost nothing.

Its activation speed was already approaching that of a true Connate Spell.

She had never expected to witness such mastery from a mere mid-stage Lord.

On the other hand, Aksai had never taken Kalina lightly just because he had managed to swindle her.

He knew that even after losing access to her treasures, she remained a formidable opponent.

Earlier, Aksai had watched Kalina cast her Connate Spells.

He could have stepped in to rescue the Purple River Lord much sooner.

Instead, he chose to wait and let Nuri gather as much data about Kalina as possible.

Even though Aksai did not fully understand the principles behind Connate Spells, he could instinctively tell that they were an advanced form of intent-based spellcasting.

Thanks to the corrupted druid who had used an intent-based technique in the Martial World of Sharag, Aksai already knew just how terrifying intent-based Spirit Spells could become.

He also knew the limits of his own abilities.

His intent-based Innate Spirit Spells were still in their infancy.

Even if he infused them with Intent, they could never match the amplification granted by a true Connate Spell.

As such, he decided to catch Kalina off guard by relying on his greatest advantage.

Using Nuri’s multi-threaded computational abilities, Aksai cast several Innate Spirit Spells simultaneously, stopping each of them just before the final step.

Only after every spell had reached that stage did he complete their final steps all at once, allowing multiple intent-based Innate Spirit Spells to be activated simultaneously.

If the quality of his Spirit Spells was lacking...

Then he would overwhelm his opponent with quantity.

[ Vine Barrier has finished its final step. Ready for deployment. ]

[ Earth Control has finished its final step. Ready for deployment. ]

[ Fire Breath has finished its final step. Ready for deployment. ]

[ Silverblue Moonsteps has finished its final step. Ready for deployment. ]

[ Yellow Earth Skin Shell has finished its final step. Ready for deployment. ]

[ Venom Dominion has finished its final step. Ready for deployment. ]

[ Toxic Regeneration has finished its final step. Ready for deployment. ]

Aksai paid little attention to the enormous amount of Spirit Essence being consumed. With his pale face, he completed the series of Mudras for all the Innate Spells.

With Nuri’s assistance, he cast multiple Spirit Spells simultaneously.

Then...

He unleashed all of them upon Kalina at once.

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