Now that Lu Fan had stepped into the Golden Core realm, the world opened up before him in ways it never had before. With his newfound strength, he was no longer limited to basic techniques or low-grade resources. As a Golden Core cultivator, he held the status and power to access treasures and knowledge that once lay far beyond his reach.
Intent on broadening his horizons, Lu Fan made his way to a renowned cultivator market in Cloudrest City—a sprawling hub where countless merchants, sect representatives, and rogue cultivators came to trade rare items and advanced techniques.
Unlike before, when he had to bargain cautiously or seek obscure stalls, this time his mere presence commanded respect. The moment others sensed his Golden Core aura, they eagerly stepped forward to serve him. Doors that were once closed now opened effortlessly.
Lu Fan began purchasing cultivation manuals and advanced methods in bulk—refinement techniques for alchemy, weapon crafting, formation design, spiritual farming, beast rearing, and more. He wasn't interested in mastering them all personally, but he understood that to build a legacy, he needed to lay the groundwork across multiple disciplines.
To fund this grand endeavor, Lu Fan sold several refined Gold Essence Crystals, rare treasures he had forged during his cultivation. These radiant, high-purity essence stones were coveted by alchemists and blacksmiths alike, and their sale fetched him an immense fortune.
With the resources in hand, Lu Fan acquired not just books and scrolls, but also high-grade spiritual ores, alchemy furnaces, formation flags, array blueprints, and rare seeds for spiritual herbs and crops. Everything he needed to build a proper foundation was now his.
He returned to his island carrying a storage bag brimming with ancient knowledge and rare materials.
In the past, Lu Fan's approach had prioritized quantity over quality. His weapons, while effective, were built on simplified magic weapon models—crude constructs formed by stacking materials and forcing compatibility through sheer power. They were practical but far from refined. Now, with access to true cultivation knowledge, he dove into the intricacies of high-grade weapon refinement and pill crafting.
He began with weapon refining, studying ancient forging techniques and tempering methods. He built his own forge using high-quality spiritual fire and rare ores, meticulously following the instructions. But after several failed attempts—warped blades, brittle cores, unstable spirit bindings—he came to a painful conclusion: he had no talent in weapon crafting.
Undeterred, Lu Fan turned his attention to talisman creation, then pill refinement, and even formation array construction. Each time, he committed himself with focus and effort, only to face repeated failure. No matter how carefully he followed the methods or how potent his resources, something always went wrong—wrong inscriptions, flawed harmonization, or incomplete activation. Eventually, he was forced to accept that these disciplines, while powerful, did not suit him.
His path was clearly not that of a craftsman.
Accepting his lack of talent in crafting, Lu Fan turned his full attention to the magic techniques he had recently purchased. Among them, one in particular caught his eye—Blood Pool Array, a dark technique used by evil cultivators to refine a blood pool using human blood, transforming it into a reservoir of powerful Blood Qi.
Naturally, Lu Fan refused to use human sacrifices. Instead, he adapted the method, substituting human blood with spiritual beast blood, bonemeal, and blood meal, similar to the ingredients he'd previously used for his Blood Furnace. As he studied the Blood Pool Array more deeply, he realized that much of its structure overlapped with his existing furnace method. The principles of condensing, purifying, and circulating blood essence were nearly identical.
It felt more like rediscovering something he already knew, rather than learning something new. This method wasn't foreign—it was familiar, a different path to the same destination.
After refining the Blood Pool Array into his system, Lu Fan moved on to experiment with another obscure and dangerous path—Gu cultivation. Among the techniques he purchased was one that allowed him to raise Blood Gu, parasitic insects nurtured with blood essence and refined into powerful living tools.
He began the process carefully, raising a small cluster of Blood Gu using the essence from his Blood Furnace. Over time, the Gu matured, and he proceeded to form a contract with one of them. As the contract was sealed and the Gu attempted to enter his body, an unexpected reaction occurred—his Thunder Gate flared to life, instinctively identifying the Gu as a foreign invader. In a flash of violent energy, the Gu was incinerated before it could fully merge with him.
Lu Fan stood still, silently absorbing the result. One thing was now crystal clear: his body, tempered by thunder and infused with a complex bloodline, rejected parasitic symbiosis. He could raise Gu externally and perhaps command them through talismans or formations, but his inner cultivation was already sealed off from foreign entities.
So he made a mental note—Gu techniques were usable, but only for external application. His body was a fortress, and nothing foreign would be allowed to take root within.
Just like other magic arts, Gu cultivation also had two core pathways—the quantitative method, which relied on mass breeding and survival of the fittest, and the quality-focused method, which used rare materials to nurture superior Gu directly.
Lu Fan decided to experiment with the former. Drawing inspiration from the brutal logic of Gu refinement, he purchased a massive quantity of poultry eggs online, acquiring tens of thousands of fertilized eggs at once. Then, using the Gu Cultivation Array he had acquired, he activated a large-scale formation that encompassed his entire island.
As the array hummed to life, millions of chicks hatched simultaneously, their bodies subtly influenced by Blood Qi and spiritual energy. Under the ruthless pressure of the array, their instincts became warped, driving them to fight, devour, and compete for survival. The island, once serene, was soon filled with chaotic screeches and the stench of blood as the chicks tore into one another.
Days passed, and the carnage didn't stop. The Gu Cultivation Array fed spiritual energy into the battlefield, ensuring the process continued until only one creature remained—a single bloodstained chicken, its feathers dark red, eyes glowing with a strange light, standing atop a mountain of its slain kin.
Lu Fan watched in silence. A single survivor from millions—a Blood Gu Beast born from slaughter and pressure.
As days passed, the lone surviving chicken began to undergo a startling transformation. Fed by the lingering Blood Qi within the array and tempered by the sheer brutality of its birth, its body grew rapidly, muscles bulging beneath evolving feathers. It shed its fragile chick form and began to resemble something far more fearsome—a monstrous bird with the body of an eagle and the vibrant red, gold, and black coloration of a rooster.
However, due to the Gu refinement process, the creature lacked a true soul or intelligence. It was a mindless living puppet, a beast bred purely for power and instinct. Its sharp beak gleamed like spirit metal, and its claws could rend through stone with ease. The aura it exuded was savage and oppressive, infused with killing intent from the countless lives it had taken to survive.
Lu Fan silently observed the beast, nodding to himself. Though unintelligent, it was a perfect external Gu, a brutal weapon shaped by nature and array, forged through blood and carnage.