The Path of Immortality: Starts With Creating Water Bear Gu

The only thing that troubled him was the issue of material collection. The thought of the materials needed for the Five Elements Reversal Formation gave Long Xuan a headache.

It was needless to say that setting up a fierce formation would be incredibly costly. Otherwise, this world would be full of fierce formations, especially the "Rubik’s Cube Grand Formation," which was practically a money-burning machine.

Given the importance of keeping the spiritual spring a secret, Long Xuan was meticulous about the materials used for the Five Elements Reversal Formation, using only the best and cutting no corners. Many of the materials couldn’t be bought directly with spirit stones and were extremely difficult to collect.

Thus, the cost of his Five Elements Reversal Formation was astronomical.

Just thinking about the materials list that was about to become a book made Long Xuan’s scalp tingle.

Especially the primary materials for the Five Elements Reversal Formation, which gave him an even bigger headache.

The primary materials for the Five Elements Reversal Formation were peak-grade spirit stones of the gold, wood, water, fire, and earth attributes.

These were peak-grade spirit stones. In a small spirit stone mine, finding a single peak-grade spirit stone would already be considered fortunate.

Peak-grade spirit stones contained the most pure elemental power, infinitely close to the source, and were priceless.

The value of a Peak-grade spirit stone was on par with that of millennium ice marrow, so the difficulty of collecting them was imaginable.

Not only was it extremely difficult to collect, but because of their immense value, gathering them would certainly involve risks. Just like the last incident with Master Jin, such dangers were unavoidable unless one decided not to collect them at all.

If you want to collect priceless treasures, but expect to do so without any risk, that’s completely impossible.

At this moment, Long Xuan could only think of two relatively safe ways to collect them.

The first method of collecting materials is to once again go to the Mission hall of the Long Family and take advantage of the situation.

In the Long Family, as long as you have contributions, you can exchange them for anything. It’s extremely convenient to collect materials there, and I hardly have to pay any cost—a perfect opportunity to freeload.

As for the risks involved, he is currently the family’s genius that is under special training, highly valued due to his Ten Absolute Body. They are more focused on protecting him than anything else. Plus, He also has the family's only third-grade alchemy master as his backer. He feels that the possibility of him being in danger is very low.

But nothing is absolute. After all, peak-grade spirit stones are useful to any level of Gu cultivators. So for the sake of caution, he decided that his real body would stay in the Five Elements Reversal Formation in the future and would not appear in the Long family anymore.

All daily activities in the Long Family will be handled by his clone. Ever since he broke through the Marrow Cleansing, the Evil Dragon Emperor’s Eye of the Long Family can no longer see through his clone. So, even if the clone causes trouble due to the peak-grade spiritual stones, it will only be the clone that suffers the consequences.

Moreover, the Five Elements Reversal Array is anchored by a spiritual spring, making it difficult even for a Gu King to break. His true body will be 100% safe inside, and in the event of any unforeseen variables, he can escape via the teleportation array.

With these layers of protection, he believe this method of collecting peak-grade spiritual stones is entirely feasible.

The second relatively safe method of collecting materials is to trade with Di Xin.

She’s the wealthiest in the entire marketplace—a true little rich lady. Di Xin frequently visits the treasuries of various clans, so she’s far wealthier than me. I absolutely must take advantage of her and cannot let this opportunity slip by.

Moreover, she is a formation master, so she must have a lot of formation materials. He might even be able to collect most of the formation materials he need from her alone.

There’s a good chance she also has peak-grade spiritual stones, perhaps even more than one.

He already had many dealings with her, and he feel that she’s unlikely to make a move against him. He can safely reveal his treasures in front of her.

The key point is that the combat power of the Ten Absolute Body is unbeatable at the same level. After his breakthrough, he no longer fear Gu cultivators at the Marrow Cleansing Stage. Even if Di Xin suddenly makes a move, he's confident he won’t need to fear her.

So, this method of collecting peak-grade spiritual stones is also very safe, allowing him to work on both fronts.

However, Di Xin has a particular fondness for high-quality spiritual insects, so to impress her, he'll need to raid the gambling stone shops run by the major clans. This is another chance to freeload without any cost.

Ever since the seven major clans spent a fortune to buy the fossil mine from him, they have deployed massive manpower and resources to excavate a huge number of fossils, which led them to start the gambling stone business.

But in his view, they’re just workers, working for him for free.

They give him a sum of money, and the spiritual insects they painstakingly dig out eventually end up back in his hands. They’re essentially digging fossils for him—he's freeloading off their labor.

Long Xuan displayed a sinister smile.

These are the only two relatively safe methods he could think of to collect peak-grade spiritual stones.

As for the ordinary materials needed for the Five Elements Reversal Array, they can be collected directly in the marketplace using spiritual stones.

Don’t underestimate the cost of setting up a fierce array. After all, it’s an array that can stop a Gu King—just the quantity of materials alone is enough to fill a book.

Long Xuan can’t currently estimate how many spiritual stones will be consumed to successfully set up the Five Elements Reversal Array.

But once the array is complete, he'll probably have very few spiritual stones left, if not running a deficit. He'll definitely have to come up with another source of income.

Long Xuan stopped thinking about this headache-inducing matter. After compiling all the papers filled with writing into a book, he wrote on the cover:

"Five Elements Reversal Formation Diagram"

—Written By Long Xuan

After placing it in the small box, he took out another blank sheet of paper, preparing to create another low-grade Gu formula to milk another round of benefits from the Long Family.

But this time, he planned to use the "let it be" method, just to make do with it. There’s no need to earn a billion contributions—he doesn't have that kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Pursuing the ultimate cost-performance ratio is mentally exhausting, and the brain cells he just killed haven’t even recovered yet; he need rest.

Peak-grade spiritual stones are incredibly rare. Even in the Long Family’s Treasure Hall, there are only two—one gold, one fire. Each peak-grade spiritual stone costs 30 million contributions.

He still has over 10 million contributions left. Long Xuan felt that this low-grade Gu formula only needed to earn 50 million contributions, which would be enough. There’s no need to aim for the extreme.

As usual, he planned to use some rarely-used, obscure spiritual insects to refine Gu. After roughly searching through his mind, he decided to focus on the sedge moth.

Don’t be fooled by the sedge moth’s lack of offensive power; it is a master architect among insects with a rich artistic sense.

The hobby of this insect is building houses, and the little houses it constructs are beautiful and aesthetically pleasing.

sedge moths collect various materials from nature as building materials, constructing houses in different shapes—some in pyramid shapes, some in spiral staircase shapes, some in chimney shapes...

The little houses built by these insects are simply bizarre, with creativity entirely different from that of humans.

The reason he chose the sedge moth is purely because he likes this type of insect.

In his previous life, when he was studying entomology, he enjoyed placing various materials in front of sedge moth, allowing them to freely use their imagination to build all sorts of strange houses, and he never got tired of it.

In this world, whether the sedge moth is strong or not is secondary. He just wanted to see if refining sedge moth into Gu insects would result in any differences in the houses they build.

In the future, could they make the houses bigger, and could humans live in them? Would there be any special effects if someone did live in one?

What if the houses built by sedge moth turned into Gu insects could double a person’s cultivation speed? These are all possibilities.

Long Xuan was very much looking forward to it.