Chapter 1414: Opportunity Has Come

Lu Ye was not in a hurry. He was waiting for a good opportunity, as he had received news that there would be a chance to demonstrate the Unity Array.

Whether he could seize this opportunity depended on his luck.

Time passed, but his usual operations did not cease. He continued to refine array plates in between skirmishes, accumulating a large quantity.

On the Contribution Ranking, his position had long fallen out of the top three hundred...

This was because those ranking higher were constantly engaging in battles, only pausing for recovery and healing, while he spent a lot of time refining...

At the Heavenly Secret Guild, Liu Quan politely escorted Lu Ye to the entrance. Most outer-circle cultivators were quite poor, except for those from major sects.

Therefore, a transaction involving dozens of Spirit Stones was not common. Since Lu Ye was also straightforward, Liu Quan naturally wanted to build a good relationship with him, hoping for more business in the future.

As he watched Lu Ye's figure disappear, Liu Quan turned around, and a fragrant breeze wafted towards him. Someone was standing right behind him.

"You startled me!" Liu Quan grumbled, annoyed. "Why aren't you attending to customers? What are you doing standing behind me?"

The person replied sweetly, "I missed you."

Liu Quan, feeling guilty, glanced left and right. Seeing that no one was paying attention, he lowered his voice and said, "I'll come find you after work tonight."

"Alright," the woman responded with a smile.

Liu Quan casually walked back into the main hall to greet other customers, while the woman gazed thoughtfully in the direction Lu Ye had departed.

Later that night, after a period of intimacy, they chatted casually. The woman subtly steered the conversation towards the day's transaction. Liu Quan, feeling sleepy, answered intermittently before quickly falling into a deep sleep.

The woman, lying in his arms, found it difficult to sleep.

If she wasn't mistaken, the customer from earlier that day was the same person she had served half a month ago, who had sold many ores and purchased some spirit pills.

She hadn't expected him to return to sell ores again after just half a month.

Judging by his appearance, the customer was undoubtedly a rogue cultivator. It was certainly noteworthy that a lone rogue cultivator could accumulate wealth amounting to dozens of spirit stones in such a short period.

Someone like her, working at the Heavenly Secret Guild, would earn at most twelve or thirteen spirit stones a month, even with additional income. This made her recall her days as a rogue cultivator, and the comparison left her feeling a bit sour. She thought for a long time before finally feeling drowsy, but she still couldn't sleep soundly.

Meanwhile, in the cave on Qingyun Mountain, Lu Ye was cultivating.

After completing his transaction at the Heavenly Secret Guild earlier that day, he used his remaining spirit stones to buy a lot of food and then rushed back non-stop, arriving at the cave before nightfall.

With enough spirit pills, he immediately began cultivating by consuming them.

As spirit pills were consumed, the spiritual energy in his fifteenth aperture gradually filled, then surged towards the sixteenth aperture.

Twelve days later, inside the cave, Lu Ye sat cross-legged, calming his mind and concentrating.

Today was a big day; if all went well, he would advance to the second layer of the Spirit Stream Realm.

Since his return twelve days prior, he had continuously consumed over thirty Spirit Accumulation Pills, finally opening his eighteenth aperture and cultivating its spiritual energy to full capacity.

Recalling the energy circulation route in the Golden Cicada Freedom Art, Lu Ye activated his spiritual energy, guiding it from the tenth aperture, sequentially through the eleventh and twelfth, and finally to the eighteenth aperture.

He had done this when he reached the first layer of the Spirit Stream Realm, so he was quite familiar with the process now and encountered no difficulties.

The spiritual energy smoothly flowed through the nine great apertures like a gentle stream. As Lu Ye continued, the flow within these nine apertures accelerated, circulating continuously.

Reaching a limit, Lu Ye felt a jolt throughout his body, and a wave of energy swept through him. The spiritual energy flowing from the tenth to the eighteenth apertures began to circulate autonomously.

Second layer of the Spirit Stream Realm, achieved!

Having experienced this once before, Lu Ye felt no excessive joy, only a natural sense of calm accomplishment.

Now, he was no longer the minor three-aperture cultivator who had drifted into the Spirit Stream Battlefield just over two months ago.

If reaching the first layer of the Spirit Stream Realm granted him the qualification to survive in the outer regions of the battlefield, then reaching the second layer gave him the qualification to move freely within it. Of course, there was still a gap compared to cultivators with higher cultivation levels, but Lu Ye was already quite satisfied.

Compared to reaching the first layer of the Spirit Stream Realm, his promotion to the second layer this time took even less time. It had taken him approximately forty days to go from opening three apertures to reaching the Spirit Stream Realm, but from the first to the second layer, he used less than a month.

This was mainly due to abundant cultivation resources. Even so, this cultivation speed was incredibly fast.

It's important to know that early-stage cultivators typically take about ten days to open each aperture because their primary method of cultivation is absorbing spiritual energy from heaven and earth. When their cultivation level is not high enough, the efficiency of absorbing spiritual energy is low, so their cultivation speed naturally cannot be fast.

This situation only slightly improves after reaching the fourth layer of the Spirit Stream Realm.

In other words, for an ordinary cultivator at the beginning of their cultivation, advancing one layer every three months is normal. But for Lu Ye, advancing one layer on average each month, this was the joy of cultivation with pills.

In the first layer, Lu Ye only had one minor circulation from the Source Aperture to the ninth aperture. But after reaching the second layer, he gained another circulation from the tenth to the eighteenth aperture. He now had two spiritual energy circulation systems within his body.

As a result, he could mobilize more spiritual energy in a short time, and its destructive power naturally became stronger.

Upon reaching the third layer, there would be three such minor circulations. By analogy, a cultivator at the ninth layer of the Spirit Stream Realm would have nine minor circulation systems within their body.

He still had thirty Spirit Accumulation Pills. Although Lu Ye really wanted to continue cultivating, he knew that haste makes waste.

He first ate something, then went outside the cave to find a mountain spring, took a bath, changed into clean clothes, and then, amidst the trickling sound of the spring, took out the Golden Cicada Freedom Art to study.

Next, he planned to advance towards the third layer of the Spirit Stream Realm. He needed to understand the locations of the apertures beyond the eighteenth to facilitate his subsequent cultivation.

The mountains were peaceful, with occasional sounds of birds chirping and insects flying. Dappled sunlight pierced through the canopy of leaves, illuminating the young man's profile, making the scene appear like something from a painting.

"What are you sneaking around for?" Lu Ye called out without lifting his head.

From the trunk of a large tree nearby, a small head poked out. Its disheveled appearance would surely startle anyone unfamiliar with it.

Yi Yi glanced at what Lu Ye was reading. Once she saw it was a low-level cultivation technique, she pursed her lips, a look of disdain on her face.

"Is something wrong?" Lu Ye asked, tilting his head, trying hard to suppress the urge to punch her.

"When are you leaving?" Yi Yi asked.

Although Lu Ye hadn't come out to hunt during this period, this was her and Big Tiger's territory; how could they tolerate someone else snoring beside their bed? If it weren't for her apprehension about the spiritual talismans in Lu Ye's possession, she would have long since teamed up with Big Tiger to drive him away. However, having suffered a loss at Lu Ye's hands once, Yi Yi was still hesitant to act rashly. Moreover, Yi Yi could tell that Lu Ye had become much stronger than two months ago.

Lu Ye closed his book, stood up, and stretched. "I'm tired. I'm going back to sleep!"

"Hey, I'm talking to you!" Yi Yi exclaimed angrily, but she received no reply. She could only grit her teeth and curse, "You rogue, you stinking thing, you're infuriating me! Wah-yah-yah-yah..." She then furiously scratched at a nearby tree, sending wood chips flying.