Han Li picked up a single pill between two fingers and held it before his eyes. A faint smile appeared on his face.
His desperate gamble had not been in vain. With these few Dust-Descending Pills, he and Qu Hun's chances of reaching Core Formation would be a bit higher.
He carefully placed the pills back into the bottle and returned it to his storage pouch.
Now, Han Li needed to find a place with spiritual energy that was also safe enough for him to attempt Core Formation as quickly as possible.
Whether it was Qu Hun or himself, as long as one of them could enter the Core Formation stage, they would at least have a fighting chance against their pursuers.
However, Core Formation was not something that could be accomplished in a matter of days.
Aside from once-in-a-generation prodigies born with Heavenly Spiritual Roots, most cultivators needed sufficient spirit medicine and time to break through the bottleneck.
The "Snow Spirit Water" and "Heavenly Fire Liquid" he had previously intended to purchase were two essential spirit substances that cultivators needed when attempting Core Formation.
Without them, Core Formation was not impossible, but the success rate would drop so low that it would make any cultivator vomit blood.
Although no one had ever compiled official statistics, the rate was said to be far below one percent.
Beyond these two items, other spirit medicines could also be consumed during Core Formation, and the more varieties one used, the greater the chance of success.
None of them had as dramatic an effect as Snow Spirit Water and Heavenly Fire Liquid, of course.
And like those two spirit substances, repeated consumption of any of them was useless. This was not a matter of qi condensation meditation—each type of spirit medicine worked best in proper doses, and taking too much could actually produce the opposite effect.
The funny thing was that these other spirit medicines were far less effective than Snow Spirit Water and Heavenly Fire Liquid, yet they were even harder to find and more rare.
Most of them required one or even several types of thousand-year spirit herbs as raw ingredients to be refined.
What ordinary cultivator could afford such extravagance?
At most, being able to prepare one or two additional types beyond Snow Spirit Water and Heavenly Fire Liquid was already considered the height of luxury.
Of course, this was not a significant problem for Han Li.
Except for a few extremely rare spirit herbs he truly could not obtain or had never even heard of, he had already accelerated the growth of the rest during his years of cultivation on Xiaohuan Island. He had used them to prepare over a dozen auxiliary spirit medicines for Core Formation, and they now sat safely inside one of his storage pouches.
What was most surprising was that these spirit medicines did not require a cultivator's innate true fire for refinement—they could be simply prepared like ordinary mortal medicines, with no special techniques needed.
And their formulas could be easily found in all manner of texts and records.
This had baffled Han Li for quite some time, and he still found it somewhat puzzling.
The five Dust-Descending Pills he had obtained were precisely one of the auxiliary medicines that cultivators in the Chaotic Star Sea needed for Core Formation, which was why they were so rare and precious.
But it was not as though taking these auxiliary spirit medicines would immediately boost one's Core Formation success rate by a huge margin compared to other cultivators.
Based on the materials Han Li had reviewed, even with such an extravagant Core Formation preparation as his, the improvement would be no more than ten or fifteen percent over what other cultivators typically achieved.
At least it was a little better than not taking them at all. Of course, these were only Han Li's own estimates.
Furthermore, the Core Formation process could not be completed in ten days or half a month.
According to the various texts and the Core Formation experience that Li Huayuan had once mentioned, the entire process would take a full three to five years.
The exact duration depended on individual aptitude.
During this period, one had to avoid extreme emotional states of joy or grief, must not engage in combat or magical duels with others, and needed to absorb a certain amount of heaven and earth spiritual energy.
Therefore, finding an island with at least some spiritual energy in which to secluded himself for Core Formation was something Han Li had to do.
With this thought in mind, Han Li took out another jade slip from his person. Inside it was an enormous sea chart centered on Kuixing Island and the other two major islands.
Han Li sent his spiritual sense into the slip and spent considerable effort before finally determining his approximate location. He then searched the entire sea chart for remote, lesser-known small and medium-sized islands marked with annotations.
After the time it takes to eat a meal, Han Li withdrew from the jade slip with a thoughtful expression.
He looked around at the surrounding sea and the blazing sun overhead, narrowed his eyes slightly to adjust his bearing, and then departed with Qu Hun in a streak of white light that vanished into the horizon.
Along the way, Han Li would land on any uninhabited island he encountered to rest briefly and replenish his magical power. When he spotted islands occupied by cultivators or other people, he would immediately avoid them without daring to linger for even a moment, fearing he might leave some trace that could be followed.
After zigzagging through several different directions, Han Li finally flew at top speed toward his true destination.
...
Two months later, above an extremely remote island, the figures of Han Li and Qu Hun appeared.
This island was far smaller than Kuixing Island, but it was still much larger than an ordinary small island, barely qualifying as a medium-sized one.
This was Han Li's destination after his long journey: Sea Ape Island.
Aside from a small number of mortals, the island was mostly inhabited by low-level cultivators who had not yet reached Foundation Establishment. There was no island lord to speak of—it was entirely a place where one could come and go freely.
The island earned its name because the surrounding waters were home to a peculiar low-level spirit beast called the Sea Ape.
This creature looked no different from an ordinary ape, with one exception: not only could it cast the low-level magical technique known as Water Arrow, but it also possessed surprisingly high intelligence.
Adult Sea Ape were nearly as clever as seven- or eight-year-old children. They could dive into the deep sea to catch fish for food, making them a favorite among cultivators who wanted to capture them to serve as menial workers in their cave dwellings.
Although Sea Apes were classified as spirit beasts, a cultivator at the fifth or sixth level of Qi Condensation could easily defeat and capture one. As a result, small boats from all over came to the island every year to hire low-level cultivators to catch and sell them.
Some small merchants pooled their resources to set up a formation array on the island and established a permanent shop, purchasing live Sea Apes at low prices year-round. When merchant ships arrived at certain times, they would transport large quantities all at once.
This naturally attracted a number of low-level cultivators to the island looking to earn spirit stones.
But the reason other rogue cultivators quickly moved here to stay after the formation was set up was that Sea Ape Island actually had a passably large spiritual vein.
Though the quality of the spiritual vein was nothing remarkable, its sheer size and breadth meant that low-level cultivators could cultivate almost anywhere on the island.
And the so-called spiritual nexus and a few spots with slightly denser spiritual energy were not much different from the rest of the island—no high-level cultivator would bother fighting over them.
An island with such thin spiritual energy and nothing but the minor specialty of Sea Apes was naturally beneath the notice of any major power. It was entirely a domain of free-spirited low-level cultivators.
Although Foundation Establishment or Core Formation stage cultivators occasionally visited the island, they were almost always just passers-through.
It was the perfect place for Han Li to hide and attempt Core Formation.
...
Two days later, Han Li stood in a desolate mountain area on one corner of the island, gazing at the temporary cave dwelling he had just freshly excavated. He felt thoroughly satisfied.
The new cave dwelling consisted of nothing more than a simple herb garden, two hidden chambers, and no other complex structures.
Of course, Han Li had used a set of formation-setting tools to erect an ordinary concealing formation that sealed the cave entrance. He also carefully released the two Blood Jade Spiders from the leather pouch he used for storing spirit beasts, placing them to guard the gate of his dwelling.
After years of training, these two white spiders had grown to the size of a human head. They had also advanced two ranks, reaching the upper first-tier level—more than capable of handling ordinary Qi Condensation stage cultivators. They were the only exotic insects Han Li had brought with him from his true cave dwelling on Xiaohuan Island.
As for the other exotic insects and spirit beasts, they remained in his real cave dwelling on Xiaohuan Island.
Han Li speculated that if those scheming individuals were still unwilling to let go—if they wanted to silence him or avenge that cultivator surnamed Gu—they would inevitably track down his cave dwelling on Xiaohuan Island.
Though three grand formation arrays protected the outside of both his real and fake cave dwellings, they probably would not withstand a Core Formation cultivator's forceful assault for long.
The real cave dwelling would certainly be exposed—there was no question about that.
As for the fake cave dwelling, by Han Li's estimation, the chances of it being discovered or not were roughly fifty-fifty.
The tunnel leading to the real cave dwelling was not concealed using any easily detectable formation but instead relied on the mortal world's mechanical ingenuity, cleverly using a stone chair carved from a massive boulder to block the tunnel entrance.
If the intruders only searched the mountain where the fake cave dwelling was located, Han Li was confident they would detect nothing unusual.
But if the intruders were the meticulous, thorough type who liked to investigate everything to the end, that was harder to say.
After all, the distinctive aura of those exotic insects inside the other mountain would not escape the powerful spiritual sense of a Core Formation cultivator.
With this realization, although Han Li felt somewhat reluctant to part with those exotic insects that he had never been able to fully tame, he could only leave their fate to heaven.
Of course, if they were not discovered and went five or six years without being fed, those venomous insects would likely not die, given their legendary hardiness. There were precedents of them surviving for years without food.
With these thoughts drifting through his mind, Han Li and Qu Hun each walked into one of the hidden chambers.