Chapter 4189 — One Year's Time

Beneath that strange, unnatural calm, the days slipped by one after another. Old Rags kept at it with dogged persistence, yet no sign of a proper mold ever took shape. Fortunately, thanks to that persistence of his, the situation inside the casting pool did not deteriorate any further—it merely stayed locked in a stalemate at the final threshold, which was a blessing in disguise.

That was not all. Wei Zhao, too, had run into a bottleneck. The peak of the early Golden Core stage was right there before his eyes, so close he could almost touch it, yet no matter how he tried, he simply could not pierce that last layer of window paper. It was truly maddening.

Given that his breakthrough had been perfect, given that he was among the strongest of Golden Core cultivators, Wei Zhao had assumed that advancing through the early Golden Core stage would come as naturally as water flowing into a channel. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined he would get stuck at this very step.

If other Golden Core experts ever learned of such thinking, they would genuinely break down and weep. From forming his core to the present, by the most generous reckoning, only a few months had passed for Wei Zhao—and already he was scheming to climb another rung, without so much as a single elixir to assist him.

What were those legions of Golden Core experts—stuck in place for decades or even centuries, for whom even top-grade elixirs were as good as swallowed for nothing—supposed to feel about that?

Since a breakthrough was out of reach, Wei Zhao knew from past experience that sheer blind seclusion would be useless now; he had to wait for the right opportunity. So he simply eased his mind and stopped forcing a rapid breakthrough in the short term.

With time idling heavily on his hands, Wei Zhao seized the leisure to refine a batch of elixirs. Entrusting them to Hong Zhong, he had them sent through the Hong Clan Merchant Guild's channels to the Tian Dan Pavilion on Middle Island. This was something he had long planned—it would relieve no small amount of pressure on Tian Chan.

Tian Chan, though also a perfect-breakthrough expert of the early Golden Core stage, did not possess Wei Zhao's divine alchemy treasure, the Shennong Cauldron. She could only guarantee the quality of fourth-grade elixirs; refining fifth-grade ones was still far beyond her at this stage.

Along with the elixirs, Wei Zhao deliberately wrote a letter to Di Xingdao, inquiring about the matter of bottlenecks. Though Di Xingdao had not achieved a perfect breakthrough himself, he was, after all, a senior who cultivated the Creation Battle Art as well, and his experience ought to be of considerable reference value.

Before long, Wei Zhao received Di Xingdao's reply. In the letter, Di Xingdao said that although Wei Zhao had broken through perfectly, he had only just ascended to the Golden Core stage and was precisely in a phase of amassing strength before release. He must absolutely not be impatient; so long as he smoothly broke through to the peak of the early Golden Core stage, everything afterward would flow without obstruction.

At this stage, the key lay in consolidating one's realm and accumulating one's foundation. This was something that could affect the entire Golden Core stage to come, and not the slightest carelessness could be permitted.

Therefore, encountering a bottleneck at this time was not in the least surprising, nor was it by any means a bad thing. Of course, that did not mean one could henceforth cease striving for progress; all things required moderation, and if one remained stuck at a bottleneck for too long, that too was hardly a good thing.

What Wei Zhao needed to do now was refrain from forcing a swift breakthrough in the short term, while still making the proper preparations, calmly awaiting the moment when the breakthrough would come as naturally as water flowing into a channel.

As for precisely how to prepare, the advice Di Xingdao gave coincided remarkably with Wei Zhao's own thinking: shutting oneself away in blind seclusion was the most foolish and senseless of choices. To seize the opportunity for breakthrough, there were only two paths.

Either do battle with others, constantly consolidating one's realm through actual combat, or consume natural treasures, using external stimuli to strengthen one's foundation.

Yet for the moment Wei Zhao had neither. His Golden Core elixirs had long since run out, and the days now passed quietly and peacefully. The only sworn enemy whose strength was sufficient—Xu Lingchong—had for some reason kept his troops in check, while everyone around him was simply too weak, leaving him unable to find even a sparring partner.

At present, the only thing Wei Zhao could rely on was the trial combat of the Threefold Pavilion. Though there was little challenge within the Newcomer Pavilion itself, if one looked at the Threefold Pavilion as a whole, it was a place where experts emerged in droves—no small number of them were stronger than Wei Zhao.

In the blink of an eye, the one-year term in the Newcomer Pavilion had arrived. The newcomers of the Threefold Pavilion gathered in the great hall, every one of them anxious and uneasy, awaiting the crucial final examination that would decide their fate. Whether they could smoothly join the Threefold Pavilion now rested on this single day.

The Grand Contest of Newcomers was the most important event of the Newcomer Pavilion. The Threefold Pavilion sent elders to attend and lend their support, while Hu Yunfeng, as Pavilion Master of the Newcomer Pavilion, presided over the contest from the platform.

"It has now been a full year since all of you joined the Newcomer Pavilion. I, as Pavilion Master, wish to congratulate you newcomers here—you finally have the chance to formally join the Threefold Pavilion and become official disciples of the outer sect," Hu Yunfeng said with a smile, opening the proceedings before the assembled crowd.

All the newcomers immediately showed expressions of excitement. A year of hardship had been for this very day. Once they shed their newcomer status and became official outer-sect disciples, both their standing and their treatment would rise by a great margin—this was what they had dreamed of. Yet Hu Yunfeng's very next sentence made certain faces darken abruptly.

"However, regrettably, this opportunity is reserved only for those newcomers who have successfully established their foundation. As for those who could not even manage foundation establishment, I can tell you frankly and directly: you do not even have the chance to take part in the Grand Contest of Newcomers. In the future, mine well and cultivate well in the Spirit Jade Hall, and perhaps one day you may still turn your fortunes around—but unfortunately, today there is certainly no hope for you." Hu Yunfeng's gaze fell upon those newcomers who had not yet established their foundations.

Because of the support from the Middle Island Elixir Hall this year, the cultivation resources provided to the newcomers had been far more abundant than in previous years, and the proportion of newcomers succeeding in foundation establishment had reached fully eighty, even ninety percent. Yet in the end there were always a few hopeless cases who could not be propped up—Zha Wu of the Qingyun Pavilion, for instance.

Hearing Hu Yunfeng's "verdict," Zha Wu's face turned ashen at once. To be banished to mine in the Spirit Jade Hall was the most pitiful of fates. True, there had been cases of dramatic reversals there, but they were exceedingly rare—ordinary people could not count on such a thing at all. Now he truly had not a shred of prospects left.

Zha Wu cast a helpless glance at Qiao Hongcai and the others. He considered himself not much inferior to the former Qiao Hongcai—how was it that their present circumstances were now worlds apart?