Chapter Thirty-Five Steady Progress

  Man is the spirit of all things, and man's blood is also a unique spiritual material.

  As one's cultivation deepens, the role of human essence and blood also increases.

  Chen Yuan cultivated the Yin Yang Cultivation Technique, using the two energies of yin and yang to temper his body. His fresh blood had a guiding spiritual nature, even surpassing that of some high-level demon beasts.

  Fingertips fell on Longxi wood, with blood lines outlining, drawing a line like a pulse on the Longxi wood.

  Chen Yuan painted nine dragon breath trees, and a lot of fresh blood flowed out. However, his current physique, as long as it's not more than half of the blood loss, has no significant impact on his body.

  With fresh blood drawn, the spiritual energy of the Dragon's Breath Tree was activated, and the terrestrial spirit energy was drawn out. Chen Yuan then inserted the other eight Dragon's Breath Trees into other points that had already been selected.

  Nine dragon breath wood meridians flashed simultaneously, reaching resonance. The cut-off earth meridian began to split out new branches to the left and right, connecting with each of the nine dragon breath woods, eventually forming a circular array of two hundred square feet in diameter.

  Chen Yuan is not incapable of setting up a larger Spirit Gathering Array, but the most important thing is that there are only so many people now, and setting one up that large would be pointless.

  The foundation is basically formed, but Chen Yuan is slightly picky about the spiritual energy of the earth's veins.

  "It's a pity that this isn't the main vein. It can only be changed by moving mountains and altering the course of a major vein during future expansions."

  After the formation of the array base, Chen Yuan needs to carry out further strengthening.

  "Why did you choose this simple Soul Gathering Array? It would be better to use the Divine Spring Array." The divine snake asked casually while chatting with Chen Yu.

  "It's too expensive, and the Lingquan eyes are hard to find." Chen Yuan replied.

  "But this Spirit Gathering Array is not very stable, after all, the earth's spiritual energy is flowing, and your interception method can easily make the entire land spirit unstable, which will trigger natural disasters, no need for a demon tide, your village will be destroyed." The divine snake reminded.

  Chen Yuan nodded, he hadn't thought this aspect through yet, luckily the divine snake reminded him:

  I will be more cautious and try to control the time of running the Spirit Gathering Array every day so as not to affect the flow of the entire vein.

  The Spirit Gathering Formation was a first-grade formation, and for Chen Yuan, it didn't pose much difficulty.

  Moreover, the Spirit Gathering Formation is most suitable for spiritual law buildings, and most of the array masters who build spiritual law buildings will use the Spirit Gathering Formation as a practice.

  Of course, Chen Yuan couldn't just refine the Ling Spirit Array, the more important one was still the City Protection Grand Array.

  The city's grand array needs to cover the entire canyon range, and the materials required are a staggering amount of demon crystals.

  Moreover, all kinds of key arrays required by the Great Array must be refined one by one, which is a major project for Chen Yuan.

  And the four groups of people who followed him, after being busy for two days, had almost finished cleaning up and collecting all the materials that needed to be cleaned up.

  Chen Yuan also gave them new tasks, Zhang Sheng and Liu Tao's two teams built gates, Wang Gui built houses, while Fang Shi Chao went to other manors to recruit scattered cultivators. Of course, these scattered cultivators need to be recognized by them and are not evil people.

  After all, with just over 20 people, the speed of building the manor is really too slow, and the number of people must be expanded.

  Since the construction of the village, Chen Yuan has felt that his own hands are really insufficient, and in terms of strength, they are also somewhat lacking. Zhang Sheng and Liu Tao, although they did their best, were afraid to take charge of many things on their own. Chen Yuan knew that these few childhood friends of his might not be able to achieve great things. On the other hand, Fang Shi Chuan, whom he didn't know well, was clean and efficient, handled logistics matters in an orderly manner, and was good at talking and negotiating. He could even serve as a general manager or handle foreign trade affairs. Therefore, Chen Yuan chose to entrust Fang Shi Chuan with the task of recruiting people outside, while Zhang Sheng and others had too much of a petty mindset and lacked the eloquence to persuade others.

  Three days later, the first gate of the city wall was initially completed. At this time, Chen Yuan also officially named the canyon.

  The name was obtained very simply, called Shanling Manor.

  As for whether he will change his name in the future, Chen Yuan has not thought about it yet.

  The divine snake didn't like this name, saying it was too petty. However, these things are useless in a dispute. Although Chen Yuan is confident now and has the momentum, after all, the manor's development should be low-key at first.

  Fang Shilong and his party returned on the fourth day of their trip, bringing back only three people.

  Among them were two female Taoist priests, which could be considered as adding flowers to the otherwise all-male Mountain Villa.

  These two female cultivators were in the middle of their actual cultivation and were a pair of sisters. The elder sister was called Liao Mei, while the younger sister was called Liao Tao.

  At the age of twenty, this life may have no hope of building a foundation. It belongs to the type that has no hope on the grand path.

  However, for the estate to develop and continue, it naturally requires the people in the village to multiply their offspring.

  These two women are quite attractive and naturally became the focus of attention as soon as they arrived. As for who they would choose to form a Dao partnership with, Chen Yuan didn't care.

  As for the male who was brought back, he is already over 50 years old and has only been practicing for a short period of time. He started practicing at the age of 30 and after 20 years, he is still in the initial stage of his practice. His talent for cultivation can be said to be extremely poor, but he is an expert in construction and has made significant contributions to building houses since his arrival.

  Chen Yuan was busy every day refining the components of the Tian Huo Di Han Great Array, but every night he would also take out an hour to talk to them about his cultivation experiences.

  His initial cultivation of Qi refining didn't have much experience to offer guidance on.

  However, Shen She, this ancient spiritual beast who has lived for unknown years, is very experienced. Although he is a demon, he once transformed into a human, so he can give many pointers on cultivation.

  Sometimes, Chen Yuan himself conveyed the words of the divine snake, and as he spoke, he suddenly stopped with a hint of understanding.

  In the midst of Shanling Manor's orderly construction, Chen Yuan rewarded Fang Shiqi with a second-grade flight artifact and had him go to Julimubao, Xuemu Fort, and other places to persuade and recruit people. The population of Shanling Manor slowly broke through to thirty people.

  In the valley, as a residential area, the second district has already built ten courtyards with houses. Chen Yuan was very considerate and planted Longxi wood in each courtyard, burying it underground, making the courtyard full of spiritual energy, which is extremely beneficial for cultivation. Especially when couples live inside and become pregnant, the fetus can receive spiritual nourishment during pregnancy, and after birth, their innate talent for cultivation will be much better.

  Chen Yuan wants to develop the manor into a fortress and turn it into a city... Naturally, everything is done with long-term plans in mind.

  And those who obtained the Yuanzi were extremely excited and followed Chenyuan's heart even more loyally.

  But even if Chen Yuan rushes day and night, a large defensive array cannot be set up in just over a dozen days.

  And next time, the tide of monsters will erupt in just three days.

  Chen Yuan did not choose to activate the Hundred House Order. Once activated, it would formally open up a piece of pure land and connect with the aura of Ruo Mu City. At that time, the demon tide would surge towards them. Now without the Great Array of Protection, without spiritual buildings for defense, and without manpower, inviting the demon tide would be equivalent to seeking destruction.

  In order to prevent the demonic tide from threatening Shanling Manor, which was still in its formative stages, Chen Yuan chose to use himself as bait and lure away the demonic beast army that might pass through here.

  The tide of monsters erupted as scheduled, and the people of Shangling Village all retreated into the canyon.

  Chen Yuan was alone on the west bank of the Black River in the canyon, hiding behind a huge boulder, watching as second and third-grade flying beasts flew by in the sky, swallowing his saliva secretly. The flying beasts were the greatest threat to the mountain valley without the protective array.

  Fortunately, these guys seemed to have already determined their target and flew over the Mountain Village in a cloud-like manner without any intention of attacking.

  However, Chen Yuan had not yet breathed a sigh of relief when he discovered that a large group of black alligators crawled up the shore from the Black River. This group of second-level demonic beasts was extremely troublesome, with over a thousand heads emerging from the foul-smelling Black River. Originally, they were running towards the front, but as they ran, about a hundred black alligators suddenly moved towards Mountain Ridge Village.

  It seems to have caught wind of human presence inside.

  At this time, Chen Yuan naturally couldn't continue to hide, and he quickly put away the Xiangxiang pouch. This was his second Xiangxiang pouch; even if he had great merit towards Xiangxiang Fort, Hai Mingyue would only give him three in total. The pouch sealed its opening tightly, so the fragrance wouldn't leak out, but once it was opened and worn, it would disappear without a trace within a month.

  So Chen Yuan still urgently needs a new fragrance substitute, otherwise he will have to continue to return to his whole body smelling again.

  The sachet was put away, and the strange fragrance of summoning souls immediately attracted a large group of demons and beasts to turn their heads.

  Hundreds of fire crows swooped down from the sky in an instant, and fireballs rained down on Chen Yuan.

  Chen Yuan did not rush to start a formation, but instead quickly retreated.

  A rain of fireballs, instantly burning a hundred square feet of grassland. As the flames were dense, Chen Yuans sacrifice emerged from the ashes!

  Roar!

  A mighty roar, and the Ash Dragon reappears.

  Apart from the fire crows, the black alligator fish that had been surging out of the mountain valley also began to move. Once they turned their heads, Chen Yuan immediately opened the fragrance pouch again. Having attracted so many fire crows and black alligator fish, as long as he could resolve the crisis in the mountain valley, he didn't want to endlessly attract more demonic beasts. After all, there were countless aquatic demons in the Black River, and this place wasn't far from the Youming Forest either.

  This is not the case where the Hundred Demons' army has split up and taken action separately. If he were to release the Soul-Calling Incense here for a long time, Chen Yuan would absolutely be eaten by tens of thousands of demons until nothing was left but his hair.