.

The environment of the secret realm was like a large, high level cultivation chamber, where the concentration of Qi in the air was so dense that cultivating here for a single day wouldn't be much different from cultivating outside for ten days, if not more.

This advantage was further amplified by the fact that the time difference between the outside world and the one inside was also great, a month here would barely be more than a few days in the outside world.

Therefore, Liang Yuexin had all the time she needed not only to make quick progress but also to recover a good part of her cultivation.

Her foundations seemed to have disappeared, but in a certain sense they were still there, and although she was cultivating from scratch, her comprehension of the various cultivation stages within the Mortal Realm was high enough to make her advancement through each stage much easier.

She soon discovered that such progress was even faster thanks to her body, which seemed to cultivate on its own even when she wasn't consciously doing so.

Just like beasts, who simply by living and hunting continuously advance in stage, she could actually absorb and refine Qi in her body even while sleeping.

And that was due to her draconic bloodline, one of the most powerful out there.

At this moment, she was in a cultivation area on the roof of the small residence, specially created by Zhu Rong as the perfect spot where the surrounding Qi naturally concentrated, making cultivation there much easier.

She wasn't sure how it worked, but she didn't care, what mattered was that it worked, and after cultivating there for a few days, she could tell that it truly did.

She had already broken through to the second stage by the second day of cultivation, and now, on the fifth day, she could already feel that she was close to breaking into the third.

Such speed was tremendous, to say the least, and although she could sense it was starting to slow down, she also realized that it wasn't by much. If she continued like this, in at most a month she would have returned to the fifth stage.

After completing her daily cultivation session, she let out a sigh as she opened her violet eyes and turned her gaze in a certain direction.

It was aimed downward, toward the forest, and although at first glance it might have seemed she was admiring the scenery, that wasn't the case.

Her gaze was fixed on a particular point within the forest, and even though it was far away, with her enhanced sight it didn't take her long to clearly see what was happening there.

She stared at that area for a while, then finally, as if she had found what she was looking for, she stood up and disappeared from her spot, reappearing just seconds later in that section of the forest, looking ahead.

There stood Zhu Rong, who was busy checking something on the ground.

"You've been wandering around the forest for days now, scattering seeds everywhere. Care to tell me what you're doing?" she said, walking forward to reach him.

Zhu Rong, who had already sensed her presence, didn't seem surprised and continued what he was doing while saying:

"This is a special kind of Qi flower. Unlike the normal ones you might have seen before, these are a particular variant I created myself to better adapt to the unique conditions of the secret realm," he said while infusing his Qi into the soil below, where, far from sight, several roots began spreading deeper and deeper, growing and branching endlessly as if they had no end.

"Qi flowers? You're trying to enrich the secret realm with more Qi?" she asked, knowing well what those flowers were.

As the name suggested, they were related to Qi, more precisely, these flowers absorbed the Qi from the environment, purified it, and increased its effectiveness.

It was well known that the purer the Qi absorbed by a cultivator, the easier it would be to refine and convert it into other forms of energy, such as elemental ones.

"Something like that," he said, finishing what he was doing, giving her a flat answer.

That clearly seemed to irritate her, but before she could say anything else, she sensed that something strange was happening underground.

She had already noticed the roots of the flowers growing larger, but this was different.

She had ignored it at first, but now, as she focused again, she realized that the roots had become thicker and deeper, but more importantly, they seemed to be forming connections with the roots of various other plants.

That shouldn't have been possible, or rather, it shouldn't have been happening, since normally that would inevitably lead to the death of one of the two plants.

The space would become too cramped, and planting too many in one place risked killing some of them, as the resources would be spread among too many.

But this didn't seem to be the case here, as these plants appeared to be communicating with the Qi flowers, and more importantly, they seemed to have formed some sort of organization among themselves, with the Qi flowers acting as the core and the others serving as appendages following their orders.

That sight confused her, and she wondered if those flowers were truly what he said they were.

'What in the world did he modify them into?' she thought, watching Zhu Rong observe the process with a calm expression, as if nothing were unusual.

"Hmm, that should be enough for now. This should stabilize this section of the forest," he said, turning to her before adding,

"Well then, would you like to eat something? I'm planning to cook some spiritual dishes that I haven't prepared in a long time," he said.

He had spent the last few days organizing various things within the secret realm in preparation for what he intended to do.

Creating a secret realm wasn't something simple, and although beings of the Spirit Realm could create them with some effort, it would still consume a vast amount of their cultivation, and recovering it would take a long time.

His past self had spent an enormous amount of resources to create this secret realm, not only to imprison that creature but also as preparation, in case he would ever need his own small world in the future.

Now that he had regained control over the secret realm, he had made many modifications and even managed to detach it from its original position, and thanks to Yuan Lan, he was able to compress it into his dantian.

He now practically had his own small, portable world that he could access whenever he wished.

The benefits of such a thing were immense, enough to make even Spirit Realm cultivators envious.

For them to achieve something similar, they would have to wait until reaching the peak of the Spirit Realm, and even then, they would only be able to create a small space with little life in it, one that would be partially chaotic and not completely under their control, since the laws of space were not easy to comprehend for cultivators of that level.

This was also one of the reasons why secret realms could be like ticking time bombs, if pushed beyond their limits or somehow triggered, only negative consequences could be expected.

That was why there were always many restrictions on the cultivation level and the number of people who could enter, as well as on the kinds of objects allowed inside.

In short, the number of problems in creating and maintaining a secret realm was by no means small, but most of those problems were practically nonexistent in Zhu Rong's case.

That only increased its value even more in the eyes of others.

That said, the reason he was increasing the Qi density in the environment inside the secret realm wasn't because he wanted his own high level cultivation ground, but rather because he needed it to restore the divine grade sword within his sea of consciousness.

The sword had clearly suffered a certain degree of damage and was now in a dormant state.

But he later discovered that this dormant state wasn't helping it recover, rather, it was merely delaying the inevitable,

its destruction.

By entering that state, its energy consumption had been reduced to a minimum, slowing down its degradation.

But if he didn't do something, sooner or later it would be completely destroyed.

And that wasn't something he intended to let happen.

He had spent almost an entire century of effort, searching for materials and methods suitable for forging it, and letting it die before his eyes was not something he wanted.

Normally, helping it recover from its injuries would be problematic, as it would require many rare materials and, more importantly, someone capable of repairing it.

Zhu Rong, being its creator, met that requirement, he knew exactly what it needed, and he already had almost everything prepared to start the restoration process.

If it had been before, he would have had to work hard to find the materials and a suitable place to fix it, something that would have taken a lot of time and might not even have succeeded.

But now it was different, his dimensional ring contained an immeasurable number of treasures, and he was still far from using them all.

He had all the materials he needed, and for those he didn't, he had suitable substitutes.

Now, he only needed to finish preparing the secret realm,

and then everything would be ready to restore the Divine Grade Sword.

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