Cultivation begins with separation.

Chapter 374 Zhan Mingyue

The Frozen Continent, the Blue Ice Immortal City.

Blue Ice Immortal City possesses one of the two fifth-tier spiritual veins of the Frozen Continent, making it one of the two most important immortal cities besides serving as the state capital.

Originally, the area surrounding Blue Ice Immortal City was entirely covered by glaciers. However, after the transformation by the Primordial Purple Apricot, the surrounding temperature rose, and the glaciers slowly melted, accumulating water to form a huge lake called Blue Ice Lake.

Blue Ice City is built on the central island of Blue Ice Lake.

At this moment, many cultivators and mortals are already living inside and outside Blue Ice City.

The spiritual energy of the Blue Ice Immortal City is mostly absorbed by the city itself, but because the spiritual energy of the fifth-order spiritual vein is so abundant, there is also a considerable amount of spiritual energy within the Blue Ice Lake.

With spiritual energy, mortal objects can transform into demons, which has led to the presence of many demonic beasts in the lake.

Normally, blue ice lakes formed by melting glaciers shouldn't have many organisms.

However, after Tai Chu Zi Xing's research, it was discovered that after the ice lake was formed, it was connected to the underground water veins. Many aquatic creatures were attracted by the spiritual energy and gathered in the lake from the underground water veins. Gradually, many low- to mid-level demonic beasts appeared in the lake.

The humans and cultivators who live around Blue Ice Lake mostly make a living by hunting monsters.

On this day, outside Blue Ice City, hundreds of cultivators from eight aristocratic families gathered in a square.

The heads and elders of these cultivation families are all Golden Core cultivators, while the rest of the cultivators are at least Foundation Establishment cultivators.

At this moment, Zhou Rulong, the patriarch of the Zhou family who was at the late stage of the Golden Core realm, flew into the sky, looked around, and then used amplification magic to say:
"Everyone, the Zhan family's Ancestor Mingyue has offered a high reward for a dragonfish. Our Zhou family has discovered the trail of a Golden Core Dragonfish. This time, we have gathered you all here to capture this dragonfish together."

As you all know, the Zhan family holds a prominent position in the city.

If we succeed, we might very well become an inner-city family.

When Zhou Rulong mentioned the inner city families, all the cultivators in the square were filled with excitement, wishing they could draw their swords and fight the dragon fish right now.

Blue Ice Immortal City does not actually have an outer city.

In reality, the inner city these cultivators referred to was the area inside the immortal city, while the outer city was the area outside the immortal city.

The immortal city is rich in spiritual energy, with various cultivation buildings and resources, making its cultivation environment vastly different from that outside the immortal city.

These cultivators were either captured and forced to work in the mines or were their descendants.

Originally, Yi Dong planned to have those people mine until they died, but later he found that the cultivators were working very inefficiently because they had no hope of advancement. In order to improve mining efficiency, he had no choice but to lower the requirements for "redemption" and allow some cultivators to leave the underground mines with the help of other cultivators in their families.

However, when these cultivators left the underground mines, Yi Dong did not allow them to directly become residents of the Immortal City.

The residents of Immortal City today are mainly of two groups: one is the Immortal Kingdom's human race that Mu Mu transferred from Pingyuan County.

Originally, Yi Dong only asked Mu Mu to transfer the mortals from Jinshan City, but Mu Mu and Dongfang Hong, for some reason, secretly transferred a large number of mortals from Qingzhou without Yi Dong's knowledge.

These humans with the bloodline of the immortal kingdom can obtain the right to rent a portion of the assets in various immortal cities as soon as they arrive.

Mortals born in immortal kingdoms naturally have a lot of knowledge about cultivators. Over the decades, they have established countless cultivation families and taken root in the immortal cities that have already been built.

The other part of the residents of the Immortal City are the modified people who were transferred from the Yanshan Blessed Land by the Primordial Purple Apricot.

As for the people outside the city, apart from those who came from mining, there were only a small number of native humans from the Frozen Continent.

The creatures of the Frozen Continent are naturally not limited to humans, but in recent years, with the establishment of one immortal city after another, most intelligent creatures other than humans have been killed. In the absence of external enemies, the differential treatment has naturally led to great conflicts among the humans inside and outside these immortal cities.

The relationship between cultivators inside and outside the city is generally not very good.

The cultivators within the city possess spiritual fields and the skills to refine pills and craft artifacts, essentially monopolizing most of the resources flowing out of the spiritual veins, resulting in a superior cultivation environment.

The human race outside the city has very limited resources.

Just like the Immortal Kingdom, Yi Dong had encircled all the spiritual veins with arrays, making them unusable for other cultivators.

This also means that cultivators outside the immortal city who want to seek opportunities cannot find a place to venture out.

Of course, there are still opportunities on the Frozen Continent. After all, the Ice Dragon Clan has been entrenched on the Frozen Continent for countless years, and there must be some treasures left in places without spiritual veins.

However, in general, the cultivation of immortals outside the city is extremely arduous.

The humans inside the city, even the mortals, lived better than many Qi Refining cultivators outside the city.

Because they live within the city, where there are laws governing their cultivation, cultivators generally don't worry about their personal safety.

This has led to cultivators outside the city harboring hatred towards those inside, while also hoping to become residents of the city.

Nowadays, the Frozen Continent is vast and sparsely populated. The descendants of cultivators within the city are also considered city dwellers. The treatment of people inside and outside the immortal city is vastly different from birth.

Zhou Rulong nodded slightly when he saw that the cultivators from the eight major families were all brimming with fighting spirit.

The cultivators from these eight families were mostly from a major sect, and the Zhou family was even of royal lineage.

After arriving in Blue Ice Immortal City, the sect existed in name only.

These outside cultivators also learned the rules of the Immortal City: here, sects are not allowed to exist; only cultivation families bound by bloodlines are the mainstream.

After Zhou Rulong explained some basic information, he called for everyone to set off. The cultivators from the eight great families quickly piloted their flying boats into the vast Blue Ice Lake, which resembled a boundless ocean.

In Blue Ice City, in a cultivation room built on a hill, spiritual energy was like mist, and a female cultivator was breathing in and out spiritual energy.

Zhan Mingyue opened her eyes.

"My Dao body does not need the essence of heaven and earth to break through to the Nascent Soul stage."

However, ancient cultivators are inherently weaker than modern cultivators. If I break through to the Nascent Soul stage without using the essence of heaven and earth, my foundation may be further weakened.

It seems it's time to find a way to discover the essence of heaven and earth.

Within the Immortal City, many things, such as cultivation techniques, elixirs, and magical artifacts, can be exchanged, but some precious natural treasures, such as the essence of heaven and earth, are not available.

Zhan Mingyue pondered, but didn't know how to begin.

Before arriving on the Frozen Continent, she didn't even know what the essence of heaven and earth was.

After arriving on the Frozen Continent, she learned a lot of information that she didn't know before.

"By the way, those cultivators who come from royal families should know about the essence of heaven and earth. I remember the Zhou family outside the city, they seem to be from the royal family of the Northern Cang Zhou family. They might know something. Hmm, I'll have someone go and find out when I have time."

All five royal families of Bei Cang have cultivators who have reached the Nascent Soul stage.

However, Zhan Mingyue guessed that the Nascent Soul cultivators of the five royal families were probably given the essence of heaven and earth by the dragon clan, so she was not in a hurry to find the Zhou family.

Zhan Mingyue is currently thinking about something. Some time ago, a junior member of her Zhan family was found to have a Heavenly Spiritual Root. The junior's mother is a human from the Immortal Kingdom, so the person also possesses the bloodline of the Immortal Kingdom. The family members don't know whether to let that person cultivate the modern cultivation path or the ancient cultivation path.

There are also many modern cultivators within Blue Ice City.

Furthermore, many immortal cultivation families from the human race in the immortal kingdoms primarily cultivate in the present day, while those without heavenly spiritual roots choose to embark on the path of ancient cultivation.

The cultivators in Blue Ice City are mostly Qi Refining cultivators; there isn't even a Qi Refining King, let alone a Foundation Establishment cultivator.

Because those cultivators only possessed rudimentary knowledge of modern cultivation, and the Immortal City did not offer this knowledge.

Within Blue Ice City, modern cultivators are far inferior to ancient cultivators.

However, Zhan Mingyue knew that the situation in Blue Ice City could not represent the future situation of the Frozen Continent.

As far as Zhan Mingyue knew, the several Yi family cultivators who currently controlled the Frozen Continent were all cultivators of the present era.

From information gathered from her family, Zhan Mingyue knew that outside the Vast Ocean Spirit Realm, there was a vast human immortal kingdom, and within that kingdom, there were countless powerful cultivators.

The Yi family, which now occupies the Frozen Continent, is merely an ordinary family in that Immortal Kingdom, which shows just how powerful they are.

However, the Yi family has not yet opened up the knowledge of modern cultivation, which makes Zhan Mingyue hesitate.

Although a Heavenly Spiritual Root is far inferior to one's own, it is still very important to the family.

Zhan Mingyue, who possesses a Dao Body, holds a certain status within Blue Ice Immortal City.

If it weren't for the fact that Blue Ice Immortal City had hundreds of Nascent Soul families descended from the Yanshan human race, Zhan Mingyue's family might have been considered the number one cultivation family in Blue Ice City.

Although Zhan Mingyue was not valued by Yi Dong, Tai Chu Zi Xing secretly provided her with a lot of help, and even gave her the Heavenly Book inheritance to cultivate.

The Heavenly Book is in Mu Mu's hands, and a large part of Mu Mu's cultivation techniques are derived from the deductions of Tai Chu Zi Xing. Therefore, it is not a problem for Tai Chu Zi Xing to pass on the Heavenly Book to Zhan Ming Yue for cultivation.

Zhan Mingyue, who cultivates the "Tai Chi Dao Canon", has combat power that even surpasses that of ordinary Nascent Soul cultivators. Her powerful strength has made the Zhan family's status in the city surpass that of most other cultivation families.

After thinking for a while, Zhan Mingyue was still unsure which path was suitable for her as a descendant of that day's spiritual root, so she temporarily gave up thinking about it.

Then, Zhan Mingyue circulated the "Tai Chi Dao Canon" and felt as if her whole being had merged with heaven and earth.

As Zhan Mingyue's eight magical powers spun, a giant Tai Chi pattern formed within her dantian.

"My natal magic weapon, the Tai Chi Diagram, requires materials I've never even heard of, such as Yin-Yang Essence, Sun God Iron, and Taiyin Silkworm Silk. It's practically impossible for me to find them. Am I really going to give up this strongest natal magic weapon and choose the Tai Chi Sword and the Tai Chi Pisces instead?"

Zhan Mingyue was somewhat unwilling.

According to the Taiji Daodian, once the Taiji Diagram becomes one's natal treasure, it possesses infinite mysteries and boundless power, capable of neutralizing all attacks and ignoring any defense, making it incomparably powerful.

Moreover, the Taiji Diagram is a natal magic weapon that only a Daoist can refine, making it the most suitable natal magic weapon for her.

In comparison, while the Tai Chi Sword and the Tai Chi Pisces are also very mysterious and powerful, they are not as good as the Tai Chi Diagram.

Zhan Mingyue had no idea how to obtain the various rare and precious materials needed to refine the Taiji Diagram, which meant that even though she was already at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage, she had not yet refined her natal magic weapon.

Only when there is absolutely no other way will Zhan Mingyue think of refining the other two natal magic treasures as substitutes.

Suddenly, Zhan Mingyue looked warily towards the door and saw a female cultivator who had somehow broken through her formation and entered the cultivation room.

"who are you?"

(End of this chapter)