Second Layer

Wang Xue finished the meat of the Black Boar, with the 100-year-old Jade Lotus in his hands strengthening his foundation will become much easier and this power may even lead him to break through the barrier of the second level of the Jade Palace realm.

But he was not planning to cultivate in that spot. Standing up Wang Xue kept the 100-year-old Jade Lotus in his storage bracelet after cleaning himself he hurriedly left that place in order to find a suitable place for cultivating.

"I have to find a place to solidify my foundation, I can directly absorb the 100-year-old Jade Lotus but with my current level of strength doing that will only lead to leakage of stored spiritual energy." Wang Xue mumbled to himself.

The 100-year-old Jade Lotus in his possession have aged for a hundred years and in that past 100 years this Jade Lotus have continuously absorbed the spiritual energy of the world and with Wang Xue's current level of cultivation he will not be able to quickly absorb it all, so finding a place where he can cultivate in peace is something that he must do.

Wang Xue's millions of years of experience can help him take a shortcut in cultivation as he does not need to find and learn anything like everybody else, but even with this shortcut of his Wang Xue still needs to take his time.

The sky had turned dark for a while now and the nocturnal demonic beasts in the Dark Forest had been active as they hunt other demonic beasts for food. Wang Xue moved around the dark forest trying to find a place for him to cultivate while skillfully avoiding the demonic beasts that have greater strength than his.

He runs for a good half an hour around the Dark Forest before he found a small cave in a remote unnamed mountain, entering the cave he found a small pond that provides clean water and a clean environment. Although the cave was small Wang Xue thought that it was the perfect place to cultivate.

But even after finding the cave Wang Xue didn't immediately start cultivating, Wang Xue left the cave for a while and came back carrying a boulder with a width of 3 meters, the boulder's size was enough to block out the entrance of the cave. Wang Xue first entered the cave and then placed the boulder in front of the cave blocking out the entrance.

With the entrance fully blocked off, Wang Xue was surrounded by complete darkness, walking in the center of the cave Wang Xue sat in a cross-legged position and closed his eyes after that he started forming a myriad of different hand formations and, he continued doing this his surrounding glowed with a bright light.

"This simple formation will keep other people away while I'm in closed-door cultivation." He said as the formation glowed with bright light and started forming a web of intricate runes which interconnected with one another.

The runes that surrounded the entire cave was called a spiritual formation that is mostly used in creating spirit weapons or creating formations with different uses, an example of this is the formation that Wang Xue placed inside the cave.

The effect that of this formation is to camouflage the cave and make it blend with the surrounding area as much as possible.

Wang Xue was not a master of creating formation neither does he know how to create spirit weapons, but Wang Xue was interested in ancient runes as they held many secrets regarding cultivation and with Fenrir teaching him the incantations of the independent plane's entrance before, Wang Xue was able to grasp how to effectively use runes.

Although he cannot create any heaven-defying spiritual formation creating something this simple is just child's play for him, "Maybe I should learn how to create formations in the future." Wang Xue thought.

Taking out the 100-year-old Jade Lotus from his storage bracelet, Wang Xue placed his body and mind to its peak state, taking in deep breaths Wang Xue made the 100-year-old Jade Lotus float in front of him. He grabbed the Lotus floating in front of him and threw it inside his mouth.

The Jade Lotus entered his body and then to the Golden Pagoda that rest in his Qi Sea, inside the first layer Golden Pagoda the 100-year-old Jade Lotus started to be absorbed by Wang Xue's Golden Pagoda. A bright golden light was reflected inside Wang Xue's Qi Sea which illuminated everything.

Wang Xue's physical body was trembling, inside his body was a huge amount of spiritual energy, with the trembling of his body Wang Xue started circulating the Golden Pagoda skill.

The spiritual energy from the Jade Lotus had impurities in it, but the Golden Pagoda seemed to not mind the impurities it had. Wang Xue felt the spiritual energy being absorbed in his Golden Pagoda was being purified and with every circulation of the Golden Skill, the excess spiritual energy that was leaking out his one layer Pagoda was being led back in the Pagoda to be absorbed.

Day and night passed, and before longed Wang Xue had been in closed-door cultivation for 5 days. Wang Xue still repeated the process of purifying, absorbing, and circulating hundreds of times. However, even with all this repetition 100-year-old Jade Lotus's spiritual energy was still not exhausted and half of it still remains untouched.

Wang Xue floated inside his Qi Sea he watched the Golden Pagoda float with resplendent golden light like it had never before and saw the shadow of the second layer forming above the first, "Strengthen the foundation and build the next."

Wang Xue said as he thought of the next step he should take. Wang Xue circulated the Golden Pagoda skill in top speed, the barrier of the level 2 Jade Palace was right in front of Wang Xue and he only needed to knock on it for him to advance a level.

Click!

The sound of a glass breaking rang inside his Qi Sea, the second layer of the Golden Pagoda started to materialize a huge amount of spiritual energy was then concentrated in the second layer the Jade Lotus was withering fast, even with 50 percent of the Jade Lotus forming the second layer was still hard.

Boom!

As the Jade Lotus completely withered down the second layer of the Golden Pagoda was already starting to materialize. While the 100-year-old Jade Lotus wither down after losing its spiritual energy, the second layer began to shine, but even 100-year-old Jade Lotus was still not enough to completely form the second layer.

Noticing this point Wang Xue connected his consciousness inside his storage bracelet, inside his storage bracelet was the spirit pills that numbered around 2,500, after taking the prize of the Jade Province Competition and taking the storage bracelet of both Yu Da-Xia and Zi Shuang, Wang Xue had been able to gather this much.

After he connected with his storage bracelet Wang Xue started sucking in the spiritual energy inside the spirit pills. The spirit pills are all made of concentrated spiritual energy making it useful for cultivation, Wang Xue started absorbing the spirit pills to sustain the amount of spiritual energy needed to finish the materialization of the second layer.

The process was short but on this short amount of time Wang Xue had already finished absorbing 75 spirit pills and this is still only the beginning, it took a few more minutes before Wang Xue finally completed the materialization of the second layer of the Golden Pagoda.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Sounds of something crumbling sounded out inside Wang Xue's body, the barrier that separated level 1 of Jade Palace realm and the level 2 of the Jade Palace realm was finally broken through by Wang Xue.

Floating above Wang Xue's Qi Sea was a magnificent two-layered Pagoda, the amount of light that it shone with was enough to illuminate everything inside Wang Xue's Qi Sea, but as time went forward its luster went back to normal letting Wang Xue have the clear view of his Golden Pagoda.

The design of the second layer was the same as the first simplistic but elegant, but Wang Xue notices a subtle difference in the Golden Pagoda's design. The dragon on the upper right corner that he saw seemed to have grown a size and had climbed up the second layer connecting the second and first layer of the pagoda.

"The Golden Pagoda skill is related to the Dragon Dwelling Pagoda, it still holds many secrets." Wang Xue entered the second layer, but like the first, there were still not much left to explore, but the spiritual energy inside the second layer was stronger than the first.

After he checked the second layer Wang Xue gave out a sigh, "Sigh, the Golden Pagoda Skill is truly strong but the energy expenditure is just too much." He grumbled after thinking just how much spirit pills he had to burn in order to materialize the second layer.

By the time Wang Xue was able to create the second layer of his Golden Pagoda the number of spirit pills that he had gone through was already around 200 spirit pills. Using this logic Wang Xue thought about his future breakthroughs and just how much spiritual energy he would need to complete the third layer.

He had used 200 spirit pills now, and that was also because he had already used 50 percent of the Spirit Jade Lotus, thinking about this Wang Xue tried calculating the amount off spirit pills he would have spent if it was not for the Jade Lotus and the number he got made his head ached.

"1,000 spirit pills, if it wasn't for the Jade Lotus the spirit pills that I have now would be already halved."

Right now Wang Xue was still able to sustain his spirit pills expenditures but if this were to continue and Wang Xue was not able to provide enough spirit pills cultivating without any assistance would be hard for him.

Cultivation needed many different kinds of resources elixirs, pills and many more "I need to find a way to cover my expenditures."

Wang Xue first stabilized his cultivation before he opened his eyes. When he opened his eyes Wang Xue started feeling out his body after breakthrough, the cave was dimly lit and the only light that he had was the sunlight that was able to enter the cave through the little opening the entrance of the cave had.

Wang Xue felt his throat dry, he had been in closed-door cultivation for 5 days and since he had not eaten nor drink anything. Walking towards the little pond inside the cave Wang Xue submerge his face in the pond, taking a drink Wang Xue felt his body refresh.

After a short while, Wang Xue raised his head and saw his face being reflected over the pond's surface, seeing his hair that lied over his shoulders Wang Xue took out a strip of cloth from inside his storage bracelet and used that cloth to tie his hair.

He tied his hair in a messy bun, looking at his reflection Wang Xue felt satisfied. The way he looked was unkempt but it gave a feeling that he was a warrior or a fighter that had fought on hundreds of fights.

"Time to head out." Wang Xue didn't waste his time looking at his reflection over the water, he took a step and arrived right in front of the boulder that he had used to block the entrance. Wang Xue stretches his body and pulled his pulled back.

He drew power from his Golden Pagoda, from the first layer he gains the strength of 15,000 pounds but now that he had two layers just how much would his strength have improved?

Ha!

With a shout Wang Xue threw a punch, his fist glided across the air.

Bang!

The boulder exploded and turned to dust, the dust flew scattered all over the place. Wang Xue started walking out of the cave, he had a huge smile on his face.

He looked at his fist and thought about the strike he had thrown, he said to himself "35,000 pounds of force."