Achievements during the Opening of the Four Symbols Mystic Realm

After three long days of acting as an observer, Zhao Yunxiao crashed into bed the moment he returned to his residence.

As much as he would like to resume his daily cultivation practice that he had already missed for two consecutive nights, the tension that had accumulated in his body made this infeasible.

Of course, he could always force himself to cultivate nevertheless. But considering his current state of exhaustion, the resulting gains would never be worth the effort.

Rather than forcing things, he might as well spend a night to fully recover both mentally and physically, so that he could at least be back in shape come tomorrow.

In any case, the day following the opening of the Four Symbols Mystic Realm had always been a quiet one.

Perhaps this was not surprising as well.

While non-participants would be eagerly trying to find out more about the participants' results, participants would also need time to recover. In fact, most participants would only submit their reports later in the day, allowing news of the event's results to finally become available to the other disciples.

Zhao Yunxiao had been as impatient as many others in the past, spending the entire day going around speaking to people, trying to gather as much information as possible.

However, he had gradually come to realise that doing so was rather meaningless.

Most of the time, he would spend the entire day speaking to various people, all just to catch wind of news that would end up spreading like wildfire only a few hours later.

Such a result was simply not worth the effort.

That was why, rather than doing so again this year, Zhao Yunxiao decided to spend the day on something that he had wanted to do for a long time now.

After his usual morning practice and having his fill at the Lightwind Pavilion, he took a quick trip to the Sect Market before heading for the Alchemy Chamber.

This time, he was not there for his job as an attendant, but for his personal reasons instead.

It had been a while since he harvested the Frozen Spiders and the Darkpetal Lily pollens. During this time, he had used the Darkpetal Lily pollen as a direct numbing agent on Hua Xian, but that was neither the most efficient way nor the only way of utilising it.

Because of that, he wanted to spend some time creating a variety of poisons using these ingredients, complementing them with other ingredients he had and those obtained from the Sect Market.

It was not just about creating a poison with greater lethality, but also creating poisons with various other functions such as delayed activation or paralysis.

Doing so would greatly increase his arsenal of moves, allowing him greater flexibility when dealing with more complex situations that could arise in the future.

But even before that, there was something more important that he wanted to do.

Refine the Firecrown Pill.

There was only one known use for the Firecrown Pill, and that was as a catalyst to open the Mind Gate – one of the Six Gates of Self-Actualisation from the body strengthening system.

The Six Gates of Self-Actualisation were further categorised into two greater gates and four lesser gates.

Among the two greater gates, the Mind Gate had the effect of improving one's perception, while the Heart Gate improved one's vitality.

As for the four lesser gates, they were the Left and Right Shoulder Gates, as well as the Left and Right Hip Gates. All of them shared a similar effect of increasing both the muscular strength and rate of channelling essence energy in each of their corresponding limbs.

There was also no fixed order in which the six gates had to be opened.

However, starting with the two greater gates was largely believed to be ideal. This was because increased perception and vitality could help support the opening of the other gates. One made the process easier while the other made the opened gates stronger.

Unfortunately, the two greater gates were also relatively much more difficult to open, which was why most people actually chose to do it the other way around.

Not only did starting with the four lesser gates help cultivators get past the psychological barrier of breaking through their first gate, but doing so also gave the cultivators more time to prepare for the opening of the more difficult greater gates.

Zhao Yunxiao, on the other hand, wanted to follow the ideal route.

The Six Gates of Self-Actualisation made up the very foundation of the body strengthening system, so he wanted it to be as stable as possible.

As for why he wanted to start with the Mind Gate, that was because he felt like perception would benefit him a lot more than vitality at the moment.

His physique could still be considered rather strong, but his talent was average at best.

With the opening of the Mind Gate, he was hoping that the increased perception could reduce this shortcoming of his.

That said, it was not impossible to open the Mind Gate without having a Firecrown Pill, but it would definitely be multiple times more difficult to do so.

Considering how the process of breaking through each gate was rumoured to be extremely tedious and painful, Zhao Yunxiao certainly wished to reduce the chances of failure as much as possible!

In comparison, refining a Firecrown Pill was not a difficult task whatsoever.

Tedious, yes.

But difficult, no.

It was a time-consuming process that would take almost an entire day, which was why Zhao Yunxiao wanted to seize this opportunity to get it over and done with!

***

While Zhao Yunxiao was busy refining pills and concocting poisons, the sect quickly became livelier as the day passed.

One by one, news of participants' successes and failures in the Four Symbols Mystic Realm began to spread, not just in the inner sect but in the outer sect as well.

Of which, there were three prominent pieces of news that stood out among the rest.

The first of which was related to Cheng Kai. In a span of three days, he had completed a grand slam by defeating up-and-rising core disciples from all the other three major factions.

Sword Finger Qi Yi of the White Tiger Sect, Infernal Claw Quan Hui of the Vermilion Bird Sect, and Moon Dragon Meng Kui of the Azure Dragon Sect.

There were participants who had witnessed how he defeated all three of them in separate duels.

For an inner disciple to defeat core disciples from the other three major factions, it was a piece of news that brought great honour to all disciples in the Black Tortoise Sect!

The second piece of news was related to Hua Shui of the Feng Faction. On the third day of the event, he organised a raid party of around one hundred participants, including not only those from other inner sect factions, but also those from the other three major factions.

Under Hua Shui's lead, the raid party launched an attack on a powerful monster's nest, successfully killing the monster and obtaining tonnes of rewards from within.

This monster was largely regarded as one of the rulers of its region, probably on a similar level as the Serpent Mammoth, if not even higher.

To be able to take it down once and for all under the Black Tortoise Sect's lead, this naturally brought pride and joy to everyone in the sect. Among them, those from Elder Feng Wanjia's Feng Faction could not help but feel even better about it!

The third and final piece of news was related to Xiong Yekong of the Armed Ape Tower. In the Four Symbols Mystic Realm, he had actually fought Thousand Blade Ren Qiansha to a draw.

This Thousand Blade Ren Qiansha was a core disciple of the Azure Dragon Sect. But unlike the three up-and-rising core disciples defeated by Cheng Kai, Ren Qiansha had already fully established his cultivation path, with tonnes of accolades under his belt.

To be able to fight him to a draw, it further corroborated the rumours that Xiong Yekong had already reached the level of the core disciples of the Four Great Symbol Sects!

Along with these three headliners, news of the other participants' performances quickly spread among the disciples.

Chen Pingxi could not help but frown as she carefully went through the reports, focusing especially on the participants who had been under Zhao Yunxiao's watch.

Yes, Huo Bubai's party did rather well, and Cheng Kai's feats were naturally exceptional.

But on the other hand, San Wanfan's party only did all right, while Nuo Qianling's party actually got completely routed.

No matter how she looked at it, there was nothing hinting that Zhao Yunxiao had a huge part to play in any significant accomplishments.

Was she thinking too much?

Perhaps.

But there could also be information privy only to the inner circle that did not make it to her ears. To know for sure, she would have to keep these people's names in mind during the days that followed.

At the same time, there was no doubt that Elder He Luoxuan definitely treated Zhao Yunxiao in an exceptional manner, as this was something that she had already witnessed for herself.

Even if she ended up being wrong about how Zhao Yunxiao was playing a hidden role in the Four Symbols Mystic Realm, which she still did not think was the case, that alone would be reason enough to build a good relationship with him!

Apart from information about the participants, two separate pieces of news were also starting to spread, though they were mainly kept to the outer sect.

Firstly, Tidal Fairy Chen Pingxi of the Origin Lake Sect actually went up to Zhao Yunxiao after exiting the Four Symbols Mystic Realm, greeting him like a peer!

A greeting like this would not have been much in most other situations, but two points made it newsworthy this time.

One: The target – Zhao Yunxiao – was just an ordinary outer sect disciple with nothing amazing to speak of apart from his diligence.

Two: Zhao Yunxiao was the only person whom she had taken the initiative to greet before retiring for the night.

With these two points combined, it was difficult not to believe that there were close ties between the two.

As for what this connection was about, nobody knew. However, not a single person suspected the relationship between them to be indecent in any shape or form.

After all, why would Tidal Fairy Chen Pingxi ever fancy someone like Zhao Yunxiao?

Be it in terms of talent, wealth, status, or looks, Zhao Yunxiao simply could not compare to most inner disciples!

On top of that, it became known that during the opening of the Four Symbols Mystic Realm, an outer disciple actually managed to single-handedly take down a wild monster that was more than a full realm above his cultivation level.

Nie Hanchang, despite being only at the Intermediate Essence Gathering realm, managed to take down a monster at the Advanced Essence Physique realm!

The assessor at the Sect Market had not thought much about it when he first turned in the carcass of the monster, but was shocked upon hearing that he had hunted it without the help of any arrays or traps.

Following which, people were brought in to examine the carcass, which confirmed that the wounds were indeed all from the Grand Annihilator.

To be able to fight and defeat opponents despite suffering from a cultivation disadvantage of an entire realm... this fearsome combat talent was even enough to draw in the attention of the sect administrators.

After forging a mythical treasure, this incident once again brought Nie Hanchang's name into the limelight!