Chapter 410: Heavenly-Grade Golden Core – one!
Staring at the spirit talisman shimmering with intricate golden threads in his hand, Jiang Chen was utterly dumbfounded.
Without a shadow of a doubt, this was the legendary Golden Light Talisman he had been desperately trying to acquire.
He had fully prepared himself for the agonizing, long-term grind of secretly sourcing the exorbitant materials required to craft one. He never expected that Patriarch Carving Trace’s corpse essentially functioned as a built-in talisman printer, capable of producing ten of them on command.
To put the value into perspective, when Chen Tian broke through to an Earth-Grade Golden Core, he only utilized a single Golden Light Talisman.
Ten Golden Light Talismans elevated Jiang Chen’s survival probability through the impending Heavenly Tribulation to a staggering ninety percent.
The remaining ten percent of the risk boiled down entirely to location.
“I am exactly one step away from condensing my Golden Core,” Jiang Chen muttered, his mind racing. “The hardware is ready. Now I need the geography. Will the pocket dimension work?”
The Heavenly Tribulation wasn’t a quiet process. It triggered massive, apocalyptic meteorological phenomena, and the intensity scaled exponentially with the number of Spirit Roots a cultivator possessed. With five Spirit Roots, Jiang Chen was guaranteed to summon a storm that would alert every high-tier cultivator within a hundred miles.
He needed a location that was absolutely secure and perfectly isolated from external interference.
Currently, his pocket dimension was the only place that met those criteria. Attempting a breakthrough anywhere in the material world would inevitably draw a crowd, exposing his secrets and making him a target.Deciding to table the location issue for now, Jiang Chen prepared to exit the dimension. He glanced over and noticed the Thunder Dragon Water-Repelling Boat was still aggressively ramming the side of the stone sarcophagus in a futile attempt to devour its energy.
Jiang Chen scowled. “Conserve your energy, you stupid boat. This artifact is priceless, and the Patriarch still needs to use it.”
The Thunder Dragon Water-Repelling Boat immediately ceased its assault, practically radiating the embarrassment of a reprimanded artifact spirit.
Jiang Chen commanded the vessel to shrink down, pocketed it, and stepped out of the dimension alongside his new puppet, Patriarch Carving Trace.
Once back in the crushing depths of the Canglan Sea, Jiang Chen deployed the boat, bringing the Patriarch aboard as they resumed their underwater transit.
Barely an hour later, the ocean violently convulsed.
The pitch-black abyss was suddenly illuminated by an impossibly brilliant, blinding flash of purple light. A catastrophic BOOM ripped through the water column, originating from a nearby sector of the Canglan Sea.
The shockwave hit them seconds later. The ocean boiled. Massive, displaced tidal currents collided with one another, generating a terrifying, hyper-pressurized whirlpool that shredded nearby water demons and electrocuted sea monsters by the hundreds.
The defensive arrays on the Thunder Dragon Water-Repelling Boat flared to life, its three lightning-whips snapping to full extension to absorb the stray lightning.
Jiang Chen blinked, completely stunned. “Did that actually just detonate?”
Back when he was tracking the millennial flood dragon, he had discovered that massive, double-pointed thunder crystal node. Certain it was a hidden trap planted by the Yellow Springs Alliance, he had preemptively buried a massive payload of Self-Destruction Talismans beneath its foundation.
His logic was simple: the moment the crystal activated, the talismans would blow the node to kingdom come.
He just never expected it to actually happen while he was still in the zip code. And the yield… the yield was absurdly high.
A cruel, predatory grin spread across Jiang Chen’s face. “That felt close. Let’s go see which unlucky bastard just caught the blast radius.”
Deep in the epicenter of the blast zone.
Wu Lao dragged his mangled, ruined body through the churning water, his eyes wide with absolute horror. “How the hell did the thunder crystal detonate?!”
Every movement was agony. As he desperately tried to flee the sector, his blurry vision caught a silhouette approaching through the murky water.
Panic seized him. He tried to change his course to avoid detection, but his body refused to respond. He had barely survived the point-blank detonation of the node; simply remaining conscious was a miracle.
As the figure drew closer, the details resolved. Wu Lao froze, his mind stalling completely. He rubbed his eyes with a trembling, blood-soaked hand, certain his mangled brain was hallucinating.
It wasn’t a hallucination.
“P-Patriarch?!” Wu Lao stammered, coughing up a lungful of blood. “I haven’t even brought the sacrifices into the Seal Bone Tomb yet! How have you awakened?!”
Through the telepathic link, Jiang Chen fed the Patriarch his lines. The ancient corpse spoke, its voice a resonant, soul-shaking baritone. “I sensed your agonizing pain, my disciple. I shattered the coffin early to seek you out.”
Wu Lao wept, tears of fanatic devotion mixing with the seawater. “Praise be to the Patriarch! Praise be!”
“What catastrophe has befallen you?”
“I was positioning myself to activate the grand Formation over Mystic Heart City to trap the Cloud Sea Sect disciples! I never expected the Gui Water energy concentrated within the thunder crystal to be so violently unstable! It unexpectedly detonated!”
“The resulting blast is massive,” the Patriarch intoned grimly. “It will inevitably draw the gaze of the Golden Core elites.”
“Do not worry, Patriarch!” Wu Lao gasped. “My subordinate released a Green Water Demon Ape near Mystic Heart City. The Immortal Sects are currently frantic; they won’t be able to investigate this sector for some time.”
Jiang Chen analyzed the information rapidly. “If your objective was to trap them within the city using the Formation, why deploy the ape?”
“A twofold strategy, Patriarch. First, the ape guarantees they remain distracted within the city limits. Second… it ensures the surrounding waters are secure for…” Wu Lao trailed off, coughing violently.
“For what?”
“For my disciple’s granddaughter! She is utilizing this window of opportunity, the ambient Spirit Qi bleeding from the severed dragon vein, and the unique spiritual climate of Dream Island to attempt her breakthrough to the Earth-Grade Golden Core!”
Jiang Chen’s eyes widened behind his Phantom mask. “Wait. She is attempting an Earth-Grade Golden Core breakthrough on Dream Island?”
“Yes, Patriarch! Everything is perfectly aligned. The ritual only waits upon my return.”
“Excellent,” the Patriarch declared, his tone absolute. “I shall accompany you.”
Aboard the cloaked Thunder Dragon Water-Repelling Boat, Jiang Chen stroked his chin, a ruthlessly pragmatic scheme forming in his mind.
“I suddenly have a very bold idea.”
If the crippled cultist was telling the truth, Dream Island was the absolute perfect location for a Heavenly Tribulation.
First, the geography was flawless. Because Dream Island was technically a localized secret realm, it was entirely isolated from the outside world.
Second, the Yellow Springs Alliance had already done all the heavy lifting. The arrays were set, the perimeter was secured, and the ambient Spirit Qi was primed. They were literally just waiting to push the button.
If Jiang Chen infiltrated the island, hid underground, and triggered his own breakthrough simultaneously… the catastrophic Heavenly Tribulation would lock onto both of them. Given the cultist’s granddaughter was aiming for an Earth-Grade core, the tribulation clouds would inevitably split their focus, aggressively drawing half the lethal, turbid lightning away from Jiang Chen.
It was the ultimate meat-shield strategy.
What else did he need?
Nothing.
Initially, Jiang Chen had believed that absorbing the core essence of a high-tier demon was a mandatory prerequisite for the Golden Core stage, which was why he had heavily invested in a mercenary hunting team back in Green City.
He later learned that demon essence was only a crutch used by cultivators with incomplete elemental affinities to forcefully stabilize their physical constitution and artificially enhance their Spirit Roots. Because Jiang Chen possessed a flawless, mutually generating Five-Element Spirit Root cycle, external demon essence was completely redundant.
Spirit Weapons to absorb the lightning strikes? He had an entire arsenal primed and ready.
Spirit Talismans for emergency shielding? He literally had a Golden Core proxy mass-producing them.
He possessed the favorable timing, the human element, and the necessary hardware. The only missing variable was the geographic advantage.
And Dream Island was about to provide exactly that.
Guided by Wu Lao, Patriarch Carving Trace led the way toward Dream Island, with Jiang Chen trailing silently behind in the cloaked Thunder Dragon Water-Repelling Boat.
The journey was agonizingly slow due to Wu Lao’s crippled state. Gradually, the ocean floor gave way to a steep continental shelf as they ascended toward the surface.
The waters here were choked with an unnaturally dense, supernatural fog.
Through the mist, the faint, ethereal silhouettes of ancient pavilions and towering pagodas occasionally materialized, giving the area the appearance of a mythical, overseas paradise.
However, Wu Lao and the Patriarch completely ignored the architecture, deliberately altering their course to give the phantom structures a wide berth. It was obvious that approaching them would trigger something catastrophic.
Jiang Chen remained perfectly patient, maintaining a safe distance to ensure his cloaked vessel went undetected by Wu Lao’s paranoid spiritual sweeps.
Eventually, the duo arrived before a colossal, half-open clam shell resting on the ocean floor.
The shell spanned over a hundred feet across. The left half of the shell was pristine, carved from what looked like flawless white jade and etched with incredibly fine, concentric rings.
The right half was a nightmare. It was forged from pitch-black obsidian, and the jagged grooves in the shell pulsed with a sickly, necrotic light. Upon closer inspection via the Patriarch’s vision, Jiang Chen realized the black shell was composed of billions of screaming, semi-translucent human faces fused together.
A sweet, cloying pink mist slowly drifted from the gap between the massive shells.
Because Jiang Chen shared a perfect telepathic link with Patriarch Carving Trace, he experienced the sensory input of the environment exactly as the proxy did.
The moment the Patriarch stepped into the pink mist, an overlapping chorus of seductive, whispering voices flooded Jiang Chen’s mind. They promised absolute desires: Longevity… Immortality… Agelessness…
While the original Patriarch Carving Trace had been pathologically obsessed with immortality, a Golden Core powerhouse of his caliber wouldn’t have been compromised by such base psychological warfare. Furthermore, the entity currently wearing his skin was a soulless flesh puppet.
Jiang Chen, safely insulated in his submarine, instantly recognized the trap. The mist was a passive illusion trap. If a cultivator possessed a weak will or fractured Dao Heart, the whispers would shatter their soul and induce immediate, lethal madness.
As they navigated deeper into the clam’s interior, the environment expanded impossibly.
Despite being called an “island,” there was zero vegetation or solid earth. The entire interior was a shallow, endless expanse of crystal-clear water.
Floating just beneath the surface of the water were thousands of perfectly spherical, head-sized pearls.
The pearls weren’t solid. They functioned like scrying orbs, projecting vivid, looping illusions within their cores. Some displayed sprawling, fertile estates; others showed warm scenes of smiling wives and children; some depicted glorious, blood-soaked battles where a lone swordsman decimated his enemies.
Every pearl was a perfect, tailored hallucination.