All the Dragonmark warriors were gathered. The gathering point was Crouching Dragon Mountain’s personal training room.

Gu Yang, Tang Wan-er, Guo Ran, Li Qi, and Song Mingyuan were all sent to the entrance as guards. No one could enter. This room had been completely sealed.

The Dragonblood Legion’s members had never seen Long Chen so solemn before.

Once everything was prepared, and confirming there was nothing they had overlooked, Long Chen took out a large pile of fruit and distributed it.

The Dragonmark warriors stared blankly at the fruit. They didn’t understand what he was doing.

They didn’t know that what Long Chen was distributing to them were rank four Heavenly Dao Fruits.

In the Eastern Wasteland, he had given all his Heavenly Dao Fruits to Yue Xiaoqian. These Heavenly Dao Fruits were new ones that had just grown.

This was the primal chaos bead’s terrifying ability. As his cultivation base increased, any Celestials that died beside Long Chen would have their Heavenly Dao energy absorbed by the primal chaos space’s Heavenly Dao Tree.

He had over ten thousand rank four Heavenly Dao Fruits. Long Chen had been hesitating over this for a while now.

There were over ten thousand Dragonmark warriors, all who were rank three Celestials at the strongest, and some who were still rank two. For them to all become rank four Celestials overnight was far too exaggerated, and people would definitely investigate.

Then his heaven-defying ability to create Celestials would be exposed. Countless people would set their gazes on him, which was an extremely dangerous situation.

But there had been such a huge accident in the competition this time. Over a dozen Dragonmark warriors had sacrificed themselves. That made Long Chen feel some guilt. If he could have distributed the Heavenly Dao Fruits earlier, perhaps those people wouldn’t have died.

So after their deaths, he had decided to stop holding back. But then he had been immediately sent to the Ghost Prison.

Now he had obtained the Xuan Master’s promise, and he was even more sure. He would bring all the Dragonblood Legion’s warriors to the fourth rank.

“Today’s matter must be kept completely secret.”

Long Chen only spoke a simple warning before leaving. The Dragonmark warriors didn’t understand, but the Dragonblood warriors had already started devouring their Heavenly Dao Fruits and refining their energy.

The Dragonmark warriors uncomprehendingly consumed their Heavenly Dao Fruits. Following that, expressions of disbelief appeared…

Long Chen called over Tang Wan-er and the others, taking out rank five Heavenly Dao Fruits.

Seeing those, Gu Yang and the others had excited expressions. If they could also become rank five Celestials, they would be on the same level as Hu Guishan and Fan Song.

“Boss, I don’t need it. Becoming a rank five Celestial isn’t that useful to me,” said Guo Ran.

Long Chen smiled slightly and patted Guo Ran on the shoulder. This little fellow was at least growing more thoughtful.

“Then, I don’t need mine either. It’s not that useful,” said Li Qi.

As a result, the others all said that they didn’t need theirs. Long Chen smiled and said, “It’s fine, just take them. The six Heavenly Dao Fruits I have are exactly perfect. There are five of you here, and the remaining one is perfect for Meng Qi. Zifeng walks the Sword Dao and doesn’t want to rely on Heavenly Dao energy to cultivate, while Wilde also does not walk the ordinary path. These six are perfect.”

“Ah, then I won’t stand on courtesy. To tell the truth, a rank five Celestial is really eye-catching. I’ve wanted such a thing for a long time.” Guo Ran laughed mischievously, a wretched smile appeared on his face.

The others were also at ease to hear this and consumed their fruit. They were filled with a grand feeling. Now, who in the Xuantian Dao Sect would dare to block their growth?

Once Tang Wan-er and the others entered seclusion as well, he guarded the outside on his own. He closed his eyes and slowly formed a hand seal.

But he hadn’t even finished forming the hand seal before he coughed up a mouthful of blood.

“Fuck, just what magical art was that final rune? Why does it cause such a huge backlash!”

Long Chen cursed. He had experienced the pain of dying so many times to finally remember how to use the magical art, but as soon as he tried circulating his flames according to the technique, he felt like his body would explode. Even his previous injuries were affected.

“This is no good. I need some stronger trees, or it’ll be too difficult for me to heal next time,” sighed Long Chen.

Last time, the powerful backlash of pushing the Raging Flame Prison too far had caused an intense injury, and then he had forcibly suppressed his injuries to kill Que Xinyan and the others. He had even used the third form of Split the Heavens twice.

It had been especially dangerous when he had been attacked by a rank six Foundation Forging Celestial. Those injuries had caused his body to almost break down.

The Heavenly Dao energy in his injuries made it difficult for him to heal. Even after this many days, his healing was extremely slow. He was too weak, and there was no way for him to train in such a terrifying magical art.

“I have to think of something.”

Three days later, some Dragonblood warriors finally came out of seclusion. Having advanced to the fourth rank, they felt like they had completely transformed and were full of excitement.

Long Chen had those disciples guard the others. No one was permitted to approach this place.

After that, he went directly to Treasure Gem Island. As soon as he arrived, he caused a huge uproar.

Long Chen ignored those people and went straight to the Ten Thousand Pill Hall. Once he arrived, he saw the same maiden he had seen last time.

“You… you’re senior apprentice-brother Long Chen!” The maiden was shocked.

“Hehe, now that Luo Bo’s been expelled, it seems you have it much better here.”

Long Chen saw that her robes were a bit different. There were some threads of gold in her collar and sleeves. He didn’t know the details, but she had definitely been promoted.

“Senior apprentice-brother Long Chen, do you need anything?” After a moment of stunned shock, she quickly calmed down.

Long Chen smiled. As expected, after just being promoted, a person would become much more cautious. She didn’t even mention what had happened last time.

“Let me see a list of what tree seeds you have,” said Long Chen directly.

“Please wait a moment.”

She quickly found a thick tome and handed it to Long Chen with both hands.

Long Chen went through it. This tome recorded the seeds of medicinal ingredients they had and was ordered from low to high.

But the number of tree seeds that could be used as medicine was not high. Furthermore, even fewer of them were those that could grow to a great height. Long Chen had no way around that. As long as there was a chance, he had to take it. He had no time to go looking for trees.

“Iron Spruce Oak.”

Long Chen’s eyes suddenly brightened. The Iron Spruce Oak was an extremely large tree. It contained a kind of bitter spirit essence that made it a supplementary ingredient in some eighth tier medicinal pills. It wasn’t particularly precious and was just two hundred points.

However, he knew that it could grow to become ten thousand meters tall, while its main trunk would become thick and solid. Most importantly, its wood was hard like iron, and its tree-heart could be used to refine Treasure-class bows.

The other thing was that it grew extremely slowly. It would take tens or even hundreds of thousands of years to fully mature.

That was what Long Chen cared about the most. His experience was that the harder the wood and the longer it took to mature, the more life energy it could store.

“Give me ten of these.”

Long Chen took out his crystal card, and someone quickly came over with a jade case. Long Chen had just touched it when a large hand grabbed it.

Long Chen looked up to see someone wearing Elder robes. At some unknown time, he had appeared behind the maiden and grabbed the jade case.

They still haven’t learned their lesson?

Blood-colored light flashed at that Elder’s neck. He hastily shot back in shock. Although he had reacted timely, a line of blood still appeared on his neck.

That was the injury from the tip of Long Chen’s saber. If it hadn’t been for his quick reactions, his head would have been removed from his body.

The maidens in this room all let out startled cries. They hadn’t expected Long Chen to almost kill an Elder just now.

“How brazen Long Chen! You-” roared the Elder.

“Shut up. Have you forgotten what happened to Luo Bo? If you want to play with me, I’ll play you to death.”

Long Chen grabbed the case. The reason he had paid first was precisely to avoid what had happened last time. But he hadn’t expected it to really happen.

The Elder was clearly from the Alchemy Pavilion. Although he didn’t know what excuse he had to make things hard on him, he had already paid, so that case was his. Whoever tried to take it was whoever would be hacked by his saber.

Now Long Chen had learned how to play this game. Even if that Elder’s cries drew out the guards here, Long Chen had a leg to stand on: if someone wanted to take what was his, wasn’t he allowed to act in self-defense?

“You…” The Elder’s expression was exceedingly ugly.

“What you? I’m warning you, if you want to reincarnate, you can become enemies with me. Miss, can you hand my crystal card back to me?” Long Chen turned to the maiden.

Only then did she recover from her shock and pass it back to Long Chen. Taking it, Long Chen left without even looking at the Elder.

As expected, that person didn’t cry for reinforcements or make the matter public. Long Chen returned directly to Crouching Dragon Mountain. After he arrived, he planted the Iron Spruce Oak’s seeds in the primal chaos space and began circulating the primal chaos bead. The ten seedlings began to crazily grow.

One meter… ten meters… a hundred meters… When the Iron Spruce Oaks grew to fifteen hundred meters, Long Chen extracted the life energy from one of them. He found that just this fifteen hundred meter Iron Spruce Oak contained as much energy as the fully grown trees he had obtained from the Spirit World.

He directly removed all those trees and crazily planted the Iron Spruce Oaks. Planting them with set distances between them, he filled the primal chaos space.

But once the primal chaos space was filled with these new seedlings, the speed at which they grew sharply dropped.

“Hehe, all the stock I saved up back then finally has a use.” Long Chen took out huge corpses from his spatial ring, tossing them into the black soil.