It was Wang Lin!
The heaven defying bead had undergone a mysterious change after absorbing the Earth Spirit. Before, it would have been impossible for him to stay inside for five years.
But after the earth element was completed, the amount of time Wang Lin could spend inside was far longer than before.
A big change was that the heaven defying space now had some spiritual energy inside. There was none in there before.
This spiritual energy was much more pure than the spiritual energy outside. Although Wang Lin had never felt celestial spiritual energy, he felt that the spiritual energy inside the bead was a bit less pure than celestial spiritual energy.
In additional to all of this, the most important change was that all of the small light sources inside the heaven defying bead had gathered together and formed five large masses of light in the sky.
Among the five masses of light, three of them are glowing brightly, one of them was only glowing slightly, and the last one was very dim, without any color.
Wang Lin had spent the years inside the heaven defying bead observing the masses of light. With his perception, he realized that these five masses of light were related to the elements.
It was very likely that these five masses of light were made of the elemental energy gathered by the heaven defying bead. The three brightly glowing ones were the water, earth, and fire elements.
The half glowing one was the wood element.
As for the completely dim light, it was the metal element.
In the years Wang Lin had spent observing the heaven defying bead, he got a very mysterious feeling from the lights. It was as if they were alive.
If someone whose cultivation level was higher than Wang Lin’s was inside the bead, they would have a hard time noticing this. Wang Lin was able to notice this while he was cultivating his own life and death domain. During a moment of enlightenment, he was able to detect life inside the masses of light.
This discovery suddenly increased his interest in the masses of light.
Situ Nan once said that the appearance of the heaven defying bead caused all of the top cultivators in Suzaku and even cultivators from other planets to come and fight for it. After losing his body, his Nascent Soul escaped into the heaven defying bead and barely survived.
After a series of events, he was able to escape those cultivators. After many years, the bead ended up inside the stomach of a bird and then found by Wang Lin.
Wang Lin has had this heaven defying bead for more than 400 years, but he still hadn’t managed to figure out its true function. In his view, this bead could only alter time to a certain degree and could change normal water to one with spiritual energy.
These abilities were very useful for cultivators below the Soul Formation stage, but they weren’t all that useful to Soul Formation and above cultivators.
After all, for cultivators past the Soul Formation stage, the spiritual energy in the mortal world is no longer pure enough to cultivate with. Only celestial spiritual energy can be used, so this spiritual energy of the mortal world really wasn’t that attractive to them.
Making water with spiritual energy and time altering were somewhat useful, but with just these abilities, it didn’t seem right for the top cultivators of Suzaku and other planets to come and fight for the bead.
Wang Lin believed that this heaven defying bead definitely had to have other uses. Why else would all those powerful cultivators fight over it?
Situ Nan had said before that after years of studying, he believed that the heaven defying bead would only show its true nature once the five elements were complete. Maybe at that point, it will finally reveal a bit of its power.
Wang Lin’s interest for the true power of the heaven defying bead not only didn’t diminish with time, but he became even more interested.
He even had a hope that the five masses of light would become like the five elemental spirits the white-robed woman had.
Of course, this was all just speculation.
Wang Lin stood in the new Xue Yu and let out a sigh. Aside from studying the five masses of light, the rest of his time was spent cultivating his life and death domain.
He had spent more than ten years inside the heaven defying bead, but for some reason, when he was cultivating his life and death domain, the time altering power of the heaven defying space had lost its use.
Five years had passed outside. No matter how much time would pass inside the bead, it was still five years to his domain.
This point puzzled Wang Lin greatly. At this moment, Wang Lin felt his own cultivation level. He would only need to cultivate his domain for four more years before he finally reaches the Soul Formation stage.
Wang Lin believed that once he reaches the Soul Formation stage, if he were to meet that mid stage Soul Formation old woman, he will be able to put up a fight even without the divine retribution.
Wang Lin was forced to leave the heaven defying bead’s space. Even with all the changes, five years was the limit. For a while, Wang Lin won’t be able to stay inside for that long.
Wang Lin let out a sigh. Instead of flying, he slowly walked forward. He put the straw hat away and slowly walked on an ice field.
The snow raged and the cold air tried to invade his body every time he took a deep breath. After a long time, he saw an ice city in the distance.
In the center of the city was a 30 plus floor ice tower with a bead that emitted a mysterious light.
The land under his feet now belonged to the new Xue Yu, so he really didn’t have any right to intervene in this matter. He only wanted to find a quiet place to spend the next four years to reach the Soul Formation stage.
When Wang Lin arrived in the ice city, he looked no different from a mortal.
Xue Yu also had mortals. After they had migrated to the new land, they built new cities with the help of the cultivators.
Wang Lin silently appeared inside the city. As he looked at all the ice houses, he couldn’t help but feel like he was in a foreign place.
There weren’t many people walking around outside and there weren’t many inns or restaurants. The most common sight in the city were ice sculpture shops.
Outside almost every house there was someone carving a giant block of ice with a chisel, creating very rough ice sculptures. There was something strange about these people.
Along the way, no one talked at all. They were all either hurrying to somewhere or focused on carving the ice.
Also, whenever an ice sculpture was completed, all of the nearby mortals would help move it to the ice tower.
After leaving the ice sculptures there, someone from the tower would come out to accept it.
Wang Lin pondered a little. His appearance seemed a bit out of place, so others were already taking notice of him. He let out a sigh and turned to leave. Once he reached a secluded area, he disappeared.
In the blink of an eye, one year passed. During this year, Wang Lin had traveled all over Xue Yu and had entered almost every city. People no longer paid much attention to him as he started dressing like other Xue Yu mortals after going into the first city. He was now wearing clothes made out of animal fur and a fizzled animal hat.
Wang Lin learned a lot about Xue Yu during his one year here. The mortals of Xue Yu existed only to create ice sculpture for cultivators.
They created ice sculptures to exchange for what they needed to live.
There were no royal families or anything similar to them in Xue Yu. Instead, each city belonged to a powerful cultivator.
Wang Lin had figured out what the use for those ice sculptures in this past year. The cultivators would take them, place a formation on them, and then use a special technique to bring them to life, making them into something like a puppet.
This method was very mysterious. It required the use of the core essence of the Xue Yu cultivators. Wang Lin had studied it for a long time and still wasn’t able to learn anything.
As for the ice sculptures themselves, a large amount of them were sold to other countries. Their prices varied depending on the cultivation level the ice sculptures displayed.
The most expensive ice sculptures were Nascent Soul level. Wang Lin had only seen a few being made in all the cities he had visited. The failure rate to make one was extremely high.
As for Soul Formation ice sculptures, Wang Lin still hadn’t found a city that could produce one. Those types of puppets were probably very hard to produce, or even impossible. If they could easily make them, then the power of the Xue Yu cultivators would reach an unimaginable level.
In this year, Wang Lin had witnessed three occasions where a large number of ice sculptures was bought by another rank 4 country.
These ice sculptures required a large amount of materials to make, but they were the foundation of Xue Yu’s infrastructure, so no expenses were spared.
In addition to all of this, there was large amount of mortals starting to mine at the spirit veins in this land.
It can be said that the mortals were slaves as everything they did was to serve the cultivators. What baffled Wang Lin the most was that the mortals felt proud doing this; they weren’t rejecting this type of treatment.
Even if they were being overworked, there were no complaints.
Wang Lin had come to a conclusion after spending a year here: Xue Yu was a very strange country.
There was one more thing that shocked Wang Lin: all of the mortals carried a small ice sculpture with them. These ice sculptures were connected to the most powerful cultivator in their respective cities.
No matter how tired they were or even if they were dying, every morning and evening they would take out the small ice sculpture to pray. They would kneel on the ground with complete devotion.
All of these unbelievable things caused Wang Lin to have a very strange feeling about Xue Yu. This country, much like the snow and ice covering it, had no signs of vigor or life.
The sky was the same as well. There was this dull feeling everywhere he went.