"So that’s what happened."
"I understand now."
"Li Yun must have planned this from the very beginning. He knew people would target him once he entered the Genius Training Camp, so he hid his real strength on purpose."
"That way, cultivators at the 3rd level of Spirit Manifestation Realm would be too embarrassed to challenge him personally, while those at the 2nd level would look at his ranking and underestimate him."
"Then he could beat them once they walked into his trap."
"This fellow is terrifyingly calculating."
"To scheme like that at such a young age, Li Yun is definitely not someone anyone should provoke casually."
The spectators quickly convinced themselves they had uncovered the truth, and they spoke with the expressions of people who had just seen through everything.
Meanwhile, the geniuses from the Heaven’s Chosen Assembly exchanged strange looks. If they had not watched Li Yun improve so rapidly during the assembly itself, perhaps they would have reached the same conclusion, but they knew him better than that.
Li Yun was not the sort of person who concealed his power in order to scheme against others.
If such a wide gap existed between his combat strength and his ranking, there was a far simpler explanation, which was that he had gotten stronger again.
None of them had any intention of explaining this to the surrounding cultivators, partly because these people probably would not believe them, and partly because the veteran members wanted to suppress the newcomers anyway, so there was no reason to stop them from making fools of themselves.
"Tu Beichen, transfer the one thousand points."
Ignoring the discussion around him, Li Yun jumped down from the arena and looked straight at him.
"Don’t worry. I won’t cheat you."
Tu Beichen snorted, then reluctantly took out his points token and transferred the thousand points across. Every member of the Genius Training Camp carried one of these tokens, since their main purpose was to record points and allow transfers between members.
A moment later the thousand points appeared in Li Yun’s own token, and combined with what he had earned from the Extreme Dao Pagoda and the Endless Pagoda, his total came to one thousand three hundred and thirty-one.
"With this many points, I can finally exchange for something useful."
Li Yun nodded to himself. He had originally planned to challenge the two trial pagodas again right away, but with the extra thousand points there was no longer any need to rush. He could explore the remaining five secret realms first, and once his points ran out, he could return to the pagodas and earn more.
Under the complicated gazes of the crowd, Li Yun left the gambling arena and went straight to the treasure exchange hall, where he exchanged for the Myriad Creatures Tripod and also bought a drop of Ten-Millennium Spirit Milk.
Ten-Millennium Spirit Milk was an extremely precious spiritual material, and its primary effect was to purify essence qi by stripping away impurities while slightly increasing the amount of essence qi in the body.
Li Yun possessed chaos qi, however, and the purity of his energy had already reached an almost unimaginable degree, so purification meant very little to him.
What he actually valued was the tremendous energy sealed inside the spirit milk, since he could absorb it into his core and use it to push his cultivation higher.
A single drop of Ten-Millennium Spirit Milk cost five hundred points, and the Myriad Creatures Tripod cost one thousand, so the two items together would normally have required one thousand five hundred.
Because Li Yun was a core member, though, he received a twenty percent discount and only needed to spend one thousand two hundred. After the exchange, barely more than a hundred points remained in his token.
Back at his stone house, Li Yun first took out the Myriad Creatures Tripod and then circulated the Ninefold Origin Flesh Scripture.
A strand of Primal Chaos Mother Qi was slowly drawn out of the cauldron and pulled into his body, and as it fused into his flesh, the eighth stage of the Ninefold Origin Flesh Scripture, Undying Origin Body, advanced a little further.
The improvement was not enormous, yet he could clearly feel that he had taken another step toward the ninth stage.
Afterward he swallowed the Ten-Millennium Spirit Milk, and a vast wave of pure spiritual energy flooded into him.
Under his control, the energy was refined rapidly and absorbed into his core, and by the time the process finished, his cultivation had reached the perfection stage of the 5th level of Heavenly Core Realm.
Li Yun slowly opened his eyes. His combat power had already climbed into the upper range of the 6th level of Spirit Manifestation Realm, which meant that unless he ran into a powerhouse at the 7th level, there were very few people he truly needed to fear.
"Next, it’s time to explore the remaining secret realms."
He stood up, and before long he arrived at Radiant Gold Mountain, one of the five great secret realms. Unlike the Enlightenment Pagoda, all five of these realms charged points for entry, with one hour normally costing ten points, though as a core member Li Yun only had to pay five. He handed over one hundred points at once and stepped through the entrance.
His figure appeared inside a desolate space where only one enormous mountain existed. It stood several thousand zhang tall and loomed over everything like an ancient giant.
Radiant Gold Mountain primarily tested movement techniques and reaction speed, since countless golden beams attacked anyone who tried to climb it. The attacks were not lethal, but even for Spirit Manifestation Realm cultivators, being struck by one was definitely painful.
Worse still, the closer a challenger came to the summit, the more numerous and faster the beams became, which made reaching the top extremely difficult.
Whoosh!
Li Yun started climbing immediately, pushing Aurora Step to its limit so that his figure moved with astonishing speed. Radiant Gold Mountain contained a powerful repulsive force, however, and the higher he climbed, the harder that force pressed against him and dragged his speed down.
Whoosh!
A brilliant golden beam appeared without warning and shot toward him like lightning, aiming to punch straight through his body. Rather than retreating, Li Yun pressed forward and shifted his body just enough for the beam to pass beside him.
The light immediately curved through the air and came at him again from behind, and at the same time three more beams appeared on his left, on his right, and directly ahead of him.
Four golden lights attacked at once.

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