Awakened: The Spirit King!

"So even you have time when you find it hard to believe something.

"Brother, you're only are human, so I don't blame you for feeling your world slipping away."

Xie Yang noticed how confused and cute his stepbrother, Xie Ye looked now that the mask of sternness was off his face.

Currently, he looked more like a bewildered youth in his twenties than a god of war, who had been in many wars.

Xie Yang, who found him awfully similar to a startled deer, laughed so hard that he had to put his hand on his shoulder to stabilize himself.

Xie Ye felt embarrassed, and his expression stiffened as he cleared his throat to express his displeasure.

"Young master, please act your age." He gave a meaningful look to him.

"Okay, okay, I will. No need to get mean with me." Xie Yang, not wanting to get on the nerves of a person who can beat the crap out of him quickly, respectfully retreated.

"What kind of pill is it?" Xie Ye's curiosity about the pill hadn't diminished and remained equal to what it had been before they started refining it.

He really wanted to know what this pill does.

"Keep your eyes wide open and see for yourself."

After saying that to his stepbrother, Xie Yang threw the supreme quality pill of the lowest rank in his mouth and popped it with his teeth, his actions resulted in the pill shattering and releasing countless numbers of threads that shot down his throat and reached for his elixir field.

The threads reached their destination and settled there for only a moment before sinking into his elixir field, integrating with it and nourishing it so much in an instant that Xie Yang felt the wall in his way to the next level shattering with a loud sound.

Bam!

Wind waves burst out of his body, fluttering his hair and the robe that he thinly wore.

At this moment, Xie Yang alleviated to the next level.

Xie Ye felt the increase in his young master's cultivation level, and his first reaction was to gawk at him, and after that, his eyes showed a mixture of emotions.

He said not a word, for he could tell that his young master was in the process of enjoying the benefits of the pill, and he knew that disturbing him now would lead to him losing them benefits.

With Xie Ye guarding him, Xie Yang had no fear in his heart.

He didn't worry about someone sneaking an attack on him and focused entirely on assimilating with the energy threatening to balloon his belly.

Xie Yang had his eyes closed, and he had his entire focus on making his elixir field greedily devour the multi-colored threads of energy that had infused into his elixir field.

His elixir field looked like a small blue pool whose surface had many vibrant threads.

Every second, the number of threads lessened.

There were hundreds of them.

But as fast as he was absorbing them, it was not going to take him long to refine them all.

A couple of minutes passed.

Xie Ye stood at his side in silence, but the expression on his face said that he had a lot to say.

He had heard legends about pills that could help cultivators overcome the barrier that most people meet at the peak of level 3 and level 6 and knew one could find them in ancient secret realms or some big sects with thousands of years of history; However, he hadn't heard of a pill that not only helped a person level up but also helped them reach the peak of it in only a few minutes!

Xie Yang cultivation had reached the peak of level 7, and it was still increasing!

The effect of the breakthrough pill was just that excellent!

His cultivation stopped increasing when he put half a step into the eight-level. He was infinitely close to breaking through to the next stage of cultivation but hasn't achieved it yet because his spiritual energy capacity was at 799.5 units. In other words, while he had planted one foot in the next level, the other was still stuck at the current level. 

He failed to reach the 8th level of the first realm, which somewhat saddened him.

He opened his eyes and met his stepbrother's excited gaze.

"As you have seen, after usage, this pill can help one surpass the level in which their growth had stagnated at for no matter how long and reach the next level of cultivation. It's effective for cultivators in the first realm. One can benefit from such a pill three times." Xie Yang explained to Xie Ye, who was feeling indispensable emotions.

Xie Yang didn't disturb him and let him digest the information.

Xie Ye was a citizen of the Glorious Sun Empire.

For people of this empire, the breakthrough pill was nothing short of a miracle. Why?

In the first realm, a person with ordinary talent meets bottlenecks at most three times. Bottlenecks arise when a spiritual cultivator finds it impossible to advance to the next level, causing their growth to delay. They hit such a solid wall in their training that it becomes incredibly difficult for them to alleviate to the next level. To bypass the bottleneck, a spiritual cultivator needs insights that one can only gain while fighting in a life and death duel, put extreme and life-threatening external pressure on oneself, or come across fortuitous encounters such as containing a herb that helps nourish the elixir field.

It was tough for one to bypass a bottleneck, and most people do die stuck at their level, yet, with the help of three such pills, they could too easily overcome their bottleneck, which was unheard of by the people of the empire.

"Young master, we must keep the existence of these pills a secret from prying eyes. I'm afraid if its existence comes to light, our lives might become difficult." After Xie Ye suppressed his turbulent emotions, what left his mouth was advice for his young master.

"You worry too much."

"Believe me; not only will I sell them in an auction without bringing trouble to our family, but I will fool others into believing that the source of this pill isn't a person of this time."

Xie Yang smiled at him as he said those sentences with a carefree sentence.

He wasn't the type of guy to spew nonsense, nor was he a stupid man who couldn't understand the implications behind relating himself to this pill.

Xie Ye was sure that his young master had a plan.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have said a thing about selling it publicly.

"How will you do it?" Asked Xie Ye.

His young master beckoned him to come closer.

He brought his ears close to his lips before Xie Yang muttered a few sentences into his ears.

"We will need to do a few things to make it possible."

As he heard him out, Xie Ye's eyes brightened in a glow of understanding which soon changed to that of total agreement.

"If we do that, it will work." Xie Ye said.

"And it will not put our family into danger too." Xie Yang had made a plan to fool the entire world, but to make it work, he needed Xie Ye's help. From the looks of it, his stepbrother was willing to cross mountains and seas for him. 'I haven't misjudged him,' Xie Yang thought before he smilingly said, "We will reap profit while fooling the world and redirecting all danger meant for us towards an entity that only exists on paper.

"Instead of fighting with us, they will be paying us an entrance fee to get inside that entity and try their luck and hardest to obtain ancient pills."

A crafty smile was on his face, so was a foxy expression.

Xie Ye saw the figure of the master strategist overlapping with his young master.

His young master was young but exceedingly terrifying in terms of intelligence, cultivation talent, and professional knowledge.

The night sky wasn't clear, but it didn't look too bad with clouds decorating it. One must know the darkness of a night with no moonlight was different than other nights; it was darker, colder, and creepier, but as they rarely see clear clouds, the citizens of the cloud city didn't find it off-putting.

Mists too white had overtaken the streets late at night, and no one but a few unlucky souls was out of their home.

Either they were sleeping or trying to.

Among the ones awake, two men were working their hearts out.

As they made one pill after another without a care in the world, they failed to notice when the night changed to morning.

They didn't realize it until rays of warm yellow light came through the window and drizzled down on them.

Xie Yang yawned and stretched his body as he blinked his eyes and enjoyed the warm carcass of the gentle rays of light on his skin.

'Has nighttime shortened yet again?' Xie Ye wondered as he looked at the sun outside through the open window.

While the window was open, it was not possible for people outside the place to look at what was happening inside.

After gazing out the window for a while, his eyes roamed about and stopped at the two jade medicinal bottles, which contained 20 breakthrough pills each, and they were all supreme quality pills!

His eyes sparkled in joy.

What he was thinking, Xie Yang had no way of knowing it.

"Only the last batch of ingredients are left. Let's get it over with soon." Xie Yang said after removing soreness from his body and using medium-grade recovery pills to fill his elixir field.

Leader Ye replied, "Yes."