Clan Rise: Starting as a Grandfather

Chapter 1244: Chapter 816: Foundation Establishment

Yang Zhenshan let out a heavy sigh.

"Success!"

"Barely reached low grade, it seems the success was quite forced!"

Holding the only Foundation Establishment Pill, Yang Zhenshan frowned slightly.

The quality of this Foundation Establishment Pill was poor, barely reaching low grade, and could only increase the success rate of foundation establishment by twenty percent.

However, at least it was a yield.

Even if the last batch failed, Yang Zhenshan at least had one Foundation Establishment Pill as a fallback.

Yang Zhenshan exhaled deeply, tidied up a bit, and then returned to his courtyard to sleep soundly.

Although he had only refined one batch today, the pressure he had endured was immense.

If this batch hadn’t succeeded, he would have only one more chance.

Fortunately, he barely succeeded in producing one, which allowed him to breathe a sigh of relief and dispelled the pressure from his heart.

After waking up, Yang Zhenshan felt refreshed.

However, he did not immediately start another batch, but instead began to rest and nurture his body and mind to ensure he was in the best possible state.

At the same time, he wanted to summarize the experiences from his previous success to strive for refining higher-quality Foundation Establishment Pills.

Another month passed, and just when Yang Zhenshan was about to refine his last batch of Foundation Establishment Pills, he was moved and headed to the western ravine of the Spirit Source Land.

In the ravine, a heaving mist was spreading, within which golden spiritual light was interspersed, drifting like fireflies.

Yang Zhenshan looked at this scene with a grim expression.

"Failed!"

He flashed into the cave within the ravine and looked at Zhou Tianci, who had collapsed on the ground.

At this moment, Zhou Tianci was curled up on the ground, his spine deeply bent, his outer skin dry and hanging like aged tree bark, devoid of life. His eyes, sunken into their sockets, were dim and filled with helplessness and reluctance, like the last trace of water remaining in a dried-up lakebed.

"Brother Zhou!" Yang Zhenshan felt incredibly bitter inside.

There was a faint reaction in Zhou Tianci’s dim eyes, and his parched lips trembled slightly, but in the end, he failed to utter a word, and his breath vanished first.

Yang Zhenshan sat beside him with a face full of uncontrollable sorrow.

Perhaps Zhou Tianci should never have chosen to attempt a breakthrough!

Judging by his state, he hadn’t even reached the stage of Spirit Base Casting before failing.

This meant he failed at the first stage.

Yet the first stage wasn’t particularly dangerous; it was merely about flushing the body with spiritual energy. If he couldn’t endure even this, he was simply incapable of success.

Zhou Tianci was the first person in the Spirit Source Land to die from a failed breakthrough, but he certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Unless people stopped trying to break through, such occurrences would never cease.

Now it was Zhou Tianci; in the future, who would it be?

An Yuxing, Yu Qingyi, Yang Mingcheng, Yang Mingzhi...

Yang Zhenshan suddenly felt a pang of fear and anxiety.

He had always been guarding the Spirit Source Land, hoping to turn it into a land of paradise, where the Yang family could live in peace and without worries.

But now he realized that what he wanted was impossible to achieve.

Without breakthroughs, they faced the exhaustion of their lifespans.

With breakthroughs, they had to face the consequences of failure.

Birth, aging, sickness, and death are the human condition.

Parting of husband and wife, the white-haired sending off the black-haired, these things would inevitably happen.

Not possibly, but inevitably.

"Alas~~"

Yang Zhenshan sat silently for an hour and could only heave a long sigh.

The path of cultivation is not smooth; it is full of thorns and dangers, slightly careless, and one might perish.

He carried Zhou Tianci’s body back to the Clan Hall.

Zhou Tianci was a veteran of the Clan Council, and his death was a significant event for the entire Clan Hall.

The Zhou family held a funeral for him, and Yang Zhenshan personally went to pay his respects. Eventually, Zhou Tianci was buried on Anxi Mountain on the western bank of the Spirit River.

Anxi Mountain serves as the public cemetery for the Clan Hall and Longevity City. Over the past few decades, it has become the resting place for thousands, including Zhou Mao, Luo Shang, Zhen Yang family, and others.

The deceased are gone, and the living continue.

Three months after nurturing his body and mind, Yang Zhenshan once again started the furnace to refine pills.

This time, he seemed blessed as he surprisingly refined two Foundation Establishment Pills from one batch.

One high-grade, one mid-grade.

Holding the two porcelain bottles, Yang Zhenshan lazily leaned against the leg of the Furnace of Eight Trigrams.

"A total of three Foundation Establishment Pills, a twenty-five percent pill success rate, that’s quite good."

He had four sets of ingredients, at most capable of refining twelve Foundation Establishment Pills. Now having refined three, the success rate was not considered high, but it certainly wasn’t low either.

Of course, such a success rate was possible thanks to the help of the Golden Crow and years of Yang Zhenshan’s research and practice on the elixir recipe for Foundation Establishment Pills.

"With Foundation Establishment Pills in hand, next is the Foundation Establishment!"

"But I must wait for Madam to complete the Spirit Base Casting first!"

At this moment, Yu Qingyi had already entered the most critical step, absorbing Spiritual Objects to cast the Spirit Base.

In a grove of phoenix trees, Yu Qingyi sat cross-legged on a mat, with Red Cloud and Qingxia sitting not far away.

Yu Qingyi’s first breakthrough phase was conducted by the Spiritual Spring Lake, where the Water Attribute and Wood Attribute spiritual energy were highly concentrated, sufficient to meet her breakthrough needs.

But during this second phase, she needed to absorb the spiritual power contained within an ancient phoenix tree, naturally leading her to cultivate within the grove.

Yang Zhenshan approached slowly; he didn’t get close to Yu Qingyi, merely quietly observing her as she sat cross-legged under the tree.

Yu Qingyi’s breakthrough speed was much faster than anticipated. An Yuxing had started his breakthrough six months earlier, yet Yu Qingyi had already begun casting the Spirit Base first.