First Builders Drive Later Builders

The moon was bright and the stars were sparse, shining like diamonds.

Ye Shu sat on his bed, accompanied by a beauty at his side.

Yet he didn't even cast a single glance at her.

Returning home this time was originally for the sake of Foundation Establishment.

His deadbeat old man's urging had merely pushed this schedule forward.

"Hey! Have you figured out how to establish your foundation yet?" Xiaobai, standing on Ye Shu's head, said grumpily. "If you can't think of a way, just eat the Foundation Establishment Pill and establish your foundation first."

For some reason, seeing Ye Xiaosu on the bed made her particularly angry.

Stinky Ye Shu!

Obviously, she was also very cute and cared about him a lot, okay?

Yet this guy only patted Ye Xiaosu's head and didn't pet hers at all!

"As long as I want to, I can establish my foundation at any time."

Ye Shu said lightly, "But that's not what I want."

As he spoke, the storage ring on his finger flashed.

His surroundings were instantly covered with a dense layer of spirit stones. Over eighteen thousand spirit stones piled up across the entire bed, emitting a faint spiritual light.

"Wah!" Caught off guard and buried by the spirit stones, Ye Xiaosu let out an exclamation. She managed to crawl out of the pile of spirit stones with great difficulty, only to be stunned by the sheer number of them before her. Her mouth hung open in surprise as she could only softly murmur, "Young, Young Master... is so amazing..."

"Let's see what kind of tricks you can come up with."

Xiaobai curled her lips, leaping up and sitting on the table nearby to avoid disturbing him.

A broken sword wrapped in bandages.

A Purple Qi Foundation Establishment Pill.

And the surrounding eighteen thousand spirit stones. This was Ye Shu's entire net worth.

Ye Shu closed his eyes, gradually sorting out his thoughts.

The core key to the Dao of Formations lay in using formation stones to draw upon the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, using the small to guide the large. Various formation patterns were further extensions of the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, achieving incredible effects by guiding certain special spiritual energies.

For example, guiding the water-attribute spiritual power between heaven and earth could form the simplest rain-making formation, used for the farming of commoners.

Acupoints as the foundation...

Meridians as the patterns...

Time passed minute by minute, second by second.

His train of thought was already extremely clear, but Ye Shu's brows furrowed tighter and tighter.

"What's wrong, Shu'er? Have you encountered some difficulties?" Danxia seemed to see his struggle and couldn't help asking.

Ye Shu opened his eyes and gave a bitter smile.

"I was thinking of carving formations into my body, using my acupoints as the formation foundations. After all, there should be nothing in this world more attuned to spiritual energy than my acupoints, and with the number being three hundred and sixty-one, it should be able to satisfy the base number of most formations. But now I've run into a huge problem..."

"What problem?" Danxia asked curiously.

"That is strength," Ye Shu said helplessly. "The strength of the acupoints is not enough. Fragile acupoints simply cannot withstand the violent spiritual power of heaven and earth."

Danxia froze, then fell into deep thought.

This was indeed a problem.

Formation stones also had grades. Often, the higher the grade of the formation, the more violent the spiritual energy it drew, and the higher the grade of the formation stones required.

Ordinary formation stones simply could not withstand the operation of high-grade formations, let alone the most fragile acupoints of the human body.

"Then... perhaps you can use formation stones as substitutes first."

Danxia pondered for a moment and proposed a makeshift solution. "First integrate the formation stones into your acupoints, and then rely on the formation stones to bear the spiritual energy. Use the acupoints as the soil to bury the formation stones, the formation stones as the foundation, the meridians as the patterns, and the dantian as the source of spiritual energy."

"Integrate formation stones into the acupoints?"

Ye Shu was taken aback.

That actually made sense. Letting the formation stones bear the spiritual energy would bypass the problem of the acupoints being too fragile.

He had to admit, the older ginger was indeed spicier.

"Master, you are truly brilliant."

Ye Shu praised from the bottom of his heart.

"Of course!" Danxia proudly raised her chin. "Don't you see who I am? The number one ninth-grade alchemist in the world, an eighth-grade formation master, the world-renowned Elixir Venerable Fairy! Now that I've become the master of a stinky brat like you, you should be secretly rejoicing."

But with this problem solved,

another problem followed.

That was... the dantian was not a storage space where any garbage could be stuffed. As a cultivator's vital gate and source of power, it was usually used to nurture one's natal magical treasure.

Could it be that his natal magical treasure would be formation stones?

That would be too...

Ye Shu shuddered all over, completely rejecting this idea.

It wasn't that it wouldn't work.

It was just too lame. It wasn't cool at all.

Just as he was in a dilemma, his gaze suddenly caught sight of the bandage-wrapped Male Mandarin Duck Sword in front of him.

Ye Shu's eyes lit up.

Right!

How could he have forgotten about it?

The Male Mandarin Duck Sword was incredibly compatible with him. Although it was broken now, its material remained unchanged. It was still a high-grade Earth-tier weapon, more than enough to withstand his Foundation Establishment stage spiritual power.

Having made up his mind, he removed the bandages from the Male Mandarin Duck Sword, revealing the broken, crack-filled blade.

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight..."

Ye Shu counted the fragments of the Male Mandarin Duck Sword piece by piece. Exactly three hundred and sixty-one pieces, almost as if it were tailor-made for him.

"After going around in a huge circle, it's still you in the end."

Ye Shu stroked the broken Male Mandarin Duck Sword and couldn't help but sigh. In his mind, he suddenly recalled Lin Qingxue's slightly chubby little face, wondering how she was doing now.

Perhaps she was cursing him somewhere?

Thinking of Lin Qingxue's puffed-up angry look, Ye Shu couldn't help but smile slightly.

He wondered when they would meet again.

He shook his head, casting aside these distracting thoughts. Then, he placed the Male Mandarin Duck Sword in front of him, picked up a spirit stone from the bed with his right hand, closed his eyes, and sank his qi into his dantian.

Along with his breathing, his acupoints lit up one by one.

In the pitch-black room, his acupoints flickered with his breath, like glowing stars.

Immediately after, three hundred and sixty-one blue bands of light spread out along his meridians, slowly converging in his dantian.

Although everyone's breakthrough method varied due to different cultivation techniques, the essence of the Foundation Establishment breakthrough was the same. The so-called Qi Condensation was condensing spiritual energy, continuously solidifying the originally scattered spiritual energy until it liquefied, laying the foundation within the dantian to achieve the Dao Foundation. This was known as—Foundation Establishment.

And previously, Ye Shu indeed had no ideas for the Foundation Establishment chapter.

But—

That was only an idea regarding application.

In reality, he had already prepared a backup plan, which was: all three hundred and sixty-one acupoints would establish a foundation!

This was incredible, very bold.

But because of the existence of the Cosmic Starry Sky, it was entirely possible, because he wasn't doing it all at once, but rather...

Ye Shu closed his eyes and calmed his breath. The spirit stone in his hand suddenly shattered.

The spiritual energy from the spirit stones was fully absorbed by his acupoints and dantian one by one until they were completely saturated.

The first threshold that blocked countless cultivators from Foundation Establishment.

Liquefying the spiritual energy.

As long as one crossed this step, all the subsequent paths would fall into place naturally, laying down the foundation.

But for ordinary people, this step was the most difficult. Once the breakthrough began, it could not be stopped. One had to use the spiritual energy in their body to achieve it in one go. If their spiritual power fell short midway, the breakthrough would fail.

In light cases, their foundation would be unstable; in severe cases, they would lose all their cultivation.

But this was absolutely not a problem for Ye Shu.

A sharp glint flashed in his eyes.

It was time to give the people of this world a little Dragon Kingdom shock.

He guided all the spiritual energy from his acupoints to flow into his dantian.

By first gathering the power of all his acupoints to nourish the spiritual energy in his dantian, he would condense it into liquid and achieve Foundation Establishment. Then, the Foundation Establishment of the dantian would feed back into the acupoints, allowing all three hundred and sixty-one of them to follow suit.

With such a foundation, how could it be anything but incredibly solid?

This method was called—

Letting the first Foundation Establishment drive the rest.

Could anyone else in this world have possibly thought of this?

Meanwhile, not far away.

Xiaobai, who was sitting on the table, was completely dumbfounded.

Watching the ribbons of blue light wrapping around Ye Shu's body and the increasingly majestic aura emanating from him, her little mouth fell slightly open, remaining unclosed for a long time.

It wasn't until this moment that she realized this guy really hadn't been lying.

His breakthroughs truly had no bottlenecks!