Kong Beiwu was also quickly aware of the change, his slightly bored expression after guarding out here for merely half an hour in which nothing occurred finally letting up as he dashed back inside. There he saw Luo Roumei whose aura was receding and the phenomena around her calming down, soon opening her light green eyes to regard him.

"Not bad. I have to thank you for this, who knows how long it would have taken me to purge my foundation of flaws like this." She said faintly, speaking before Kong Beiwu could say anything.

This left the young man feeling slightly bashful as he nodded. "As long as you're fine."

Li Ling only paid slight attention to the two then took his focus away from them, as they already knew what to do. As for him, he continued painstakingly refining the Spirit Soil while opening the Nine Heights Pagoda's manual with his Spirit Sense Control Technique, reading through it casually.

Unfortunately, for older techniques like this which involved Qi Refinement levels, they were mostly recorded in books rather than jade slips due to the lack of spirit sense. However, it wasn't too difficult for Li Ling to introduce the information into his mind with his awakened Sea of Consciousness enhancing his mental processing abilities.

"Huh… interesting." Li Ling remarked when he was done, putting the manual down with a thoughtful look on his face.

He had some idea of the Nine Heights Pagoda when he bought it, but now that he fully looked through it, he understood why someone would still take it out to sell. It was a technique that, while limited in its function, had great utility for setting up a foundation for cultivators before entering the Spirit Path.

Essentially, the core of this technique was to visualize a nine-story pagoda and then construct it using spirit sense, turning it from fantasy to reality and fortifying one's spirit sense.

It sounded simple, but there was some difficulty to it. Firstly, if in the Qi Refinement stage, you could not have spirit sense, so you had to rely on a special second-grade material to handle the fortification of the first layer of the technique, which would then birth an awakened spirit sense for the Qi Refinement practitioner.

Secondly, if one was in Foundation Establishment and above already, then they did not need any entry materials, they could use their already condensed spirit sense to get things done. However, if one was already in Foundation Establishment, there were usually better spirit sense techniques to rely on than this.

Thirdly, this daoist art was a mixed practice, seemingly very much like a mixture of a typical daoist art and a cultivation method, with features of both present within. For one, unlike typical daoist arts, it did not have the usual Entry, Advanced, Expert, Mastery, and Perfection divisions, but rather was split into nine stages, one for each level of the pagoda.

Li Ling decided to get started, visualizing a grayish-black pagoda with slightly modern traits, being the famous Leifeng Pagoda he had once visited on Earth when he returned home to the mainland.

Li Ling liked to use motifs from Earth to remind himself where he came from, especially that even though he was Li Ling of Firmament Heaven right now, he was still Andrew Han from Earth as well.

It seemed that this thought activated something within him as the pagoda, which had five stories in reality, extended itself to have nine levels and radiated a beam of light that seemed to encapsulate the entire Sea of Consciousness.

As part of its formation, the Nine Heights Pagoda chosen was established in the center of the Sea of Consciousness, becoming its fundamental core as everything was imbued into it as one advanced through the levels.

This was a good thing, because it focused one's thoughts and also provided a form of defense for the Sea of Consciousness while also making spirit sense tougher, more condensed, and heavier, though it did nothing to increase offensive power or the quantity of spirit sense.

Doing this, Li Ling glanced at the system panel to see that the daoist art had indeed been inducted on it, now at the first level. In truth, he could easily rise through to the first six levels of the technique given the quality of his spirit sense and his current realm, but why save Slaughter Points on something so small?

Breaking through with the system guaranteed the best possible conditions and effects, with a perfect foundation compared to himself—where even if he had godly comprehension, he could still make mistakes here and there that he would have no idea about.

The first level cost ten Slaughter Points, so Li Ling spent the 'money' in order to obtain the 'power'.

Immediately, a storm was set off in his Sea of Consciousness as the first level at the base of the Nine Heights Pagoda, styled after the Leifeng Pagoda, began to rapidly form as if it was being turned from experimental data to actual content.

In a matter of seconds, the first layer was built and an anomaly occurred that Li Ling did not predict. You see, the method of practice for this technique required one to 'fill' the illusory pagoda with spirit sense as the building block, turning it from fake to real, which also consumed and refined one's spirit sense.

Hence why Li Ling was sure he could rush through six levels because he had enough spirit sense to build six layers before his remaining 'loose' spirit sense became too little to move forward.

But the Infinite Slaughter System, as seen multiple times, always provided its own resources for any breakthroughs or technique fully by itself, so where did the spirit sense that was used to build the first layer come from?

The answer was, Li Ling did not know!

What he did know was that, due to this anomaly, the Nine Heights Pagoda had gained an additional ability that it did not have before, which was to increase the total quantity of spirit sense one possessed!

And this increase was vastly different from just range, because this spirit sense was 'developed' spirit sense that had been 'refined' through the Nine Heights Pagoda's process, the precise benefit that came with practicing it.

Li Ling raised an eyebrow as he felt the difference between the two. The spirit sense that was attached to the pagoda was easier to control, swifter, tougher, and far more informative, with higher sensitivity to various things. Its base range at the peak of the first layer was only one meter, but when compared to his 'loose' spirit sense outside the pagoda that seemed to form a fog surrounding it, the difference was like night and day.

His 'loose' spirit sense could still reach the same old 1058 meters, but it could not combine with the one meter from the pagoda, rather overlapping it. So within that meter radius, the stronger pagoda sense took priority and precedence due to its higher quality, making the whole thing feel redundant.

Li Ling frowned as he realized that this 'anomaly' was not very beneficial unless he could find a way to refine the loose spirit sense into the same quality as what formed the pagoda. However, to do that, he would need to use his own loose spirit sense to actually build the pagoda, which was the natural practice of the technique.

But if he did that, he would not gain the 'free' spirit sense that came with the Infinite Slaughter System's level-ups.

What a conundrum!

Actually, not really. Li Ling still decided to use the Infinite Slaughter System almost immediately, because the issue was just an inconvenience, not a dealbreaker. Who said he could only practice one spirit sense method at once anyway? Most people would have to as they couldn't spread their attention, but he could precisely do so thanks to Slaughter Points.

If the new method also suffered from the same problem, generating new high-quality spirit sense, then he would try and find a heavenly treasure or some special pill that had the effect of condensing spirit sense. There were plenty in Firmament Heaven with different types, effectiveness, and relative tiers where one could consume them.

As such, Li Ling decided to blaze forward, paying 20 Slaughter Points to advance to the second layer, causing his newly born spirit sense to reach five meters. The third level cost 30 Slaughter Points and increased the range to ten meters, which was indeed the starting point of average Foundation Establishment first-level cultivators, but this was meant for the late stage of Qi Cultivation!

Indeed, this technique had some advantages to it among the various disadvantages.

The fourth level cost 40 Slaughter Points and boosted the range to 30 meters, which was around the peak of the third level of Foundation Establishment, only that if two fellows at the 3rd level were to meet and have a spirit sense-off, the average cultivator would lose heavily to the one who practiced this daoist art.

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