Paragon of Sin

"The Echoing Stars of the Vastness Pill," Wei Wuyin sighed with a ponderous expression, emotional conflict shone within the depths of his silver eyes, and his lips tugged downwards into a frown. The legacy of the Alchemic Dao of the True Element Sect wasn't as in-depth and varied as he wished, lacking crucial information about Mortal Sovereign Alchemists, but it did contain a general list of standard products across the Mortal-rank and records of historical facts.

The Echoing Stars of the Vastness Pill was a well-known pill throughout the stellar region. Any organization with a semi-decent alchemy department would have it in their archives, if only for study and reference. Despite its usefulness and value, this was solely due to its history. It was an old concoction method, dating back even before the former Imperial Clan era when the war for Solar Stars was rampant. During this period, countless horrific deaths occurred, with some Solar Stars being directly snatched by Ascendants, causing a deluge of chill to sweep star-less starfields. This was called the War of Fallen Stars.

It wasn't a war between factions, races, or ideology, but one involving almost every expert at the time, all vying for the most valuable resource at that time: Solar Stars.

There were very few who showed restraint during this war. Ascended beings fought wildly to claim materials and resources, destroying naturally created Continental Flat Earths, Lunar Satellites, and Planets en masse. Chaotic would be an understatement for that era. While this war raged, the value of 'naturally born' celestial bodies revealed themselves, and Dark Void space grew significantly in value.

Even during that time Ascended beings practiced the Alchemic Dao, and Mortal Sovereign Alchemists were the highest limits of any alchemist. The concept of a ninth-grade product was holy to cultivators, saving them dozens, if not hundreds of years in their cultivation. It shattered limits, opened new paths, and as such, the world grew obsessed.

A Union of Alchemists formed called the Seven Sages Tower, a now-extinct power, who devised this particular concoction method after abusing their might, rallying strength, and knowledge, justifying slaughtering trillions of mortals for their own goals and pursuit of knowledge. Those with power merely watched, afraid of the terrifying rallying power they wielded to gather the loose-like-sand experts towards a single goal, preying upon their greeds and essential needs.

There were said to be many examples made of those who rebelled against the Seven Sages Tower's way of doing things. Still, they devised the majority of pre-King of Everlore Era concoction methods, arts, spells, and formations. They established a terrifying foundation that helped propagate and develop the Alchemic Dao to its current levels in the stellar region. Their contributions were undeniable. And their downfall allowed these contributions to be spread widely, allowing even the imaginary 'Pinnacle-tier' Echoing Stars of the Vastness Pill to be in any decent archive.

After the Seven Sages Tower's rise and fall, the War of the Fallen Stars, and the Aeternal Sky Solar Star's Supermassive Mystic Radiance Belt's construction, the 'natural' Solar Star resource had gone from being extremely abundant to numbering less than a hundred throughout the stellar region, and most of them were kept by powerful organizations as the core of their base of operations—starfields, such as nine belonging to the Ninestar Sainthall.

Wei Wuyin had read a faded diary written using Permanence Ink, a type of ink instilled with the Mortal Dao's Permanence principle, once graphically depicted the merging of Solar Stars into the Supermassive Solar Star of the Aeternal Sky Starfield, and it was horrific. Thousands of natural Solar Stars were pulled away from all over, dragged across the Dark Void by hordes of Ascended beings and Starlords, all to forcefully plunge it into a growing mass of horrifying light.

It wasn't easy to move a Solar Star, and a lot of powerful Astral Realm Cultivators and Ascended beings lost their lives dragging these Solar Stars tens of millions, sometimes billions, of miles.

It was mentioned that countless cried and begged for mercy from the ' sky gods', forced to watch as their life-giving star was dragged away, swept by the lifeless chill. The entire event lasted centuries.

At this time, it was clear that Ascended beings saw mortals as insignificant existences whose lives were worth very little. They offered no relocation options, expended no effort to create new Solar Stars, and merely took and took without remorse. They were extremely dark years. It was unfortunate that the Mystic Essence of the starfield had caused erosion of the Permanence Ink's power, losing some of the well-written views of the author.

Wei Wuyun had always been curious about the former civilization of this world, however. The civilization that originally handled the transportation formation to the Battlefield. With their absence, it was clear they left these worlds. But what confused him was the Tiangou and the methods those titans left behind.

It feasted on Solar Stars yet there were tens of thousands left untouched. There had to be a reason for this. A large, connected area of once many starfields had been conquered and merged until twenty-two remained in this era, yet the Tiangou hadn't raided the Grand Cyclic Stellar Region. He wondered if it had to do with the Mystic Radiance Belts, but there was no mention of their existence until after the War of Fallen Stars, so it confused him a little more.

But Wei Wuyin's conflicted emotions didn't stem from the Echoing Stars of the Vastness Pill's bloody history or the history of the stellar region but from the core ingredient. A 'natural' Solar Star was the rarest form of resource in the current era, heaven-shakingly so. After tens of thousands of years of history and conflict perpetuated by greed and ambition, the Solar Stars that fit this requirement have long been claimed and outfitted with Mystic Radiance Belts.

Wei Wuyin was left with no viable options to acquire them from the stellar region naturally. He had thought that using Stellar Rain could serve as an alternative, even testing it, since their exuded light energies bore remarkable similarities to Solar Stars' emissions. Unfortunately, he determined it impossible. The issue wasn't the absence of energy but the Star Core's unique mixture of power.

It contained all the necessary power to reinforce a Domain Seed, enrich a cultivator's Star Core, and refine the body. Just using it in a raw manner for cultivation was extremely useful, allowing him to realize that the War of Fallen Stars was inevitable.

The only other option was to create his own. However, as he delved into the topic, he learned that only Ascended beings could reliably create Solar Stars. The other ways were to wait for the process of Star Ascension, when a Starlord dies, to take effect, which could last for tens of thousands of years for a dwarf star, or have a group of Starlords work in conjunction to generate one. Regardless of which, the option would take numerous years and effort to generate a viable Solar Star. After all, it had to be a minimum of a 'dwarf' in quality.

There was the brutal option of having an Ascended cultivator, like Wu Yu, slaughter Starlords to refine their Star Cores, expediting the process of tens of thousands of years to decades. Unfortunately, he learned that this was attempted by many experts and all of the results failed to make a 'natural' Solar Star. This was likely due to the Mystic Dao's ways influencing the process of the Mortal Dao, in his opinion.

"..." Wei Wuyin knew his growth could slow to a crawl without this pill. This was a direct consequence of having four Astral Souls, all of which were abnormally powerful exceeding typical limits, and had ravenous needs. However, it was more important to mention the unbelievable prospects if he succeeded in concocting this pill! Not just for him, but the Ascendants!

The term 'crawl' was used in a way that would cause countless experts to throw up buckets of aggrieved blood. After all, Wei Wuyin would just have to spend a few extra years concocting less effective products while his Astral Souls refined to make other pills that achieved a roughly similar effect, substituting quality with quantity. Eventually, he'll reach his cultivation limits. Wei Wuyin was fully aware of this fact.

However, Wei Wuyin refused to waste years in his alchemy chambers, concocting the same pill a million times, and then likely billions of times for the Temporal Eye Phase, the Eighth Stage of the Astral Core Realm, and very likely tens of trillions of times for Star Core Phase. The years would grow into decades and then centuries. While he could concoct with astonishing speeds, even ninth-grade products took him time.

Moreover, he'll need different products to enrich his time energy, refine his Star Core, and expedite the growth of his Astral Physique to a level where his Astral Idols properly form. Looking at his possible future, he felt a chill in his spine. If just one of these pills could take decades or centuries to be successful, what about four or five different sets? What about pills that could increase his mental, physical, spiritual, light, spatial, essence, and bloodline energies? Excluding the last, the Echoing Stars of the Vastness Pill enveloped all this.

It might not just be centuries, it could be thousands of years! And if he followed his track of refusing to ascend to the next stage without maximizing his foundation, he…

"I can't waste all my time concocting; I still have to practice my arts, spells, and methods to prepare for the Calamities, my Ascension by comprehending the mysteries of these Mystic Rune Seeds, and support the Ascendants. If I waste so much time trying to grow, won't my soulspan be completely exhausted?" Wei Wuyin could see himself maintaining this course, and if he faced the tiniest hiccup on his path of the Alchemic Dao, unable to become a genuine Saint Alchemist if he was lucky to become an Ascended, he could easily find himself dying due to old age.

The path Wei Wuyin chose was optimal for his cultivation, for his future, but it was not without its extraordinary issues. The more he traversed down this path of excellence, the more he would be forced to confront its dangers and struggles, he genuinely felt tensed. Nevertheless, the Calamities of Hell biting at his heels refused to allow him any respite, forcing him to never stop.

Wei Wuyin was a mere mortal trying to survive the Eighteen Hells, a heaven-defying, no, hell-defying feat. This was his only path. He refused to cultivate at his fastest pace, leaping cultivation stages with no regard, and becoming weak as a result. While he could, and easily at that, he refused to let that happen, to be beheaded due to his weakness.

He had settled in another life, in another time, and at the grounds of the Scarlet Solaris Mountain, he was killed. He hadn't felt it himself but seeing it was more than enough to know that taking a different route was destined for failure.

Who knows who his enemies could be in the future?

He had to make ample preparations for every possibility.

Nevertheless, he was now faced with this difficult obstacle. It was the first true obstacle on his path of alchemy: How to create a 'natural' Solar Star. Just the objective alone was contradictory, but Wei Wuyin was left with no choice but to find an avenue for this possibility. If he didn't, all his efforts thus far would be for naught.