After the Martial Roll of Honor tournament ended, Shun Long was confident that his faction could easily replace one of the top 100 factions.
After all, most of the faction leaders of the factions that were ranked in the lower half of the top 100, were either middle rank 9 or peak rank 9 Nascent Soul stage cultivators at best.
With Shun Long's own strength, only the top Nascent Soul stage outer disciples that were just half a step away from breaking through to the Dao King realm could pose some trouble to him.
Indeed, after challenging the faction that was ranked 80th, Shun Long and the rest took over their territory quite easily.
Becoming one of the top 100 factions was the final thing that Shun Long needed for his plan.
Naturally, Shun Long had a reason for choosing to occupy the territory of one of the top 100 factions.
Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have bothered with something like this, especially when the top 100 factions could be challenged by other factions at any time, which could interrupt Liu Mei's and the rest's cultivation.
After all, it wasn't uncommon for other factions to sneak attack the top factions during night in order to gain an advantage.
However, Shun Long still decided to do so despite these drawbacks, and the reason behind that were the formations that were engraved within the top 100 courtyards.
Every courtyard in the Holy sect contained certain formations that could absorb spirit stones and extract their energy, before they filled the air in the courtyard with pure qi.
Shun Long knew that this function of those formations was similar to the way his 'Heaven Swallowing vine' worked, but naturally, the effect of those formations couldn't compare to the effect of the vine at all.
Still, this was much more efficient than cultivating by one's own self.
As for the courtyards that the top 100 factions occupied, they were rumored to have much better formations compared to the normal courtyards like the one that Shun Long stayed in.
These top 100 courtyards were said to be at the same level as the courtyards of the inner court Elders.
Shun Long knew that in his own courtyard, if he wished to do so, he could add more middle-grade spirit stones into the refining formation so that the qi in the air around his courtyard would be even denser, but it was impossible to add any high-grade spirit stones.
The refining formation of the normal courtyards wasn't strong enough to refine any high-grade spirit stones.
But the courtyards of the top 100 factions were different!
They could easily refine hundreds of high-grade spirit stones in a single day and increase the cultivation speed of those disciples.
If one had enough high-grade spirit stones, they could even cultivate like the inner court Elders did.
After obtaining 200.000 high-grade spirit stones from the Grand Elder, Shun Long had more than enough spirit stones for his own cultivation and could easily afford to fuel an entire courtyard with high-grade spirit stones.
Thus, Shun Long had already decided to let everyone cultivate inside this courtyard, while consuming 'Soul Purifying pills' that would bring the purity of their soul to the peak of the Nascent Soul stage.
Although 'Soul Purifying pills' were considered to be extremely rare rank 5 pills, Shun Long knew that it wasn't too hard to concoct them.
The most difficult part was finding the 'Soul Purifying flowers' themselves, which wasn't an issue for Shun Long with the god-like abilities of his herb garden.
Of course, there was only a year left until the opening of the King's Palace, and Shun Long knew that even with the 'Soul Purifying pills', if Xingyi and the rest had to split their focus and try to reach the peak of rank 9 in the Nascent Soul in both their cultivation bases and the purity of their souls, 1 year wouldn't have been enough under normal circumstances.
However, if their courtyard was filled with the pure qi from the high-grade spirit stones, then things would be completely different.
Cultivating inside this courtyard was even better than cultivating inside the courtyards of the inner court Elders.
After all, although the inner court Elders would often allow their disciples to cultivate inside their courtyards, in reality, the Elders themselves would absorb more than 90% of the qi in their courtyards, leaving only the rest for their disciples.
This was only natural since Dao Emperors needed much more qi for their own cultivation, and there couldn't possibly be enough for their own disciples as well.
But the courtyards of the top 100 factions were different.
Cultivating inside these courtyards and absorbing the qi from the high-grade spirit stones directly was much faster than cultivating inside the courtyard of an inner court Elder.
Like this, a year had passed, and indeed, after consuming hundreds of top-grade rank 5 'Soul Purifying pills', Jiang Chen, Xingyi, and Bai Longtian had already reached the peak of the Nascent Soul stage in terms of their quality of the soul, while their cultivation bases had also reached the peak of rank 9 in the Nascent Soul.
As for Liu Mei, she still needed a few more days until her soul reached the peak of the Nascent Soul stage as well.
Time continued to pass, and 3 days later, Liu Mei's soul finally reached the pinnacle of the Nascent Soul stage as well, but Shun Long had yet to return to the room.
Inside the foggy space in the 'Stone of Time', Shun Long was still sitting cross-legged on his usual seat with his eyes closed, looking like he had completely forgotten about the passage of time, as he kept absorbing the pure qi around him to purify his qi balls.
81 silver-colored balls of qi were hovering in the air above his head, like the stars that illuminated the night sky.
Most of the qi balls were shining with the same bright silver light, but some of them were slightly dimmer than the others, showing that they hadn't been completely purified.
An enormous vine was eating the small mound of high-grade spirit stones that were placed in front of Shun Long without any signs of stopping, turning it into pure qi that filled Shun Long's surroundings.
The Heaven Swallowing vine had been doing this for almost 10 years, consuming tens of thousands of high-grade spirit stones, and by now, its surface seemed to have changed slightly as well.
1 more month passed like this, before Shun Long's eyes finally opened.
