The Path of Immortality: Starts With Creating Water Bear Gu

Shortly after, Long Xuan returned to the Little Poor Peak and walked into a hastily constructed shabby wooden hut. Once inside, he immediately began the project of creating his own low-grade Gu recipe.

Elder Long needed to refine a large quantity of third-grade spiritual pills to pay off his debts, so he had to use one of Long Xuan’s clones to assist him. He found a place to retreat into seclusion and began refining pills.

Heaven knows how much debt he owed, but it was certain that he wouldn't be coming out anytime soon.

Therefore, the vast Little Poor Peak was left entirely at Long Xuan's disposal.

Once he calmed down, he opened his bottomless imagination, ready to unleash another brainstorm.

Isn’t this just a challenge to maximize cost-effectiveness? Simple, give him the time it takes to burn one stick of incense.

Long Xuan was brimming with confidence, exuding an air of arrogance.

He first thought that if he wanted to challenge the highest cost-effectiveness, then the materials must be cheap. And the cheapest materials for spiritual insects were undoubtedly those unpopular spiritual insects, which could be bought in large quantities for just a single spiritual stone.

Many spiritual insects were never used for refining Gu. The reason they were raised was entirely because they were used as food.

Raising this type of Gu insect often required preparing a large number of spiritual insects, and those unpopular and inexpensive ones were undoubtedly the best choice.

These spiritual insects might seem like low-grade insects, but they should actually be categorized separately, as inferior-grade insects.

Inferior-grade insects were cheap; a single spiritual stone could perhaps buy dozens of them. Some inferior-grade insects had never been used to refine Gu before, but today, Long Xuan was determined to break the boundaries of what his predecessors dared not imagine, and achieve what they could not.

While others used these spiritual insects as food for Gu insects, he was going to use them to refine Gu, and not just any Gu, but powerful ones that would set a new record for cost-effectiveness.

One day later, a few small creatures appeared in Long Xuan's courtyard.

A few small black insects were seen pushing little balls, rolling them back and forth across the field. Under their push, the balls grew larger and larger.

Long Xuan watched with great interest, fully engaged.

Yes, the extremely unpopular spiritual insect that Long Xuan chose, which no one used to refine Gu, was none other than the dung beetle.

The Long family’s estate had a spiritual beast farm where the output of spiritual beast dung was immense, attracting many dung beetles, which he could easily collect.

So when he saw this group of little creatures, Long Xuan was instantly inspired.

Dung beetles are fascinating creatures; they enjoy playing with dung, and they love eating dung.

You heard right; the little balls they were currently pushing around the field were indeed dung, stinking to high heaven, yet they were thoroughly enjoying it.

But don’t look down on their peculiar hobby; they are the artists of the insect world. The dung they roll is very round, almost like a piece of art.

They even have a sort of competition among themselves, seeing who can roll the biggest, roundest dung ball, with the winner earning the right to mate with a female dung beetle.

Thus, in the world of dung beetles, the culture of competition is strong, even leading to jealousy and fights over the dung balls.

With such a peculiar hobby, it’s no wonder that humans keep their distance from them.

Who would dare to use such creatures to refine Gu? They stink, and their tastes are extreme, even liking to eat dung. Anyone who refined Gu with them would have to dig dung all day, becoming a dung worker.

No Gu cultivator could bear such a loss of face.

So while other unpopular insect species might have been attempted for Gu refining, no one had ever used dung beetles for this purpose. Throughout history, no Gu insect of the dung beetle type has ever been created.

This shows how much Gu cultivators disliked dung beetles, even though the spiritual beast dung produced in such large quantities that it could drown a person, leaving dung beetles everywhere. They were thus honorably captured by Gu cultivators to feed their Gu insects.

Only Long Xuan could see their potential and thoroughly explore it.

Every insect species has its unique qualities, and dung beetles are no exception.

Do not underestimate these dung workers; they are quite capable.

A dung beetle can push an object 1,141 times its own body weight. In terms of weight-to-strength ratio, this insect ranks among the top in the insect world.

This strength is truly astonishing. Long Xuan's first thought was to figure out how to enlarge dung beetles without destroying the ratio of their weight to strength.

It’s easy to enlarge dung beetles—just adding the gigantifying genes of some other creature might do the trick. But enlarging them while maintaining the ratio of weight to strength is difficult.

Once he solved this problem, what kind of monster would he create?

Long Xuan couldn’t imagine it; it would definitely be terrifying—such a creature would have the strength to move mountains, even pushing them like a dung ball.

Conjuring up the image of such a fearsome creature in his mind, Long Xuan was very excited and full of motivation. He immediately took out paper and pen and began trying to write down what he thought were the correct materials.

Up until now, the Gu recipes he created were no longer based on guesswork; they were all logical.

Since his goal was to proportionally enlarge the weight and strength of dung beetles, he began experimenting with combining the gigantifying genes of various other creatures, not just limited to insects.

But not just any gigantifying genes would do. The key was to ensure that the ratio of weight to strength remained unchanged, which was a strict requirement he set for the Gu recipes.

At the same time, he had to find a way to change the dung beetle's diet. It absolutely could not continue eating dung. He had to find a way to make it eat soil instead, to push soil balls.

Otherwise, who would be willing to form a blood pact with a Gu insect that loves eating dung? The very thought would make people sick, and forget about quickly spreading it or promoting it throughout the clan.

Moreover, eating soil is great—soil is cheap, it's free, you can eat as much as you want, it’s perfectly aligned with the concept of cost-effectiveness.

Long Xuan thought unscrupulously...

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