Several more months passed, and Joe Di finally came to a halt.
At the edge of his spiritual sense, a massive mountain appeared. In the many years since Joe Di entered the Grand Ruins, he had never seen a real mountain.
In the Grand Ruins, everywhere was covered in dull-colored deserts, wastelands, and basins. Joe Di had never encountered either water or mountains here.
If not for the water-element rule fragments here, Joe Di would truly wonder how the Elemental Beasts managed to survive.
Even if Elemental Beasts are cultivator monsters, they still can't go without water forever.
Joe Di's spiritual sense swept over his ring, where materials had piled up like mountains. He decided to find a cave mansion on that mountain and enter seclusion for a while.
For Joe Di, having reached this level of cultivation, he had hit a bottleneck. Without some special external force, he definitely couldn't reach Dao Nurturing in the short term. So his main goal now was artifact refinement.
With his current strength, dealing with ordinary Dao Nurturing cultivators would be no problem. But what about those stronger, or even those at Dao Transformation?
Although Joe Di had many techniques, who would mind having even more? He also possessed his strongest divine ability—the Blade Array. However, after ascending to the Immortal Realm, his strength grew so quickly that he hadn't needed to use the Blade Array.
Now, in the Dao Domain, having a powerful Blade Array was crucial for him. If he encountered a true powerhouse and couldn't win, he could use the Blade Array together with a law array for support. The Blade Array, once deployed, was far stronger than any law array he could hastily set up.
Since his cultivation couldn't improve quickly, he decided to accelerate his progress in arraycraft.
As Joe Di moved away from the area of shattered rules, the number of Elemental Beasts around him noticeably decreased. After spending so much time in the Grand Ruins, Joe Di knew that not only were there Elemental Beasts here, but also rule vortexes.
If one accidentally falls into a rule vortex, there is no chance of survival. Although Joe Di has the Ninth World, falling in would not mean immediate death. Still, he preferred to be cautious and avoid using spiritual sense flight unless absolutely necessary.
The mountain was not far from Joe Di, so even without using spiritual sense flight, he arrived at its base in less than half a stick of incense.
Joe Di's spiritual sense circled the mountain and immediately sensed that someone was in seclusion here, likely with the same idea as him. He wasn't sure how many, but with the mountain spanning hundreds of miles, his own seclusion wouldn't affect anyone else.
An hour later, Joe Di had already carved out a sanctuary in a secluded spot on the mountain and set up a concealment array outside.
His arraycraft skill was already at the rank of Second-Tier Divine Arraymaster. Using refined array banners and law array banners, he set up concealment and defensive arrays that no one could detect unless their arraycraft far surpassed his.
With his sanctuary fortified like iron, Joe Di set up surveillance and warning arrays outside, then entered the Ninth World to begin studying artifact refinement.
...
In cultivation, time ceases to exist; the same is true for artifact refinement.