After pondering for a moment, Yunxiao’s soul form sat cross-legged down in the Divine Realm Tablet and performed an incantation gesture with both hands, just like his true-self in the outside world. Together, both his forms began to meditate. The difference between them was that his true-self was absorbing the natural Primordial Qi in the outside world while his soul form was condensing soul power in the Divine Realm Tablet. They were meditating at the same time, and even though they were spiritually connected and came from the same origin, they did not distract each other.
“Sure enough, the Laws of the World in here are different!” His eyes lit up and his face beamed with joy as he said excitedly, “It means I can divide myself into two when meditating and cultivate my soul and my flesh at the same time! In this way, even though my cultivating path is tougher than that of others, I can save half the time! Moreover, the Great Expansion Divine Technique can be manifested in the Divine Realm Tablet…With all these combined, my goal of restoring the soul power of a ninth-tier alchemist is no longer so distant!”
It was a hundred times more difficult to cultivate the soul than martial arts. Although Yunxiao had various soul cultivation techniques up his sleeves, there was never a shortcut in the path of the Great Dao.
No matter how good the resources one had, one could not omit hardship and the tempering of time. It was through endless cultivation that a warrior or alchemist could become a hero.
Although Yunxiao still could not understand this Divine Realm Tablet, he was already spiritually connected with it. He knew it was because he was too weak now, and his priority was to increase his strength as soon as possible.
His soul began to cultivate the Great Expansion Divine Technique in the Divine Realm Tablet while his body performed the various strange moves of the Tyrant Body Tempering Technique in the secret chamber. In the meantime, he carefully controlled the gravity force to make himself struggle on the verge of collapse; only in this way could he keep breaking through.
Slowly, he increased the gravity force to thirty-fold, which was the limit he could withstand right now. His muscles and limbs were stretched taut, and he could feel waves of tremendous ache and distending pain coming from them. His soul-form in the tablet felt that too, and it frowned slightly.
Suddenly, a faint light about the size of a bean shot out of the forehead of his true self, and then from within the tablet came flying out ten inferior-grade Primordial Stones, hovering in a row in front of him.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Yunxiao waved his hand with the miniature Black Girl. A beam of golden light flashed through the air, and all ten Primordial Stones exploded in the next instant, causing the natural Primordial Qi in them to spread out like boiling water vapor. The shattered stones turned into colorless powder and scattered within the secret chamber.
“Drain now, One Qi of Destiny!”
He straightened up, and his taut body bounced back to its original form, no longer in the queer posture. Then, he put his palms together and sat down while the pores all over him seemed to open at once. Meanwhile, the millions of cells in him began to breathe as the rich Primordial Qi that filled the secret chamber poured over to him.
His breathing matched the movement of the blood and Qi throughout his body. With an inhale, he drained half of the Primordial Qi contained in the ten Primordial Stones, which was then converted into the purest energy and circulated within him. During the process, more than half of the Primordial Qi would eventually be lost, a small part would be absorbed by his flesh, and what was left would condense and settle down before returning to his dantian through the meridians, becoming a part of his energy.
Yunxiao opened his eyes, and his face was covered with shock and surprise. “Soul, body, and Qi are indeed inextricably linked with each other. With the help of the first two, I was able to absorb about eight inferior-grade Primordial Stones at a time by circulating the One Qi of Destiny. In my previous life when I was at this level, it would be a feat if I could absorb even two at a time.”
His eyes gleamed as he said to himself, “Under the condition of cultivating the three at the same time, I need several times as much Primordial Qi as an average warrior to make a breakthrough, but I also absorb Primordial Qi several times faster. In this way, I’m not in a disadvantageous position. And if I continue to cultivate this way, even the energy of low-stars Martial Masters may not be as vast and pure as mine! By the time I return to the peak of the Nine Heavens Realm, there will be no one on the whole Heavenly Martial Realm that can match my strength!”
With enthusiasm in his eyes, Yunxiao took out handfuls of Primordial Stones and threw them into the air, then kept hitting them with Black Girl. One stone after another exploded, and the concentration of Primordial Qi in the chamber soon was so high that it almost solidified!
“Drain them all, One Qi of Destiny!”
If these Primordial Qi were left as they were, they would eventually return to nature. However, under the power of his One Qi of Destiny, he seemed to have become the center of a tornado while the Primordial Qi around him kept rushing into him like smaller tornadoes.
No one would have believed their eyes if they were given a chance to witness this.
Gu… gu… gu…
His body suddenly began to make all kinds of strange noises as it expanded like a balloon at a speed visible to the naked eye while his meridians were suddenly enlarged several times.
‘Not good! I’ve absorbed too much! I’m too greedy!’
He was horrified to find that under the influx of such a large amount of Primordial Qi, his body’s endurance reached its peak in a very short period of time, and he felt that all his limbs and bones were going to burst!
“Screw it, I’ve never feared death! It’s just the Primordial Qi of hundreds of inferior-grade Primordial Stones. They can’t make me burst!”
His eyes turned red, and his veins and meridians bulged, covering him all over like the tangled branches of an old tree, making him look very horrible!
“Roar!”
“Roar!”
“Roar!”
Suppressed roars burst out of his chest like thunder, then his skin began to crack with blood gushing out of them; even his eyes were bleeding at this point. Yet, his expression was unusually calm, and his eyes were as clear as water.
The chamber suddenly quieted down, and the Primordial Qi that had been swirling madly became slow and began to stop flowing. Yunxiao sat there motionless as if he had lost his life, and even the light in his eyes began to fade slowly.
‘This feeling…Is it really too much for me? Is my body beginning to disintegrate?’
‘What a joke! How is that possible?!’
He jerked his head up and his eyes shone brightly again, as if there were stars exploding in them. Meanwhile, his soul in the Divine Realm Tablet suddenly disappeared, and his divine sense returned to his mind!
“Roar!”
As an unyielding roar burst out of his mouth, his eyes widened, his palms clenched into fists, and his bones crackled! Then, all of a sudden, the quieted down Primordial Qi in the chamber was pulled once again and began to pour crazily into his body!
“Screw you, the realm of the seven-stars warrior! I will run you over like nothing!”
He let out a roar, and then used his powerful divine sense to guide the large amount of Primordial Qi pouring into his body to rush frantically at the bottleneck of the seven-stars realm, slamming at it over and over again like waves. His blood and Qi were boiling as bloody blisters emerged one after another over his skin. He clenched his jaws tightly while all his seven orifices were bleeding profusely!
Boom!
A loud boom thundered in his mind, and he immediately felt relaxed. Meanwhile, a brand-new power poured into his limbs and meridians, making him feel extremely pleasant and comfortable!
“I’ve done it at last! Haha! I’m not dead yet! Haha!”
Yunxiao laughed and his eyes were full of madness. Just now, if he had been unlucky or careless, his body would have exploded and killed him!
But, which one of those martial arts experts was not as crazy as him?
While feeling the power of an eight-stars warrior running through him, Yunxiao’s heart was filled with a lingering fear. He thought to himself that he would never risk his life again like this. He was lucky this time, but it did not mean that he would be as lucky every time. If anything wrong happened even once, he would die instantly.
There was a separate restroom and bathroom in the secret chamber, where he washed the blood off his body and changed into a clean suit. The gashes on his skin also recovered rapidly under the power of his energy.
Just as he was about to continue his meditation and stabilize his cultivation base, someone sent a voice transmission from outside the door, saying that he had something urgent to discuss with him.
He frowned, and his face showed a trace of displeasure and helplessness as he opened the door and walked out.
Standing outside the door was his grandfather. As soon as he saw Yunxiao came out, he smiled awkwardly and cleared his throat, “Well, I really didn’t want to disturb you, but…ah! Ah? You… you… what’s going on? You made it to an eight-stars warrior!” He swallowed what he had meant to say as his eyes grew wide and his mouth opened large enough to fit a watermelon.
Yunxiao frowned and said, “Tell me what is it. If you didn’t disturb me, I was planning to come out after I became a Martial Master.”
“Ahh!”
Li Chunyang was dumbfounded and seemed completely stunned. After all, what he saw was too shocking and incredible. The day before yesterday, Yunxiao had just absorbed the righteous energy of the group of scholars and broken through to the seven-stars realm, but how did he become an eight-stars warrior after only two nights?
How was that possible? Even if Yunxiao took ninth-grade medicinal pills as his meal every day, he still could not have achieved such an absurd result!
If he continued to make progress at this rate, wouldn’t he announce that he had become a Martial Sovereign in a few months?
Yunxiao turned to enter the chamber. “If you have nothing to tell me, I will continue to meditate.”
“Ah! Hold on! I do have something to tell you!”
Li Chunyang grabbed Yunxiao in a hurry. He tried to take the tremendous shock in his heart as an illusion, and only then did he come to his senses. Then, he held his breath and decided not to probe Yunxiao’s strength again, so that he would not lose his composure.
After he had calmed down, he quickly gave a brief account of the matter. It was about the military deployment order; Li Chunyang had not gone to the court.
After the incident of the Three Wises, all the scholars had either retired, returned to their hometowns, or become mad. And all of a sudden, the business of the flower boats along the Qinhuai River became extremely bad.
It angered Kong Renyi so much that he vomited blood and had a high fever. Even so, he asked someone to carry him on a stretcher to the court and called upon all the imperial preceptors from the imperial colleges, waiting for Li Chunyang to give him an explanation. This scared Li Chunyang, and he quickly slipped away when he saw them from a distance. He heard that they were still waiting in the court today and would not give up until he appeared. Out of desperation, he came here and called Yunxiao out.
“Fu*k! They are just a group of weak scholars! What are you afraid of, Grandpa? Kill whoever stands in your way!” said Yunxiao fiercely with a murderous look in his eyes.
After pondering for a moment, Yunxiao’s soul form sat cross-legged down in the Divine Realm Tablet and performed an incantation gesture with both hands, just like his true-self in the outside world. Together, both his forms began to meditate. The difference between them was that his true-self was absorbing the natural Primordial Qi in the outside world while his soul form was condensing soul power in the Divine Realm Tablet. They were meditating at the same time, and even though they were spiritually connected and came from the same origin, they did not distract each other.
“Sure enough, the Laws of the World in here are different!” His eyes lit up and his face beamed with joy as he said excitedly, “It means I can divide myself into two when meditating and cultivate my soul and my flesh at the same time! In this way, even though my cultivating path is tougher than that of others, I can save half the time! Moreover, the Great Expansion Divine Technique can be manifested in the Divine Realm Tablet…With all these combined, my goal of restoring the soul power of a ninth-tier alchemist is no longer so distant!”
It was a hundred times more difficult to cultivate the soul than martial arts. Although Yunxiao had various soul cultivation techniques up his sleeves, there was never a shortcut in the path of the Great Dao.
No matter how good the resources one had, one could not omit hardship and the tempering of time. It was through endless cultivation that a warrior or alchemist could become a hero.
Although Yunxiao still could not understand this Divine Realm Tablet, he was already spiritually connected with it. He knew it was because he was too weak now, and his priority was to increase his strength as soon as possible.
His soul began to cultivate the Great Expansion Divine Technique in the Divine Realm Tablet while his body performed the various strange moves of the Tyrant Body Tempering Technique in the secret chamber. In the meantime, he carefully controlled the gravity force to make himself struggle on the verge of collapse; only in this way could he keep breaking through.
Slowly, he increased the gravity force to thirty-fold, which was the limit he could withstand right now. His muscles and limbs were stretched taut, and he could feel waves of tremendous ache and distending pain coming from them. His soul-form in the tablet felt that too, and it frowned slightly.
Suddenly, a faint light about the size of a bean shot out of the forehead of his true self, and then from within the tablet came flying out ten inferior-grade Primordial Stones, hovering in a row in front of him.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Yunxiao waved his hand with the miniature Black Girl. A beam of golden light flashed through the air, and all ten Primordial Stones exploded in the next instant, causing the natural Primordial Qi in them to spread out like boiling water vapor. The shattered stones turned into colorless powder and scattered within the secret chamber.
“Drain now, One Qi of Destiny!”
He straightened up, and his taut body bounced back to its original form, no longer in the queer posture. Then, he put his palms together and sat down while the pores all over him seemed to open at once. Meanwhile, the millions of cells in him began to breathe as the rich Primordial Qi that filled the secret chamber poured over to him.
His breathing matched the movement of the blood and Qi throughout his body. With an inhale, he drained half of the Primordial Qi contained in the ten Primordial Stones, which was then converted into the purest energy and circulated within him. During the process, more than half of the Primordial Qi would eventually be lost, a small part would be absorbed by his flesh, and what was left would condense and settle down before returning to his dantian through the meridians, becoming a part of his energy.
Yunxiao opened his eyes, and his face was covered with shock and surprise. “Soul, body, and Qi are indeed inextricably linked with each other. With the help of the first two, I was able to absorb about eight inferior-grade Primordial Stones at a time by circulating the One Qi of Destiny. In my previous life when I was at this level, it would be a feat if I could absorb even two at a time.”
His eyes gleamed as he said to himself, “Under the condition of cultivating the three at the same time, I need several times as much Primordial Qi as an average warrior to make a breakthrough, but I also absorb Primordial Qi several times faster. In this way, I’m not in a disadvantageous position. And if I continue to cultivate this way, even the energy of low-stars Martial Masters may not be as vast and pure as mine! By the time I return to the peak of the Nine Heavens Realm, there will be no one on the whole Heavenly Martial Realm that can match my strength!”
With enthusiasm in his eyes, Yunxiao took out handfuls of Primordial Stones and threw them into the air, then kept hitting them with Black Girl. One stone after another exploded, and the concentration of Primordial Qi in the chamber soon was so high that it almost solidified!
“Drain them all, One Qi of Destiny!”
If these Primordial Qi were left as they were, they would eventually return to nature. However, under the power of his One Qi of Destiny, he seemed to have become the center of a tornado while the Primordial Qi around him kept rushing into him like smaller tornadoes.
No one would have believed their eyes if they were given a chance to witness this.
Gu… gu… gu…
His body suddenly began to make all kinds of strange noises as it expanded like a balloon at a speed visible to the naked eye while his meridians were suddenly enlarged several times.
‘Not good! I’ve absorbed too much! I’m too greedy!’
He was horrified to find that under the influx of such a large amount of Primordial Qi, his body’s endurance reached its peak in a very short period of time, and he felt that all his limbs and bones were going to burst!
“Screw it, I’ve never feared death! It’s just the Primordial Qi of hundreds of inferior-grade Primordial Stones. They can’t make me burst!”
His eyes turned red, and his veins and meridians bulged, covering him all over like the tangled branches of an old tree, making him look very horrible!
“Roar!”
“Roar!”
“Roar!”
Suppressed roars burst out of his chest like thunder, then his skin began to crack with blood gushing out of them; even his eyes were bleeding at this point. Yet, his expression was unusually calm, and his eyes were as clear as water.
The chamber suddenly quieted down, and the Primordial Qi that had been swirling madly became slow and began to stop flowing. Yunxiao sat there motionless as if he had lost his life, and even the light in his eyes began to fade slowly.
‘This feeling…Is it really too much for me? Is my body beginning to disintegrate?’
‘What a joke! How is that possible?!’
He jerked his head up and his eyes shone brightly again, as if there were stars exploding in them. Meanwhile, his soul in the Divine Realm Tablet suddenly disappeared, and his divine sense returned to his mind!
“Roar!”
As an unyielding roar burst out of his mouth, his eyes widened, his palms clenched into fists, and his bones crackled! Then, all of a sudden, the quieted down Primordial Qi in the chamber was pulled once again and began to pour crazily into his body!
“Screw you, the realm of the seven-stars warrior! I will run you over like nothing!”
He let out a roar, and then used his powerful divine sense to guide the large amount of Primordial Qi pouring into his body to rush frantically at the bottleneck of the seven-stars realm, slamming at it over and over again like waves. His blood and Qi were boiling as bloody blisters emerged one after another over his skin. He clenched his jaws tightly while all his seven orifices were bleeding profusely!
Boom!
A loud boom thundered in his mind, and he immediately felt relaxed. Meanwhile, a brand-new power poured into his limbs and meridians, making him feel extremely pleasant and comfortable!
“I’ve done it at last! Haha! I’m not dead yet! Haha!”
Yunxiao laughed and his eyes were full of madness. Just now, if he had been unlucky or careless, his body would have exploded and killed him!
But, which one of those martial arts experts was not as crazy as him?
While feeling the power of an eight-stars warrior running through him, Yunxiao’s heart was filled with a lingering fear. He thought to himself that he would never risk his life again like this. He was lucky this time, but it did not mean that he would be as lucky every time. If anything wrong happened even once, he would die instantly.
There was a separate restroom and bathroom in the secret chamber, where he washed the blood off his body and changed into a clean suit. The gashes on his skin also recovered rapidly under the power of his energy.
Just as he was about to continue his meditation and stabilize his cultivation base, someone sent a voice transmission from outside the door, saying that he had something urgent to discuss with him.
He frowned, and his face showed a trace of displeasure and helplessness as he opened the door and walked out.
Standing outside the door was his grandfather. As soon as he saw Yunxiao came out, he smiled awkwardly and cleared his throat, “Well, I really didn’t want to disturb you, but…ah! Ah? You… you… what’s going on? You made it to an eight-stars warrior!” He swallowed what he had meant to say as his eyes grew wide and his mouth opened large enough to fit a watermelon.
Yunxiao frowned and said, “Tell me what is it. If you didn’t disturb me, I was planning to come out after I became a Martial Master.”
“Ahh!”
Li Chunyang was dumbfounded and seemed completely stunned. After all, what he saw was too shocking and incredible. The day before yesterday, Yunxiao had just absorbed the righteous energy of the group of scholars and broken through to the seven-stars realm, but how did he become an eight-stars warrior after only two nights?
How was that possible? Even if Yunxiao took ninth-grade medicinal pills as his meal every day, he still could not have achieved such an absurd result!
If he continued to make progress at this rate, wouldn’t he announce that he had become a Martial Sovereign in a few months?
Yunxiao turned to enter the chamber. “If you have nothing to tell me, I will continue to meditate.”
“Ah! Hold on! I do have something to tell you!”
Li Chunyang grabbed Yunxiao in a hurry. He tried to take the tremendous shock in his heart as an illusion, and only then did he come to his senses. Then, he held his breath and decided not to probe Yunxiao’s strength again, so that he would not lose his composure.
After he had calmed down, he quickly gave a brief account of the matter. It was about the military deployment order; Li Chunyang had not gone to the court.
After the incident of the Three Wises, all the scholars had either retired, returned to their hometowns, or become mad. And all of a sudden, the business of the flower boats along the Qinhuai River became extremely bad.
It angered Kong Renyi so much that he vomited blood and had a high fever. Even so, he asked someone to carry him on a stretcher to the court and called upon all the imperial preceptors from the imperial colleges, waiting for Li Chunyang to give him an explanation. This scared Li Chunyang, and he quickly slipped away when he saw them from a distance. He heard that they were still waiting in the court today and would not give up until he appeared. Out of desperation, he came here and called Yunxiao out.
“Fu*k! They are just a group of weak scholars! What are you afraid of, Grandpa? Kill whoever stands in your way!” said Yunxiao fiercely with a murderous look in his eyes.
