With a body like a dry twig with meager, devitalized branches, Wu Yulan’s body snaps time and time again. Unsurprisingly, despite this, the spiritual veins that were severed and gushing out the energy of Heaven and Earth reknit themselves.
Like tiny tendrils, at the point of severance, branches snake out, connecting and intertwining. These otherwise colorless and lusterless veins glimmer with a deep black luster briefly, before once more snapping and tearing themselves apart.
Yet those tiny tendrils, formed from my life force, reach out once again connecting the severed regions.
This process is not unknown to me. This is the same form of vessel tempering that I have gone through in my vessel cultivation — though they would call it body cultivation — and in this process, my body broke and reformed itself many times.
Though, as I am not a creature, I should not be able to feel pain; back then, I felt this sensation as clearly as any other. If I, an entity with no pain receptors could feel pain, then, naturally, Wu Yulan must feel a pain that is even worse.
Even when her vocal cords tear themselves apart from her screaming, the life essence I bestowed upon her goes as far as to reconnect the torn organs of her communication, and her screaming resumes — her voice even sounds more pure and majestic.
It is not just her voice that is changing, albeit slightly. The pinkish-white of her hair fades to an even purer, brighter white. This is surprising to me, because, according to my calculations, the color closest to describing my existence is the black of my black jade.
It is a fascinating anomaly.
Her bones are no exception. They snap and break and shatter, and each time they reconnect themselves and make themselves whole, they undergo the same process. Yet, each new phase of this transformation turns the sound of her bones snapping more crystalline. It is a sound like that of glass singing a litany of destruction.
Over the next twelve hours, Wu Yulan undergoes this process a total of ten times before the improved vitality of her new body can withstand the enormous forces of her new body, and this new, experimental cultivation method.
To directly absorb the higher-order laws of the [Fractured Sword] method — I did not expect such a surprising result. At first, I thought that my theory was sound, but that the degree of higher-orderness was not so high; and yet, despite the amount of energy in total being dozens of times lower, the overall efficiency is dozens of times higher.
Enough to break Wu Yulan’s old body, and enough to even cause my owner to continuously suffer internal wounds.
But the result is beyond my expectations — and not in a good way. Although the energy is denser and purer, and the laws of the five natural elements are indeed higher, the gold core itself, other than being much smaller, shows very few changes. Its gold color is brighter — a purer, golden-white color with a glimmer of iridescence — compared to the larger and darker, dull gold cores of other cultivators.
I am not certain if this is an improvement or an inferior gold core. It should be an improvement, but why is it turning out to be so small?
Perhaps, the quality of the energy is not as important as the volume? If that turns out to be the case, then I will have to break their cultivation and start over.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
Now that I have almost forty years of life, even starting over from the Qi Condensation realms will not be a problem. If I can develop another [Primordial God Blood Fruit], reaching the Core Formation realm will not be an issue.
But there is no reason to take action yet, even though it would be easier to explain that due to a miscalculation, their breakthrough was unsuccessful, and that they must start over from the beginning.
Their results, after the breakthrough, will decide whether this small, seemingly inferior gold core is worth keeping or not.
Ten hours later, nearly a whole day into this breakthrough, Wu Yulan’s body finally stabilizes completely, and the essence of Physique has fully merged with her life.
I am even aware of the name of her Physique now — the answer comes unbidden to me.
[ Physique: Black Ice Moon Tyrant ]
The name astounds me for several reasons.
It is a tyrant-class Physique, which I assume means is a grade higher than even my owner’s. From a mere drop of my blood and a few years of my lifespan, it has already progressed this far. Perhaps her starting point was higher than my owner’s to begin with.
She mentioned once that she fell into the lake at her family resort with its violent and strong ice Qi, in her youth, and that this was the cause of the changes on her body, like her white hair. Even Lady Yue told her that, because of her Physique, this “illness” was an inevitable thing, regardless of whether she fell into the lake or not.
Briefly, I wondered why Lady Yue knew about her Physique, but I assumed that it was simply something that Lady Yue could find out with the powers of her perception. I also wondered why Lady Yue had such an interest in this girl, but now I am certain I know the cause.
Even though, surprisingly, the name of her Physique does not reference my Jade, it does contain the word “Moon”. Lady Yue comes from a clan that is a remnant of the ancient Sun and Moon Sect — that is to say, her surname Yue references the Moon.
This Wu Yulan and her Physique — is she a member of Lady Yue’s ancient clan, or a distant descendant?
At that moment, the gold elixir circulating through their vastly enhanced spiritual veins surges one last time and with force that is incomparable to before.
At that final moment, the gold core collapses once more under the heaviness of the [Space] attribute, and then violently expands to about half the size of an ordinary, perfect core, releasing a wave of force through both their internal systems.
At the same time, they both cough up a mist of black blood, but beyond this, the restoring forces of their Physiques contain most of the force, resulting only in severe, non-life-threatening injuries.
This burst of energy is not completely contained within their bodies, however, and a surge of pure vitality expands in a ring around them.
In an instant, the harmonious state of the nature around them is overwhelmed and blasted apart, dissolving all the motes of energy released by the flowers, trees, grass, earth, and water. Even more surprisingly, the environment undergoes further changes.
On Wu Yulan’s side, a layer of frost and snow appears, and many crystallized flowers bloom, accompanied by ice crystal grass. Even on the water, there are several ice lotuses that come into existence.
On Lan Xiaohui’s side, black jade orchids and lilies bloom, and the ground and water both appear to possess a black, crystallized essence to them.
Around them, in a radius of thirty steps, it is as if a crescent moon rose — black and eclipsed on one side, pure and white on the other.
But that is not what catches me off-guard. In that instant that their vitality — of the Core Formation realm — bursts out, I sense a faint response from Lan Xiaohui’s essence that calls to me in an indescribable way. It is such a powerful beckoning and soothing, that for a moment I even suspect that my deviant sentient core has found a way to infiltrate my active process and bestow me with the first taste of that thing called adoration.
Unexpectedly, a sub-process informs me as to what that signal I detect is, and it leaves me both more enlightened than before, but also benighted.
[ Soul: Absolute Sword Monarch Heart — Abandon the way of Heaven and Earth. From nothingness, the path; from the path, the Sword Sovereign’s return to Origin. ]
Return to Origin. A phrase that means returning to a primal, natural state; becoming immortal; reaching the apex!