Two cauldrons, each a heavy bronze, burst into existence behind them.
It was at this moment that Tie Lang and Jia Yan knew they were both at the 1st Duan Cauldron Forging realm.
****
“We…!”
[Steady yourselves young ones!]
The Destiny Scale’s divine intent rang out once more to keep Jia Yan and Tie Lang from jumping up in joy and breaking their momentum.
This situation was still dangerous for the two. After all, the fire-attributed spiritual energy was still rampaging within the barrier like a berserk dragon!
The Destiny Scale was an ardent believer that only danger would be able to truly stimulate one’s potential.
This was evident by the way Jia Yan and Tie Lang were both able to not only charge right into the bottleneck separating them from the Cauldron Forging realm, but to break through it in one go bringing their first cauldron into the world.
[Take the opportunity to ameliorate your cauldron! The moment when it has just been created is its most vulnerable moment and is now much easier to upgrade!]
Hearing this, Jia Yan and Tie Lang took this moment to calm themselves and control their breathing.
[Now drive the cultivation technique and direct the fire-attributed spiritual energy towards your cauldrons.]
The Destiny Scale urged the fire-attributed spiritual energy towards the three disciples with relentless ferocity.
However, the fire-attributed spiritual energy didn’t cause them as much pain as it did in the beginning.
This was because their cultivation base had taken a leap forward, pushing their body to new tenacious levels. They could now more easily handle the situation where before they were only barely hanging on by a thread.
‘The fire-attributed spiritual energy within this area is thinning out. I need to move these disciples closer to the volcano. I will let the keyholder know and make movements.’
…
Some distance away, atop a small peak, sat a solitary figure like a wise sage.
Heavenly levyance tribulation lightning was crackling all over his body. Nine black cauldrons spun slowly behind the figure as pearls lodged within the notch of each cauldron shone with a brilliant light.
The figure’s body shuddered for a moment before it returned to a moment of stillness. Who else could it be but Long Di?
The moment he had shuddered was his reacting to the message that the Destiny Scale transmitted to him. They were still connected all the same, so it was easy for them to communicate if needed.
‘I’ll need to find them soon, but we have a little less than a month here, so I need to use this time to really get my cultivation method to an acceptable level. Now, how… how can I have my body contain more tribulation lightning?’
Clouds had long gathered overhead at Long Di’s location. This was the phenomenon of Long Di’s cultivation technique being driven.
Long Di’s consciousness had descended to his own inner world where his dantian was located.
This was a different location from his mind sea. The Destiny Scale had been here when it was refining the tribulation lightning energy for itself before going to his mind sea.
Now that he thought about it, that Destiny Scale was just going where it wanted without consent in Long Di’s body.
‘This must have been how Shen Ling and Feng Yu felt when I put my tribulation lightning inside of them.’
Long Di eventually put these thoughts behind him as he stared intently at his dantian. It was spherical in shape and rippled as if it was composed of condensed water.
His consciousness drifted to his dantian as he placed a hand on it. It was soft to the touch, but his hand couldn’t go any further. Even though it felt like he should be able to push through, some force disallowed this.
What he knew for sure was that the dantian would be able to accommodate more spiritual qi the more his cultivation base increased. However, it wasn’t enough to satisfy him at the moment.
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‘As I light more pearls, I’ll be able to store, hold and use more tribulation lightning since my cultivation increased, but it still drained me to use one attack that I myself created. So I need another way.’
He stared at his dantian in complete silence before he came to a decision. ‘Maybe the problem isn’t in here.’
In the real world, his eyes opened and confusion pervaded them as he thought about how to go about solving this issue.
With a change of thought, Long Di compelled his cauldrons to revolve around him instead of staying behind him like they normally did.
It was for no other reason than he was bored and he liked inspecting them from time to time.
"I wonder why my cauldrons never change to reflect my special-grade physique?"
This was a good question, another aspect about special grade physiques was that they came with their own types of cauldron outside of the normal ranking. So even though Long Di's black cauldrons were nowhere to be found on the current ranking, he could somehow feel that it was still in line with said ranking but that most likely no one had ever gone this far to bring their cauldrons to this level.
They revolved around him slowly as he stared back, watching the pearls that were inlaid in each cauldron glisten with a resplendent light.
The pearls pulsated with pure spiritual essence aside from the one that shone grey light to indicate it being lit. This was his first Star Core.
As it revolved, it disappeared from view, to be replaced by the others. After a while, Long Di was completely mesmerised by his cauldrons and pearls as they commanded his attention. It was really miraculous how in the future they would be used to bring his cauldron to the next level.
Suddenly, his eyes narrowed, and he stared at the cauldrons with more scrutiny. To be more specific, he was looking at the pearls within each cauldron.
Like a flash of lightning, inspiration struck him, and it struck hard.
"Why did I never think of this!?"
Not wasting any more time, Long Di’s consciousness sunk back into his body. He looked at his dantian suspended in a place of darkness and ran his cultivation method according to his will.
‘I am so glad that Master didn’t let me set it in stone by naming it. Anyway, let’s see if this works.’
Long Di stretched out his hand and drove all the spiritual qi in his body to accumulate at a random spot some distance away from his dantian.
Long Di’s expression became seve… well, it didn’t change, but he would like for it to be severe and that is an ‘A’ for effort.
After this, using his spiritual force, he condensed the spiritual qi until it turned into a sort of pseudo-crystallised orb, around the same size as his dantian from out the outside.
‘Success,’ Long Di was elated to see this happen when a bout of drowsiness took him.
This pseudo-crysta orbl was the accumulation of Long Di’s entire spiritual qi as a 1st Star Core Martial Master, this was why he was so tired suddenly.
What Long Di was doing was creating a whole other dantian.
In other words, when Long Di fills his primary dantian once more with spiritual qi and this new dantian, he will have twice the spiritual qi of other experts at his level in the Core Flame Evocation realm.
The reason why he was tired instead of having access to this spiritual qi was because it was just a clump of spiritual qi outside his dantian. Not only that, but it was also a shell, if anything else, it wasn’t actually filled with spiritual qi. Long Di had to use his entire spiritual qi just to make it.
He would also need to integrate this pseudo-crystallised form of spiritual qi into his cultivation technique so it would automatically feed it and his dantian going forward. The connection process of this new crystal dantian to his cultivation technique was the complicated part, but Long Di was sure he would be able to get that done given enough time.
What really flew into Long Di’s mind at this moment was, why have one core, when you can have nine? He didn’t want too much as he could only imagine the headache he would have come normal cultivation time when he needed to advance.
So Long Di used the better part of a day to create nine perfect pseudo-crystallised cores of spiritual qi.
They all hovered around his dantian like the stars praising the moon. It was truly a beautiful sight. He wished that this was all he had to do to make it work, but sadly, this was not the case.
If he just left them as is, he would need to spend his spiritual force to constantly keep them in this pseudo-crystallised state and that was not economical. Making them a part of the cultivation technique would be much better since it would do all the work for him once it was completed,and he was sure they would be treated like actual dantians, providing him with spiritual qi to use.
‘Alright, let’s get to it.’
So Long Di ran his cultivation method once more and began the integration process of all nine cores.
Everything was going well. He could actually feel these cores becoming a part of his own spiritual qi reserves.
He started to feel a bit proud of himself again. This was the second time in his life. ‘I’m pretty smart. Dare I say, a genius?’
As soon as he thought this, the integration process of all nine cores suddenly became chaotic!
Vrrrm!
He drove the remains of his spiritual force to keep it under control, but nothing he did worked!
Seeing that this was a losing battle… and that he was now out of spiritual force, he stopped fighting it. This was going to hurt, but eh, what could he do?
He simply looked at the energy of the cores becoming more unstable and asked himself a very relevant question. ‘Was genius too strong a word?’
Boom!