That afternoon, Leon meditated on his sleeping bag while the girls got to work butchering the panthers. He could’ve helped them, but they were far better at carving an animal than he was. They’d been hunting with their uncle since they were kids, after all, meaning he would just get in their way and waste a bunch of meat due to his lack of expertise.

That left him to process the last of a Marrow Tempering Pill. He’d taken one of each pill the day they found the jar of Absolute Lifeblood, the energy in the pill only being used up now despite a week of trying to absorb it. The pills were simply jam-packed with nourishing essences, and because of that, the effects on his cultivation were tremendous.

Despite being a good way through Muscle Forging, Leon’s entire body was being elevated by one pill. There were the obvious benefits, such as his marrow getting richer and the effects of his previous cultivation becoming more potent, but there were also other unexpected gains. For example, his Qi flowed much more easily through his body. Even Strengthen was more efficient now, his flesh using less Qi to maintain the same level of enhancement.

The only problem was that the pill was too effective. Every gap in his bones, flaw in an organ, or blemish on his skin had been fixed. Now there was nothing left to do, meaning there was a ton of foreign essences bouncing around his mind, body, and spirit that couldn’t be used up. They were like tiny grains of starlight lingering in his blood and Qi, each one hunting for a flaw or gap in his cultivation that no longer existed.

The only way to absorb them now was if he strained himself or broke something. Their energy would sink into the damaged areas, working hard to repair and refine the new flaws. It made sense when Leon thought about it. When put under tremendous strain, the weakest parts of the body would obviously become injured first. And now that he had been brutalised in combat, his flesh, channels, and mind could absorb more of the essence.

Leon sped up the process by guiding the essences around his body. The flakes of silver starlight were practically shoved into his bones, the limited blood flow doing nothing to stop the changes. They swept through like a cleansing tide, filling in gaps and building him up stronger by the time they died out, leaving him stronger than he was moments before.

The same event occurred all over Leon’s body. His neurons were regrown into more efficient patterns, his muscle strands were evened out and balanced, and his nerves were thickened to allow for efficient signal transduction. The effects were incredibly subtle as the pill enhanced his cultivation, but they all stacked up to bring him closer to perfection.

Finally, the last of the three perfect pills was used up. Without its essence possibly interfering, Leon could use the Boundless Spirit Nectar without fear that it would create some adverse reaction and turn him into little chunks of meat around the forest. If even the System didn’t know what an alchemical reagent would do, he would take as many precautions as he could to not mess something up. Having foreign energies rampaging through his mind, body, spirit, and soul was a good reason to wait before using the nectar.

Now, however, he didn’t have to worry about that.

The Tiger Soul Pill and the Origin Cleansing Pill were also gone from his system. He had used one of each, the Origin Cleansing pill working its magic in less than a day while the Tiger Soul Pill had disappeared into his soul after transmuting a few mushrooms. The strain on his mind had been tremendous. He was technically destroying mental barriers with his own consciousness, the metaphysical battle using up a lot of soul force that only came back purer and more potent when it regenerated.

Now he was consuming an elixir that was unique all throughout the multiverse. Leon pulled out the round bottle. It was both warm and cold in his hand, the chaotic mixture doing whatever it pleased inside the glass. Part of it was bright orange, most likely denoting the magma essence, while the other was pure white. That was obviously the snow essence.

In the middle, however, was a rainbow liquid that even the System didn’t seem to know much about besides its ability to evolve a person’s spirit. The conflicting essences had merged into this new power due to its host, a mutated Snow Pea plant.

He’d fought about who should take the elixir for nearly the entire week since they left the basement. The Boundless Spirit Nectar was Sophia’s treasure. Bai Wei had specifically made it for her to consume, but Sophia refused to budge on the issue. She simply didn’t need it. Her fighting style was designed to bridge the gap between her and the enemy. Once connected, she could attack them using a mixture of soul force, willpower, and dream Qi, effectively making all of her fights mental battles.

The most important treasures for her were the Memory of a Tainted Dream elixir and the Tiger Soul Pills. A stronger spirit wouldn’t have been very useful due to her main focus being mental and soul abilities. Sure, it wouldn’t have hurt, but she thought that it would be most useful for him, so it was only fair and logical that he was the one to use it. Not to mention that he was ahead of them in the strength department, meaning that the stronger he became, the safer they would all be.

Leon pulled off the cork and swallowed the mixture in one go.

It was like drinking a cup liquid nitrogen sprinkled with molten ash. Despite not wasting any time in trying to absorb it, the mixture raged inside his stomach. He slowly pulled it into his dantian with great difficulty. The two essences alternated between burning and freezing him, the intensity of the reactions growing until he finally brought it all into his dantian.

The mixture came alive as it mixed with his Qi. The rainbow liquid disappeared into the walls of his dantian without much issue, but the magma and snow essence didn’t go down as easily, the two of them clashing like raging deities. Every second, the mixture grew in power. It made Leon wonder if he would suddenly explode until the essences began to spill out of his dantian.

It appeared that magma and snow essence simply couldn’t exist in the same space. That meant one of them had to go, and it looked like the magma was easier to move than ice. Tides of fire rushed out of his stomach as the snow essence remained in place. White energy filled his dantian like a snowball, making him involuntarily shiver despite a wave of distilled magma surging through his channels.

As the wave of orange essence rushed out of his dantian, his channels were stretched so much that they cracked and burned, destroying everything in its wake. When the tide reached the boundaries of his spirit, the magma seared into it with the fiery vengeance of a wild animal that refused to be trapped. Leon had been sure it would pop his spirit at some point, but that never happened, the tide rebounding as it flowed back towards his dantian.

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Leon didn’t try to restrain the two forces. He allowed the wave of magma to slam into his dantian, the essence forcing its way in with a vengeance. The two powers clashed for a moment before the magma took over. Without enough space, the snow essence suddenly began to leak out, flowing through his damaged channels like cold water over a burn.

His channels stretched and cracked to the point of collapse, the ice forced them to shrink back down. The damage was also patched up with pure spiritual essence. The notification had mentioned it being used to dull the intensity of the nectar. The cracks in his channels were full of the stuff, blue lines weaving through his spirit like scars. Leon was worried if it was permanent until the ice came back and clashed with the magma in his dantian.

The magma was once more forced out so that it could be replaced by the snow essence, and as the fire burned and stretched his channels again, Leon was shocked to find the lines of spiritual essence gone. Once the magma swept past, his channels were left thicker and wider, not to mention completely healed as the spiritual essence was melted and absorbed.

It took a few minutes of spectating for Leon to notice that the white and orange essences were shrinking. The conflict was transforming the magma and snow into more of the unique rainbow essence. The reason he didn’t notice until now was that the rainbow essence would be absorbed by his spirit almost instantly. He only caught a brief glimpse of the newly formed rainbow droplet before the stuff just vanished.

Of course, the reactions became more violent as the essences were transformed and absorbed. That left him to experience countless cycles of his spirit burning and freezing. The pain did gradually decrease each time, his channels growing stronger and wider every cycle, but they would never fully adapt since the level of strain was constantly increasing.

What that meant was Leon’s channels were improving with every cycle of fire and ice.

This effect didn’t stop growing until the last trace of magma and snow clashed and transformed, leaving his Qi speckled with countless rainbow flakes of power. Leon sighed in relief as his spirit calmed down. His dantian ached and his channels throbbed, leaving him reeling like he had been through a five-day boxing match against a gorilla.

With nothing to do, he lay down on his sleeping bag and let the rainbow essence do its work.

As the last flake of rainbow essence disappeared, he looked over himself with awe. Leon marvelled at the changes to his spirit. His Qi, channels, dantian, spiritual boundaries, all of them were reforged; tempered by the power of the elixir. There were even subtle changes that he couldn’t fully quantify.

His spirit was more orderly, the magma forcefully carving out new, more efficient channels while the ice sealed up any redundant pathways. It wasn’t that big of a difference, but as Leon cycled his Qi, it flowed much more efficiently throughout his spiritual body. While the improvement wouldn’t save him more than a tenth of a second at using a skill, it might end up being the difference between living and dying one day.

The fact that the change was a side effect made it even more incredible.

Everything to do with his channels was a side effect of the two essences clashing, after all. His dantian had also been improved from the clashing, its walls thick and pure like glass. The Qi he produced now was so much better that he hesitated to call it the same name, but he wasn’t completely certain if that was due to the rainbow essences he absorbed, the clashing, or both.

Leon opened up his notifications, excited to see what the system had to say about his changes.

[Lesser Spiritual Tribulation: You have faced a life-ending tribulation and survived. Despite the extreme danger, the very foundations of your spiritual body have been reforged by this calamity, transforming and evolving it beyond that of your racial peers. +5% to Spirit.]

Leon focused on the first word of the title. The ‘lesser’ prefix implied that there were greater tribulations he could face. What could be more special than drinking a unique elixir that literally exploded inside his most vulnerable spiritual organ? Or maybe it wasn’t about severity but the effect, meaning he had to do something like this again to compound the effect.

Shaking his head, Leon smiled at the awesome gains. Five percent wasn’t that big a difference, but with the recent changes to his spirit, it was probably equivalent to a thirty percent buff when quantified with raw numbers. The elixir itself was just that amazing. His very foundations were reforged, evolving his spirit on a fundamental level that made it far superior to a regular human.

Leon wouldn’t be upgrading that for a while so he looked at the other titles.

[Ascended III: Go beyond the limits of man. +4% to all stats.]

[Tempered: Evolve two or more aspects of your spirit. +5% to Spirit.]

Ascended had upgraded and he’d also gained a new title. Just like Leon’s mind, his spirit had evolved twice, the effect granting him the new title and upgrading his old one twice. Most likely more since it had fundamentally evolved. He wasn’t even completely sure what the rainbow essence had done either, the effects much more subdued than his channels being ripped apart and healed again and again.

Leon closed his notifications and moved on.

Curious about the changes, Leon hopped up and walked over to a tree. It was scarred by the Sundering Strike he used to cut the branch off the tree. The half of the Qi Slash that didn’t hit the branch had crashed into the trunk, slicing into its bark. Now he could compare the upgrade to his spirit with a real-life example.

Leon cycled his Qi, the power thundering through his channels faster than he expected. It was harder to control now. Thicker, more potent, and with more Qi to control due to his widened channels, he had quite a hard time adjusting at first. Luckily, his soul had been nourished by the Tiger Soul Pill, and after a few minutes of making mistakes, he had no problem guiding the potent Qi cascading throughout his channels.

Drawing the sword at his waist, Leon prepared a Sundered Strike. His Qi surged into the blade faster than before, and by the time the technique was ready, half of the blade was still in its sheath. He never imagined that the timing would be so different, but it was better to be too fast than too slow.

Slashing his sword, a solid arc of Qi flew out from the edge. The technique was the same size as before. Leon had controlled the amount of Qi he used, meaning the only difference between the two attacks was the density, potency, and purity of his Qi.

As Leon expected, the blade crashed into the tree like an axe. It didn’t even break apart after digging into the trunk with a thud. Leon had to drop the technique for it to collapse, allowing it to break down into a faint mist before fading into nothing. He wondered if it could break into shards if it pierced one of those panthers. Being able to tear them up from the inside would be interesting, but he would have to maintain his control over the shards and reduce his available skills to two if he intended to keep them lodged inside of them.

It would likely take him months of training with the puzzle box to control four skills at once, so that was off the table for the foreseeable future.

Then again, what if he could make the shards explode?