Chapter 153 - Flesh Core Extraction Formation

Aside from the Qi refining cultivation base, Yaan now possessed all of the required cultivation components to form the Vital Qi Core. However, he first needed to remove his current Vital Core before forming the Vital Qi Core, but he also needed to regress his Vital Energy cultivation in order to step onto the Qi refining path once again.

Now that he was in possession of all five progressive body constitutions at the Obsidian Rank, Yaan was able to completely turn away from body cultivation for now, finally returning his attention to something that he had longed for ever since he was 12 years old; Qi refining!

Yaan’s Vital Energy cultivation was at the Late 4-Star Realm, but he didn’t need to raise it any further. In fact, it was unnecessary to build up his cultivation to this extent in the first place. His Vital Energy had risen as a consequence of training in the Grey Mist Pressure Chamber, he never sought this out. That said, it would have some use…

Because now, Yaan was going to remove his Vital Core! When he attempted to form the Vital Qi Core, this Vital Core would be an excellent supplementary medicine, since it contained his own Vital Energy and could be used with 100% efficiency with almost no negative side effects.

As for the method he would use to remove his Vital Core, there were two reasonable choices. Unfortunately, the first possibility was cut down by the Immortal Ancestor without mercy as soon as Yaan brought it up.

“I won’t directly help you to remove your Vital Core. That said, if there is another method you have in mind, I will provide you with assistance such that you are able to help yourself.”

Yaan sighed, feeling somewhat dejected by how this person seemed to randomly choose when to help him, and when to refuse his requests.

It would be perfect if the Immortal Ancestor could just extract Yaan’s Vital Core himself. The removal of the Vital Core was dangerous, to put it lightly. Typically, the removal of one’s own Vital Core would result in immediate death. It was like a mortal trying to cut out their own heart, there was simply no way to survive something so extreme under ordinary circumstances.

However, even a mortal could survive for some time if a cultivator doctor used certain methods to remove their heart. Similarly, Yaan’s chances of survival, and his ability to recover quickly afterwards, would be hugely improved if an immortal just did it for him.

Clearly this idea was just wishful thinking, so Yaan had no choice but to go with the method that he originally intended to use.

Again, this method was taught to him by the Spirit Plane Lord.

It was another formation, one even more complex than the Golden Sage Runic Formation. The formation that Yaan would be using this time was called the Flesh Core Extraction Formation. This formation was originally developed for use on demonic and spirit beasts as a way to extract their cores without causing any damage to the core itself. Such a method could only be attempted on captured, live demonic beasts. However, the formation was eventually adapted for use by body tempering cultivators who wanted to regress their cultivation.

This method was not only used by those who wanted to cultivate the Four Paths Cultivation Technique; there were other reasons to cripple your own cultivation, though almost all of these reasons involved stepping onto a different path of cultivation.

Yaan recalled everything that he knew about the Flesh Core Extraction Formation as he laid out the many resources before him. All of these resources were given to him by the Immortal Ancestor, who seemed to have an endless supply of all sorts of resources contained within his spatial ring.

Many of these resources were those used in the refinement of body tempering medicines…Yaan had a feeling that this immortal could definitely obtain those medicines for him, but simply chose not to do so. Anyway, the golden elixir and the Grey Mist Pressure Chamber were superior to any typical medicines, so this made some degree of sense.

Again, like before, the Immortal Ancestor gave Yaan only one set of materials, stating that if he failed to create this formation and lost the materials in the process, he would not replenish what was lost.

Yaan asked, should he make a blunder and destroy an essential resource during his building of this complex formation, would he be permitted to leave and procure those resources for himself…the Immortal Ancestor gave an extremely unsatisfactory answer, saying, ‘perhaps, perhaps not’.

With this in mind, Yaan would need to be excruciatingly careful and therefore exceedingly slow in his creation of this formation. There was no guarantee that he would be able to recover any resources if they were lost, so he was forced to waste a large amount of time just to protect the more common and inexpensive materials.

Whenever he built a formation, Yaan had developed the habit of laying out every material neatly in front of him, then spending an hour or so picturing in his mind where everything would go, all the connections he would build, and how the final product would look. By visualising the process of building the formation, he found that he made fewer mistakes when it came to carrying out the construction itself.

And so, after completing his visualisation preparation, Yaan began.

There were over 3,000 components in this formation. This was a large amount, especially for a formation which had an effect that only affected a single individual sitting within the formation. Typically, formations with this sort of use were not as complex compared to territory protecting formations which had multiple effects like offence, defence, detection and so on.

There was a reason for the formation’s complexity - the Flesh Core Extraction Formation also produced multiple effects.

This formation would pierce into his chest, connect to his body, then slowly and methodically cut away the connections between his Vital Core and his body, before finally extracting the core. However, even after doing everything perfectly like this, the user would still be left in an extremely tentative state after their cultivation regressed and their body readjusted to its new-found lack of a core.

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The formation would help to stabilise Yaan’s condition whilst also providing him with a significant healing effect. This effect was specifically tailored towards assisting with the recovery following the Vital Core’s removal.

Without the formation, if Yaan tried to remove his own core, there was a 95% chance that he would die from the injury, but even if he survived, there was another 95% chance that he would die later on.

With the formation, the chance of dying from the initial shock was less than 5%. The chances of dying during the following period of recovery was much higher, around 20%.

Of course, these were merely Yaan’s own estimations and deductions, he had no way of knowing for sure. Even so, it was obvious that he needed to build this formation, and why he was willing to spend a full month on setting it up perfectly.

After one month of arranging his most complex formation to date, Yaan felt thoroughly exhausted. He spent three days resting properly, sleeping and meditating to relax both his mind and body, before he turned back towards the formation with a gleam in his eyes.

The formation was shaped like a triangular pyramid. The pyramid emitted a blood red light, filling the Grey Mist Pressure Chamber with a sturdy bloody aura. It looked like a powerful treasure as it sat imposingly in this hall. It was truly quite impressive, to the extent that Yaan felt quite satisfied with his progression in the art of formations.

Yaan walked towards the pyramid, then stopped just beside its front face. He placed one palm onto a golden rune on this face, then injected his Vital Energy.

This formation was designed to be operated using Vital Energy. Yaan would not be able to continue operating the formation during and after the extraction of his Vital Core, and for this reason, it used multiple Rank 5 beast cores as a power source. The injection of Vital Energy allowed Yaan to control the formation, connecting his body to the formation, whilst opening up a gateway in the front face of the pyramid.

Yaan walked inside and disappeared within. For any other Foundation Step cultivator, it would be impossible to see into the pyramid without using some sort of spell. Even then, only those at the Spirit Core Realm and above would be able to achieve this. The formation did not actively seek to conceal the person within, but the natural bloody light emanated by the pyramid caused this to be the case regardless.

Of course, the immortal just outside of the pyramid did not need to do anything special to see within, he could easily see past this bloody light without making any effort at all. Yaan still did not understand how it was that immortals seemed to possess such shocking innate abilities, transcending all Foundation Step cultivators by such a large margin, but really, all Foundation Step cultivators felt this same clueless intrigue towards immortals.

After making his way into the centre of the pyramid formation, Yaan sat down and stretched out his two arms to either side. He sat like this with his eyes closed for some time, before finally, his eyes shot open. He took a deep breath, then with a ferocious glint in his gaze, he clenched his fists shut, initiating the formation’s activation!

Vrrr…

The activation of the formation was not very loud, but the faint buzzing sound that droned in his ears let Yaan know that the formation was now active. Now that it had been activated, it would not stop until the removal of his core and his subsequent recovery were completed.

The red pyramid started to rotate slowly. After ten rotations passed by, red chains began to shoot from the inside of the formation, wrapping around Yaan’s body. Before long, Yaan was entirely encased within a cocoon of red chains.

The chains started glowing with an increasingly powerful lustre. As the glowing built up, the chains rotated around Yaan’s body, eventually forming a small opening at the centre of his chest.

CHI!

Yaan stiffened due to the sudden pain, but he was thoroughly held in place right now so he couldn’t actually move much. Still, the piercing sensation that penetrated his chest was quite shocking due to the complete lack of warning, but he quickly calmed down and tried to relax.

Whilst the red pole that shot out from the pyramid and imbedded itself deep into Yaan’s chest looked imposing, it had not yet touched his Vital Core, nor any of the core’s connections to the rest of the body.

But after the red pole stabbed into Yaan, it began to release a continual stream of extremely thin, almost invisible red chains. The chains were so small that they were impossible for mortals to see with the naked eye, but a cultivator could perhaps use a spell to observe them.

If an outsider was to look into Yaan’s body just as the Immortal Ancestor was doing right now, they would see countless red chains stretching out, digging through Yaan’s flesh and tunnelling towards and around his Vital Core.

This process was just as uncomfortable as it sounded.

The individual chains were so tiny that on their own, they would not hurt much. However, after an hour passed by, there were now thousands of these chains drilling through Yaan’s body, making him feel as if an ant nest had been implanted into his chest. It was extremely itchy, not to mention unnerving since Yaan knew that these chains were currently wrapping around every single vital connection between his Vital Core and his body.

Five days flew by.

At this point, not only the outside of Yaan’s body found itself encased in chains, the inside of his body was also the same. His entire Vital Core was contained within a red cage, whilst every blood vessel, both major and minor connecting to the core, was now wrapped up and pierced through by the small chains.

Whenever one of the tiny chains pierced these connections close to his Vital Core, a terrific surge of pain assaulted Yaan’s body, as did a sense of danger and impending doom that was difficult to ignore.

At Yaan’s level, when his life was in danger, he would feel it as a distinct sensation in his mind…having an external force digging into his very lifeline was about as ‘dangerous’ a feeling as one could experience.

Chi…chi…chi…

Five days into this grotesque operation, the chains began constricting suddenly around the smaller blood vessels. The connections were cut by the chains, then manipulated and reconnected elsewhere, away from the core. Every single time one of these smaller blood vessels leading to his Vital Core was severed, Yaan’s body trembled and he experienced the shock response from the dramatic injury.

More and more of the smaller blood vessels were severed, then re-assigned elsewhere in the body and welded together with an intense bloody light in order to complete their reattachment. Before long, the blood vessels that were being cut were no longer small and insignificant, but large and central to Yaan’s Vital Energy cultivation, and to his life itself.

CHI!

CHI!

CHI!

Three of the largest vessels leading to the Vital Core were cut. Yaan’s face became extremely pale as blood flowed out from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears. He would be convulsing violently right now, were it not for the red chains holding him in place.

The blood-red light looked imposing, but it was actually extremely beneficial to healing Yaan’s injuries and stabilising his condition. Unfortunately, in his current injured state, it was impossible to fully stabilise his condition without undoing all of the progress in severing his core. For this reason, the final vessel was detached just minutes after these last three.

“Puh!”

A muffled choke was prevented from spreading outwards by the red chains cocooning Yaan within the formation.

Blood spurted out from every pore across his body, his eyes rolled back and a feeling of impending death washed over him. Not only was his final blood vessel detached, but his Vital Core was suddenly dragged out from his body by three thick chains in a single instant!

Yaan’s every cell throughout his body was violently vibrating, and even the power of the golden elixir within him, and the red cocoon around him, were unable to fully prevent this. These two powers assisted in healing his body and preventing his immediate death, but the shock to Yaan’s consciousness was severe.

Finally, Yaan was forced to utilise his Psyche Power. As the Psyche Power within his Sea of Consciousness surged, Yaan calmed down slightly, though his heart was still racing and palpitating wildly as his body struggled to understand what it should do to remedy this situation.

Yaan quickly realised that if he did not possess psyche cultivation, he would have certainly died at this step!

It was possible for some individuals to survive this process without psyche cultivation, but it seemed that Yaan was not such an individual. Perhaps only those superior races with innately powerful bodies could actually do so.

Removing the Vital Core from one’s own body was not simple, it was extremely dangerous, no ordinary individual would ever attempt such a thing. In fact, just having the determination to regress one’s own cultivation like this was already shockingly rare.

As time continued to pass by, Yaan’s condition worsened before it got better.

At one point, his entire body was almost completely void of blood; thankfully, his Obsidian Rank blood possessed extraordinary innate vitality, allowing his blood content to avoid dropping to absolutely nothing. Whilst he no longer possessed any blood essence, the power of vitality in Yaan’s body that was granted to him by the Obsidian Rank blood, was akin to having a blood stream completely filled with blood essence!

As the red chains clenched around Yaan’s body, his condition finally stabilised at an extreme low point.

Although his ‘stable condition’ left him almost on the verge of death, it was stable, meaning that from thereon, Yaan gradually began to recover.

His recover was excruciatingly slow. In fact, another two months passed by before Yaan was finally able to tiredly open his eyes.

When he did this simple action, the red chains around his body immediately loosened. The chains rotated around him, then retracted back into the pyramid. The pyramid itself also stopped rotating and the red light faded back down to a dull level.

Yaan stood up and let out a heavy breath. His eyes were tired, but a hint of joy could be seen within.

He survived!

He survived…he was one step closer to making it through this…