Standing atop his shield, which hovered in the dead center of the room, Liu Xing inhaled deeply. The eerie light above him, emitted by some kind of giant vein, cast a calm yet serious expression on his face, as if he were standing under a blood moon. He had already spent time digesting the situation and expressing his fury toward Wei Yi, and now, he needed to channel all of it into a calm and focused mindset.

After achieving the desired state of calm, Liu Xing aimed the gun in his left hand at the back of a child-like abomination and pulled the trigger. He moved his hand slightly to the side, aimed at the back of another abomination, and pulled the trigger again. In a repeated and continuous motion, Liu Xing sent six bullets flying. Each shone with a bright light, like falling stars illuminating the dark. Liu Xing thought these Exploding Fist bullets were emitting a softer, gentler light than usual, as if casting a mournful glow, though perhaps it was just an illusion conjured by his mind.

The first bullet hit its intended target, blowing the back of the small child into a mist of blood. The six green stripes on the side of his gun glowed, filling the weapon with qi.

"May you have a happy next life," Liu Xing prayed.

He sent some of the qi into the Ethereal Pearl, but used the rest to launch another volley of qi bullets. Six bullets flew through the air, then another six, then another, and so on. If anyone were present, since Liu Xing was still invisible, they would have assumed the shield was conjuring hundreds of streaks of blue light, striking the trapped abominations and destroying them all.

From each of the six bullets of potent qi, he used only one and sent the rest to his Ethereal Pearl, though the rate was so fast it felt like he had unlimited bullets and the qi sent to the Ethereal Pearl was like an endless river.

A moment later, he decided to reactivate the Flowing Meditation Method and split the qi from the gun into two streams. One went straight into the Ethereal Pearl nestled against his stomach, while the rest was sent to his consciousness via the hole created by the meditation technique. The hole was slightly bigger than before, and when he activated it, he felt the clarity of his senses diminish, as if the world had suddenly dimmed a notch. It wasn't enough to make him lose his balance, but it was noticeable.

As the bullets destroyed their targets, the cacophony of explosions reverberated through the inside of the giant. The smell of blood began permeating the air, adding to the already nauseating stench and making it even more unbearable. His ears picked up a multitude of noises, as many of the backs reacted to his bullets, seemingly trying to dodge but rooted in place. The sounds were almost like wet splotches, merging with the trickling and falling blood and the whizzing of his bullets.

Realizing that Wei Yi would soon notice his attacks, Liu Xing quickened his pace. He activated the Lightning Cloak Technique, and the rate of fire instantly quadrupled. In just under thirty seconds, he had shot hundreds of bullets, each killing an abomination with precision. Now, instead of walls and floors covered by the backs of humans turned into abominations, there were numerous holes, as if someone had scooped out the flesh with a spoon. From these holes, blood poured, creating hundreds of tiny waterfalls that pooled into the holes in the ground.

As he attacked his surroundings, Liu Xing noticed several holes not made by him, one of which reminded him of the butthole of the giant. His eyebrows rose as he observed these holes, wondering about their function.

This also made him realize that the hole he had used was peculiar. The anus should function to expel waste, yet there was no tubing or anything around it. It looked almost like a well in the center of a spacious room, though now it served as a way for blood to flow out.

Still, even if these holes had important functions he didn't know, it wasn't crucial. What mattered was that Liu Xing was destroying each of the "bricks" that built the giant. If he could destroy them all, he was sure the giant would crumble.

After nearly a full minute of shooting, Liu Xing saw that he had destroyed most of the backs around him. He needed to move up because beyond the one giant red tube emitting light, there was a more spacious area with walls covered by the backs of abominations. He realized that this giant resembled a giant hollow tower, with its middle crisscrossed by giant blood veins, though he was sure there would be giant organs the higher he went.

Controlling his shield to lift him as if he were in an elevator, Liu Xing continued his attacks. There were more backs than he had imagined. Some were familiar, as he had spent considerable time fighting the snake-limb abominations. Each had been strong and dangerous, but now they were merely sitting ducks.

When the giant blood vein was only several meters above his head, Liu Xing slowed his gun's attacks and slashed his purple blade upward. A crescent of purple qi, more than three meters wide, flew upward like a swallow bird before cutting through the giant vein as if it were made of soft clay. It emerged from the other side, and Liu Xing heard a groaning sound, like a giant tower unable to hold its weight and about to topple. Then, the vein split into two giant tubes, sending down two waterfalls of blood, each more than three meters wide. The waterfalls fell to Liu Xing's sides, but much of the blood splashed him, coating almost his entire body in red, as if he had just emerged from a crimson sea. Liu Xing used the back of his right hand to wipe the blood from his eyes; his face was now slick with it.

He did all of this without the shield ever stopping its ascent, his left hand never ceasing to pull the trigger. The crescent qi also cut several more veins, creating many waterfalls, albeit smaller than the first two.

After another minute of shooting thousands of bullets without hindrance, something within his body began to change. It felt like his body was charged with a small electric current, making his hair stand on end. Feeling this change coming from within, Liu Xing decided to peer into his consciousness. When he saw his core, now as big as he was and vibrating and spinning rapidly, his eyes widened.

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"So soon?" he muttered.

He blinked several times, his brain trying to process the situation, and soon came to a conclusion.

His core was ready to split in two. He was ready to break through to the next stage of the Core Splitting realm.

Even seeing this with his own eyes, Liu Xing couldn't believe it. Sure, he knew that sending a lot of qi to the core would lead to a breakthrough sooner or later, but despite the ungodly amount of qi he was sending, he hadn't expected another breakthrough so soon.

The Core Splitting realm was in a different league from the Lock Opening realm. A cultivator could spend ten years breaking through from the first stage to the second stage of the Core Splitting realm. Moreover, there was usually a bottleneck, requiring a cultivator not only to cultivate but also to hone their mind and deepen their understanding of qi, cultivation, the world, and themselves.

Yet, Liu Xing had skipped all of that and was about to undergo another breakthrough. It felt surreal. But, despite his confusion and the feeling that it wasn't real, his brain was flooded with dopamine, and his lips spread into a wide, happy grin.

"I'm going to break through!"

With his heart beating fast with anticipation, he shot more bullets and increased the travel speed of the potent qi from his gun to his core. He then decided to stop sending qi to his Ethereal Pearl altogether and sent all of it directly to his core.

The core absorbed it greedily. Its spin became even faster, and it vibrated with a higher frequency. Even though he was only peeking through a hole, he could hear the hum of the vibration. Liu Xing licked his lips. This was an important moment. Breaking through wasn't something to be done carelessly; failure could lead to a backlash, causing injury and regression in cultivation. The higher the cultivation realm, the more severe the backlash. In the Lock Opening realm, for example, the backlash might result in internal bleeding and a month's worth of lost cultivation. He could imagine that the backlash for a Core Splitting cultivator would be critical, undoing half of their progress, and even shaking his foundation, making future breakthroughs harder.

Liu Xing was confident that if he meditated and fully submerged himself in his consciousness, he would advance smoothly. But he was in the middle of something, and since he didn't know when Wei Yi would arrive, he couldn't afford that.

The grin on his face shrank a little. The excitement to advance was still there, but now anxiety began to surface, making his stomach churn slightly. The core inside his consciousness kept spinning and vibrating, as if oblivious to his feelings, and Liu Xing understood that soon, it would want to split.

As Liu Xing contemplated how to advance in this situation, he saw the "roof" of the hollow tower. The flesh covering it was covered by abominations' backs, and he realized the giant was split into multiple levels. Stopping his shield, Liu Xing shot the remaining backs of abominations on the surrounding walls, leaving the roof for now. Once the walls were entirely painted red, with hundreds of holes spitting out endless blood, Liu Xing focused on the roof.

Since he couldn't see any way to enter the next level, he needed to blast his way through. To do this, Liu Xing activated the Exploding Fist technique and enhanced the potent bullets with it. He then aimed at the back of an abomination with yellow skin, as if made from banana peels, and pulled the trigger. The bullet was a brilliant blue, like the brightest lightning from a dark cloud. He aimed at other backs and let five streaks of blue bolts fly toward their targets. When the first bullet hit, a brilliant blue explosion rocked the roof, destroying several abominations at once. Glancing at the side of the gun and seeing it glow green, he repeated the motion, sending more Exploding Fist bullets made from the qi of Core Splitting abominations.

Continuous loud explosions occurred, making even the walls of flesh tremble. Several large holes had already formed on the roof, churning out blood like waterfalls. After about ten explosions, all the abominations covering the roof were destroyed. It was wasteful, as killing them one by one would have yielded more qi, but he needed to blast the roof open.

Aiming for the center of the roof, where a giant hole was spitting out a waterfall of blood, Liu Xing pulled the trigger three more times. Three brilliant bullets flew through the air and hit the base of the waterfall, creating a huge explosion and deepening the hole. The second and third bullets made the hole wider and deeper. Now, the blood falling wasn't from the base of the hole but from the surrounding walls, where the base was devoid of blood. There, a small opening showed colors of red, yellow, white, and others spilling out.

Realizing it was the opening to the next level, he shot another bullet. When it hit, another large explosion occurred, blasting the roof open.

After the explosion settled, Liu Xing could see the next level—the upper part of the giant's stomach. Several organs were there, each pulsing with its own frequency.

Liu Xing kicked his shield and jumped to the next level. After passing through the hole, he resummoned his shield and looked around. There was a giant, box-shaped organ with a blue color, pulsing with an eerie light. Inside, several silhouettes resembling liquid with multiple heads and horrified faces formed and dispersed rapidly, as if made by the souls of the damned. Long, thin tubes nestled on the walls between the backs of abominations, like cables, pulsed with light as if electricity coursed through them. A giant heart hung high in this level, similar in shape to a normal human heart but gigantic. It pulsed with an erratic beat and was surrounded by several red and black organs of irregular shapes, like blood clots. There were no crisscrossing veins here, but many organs pulsed with different shapes and colors and all of them stuck to the wall as if trying to get out of the way of something big.

When he saw a giant opening above that contracted periodically, he realized it was the giant's throat, and a comprehension struck him.

These organs hanging from the walls were probably by design. If a giant meatball came down the throat and organs were in its path, they would be destroyed.

The core itself, which was his goal for entering this giant, stood right in front of him. The meatball was spinning and vibrating above a platform made entirely of black, rotten flesh that emanated a smell so foul he wished his nose had no holes. Hundreds of faces dotted the platform, each with empty eye sockets oozing red blood that smelled like rotten corpses.

Surrounding the meatball was qi so dense it looked almost liquid, and even the air around him felt heavy, almost like his stable qi. But while the surrounding qi was dense, he sensed movement, as if it were water flowing slowly toward a waterfall.

That waterfall—the one pulling all the surrounding qi—was the core of the giant.