Left speechless, Sun simply nodded, carving this among all the other favors Elizabeth had shown him in the short time they had known each other, and picked up the Soliger to begin dissecting its body. Despite the fact that the Soliger had only developed a Core Foundation before being killed in the Transcendent Foundation Stage, with the energy of its Dantian siphoned out and converted to grandmist which propped Elizabeth’s perfect ascension to the peak of the Saint Stage, the rest of its body was still valuable in its own right.
With blood, flesh, bones and organs tempered for years — dozens, even — Sun could synthesize the Soliger’s leftover Dantian with other parts of its body and some supplementary herbs to make a precious medicine of Pure Yang. If successful, it could even be the final push he needs to breakthrough to the Spirit Realm with Elizabeth.
Leaving Sun to his own devices, Elizabeth zeroed in on her pending rewards; more specifically, she eyed the list of rewards she could choose from her most recently completed 6th Main Quest. Between the extra break time and the sole pillar of Grandmist she had a minor meltdown weighing the pros and cons of each choice before she grit her teeth and picked the spiritual pillar of energy in the end.
Perhaps in the extra month’s worth of time she could have easily collected the hundred million units worth of grandmist energy that she would receive from the spiritual pillar she had picked, but that would definitely cut through her current allotted break time of nine days. Making it into the Spirit Realm was the only condition for completing her 7th Main Quest wherein she would probably be offered another chance to gain extra break time. Though whether or not she would pick the extra break time entirely depended on how grand the rewards from completing her 7th Main Quest would be.
Right now, while she could break through to the Transcendent Foundation with just a thought, her Intelligence and Inner Energy Reserves far surpassing what was required for a perfect breakthrough, her physical parameters were actually just shy of perfection. Most Saint Stage practitioners in her situation wouldn’t even think twice before immediately breaking through. After all, after the Mortal Realm, they would enter the path of true cultivation. The body would be of secondary concern as cultivators would gain fantastical powers through their exponentially more powerful energy manipulation and comprehensions.
However, Elizabeth wouldn’t stand for mediocrity. As someone with an obsession and ambition that wished to surpass perfection itself, she resolutely decided to first improve her body to the standard of perfection for those in the lowest sub stage of Transcendent Foundation Stage.
Sitting down once more within the Yin Formations that contained the heightened spiritual air around her, a small rectangular prism that flickered with light reminiscent of static noise appeared in between her right hand’s thumb and index finger. This spiritual pillar of energy was formed entirely out of fragmented grandmist and though it was smaller than a chocolate bar, it weighed more than a ton.
After appraising the spiritual pillar in her hand, Elizabeth summoned the power of her Talent Stealing Blood Seal and ate the mass of energy. It might have looked like she had swallowed a snack, but had there been any cultivators present to witness such a reckless action they’d curse her for being an idiot who wasted treasures.
A Saint, even one at the Peak Phase of their Stage, shouldn’t have the means to control the power of a normal spiritual pillar; nevermind one made out of grandmist. But because Elizabeth had a Divine Spirit Body, she could handle the pressure. Because of her Bloodlines she could withstand the impact, and because of her tenacity, she could endure the pain.
Driving the spiritual pillar through her body and guiding it to metaphysical space which held her Dantian was excruciating enough; leaving her sweating a small pool and nearly collapsing from exhaustion as she felt like her body was erupting with the power of an active volcano. The next part of the process nearly left Elizabeth unconscious as she had to forcefully revolve the energy in her body to slowly grind away the spiritual pillar’s energy and integrate it as her own strength.
If she were merely stealing energy from the Dantian of a fallen enemy or taken it from a willing contributor, she certainly wouldn’t be dealing with such difficulties. Alas, the spiritual pillar she had been given through her Rewards was special, to put it lightly.
First and foremost, it was impossible for the fruits of a cultivator’s labor to exist outside of their body; outside their Dantian. For the spiritual pillar Elizabeth was given to not instantly dissipate away into the environment, it was naturally being locked down by a similar phenomenon to that of a cultivator’s Dantian. In essence, Elizabeth refining the spiritual pillar was as if she was striping it away from a living person; one who was instinctively defending their cultivation base.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
However, that was simply a part of the reason she was having such a difficult time. It could be argued that even more aggravating was the fact that she was refining a spiritual pillar of pure grandmist. It would be foolish to look down on the spiritual pillar for being entirely composed of the lowest quality grandmist there could exist, as it was hundreds and thousands of times harder to refine the energy through her Ancient Godslayer Fiend methods for this precise reason.
Lastly, Elizabeth, acting as per usual, decided it wasn’t nearly enough to just simply refine the energy for herself. She had to go above and beyond reason and dared using the pressure of the grandmist she was refining to supercharge her first three Chaos Seals. Now the pressure she could emit through grandmist amounted to dozens of times its previous peak, and by using this abysmal pressure, she was silently tempering her body.
Sitting under the pressure of supercharged fragmented grandmist, Elizabeth’s body fluctuated between scorching hot and frigid cold as she channeled her [Spirit Mystic Art: Constitution of Fire and Ice] to destroy and rebuild her body. To Yrre, who was the only one present who could see her current condition, Elizabeth looked to be in an inconsolably miserable position.
Her skin constantly flaking off after being frozen and charred hundreds of times over. Her muscle fibers constantly being exposed to the world, with the marrow of her bones leaking blood and pus as if she were being tortured. If it weren’t for her eyes being tightly shut, Elizabeth’s eyes would certainly be bloodshot with stress as even her expression was locked in a tight frown.
Yet time passed and Elizabeth continue enduring this most extreme tempering method. Despite her miserable state, she held fast; her expression gradually morphing out of pain, having grown adapted. Eventually, a resounding crack escaped from Elizabeth’s body and the tumultuous storm taking place within her immediately stopped.
[Warning! Mortal Realm Bodily Potential Limit has been reached! Unless a breakthrough to the Spirit Realm occurs, no amount of tempering or training will increase the user’s physical parameters.]
Taking a cursory look at her status, Elizabeth saw that all her physical parameters were locked at a perfect 1,000. Apparently, the limit for bodily potential in the Mortal Realm was exactly the same as the standard for perfection among those with a Beginner Phase Transcendent Foundation cultivation base.
In any case, she had completed her preparations. From the peak of the King Stage she made it to the peak of the Saint Stage in one fell swoop and now she had completed the prerequisites to entering the Spirit Realm through the path of Extreme Perfection. Her bodily strength had reached the limit of possible growth in the Mortal Realm and her energy reserves were far and beyond the standard required to enter the Spirit Realm.
Still, Elizabeth was tired to the point of nearly collapsing. Thus, to ensure there were no accidents whilst making her next breakthrough, she decided to rest and gather her mental strength. During her time resting, Elizabeth watched with mild amusement as Sun concocted a pill from the remains of the Soliger.
Naturally, he had started the process a while ago as he wasn’t so bored that he would watch Elizabeth’s breakthrough event. That would just be a waste of time. So, before long, Elizabeth watched as the climax of Sun’s pill concocting reached its zenith. The medicinal essences of the spiritual herbs he was using and the vitality and pure yang energy of the Soliger’s remains were fusing.
At this critical point, Sun pulled out a storage talisman and activated it to reveal a vial of Yang Dew from the Yin Yang Dew Elizabeth had previously distributed to her party. Without hesitation, Sun opened the vial and tossed its contents into his pill furnace along with the steaming pseudo-pill paste before quickly closing it and leading his creation to resolution.
A couple of moments later, after the steam stopped pouring out of the furnace’s pressure releasing slits, he opened the furnace up and a porcelain white pill the size of a quarter revealed its luster to the world. The mere scent that came out of the furnace after its lid was removed gave clue as to how potent the medicine was, as even Yrre came over to give Sun praise.
“Impressive,” Yrre said as she eyed the pill, seeming to be able to analyze its quality at a molecular level. “Not only is this a decent Mid Tier Spirit Grade Pill, but the refinement rate is alright considering your cultivation…” ‘Alright’ was in actuality a supreme under exaggeration since Yrre’s standard neared that of Elizabeth’s. As someone still in the Mortal Realm, creating anything of Spirit Grade value was already mind-numbingly impressive; nevermind Mid Tier for Spirit Grade.
Of course, the overwhelming majority of the reason that Sun succeeded was due to the materials he was working with as he probably wouldn’t be able to recreate this success without the help of extreme Spirit Grade resources like Yang Dew. Yet his achievements in the art of alchemy couldn’t be depreciated since Sun had long since passed the level of Grandmaster; and reasonably so. He had been practicing Alchemy for longer than Elizabeth had spent on Forging, Cooking and Enchanting combined!