While Wei Ping and Long Yi fretted over what to do with their unresponsive friend, Li Lang was currently busy inspecting the new area that opened up in his body, specifically his dantian.

It was one thing for him to hear about it, but an entirely different one when he experienced its wonders for himself.

Foundation Establishment cultivators have broken free from their shackles of mortality. The amount of Qi they possess is several times higher than any Energy Gatherers. That didn’t take into account the qualitatively superior qualities, too.

With access to more powerful Qi, the container was naturally upgraded as well. The dantian had become the storage for all this energy. It was a very special part of a cultivator, and if they focused their senses on it, they could even examine the small world within it!

Just like the meridian channels, the dantian wasn’t physical. It wasn’t an organ that magically grew on the body.

When Li Lang focused on this special part, he found himself transported to the middle of the ocean somewhere. However, he didn’t panic. He was floating high in the air, and he had enough experience to realize this wasn’t reality.

This is similar to an artifact space but inside me! If artifacts are made using beast cores, it isn’t implausible that the dantian is a human’s equivalent!

After allowing his mind to go wild for some time, Li Lang calmed down and assessed his situation. He had heard about the wonders of a cultivator’s dantian, so he had a general idea of the nature of this place.

If one looked closely, the ocean below was quite shallow. He could see the bottom of it. That was because it represented the Qi within his dantian. After breaking into this new realm, his foundation was naturally poor. As the name implied, building up his foundation was the nature of this new realm.

Hmm, my celestial sea is perfectly clear. This should be because I haven’t dedicated myself to any element yet. I would have thought I leaned toward the fire element thanks to the possession of my Primordial Star Fire, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

After analyzing the sea below him, Li Lang proceeded to try contacting his more trusted partner.

“Ruby, can you hear me?”

“Of course, Master!”

“Good.”

Having confirmed his connection to his artifact hadn’t been lost, he began logging everything in his lab. He also took the opportunity to go over his database of Earth-grade cultivation techniques again to glean any information about dantians.

“These definitely don’t fit my style, but from the key points they share, I think it’s safe to say Foundation Establishment is all about strengthening the spiritual roots so it could siphon more energy into the dantian,” Li Lang muttered. “Otherwise, it would take eons before any progress is made in filling this sea.”

“Speaking of energy, Master, I feel your body is constantly feeding me with your new Qi! I feel like I’ll become a lot stronger soon!”

“Well, if the Crucible will regain more of its function due to my breakthrough, I don’t find it surprising you would benefit from it too, Ruby. Do you have an ETA?”

“Umm, sorry, Master. I just feel something is going to happen, but I can’t tell when.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Without dwelling on the matter, Li Lang continued to parse through the cultivation manuals. He had done so before, but now that he could observe the situation within a dantian himself, many esoteric concepts became more clear to him.

A few of the techniques had talked about things like building an altar or temple within oneself. It confused the old Li Lang as he only heard the dantian stored all of a cultivator’s Qi, so how could energy be used to build structures?

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Now that he had gotten a better look at himself, he could tell the ocean of Qi within him wasn’t as simple as it seemed. It appeared material, as if the ocean within him was really a world of its own. The only difference was that the entire place was enclosed except for the few openings that constantly poured in more energy from the outside world. He knew they were connected to his spiritual roots. It was as if they were giant pipes that constantly pumped more water into his own little world.

“So that’s why this new realm doesn’t have nine stages, like in Energy Gathering. There are only early, mid, late, and peak Foundation Establishment cultivators,” Li Lang murmured. “The manual says each stage is separated by how developed a cultivator’s spiritual altar is. If they’re talking about structures, I can assume this is yet another qualitative change in Qi that allows it to become more solid compared to its liquid state. This will take quite a bit of research to unravel.”

“Shouldn’t Master just take one of those trials again and obtain the most suitable technique?” Ruby suggested.

“I can’t rely on that forever. The knowledge contained inside the Crucible is comprehensive but outdated. It’s at least thousands of years old if none of those organizations knows the origin of it. Surely, modern techniques have improved after so much time has passed. This isn’t an issue that can be addressed in the short term. I have to work on other things as well.”

After going through some more Earth-grade cultivation techniques, Li Lang then pulled up the data he had regarding a different set of skills. It was the methods cultivators used to eliminate any traces of themselves to prevent being tracked down or being the target of divination.

Divination wasn’t omnipotent. Even an expert in the Spirit Divide Realm couldn’t just use divination to find out every detail about someone they never had contact with before. Instead, it required a catalyst. These catalysts were simply any biological material belonging to their target that contained traces of their Qi. It could be their hair, skin, bodily fluids, or pretty much anything.

It was a type of technique that caught Li Lang’s eye back when he had done an investigation to help Tai Xilun and his Bloodwave Conclave track down a killer on the loose. This killer had used one of these anti-divination techniques to remove any spiritual traces from the blood they left behind on the crime scene. The only reason they had been exposed was because Li Lang’s DNA analysis methods weren’t anything they had experienced before. It relied on entirely different principles.

Now that he had reached the Foundation Establishment Realm, Li Lang planned to learn a similar technique before exiting the pocket realm. To be precise, he planned to research one that would not only defend him from divination but also shield him from the Qi sense of others.

He would rather not have everyone find out he had broken through so soon. While it wouldn’t be a big deal if it was discovered, the same couldn’t be said when it came to his students. He needed to prepare a technique to prevent that sooner rather than later.

His success proved that it was possible for his students to break through as well. If more and more of them were found to have crossed this threshold at such a young age, it would start drawing a lot of unwanted attention.

In order to nip this in the bud, Li Lang was determined to formulate one such concealment art.

He didn’t have to start from scratch, though. Many organizations had already developed such techniques. It was just that he never had the chance to learn them before. If he ran into any roadblocks, he was sure he could trade for these techniques for reference.

However, before he could get started on his research, he suddenly felt his body being jolted. He was then promptly kicked out of Ruby’s artifact space.

“Li Lang, are you okay?”

The newly promoted cultivator opened his eyes to find his friend, Long Yi, an inch away from him.

“Yes, yes. Calm down. There’s no need to be worried.”

“Well, you haven’t moved for hours since your aura consolidated to the level of a Foundation Establishment cultivator. I feared something had gone wrong.”

“It was just—me reflecting on my new self. Nothing to worry about.”

“Then that’s fine, I guess. Anyway, you’ve made it! You really did break through. Congratulations!”

“Y-yes, congratulations, boss.”

Only when Long Yi’s huge figure backed away a little could Li Lang now spot his friend wearing the wooden mask. Seeing this, he nodded with a gentle smile.

“Thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you guys. Next up is your turn, Wei Ping.”

“T-that—I can’t say I’m c-confident about it yet.”

“We can talk about that at another time,” Long Yi interrupted. “For now, let’s go celebrate! All the kids are waiting for us to start dinner. They’ll be overjoyed with the news, too.”

With that, the three quickly departed from the cave, returning to the outside world, and headed for the giant gates at the base of the mountain that led to the inner chambers where the trials were.

Along the way, Li Lang couldn’t help but to sate his curiosity about the state of his new realm. He stretched his hand toward the treelines and unleashed one of his more harmless techniques, the Veiling Shroud art.

Instantly, a huge amount of smoke was generated, engulfing the entire area with a smokescreen. It easily covered ten times more area than what he could do prior to the breakthrough. And that was when he only unleashed a sliver of his newfound powers.

So this is the power of the Foundation Establishment Realm.