When Wu Guang started his attempt it was already midnight.
And when he returned to the camp, the sunrise was just a few moments ago.
Still, the Wu Guang that returned was a different person...
To understand the reason behind the latter, one would need to know what happened during Wu Guangs breakthrough.
As Wu Guang connected to his consciousness, he had no problems. Even when he fused it into his present mind, or connected to it as part of his current Wu Guang's body, no problems were present.
But the awakening of one's consciousness very often brought with it a reliving of some memories. Still, what occurred this time was far from that. In truth, Wu Guang not only relieved some of his memories, but the entirety of Bai Qi's, original Wu Guang's, and even Jason Carpenter. With the latter being his identity on the non-qi plane called Blue Planet.
Normally memories would only surface, so even with such a situation each year only took a second. Still, living across three different personas in under 10 minutes would affect even an immortal.
Truthfully, Wu Guang as he decided to keep calling himself did not expect much at all. He thought of the possibility of memories from his Bai Qi life to surface as the consciousness origins were such... but to fuse all his lives in one? Even the one he had no real connection to? In any case, even if he did not expect it, it indeed happened. Not only he relived these entire three lives, but they even fused into one, as his current memories included all of them.
As for his change, it was something that he did expect. Bai Qi was an immortal with almost 800 years worth of memories and so fused or not, they would still occupy the most space.
Still, the change was great, albeit sincerely this new Wu Guang thought that it was very worth it. Not only the memories were now a real part of him, but the experiences from all three lives were now the same. This meant that all the techniques, insights, inspirations, and even skills from Bai Qi were now fully part of his body, even if he did not train or learn them.
Previously, he had to actively access Bai Qi's knowledge and memories as to think or act. This led to his normal reactions and thoughts to be more alike to the original Wu Guang, after all, which immortal would be surprised when obtaining a spirit technique? or when encountering a lowly yellow realm cultivator?
But now... His physical form was almost entirely occupied with Bai Qi's memories and experiences, and so such a change occurred. Not only his bearing and conduct changed, but even his thought process had been fully remodeled.
Apart from such change, the breakthrough brought forth enormous benefits.
Leaving aside the skills, knowledge, and other things from Bai Qi's memories, he even had his unlocked mind power! And not simply unlocked, but directly obtained the same level as his consciousness had at the moment.
For the latter, Bai Qi's remaining consciousness was of the late Earth realm, a Saint level one. But because of his low cultivation and limits of the plane itself, it had been suppressed and so fused only as a 4th level Warrior Lord realm one. Still, for a cultivator below the Soul realm to have an Earth realm level cultivation, how could he not get enormous benefits?
Here one should remember that mind power was something available only after the Sage realm, and as Wu Guang had relived the process of learning the relevant spells, he could now defend against someone of such cultivation.
As for the common benefits from such breakthroughs, the two most important ones were the full control of one's qi and the possibility to enforce his will on weaker opponents.
For the former, it meant that in place of willing one's qi to follow a route, a cultivator would now control each strand of qi individually, and with this greatly improve one's techniques.
And the latter was the ability to apply mind pressure while speaking or via contracts. Granted, one would need to surpass the opposing party for at least a small margin for suppression to be generated... but! Wu Guang had a Warrior realm consciousness, so at least on Half-Island, if the opportunity presented itself he could pressure any cultivator to do his will.
Opportunities to form a contract with a Sage realm cultivator would be impossible to find, but at least before a fight, Wu Guang could try and scare off his opponent. The latter wasn't guaranteed to work as a part of the consciousness, one's willpower could resist such cowering. Still, he was sure that no more than a few very important figures could resist him.
But in truth, none of this was considered important by him. After all, the real benefit was by far more impressive. Consciousness itself is closely related to senses, and so after its awakening and training, one could also start improving the senses. Normally a cultivator would have a consciousness of the same level as his cultivation, as advancing one without the other was almost impossible. Still, in his case, he had a very advanced level of the former. So what did that mean? It meant that he could control senses far over his cultivation level. Here anyone would understand that having better senses and so the ability to react quicker was an enormous advantage during a fight.
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And why Wu Guang considered that this was the biggest gain? It was because the now fully fused experiences and memories allowed him to instantly bypass the training process, and directly leveled his senses to the relevant level. So now he had 5th level senses, which were the actual maximum trained senses of an Earth Body Realm cultivator!
He could discern anything he willed at least to a distance of three miles, plus no hazards from this realm could block his senses.
As he returned to the camp, his thoughts were mainly about how to conceal all these gains. Thankfully, mind power was capable of doing this. And not only that, it could be used to see through the cultivation, techniques, and barriers below its level. So basically, if he did not meet a real Earth realm cultivator, Wu Guang could be not discovered at all if he did not want to be. And in turn, he could see through any concealment and even hear the qi transmissions of the surrounding cultivators.
No new knowledge accompanied this breakthrough, but some questions were answered thanks to his new advantages. The main of them was the situation with the plane limit. As he had read in 'The Path', the Earth realm was obtainable here. But it referred to the 2nd minor realm as Warrior Lord, something that had bugged him at that moment. After all, Warrior Lord was the common name for the Body minor realm of the Earth realm, not for the 2nd or Spirit one.
The answer was simple. As the cultivators of this plane did not understand the differences between the Yellow and Earth realms, they simply thought that the cultivation laws were the same. But in truth, they were far from being so. Starting from the Earth realm, each level of a minor realm would be divided into the beginner, intermediate, advanced, and peak state. The latter could be ignored as it simply meant that a person could attempt to break through, but as for the first three, they explained the mistake of this plane's experts.
In the yellow realm, one could ascend by achieving some kind of objective and spending enough qi. The latter normally implied one's full dantian capacity. But starting from the Earth realm, one would need to accumulate experience and insights to breakthrough. Qi costs were enormous and so required external resources. Another difference was that one's dantian would be fully replenished after a successful full level breakthrough, while after a Yellow realm breakthrough it would be emptied.
In this case, a full-level breakthrough meant ascending a real level, but apart from that, there were half-levels, basically the states of one's cultivation.
So in short, each level of the Warrior Lord (Minor Body Realm, Major Earth Realm) required two half (Beginner-Intermediate and Intermediate-Advanced) and one full breakthrough. With such a situation, it's no wonder that people without knowledge considered the three breakthroughs as three separate levels. So basically, 'The Path' was mistaken. The real Plane's limit was simply the 4th or 5th level of the Warrior Lord realm. And the real following realm, the Spirit minor of the Earth realm was the Warrior King, something unattainable on this plane.
As for other questions, in truth, he did not solve them right away. But obtaining mind power meant that he could now easily form a formation, without waiting until the Sage realm. So after obtaining the missing part, as even a low-level formation required one to own a diagram scroll, he could confirm or deny the fact of formations working. He could now also investigate the Demonic Plateau if he wished to do so, after all, if he was alone, he would not need to hide his mastery over spells. A mastery that meant at the moment he could kill cultivators below the 3rd level Warrior Lord level. At least if he managed to attack them before noticed.
In truth, he could even compete against a 4th level Warrior lord, but they had a far stronger body than the previous levels and so his current mind power could not kill them. And they could kill him by simply willing it, after all, mind power had no defensive methods against qi apart from specialized formations.
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When Wu Guang neared the camp, the first one to notice him was Elder Yanshi, who seemingly was waiting for him. After noticing, the latter quickly approached and asked
"Success?"
"Yes"
"Congratulations Young Friend Wu Guang"
"Senior, thank you. Did Elder Di tell you?"
"Indeed, go into the third cart. Head Elder Di confirmed that your idea is feasible and so already activated the seal runes on the cart, so whatever happens next will be hidden from any possible observers"