The Forbidden Golden Core
At the very moment Jin Somyeong was challenging the threshold of the Golden Core, violent shockwaves were tearing again and again through the sky above Sky Island.
Two cultivators who had reached the late Golden Core level had clashed.
Boom!
The Lord of Sky Island scattered the incoming vortex and frowned. His gaze settled on the Sea Dragon clan elder blocking his path.
"You should be guarding the Sea Dragon clan's nest. Why have you come all the way here?"
"The payment the Golden-furred Sacred Ape offered was rather handsome. Would you believe me if I said he piled up high-grade Spirit Stones like a mountain?"
The Lord of Sky Island listened in silence to that mocking voice, then shook his head.
"You merely want to see humans and demonkind tear each other apart until our numbers dwindle."
"...And knowing that, you're still standing here? Shouldn't you be shaking me off this instant and protecting the spirit vein?"
"The situation will likely end soon. A new weight is about to be added to the scale."
The Sea Dragon clan elder's gaze shifted at that calm voice, neither relaxed nor urgent.
Directly above Howling Moon Star, the strange heavenly phenomena continued despite the formation the Golden-furred Sacred Ape had installed in the deep sea to block the flow of spiritual energy. In other words, the breakthrough into the Golden Core had not failed. It was admittedly rather curious, but that was all.
"What meaning could one brat who has only just formed a Golden Core possibly have?"
"Meaning, is it... You will know soon enough."
"Hmph."
The Sea Dragon clan elder snorted, and at that same instant, spells collided in midair.
Meanwhile, in another stretch of sky, no fewer than sixteen demon kings had gathered and were pouring out divine abilities. Dark crimson spears of flame rained down like a storm, while pale blade-winds howled violently through the air.
"Kahaha! Attack! Attack! Focus your power on a single point!"
The Golden-furred Sacred Ape, his eyes blazing with rapture, shouted like a madman. Following his command, the demon kings raised their demonic energy. Whether they liked it or not, now that the enemy stood before them, all of them obeyed him.
Their goal was to destroy the Extreme Pole Adamantine Formation protecting Sky Island. Naturally, the humans had no intention of simply letting that happen. With the Lord of Sky Island occupied against the Sea Dragon clan elder, the human Golden Core masters drew their artifacts and moved to block them...
At that moment, Jin Somyeong was responding to the sudden severing of spiritual energy by pouring high-grade Spirit Stones into the Mental Secret Realm.
The instant the daily Spirit Stone production reached twenty-seven, he judged that it was enough to form a Golden Core and continued the breakthrough without hesitation. He was worried that something had happened to Sky Island, but forced the thought away.
Now that he had already begun, he could not stop. Right now, he had to focus on breaking through to the Golden Core.
Wooooong.
The Heaven and Earth Origin Qi, the purest energy beneath the heavens, continued to gather. He absorbed every last trace of it and stored it in his dantian, losing even his sense of time.
How long had he been immersed? The vortex formed around him gradually expanded. At first, it had drawn in only the Heaven and Earth Origin Qi within a radius of ten li, but before long, it had widened to thirty.
Urgh...
A groan escaped him on its own. His qi-sea dantian, which had seemed boundless as an infinite ocean, was now full to bursting.
Great waves rose within the sea of his mind. An instinctive fear licked the nape of his neck. If this continued, something catastrophic was certain to happen.
It felt as though death itself were drawing near, but he did not hesitate. Hesitation during the formation of the Golden Core was the true road to failure and death.
I continue.
He absorbed all the Heaven and Earth Origin Qi surging in from the vortex, which had already expanded to fifty li. Forcing energy into a dantian that was already full, he increased the pressure.
The highly compressed energy crossed its critical point.
Whoosh!
Blue flames bloomed inside his dantian.
It was a Tier-Three flame known throughout the world as core fire.
"...!"
His breath caught in his throat. He had assumed that after practicing the Five Viscera Hundred Refinements Art, he had developed tolerance for every sort of pain, but this flame was far hotter than anything he had imagined.
The blue fire that began in his dantian spread through his entire body. The world blurred.
Core fire did not burn only material things. The space between his brows grew scorching hot, and even his divine soul began to melt.
"Ghhk."
He clenched his teeth. The pain, which felt as though it might reduce him to an idiot, was a problem, but worse than that was the suffocating helplessness.
Ever since he reached Foundation Establishment, his Divine Sense had always surveyed his surroundings. Now it was gone. The discomfort was like being struck blind.
Then the lightning sleeping within his mind awakened. Perhaps to protect its master, it tried to attack the core fire, but he hurriedly restrained it.
This process was agonizing, but it was something one had to pass through in order to become a Golden Core cultivator.
And indeed, the temperature, driven endlessly higher by the core fire, reached its peak. The vast spiritual power filling his qi-sea dantian boiled and began to refine itself at the same time.
Impurities he had not even known existed vanished. His spiritual power had been purified into an extremely pure state.
Within an extreme environment hot enough to melt even his divine soul, what remained after everything was dissolved, boiled, and burned away was a single pure crystal. That was magical power.
Finally came the purification of the body. The moment even the most fundamental energy composing his flesh began to melt, Jin Somyeong moved.
Now.
Using his soul as the core, he gathered the refined energies into one mass in order to form the core called the Golden Core.
The instant a softly shining golden bead was born within his mind, his thoughts cut off.
Hot.
No, was it cold? Was this what it felt like for a soul to be seared by fire?
All the power he had accumulated until now had been compressed to extraordinary density and reduced to a speck-sized crystal. And at the heart of that crystal, formed from tremendous power, lay his soul. Naturally, it was being crushed under immense pressure.
His soul was suppressed, and his consciousness sank into the depths. Reason vanished, leaving behind only the faintest instinct.
Ah...
Strength drained from him against his will. With his soul oppressed, he had been reduced to a state as fragile as a newborn infant.
Even the Golden Core he had condensed with powerful mental force was about to scatter.
At that moment, he wrung out the last of his strength. This was the exact instant to consume the Hundred Spirit Herb.
Saruk.
The mysterious spirit herb known as a Golden Core spiritual object melted the moment it entered his mouth. Snow-white energy seeped into the newly formed Golden Core.
It awakened a single thread of slumbering consciousness and helped him support the unstable Golden Core, which had been on the verge of collapse.
Just as relief was about to wash over him, the dark inner self that had always hidden in the depths approached his mind, now weakened by the pressure on his soul, in the form of a shadow.
"A wretched bastard with useless mixed spiritual roots! Someone like you dares covet the Golden Core? You have no right!"
Whose voice was this? Most likely, it was fear he had accumulated unconsciously.
So I had thoughts like this inside me...
He had no intention of forcibly denying it. Every human lived with fear in their heart. That was only natural.
What mattered was how one acted at the moment of choice.
Jin Somyeong quietly stared at the shadow, then shook his head.
"What's so special about the Golden Core? Why shouldn't I be able to do it? And..."
Jin Somyeong did not revere the Golden Core as sacred. To him, it was merely one of the countless gates he would pass through in the future.
"The thing that decides how far I go isn't my aptitude. It's me."
"Hmph. You make it sound so grand. Without the Boundless Great Ability, you'd have died begging long ago!"
The jeering voice grew louder and louder. It became thunder falling from the sky, stabbing into his eardrums.
It felt as if an absolute being were passing judgment upon him. The voice was resolute and majestic, as though it spoke truth itself, and for an instant, doubt arose.
Was that really so?
"I wouldn't know without trying."
Perhaps he would have wavered in the early days of his cultivation, but not now.
In reality, he had already experienced it after consuming the Dream-Wandering Primordial Pill. He had obtained the Foundation Establishment spiritual object without the Boundless Great Ability.
Though it had been a dream, it was so utterly realistic that it was enough to give him confidence.
"You will fail! Until now, you've only survived because you were lucky, but in the end—"
Jin Somyeong waved his hand at the shadow as it ranted in desperation.
Kwarung!
He burned it away with the lightning within his mind, nurtured by the Heavenly Thunder Dao Body Art.
In the darkness, which had at some point fallen silent, he did what had to be done. He absorbed the Heaven and Earth Origin Qi pouring in from every direction and guided it into his Golden Core. The pressure continued to grow, crushing down on his soul, but he endured.
Rumble!
At a certain moment, the ground centered on him cracked open. The energy infused into the Golden Core had reached the level of a true Tier-Three existence and was now radiating its presence.
At the same time, the blazing core fire erupted with explosive heat. It melted the motley collection of powers mixed into the Golden Core and fused them into one.
Perhaps the pain had become too great. Instead, he could feel nothing at all.
All he could say was that a moment as long as eternity had passed.
"...Ah."
The first thing to return was his Divine Sense. The world that had been submerged in darkness brightened.
As he completely took control of the Golden Core, the consciousness that had sunk into the depths awakened piece by piece. His soul was still located at the center of the Golden Core, but there was no pain.
It was simply comfortable, as though it had settled into the place where it had always belonged.
When he reached out, immense energy condensed in the air, and the unique pressure of a Golden Core spread outward.
Craaaack!
It was an absurdly powerful force. He had done nothing, yet the floor of the training chamber shattered and split like a turtle shell.
He gazed at the energy swimming freely through the air, then closed his eyes.
A sphere with a radius of two kilometers. Everything within it was so clear he felt as if he could grasp it in his hand.
By forming his Golden Core, his Divine Sense had also become twice as strong.
As he realized that, a sense of reality gradually returned.
"...Haha. Ahahaha!"
He could not hold it back and burst into laughter.
He had become the master of a power one dimension above the spiritual power used by Foundation Establishment cultivators.
He now possessed magical power.
As he savored the grand energy radiating from the Golden Core, he clenched his fist. Power great enough to collapse a mountain gathered there. He almost became intoxicated by the omnipotent sensation that he could do anything.
Whew... Calm down.
Perhaps it was because he had only just broken through, but his emotions surged far too easily.
What mattered now was to settle his excitement and stabilize the Golden Core he had struggled so hard to form.
Once the excitement faded, the worry he had deliberately forgotten returned to mind.
Why did the spirit vein suddenly become like this?
The ceaseless supply of spiritual energy had been completely blocked. No matter how he looked at it, that was not normal.
It seemed something had happened to Sky Island.
Crack.
He consumed five thousand units of the Boundless Great Ability in a single breath. Using it, he suppressed the energy made unstable by his breakthrough as quickly as possible.
An hour later, Jin Somyeong, having fully gathered and settled the turbulent energy within him, rose from his seat. He stepped outside the cave residence and surveyed his surroundings.
"..."
At a glance, the atmosphere in the streets seemed the same as usual, but the air was different. Breathing felt difficult, as if something heavy had settled over the world.
Jin Somyeong narrowed his eyes and lifted his gaze.
Boom! Kwang!
The shockwaves bursting endlessly in the sky told him exactly what was happening. He saw the demon kings pouring spells down toward Sky Island, and the human Golden Core masters trying to stop them.
The situation was clear.
He did not know what the demon kings had done, but the connection between Sky Island and the spirit vein had been severed. It seemed they intended to use brute force to break the Extreme Pole Adamantine Formation, now weakened compared to usual.
I should help.
Watching the Extreme Pole Adamantine Formation tremble as if it might collapse at any moment, he kicked off the ground.
Kwarung!
The instant he drew up the lightning within his mind to use Lightning Escape, lightning scattered in every direction. It was such an overbearing power that even the aftermath melted the stone floor.
...Hm?
Even as he activated Lightning Escape and headed toward the battlefield, he felt startled. The might of the lightning was simply too strong.
The surrounding scenery stretched into long streaks. Everything in front of him flowed past and vanished behind him in an instant.
It was a ridiculous speed.
Lightning Escape had become at least five times faster than usual, making it difficult to control. Instinctively, he realized what change had taken place.
...So this is the true power of the orthodox-grade Heavenly Thunder Dao Body Art.
Originally, orthodox-grade spells and cultivation arts were divine abilities powerful enough to affect the Golden Core realm. Until now, however, he had not possessed power worthy of those divine abilities, so they had failed to display their proper might.
It had been similar to owning the latest model sports car but lacking fuel, leaving him to push it by hand.
But now that he had become a Golden Core master, the true power of the Heavenly Thunder Dao Body Art, which had reached the orthodox stage, had awakened.
In the blink of an eye, distance lost all meaning.
When Jin Somyeong appeared on the battlefield as though teleporting through the air, only a few reacted.
Gwang Myeong, the Golden Core sword cultivator, and the Golden-furred Sacred Ape, who had been commanding the demon kings, merely flinched.
Before the gazes of those locked in fierce battle could even fully turn toward him, Jin Somyeong thrust out his fist, and a dazzling cluster of light poured down upon the demon kings.
It was the tyrannical divine ability that had once reduced a mountain to powder even when fueled only by Foundation Establishment spiritual power.
Now unleashed with magical power.