Form
The Heavenly Spiritual Root that could absorb every attribute.
And yet, even for me, taking in two attribute lords at once was by no means easy.
Especially when the power of the Water Lord, which had already held more strength than the Wood Lord from the very beginning, began to overwhelm the wood-aspected spiritual energy and run wild, control became even more difficult.
Veins bulged beneath my skin, and from every pore in my body even blood began to burst forth, unable to withstand the crushing pressure of the water qi.
At that moment, Jeong sago’s voice rang out.
“Neung So! Gather your wits and master the power of the elixir! Don’t tell me you mean to crumble so meaninglessly here!”
In that instant, I understood something: Jeong sago had not even properly recognized what kind of attribute lord had emerged from my dewoopdae in the first place.
I had thought her widely experienced, since she had wandered the world as a mountaineer, but it seemed she had only ever heard of an attribute lord in passing.
And while I was briefly distracted by that thought, the Water Lord began to unleash even greater force.
Of course the amount of blood pouring from my body increased as well. As blood rich with vitality spurted out without pause, my own strength began to drain at a frightening pace.
So quickly, in fact, that my cross-legged posture, which had been as upright as a bamboo stalk, began to waver.
And yet, at this moment, I instead regained my composure. I had forgotten it for a moment, but I was already a Foundation Establishment cultivator.
A cultivator at the Foundation Establishment realm was one who could even control the space around them. Control of Objects was merely one part of that power. Naturally, I already possessed the ability to draw back blood that had been forced out.
Once I focused on sensing the new power I had gained, the blood driven out by the overpowering water qi began, under the influence of my newly cast Control of Objects, to slowly flow backward as though time itself were reversing.
The water qi continued to rage and try to expel the blood, but the moment the blood left my body, it came under the control of my technique and was immediately torn back through healthy skin and into my body once more.
Fortunately, once the speed at which the blood left and the speed at which it returned became roughly equal, even my strength, which had seemed about to bottom out in an instant, recovered to some degree.
But the Water Lord still spewed out formidable water qi, and the amount of blood seeping out through my pores did not decrease in the slightest. My strength would weaken and then recover, again and again.
Because I was still not accustomed to Control of Objects, merely maintaining this flow for any length of time felt taxing.
However, as time passed and the current began to stabilize, I gained just a little room to think. And in that fleeting instant, what came to mind was that this situation was rather similar to the times when I had shared dual cultivation with Jeong sago.
The experience of sending my spiritual energy into Jeong sago and receiving hers into my own body remained vivid in my memory.
The only difference between the present situation and dual cultivation was that there was no spiritual energy of heaven and earth flowing in to sweep along that process of giving and taking.
The surrounding spiritual energy, immobilized by my innate fate, remained unchanged even now that I had reached Foundation Establishment and could control the space around me.
Still, not all of the spiritual energy I could move with my own will had vanished. My body still held the fire-aspected spiritual energy I had accumulated through the Red Flame Method Soul Sutra.
So, almost as though imitating dual cultivation, I slowly fed the fire-aspected spiritual energy I possessed into the flow of blood. At once, the water spiritual energy filling my body pushed back as if in defiance.
Fssssss—
The clash of the two spiritual energies erupted all at once, sending steam pouring from my body and inflicting immense pain, but the pressure of the water qi forcing blood from my body was clearly lessening.
The blood still surged out, and I still drove it back into my body with Control of Objects, but the flow had weakened, and that gave me a little more room to breathe.
So this time, I began to stir the wood qi that had been forced into a corner by the water qi. The power of the Water Lord was simply too overwhelming, and had shoved it aside for the moment, but after all, the only thing that could stand against the Water Lord’s power was the power of the Wood Lord itself.
Just as my fire qi, which had seemed to be resisting the water qi for a moment, was gradually being pushed back, the wood qi that had been crouching in hiding finally began to stir.
Crack!
A rich fragrance rose as though flowers had bloomed within my body, and the blood that had only been flowing more weakly at once came to a complete halt.
At the same time, my fire qi began flowing into the delicate balance between the Water Lord and the Wood Lord.
Then, the spiritual energies of each attribute, which had been growling like angry wolves and baring their force toward one another, unexpectedly began to turn together in a single current, forming one vortex and merging as one.
Blue water qi, green wood qi, and red fire qi mingled together, gradually forming a single mass of spiritual energy tinged with a pale yellow sheen.
But the balance of power, which had seemed stable for only a brief moment, began to tilt again the instant my fire-aspected spiritual energy ran dry.
When the smallest of the three forces—the fire-aspected spiritual energy—vanished, the remaining two no longer blended into the newly formed golden spiritual energy. Instead, they resumed their fierce contest of strength.
If I had possessed even a little more power to work with, or if I had been able to draw in the spiritual energy around me, this would not have happened.
Even the golden spiritual energy that had already become one began to flutter apart, loosened by the competing forces of the two attributes.
At this rate, I would not merely lose the fire-aspected spiritual energy I had accumulated through the Red Flame Method Soul Sutra. If the golden spiritual energy kept unraveling and returned to feed the other two, the two strengthened energies would eventually collide inside my body.
Death, or becoming a cripple who could never again learn any cultivation method. Those were the only two futures before me now.
But even in that desperate moment, I did not give up.
As long as I still breathed.
Nothing was over yet.
So I began drawing upon the last power remaining to me.
My internal force accumulated through the Heaven-Defying Lust Madness Classic. Unlike the spiritual energies raging through my entire body as though they would blow me apart, this power, quietly suppressing itself in my dantian, was astonishingly obedient.
What was more, through my fully opened upper dantian, it was a power that could be replenished as long as I had time.
And so the internal force endlessly renewed through my breath quickly shattered the balance between the two opposing attributes.
After that, the two attribute energies, the golden spiritual energy, and even my internal force all began to blend together and merge into one.
The spiritual energy that had begun to become one still shone gold, but its nature was completely different from before. The golden energy that had once fluttered as though it might spill its power at any moment had condensed, as though it were solid gold essence.
And that form was much like the gold cores of the demonic beasts I had already taken several times before.
That golden core even moved toward the lower dantian rather than the middle dantian, where spiritual energy normally dwelled, as if trying to take root there.
But the moment that core, exceeding the amount of energy the lower dantian could contain, forced its way in through the crack, the lower dantian itself began to change. In order to hold the power of the core, the dantian began expanding its vessel-like capacity.
Of course, that change did not end with the lower dantian alone. As the lower dantian expanded, a complete changing of bones and shedding of the mortal frame also began to take place. Bones twisted to match the enlarged lower dantian, and as those twisted bones and muscles settled into balance and the qi within my body was reorganized, a scorching sensation spread through me and my skin began to crack with a series of sharp popping sounds.
Then, with the brush of a gentle breeze, the cracked flakes of skin were blown away, revealing skin so soft it was almost like a newborn’s. It was the same metamorphosis I had already experienced before.
This time, however, there was one difference. Perhaps because my bones had not yet fully matured, the very structure of my body expanded, and even my height increased with it.
And unlike before, when I had quietly undergone this transformation during secluded cultivation, there was someone here now to witness my change.
“Neung So! You’ve achieved the changing of bones and shedding of the mortal frame that those who practice body refinement arts experience! So that’s why those who walk the path of Heavenly Dao Foundation Establishment are so strong!”
Seop Myeong-gyeol, who finally seemed to have regained some sense, exclaimed in admiration.
But contrary to her words, this metamorphosis was not the end. For a martial artist’s changing of bones and shedding of the mortal frame was not simply a matter of enlarging the lower dantian and the body’s skeleton; the meridians through which internal force flowed also had to be strengthened.
So this time, I drew power from the golden core firmly seated in my lower dantian.
Perhaps because of the obedient internal force joining it, the core released its energy all too willingly. With the fierce nature characteristic of spiritual energy and the movement of the compliant internal force added together, the strand of power I drew forth passed through my meridians with remarkable gentleness.
Of course, just because its movement was gentle did not mean the power within it was weak. In a single circulation through the body, the Ren and Du meridians, along with the minor channels throughout my entire frame, were all opened at once.
This was possible because my body had already undergone half of that transformation. Even if the meridians had not yet been strengthened to the same degree, the rest of my body had been reinforced and my qi was abundant; failing to reach such a state would have been far stranger.
Thanks to that, the foul residues that had blocked my meridians began to be forced out through the very pores from which blood had once streamed.
As the black, sticky, stinking filth left my body, the flow of qi coursing through me grew even stronger, then surged up toward the upper dantian at once.
Then, with a series of popping sounds near my head, the blockages in my meridians broke open, and my breathing instantly became lighter.
No, it was not merely that my breathing had become lighter. My martial cultivation had finally reached the peak realm, and because of that, my breath had become steadier as well.
Moreover, the rise in my martial cultivation did not stop there. Already possessing insight up to the Life-and-Death Realm, I used the still-overflowing power of the core to achieve another breakthrough.
Transcendent Realm!
That supreme realm, attainable only by sect masters of the great orthodox schools, had come to me once more.
At that moment, qi from heaven and earth poured in all at once through my already wide-open upper dantian. The instant these two successive breakthroughs ended, enough to make even the most bizarre figures in the martial world gasp in shock, my body, which had long been suspended in the air, slowly descended back to the ground.
After taking one breath to steady myself, I opened my eyes.
Flash!
The instant the sharp light bursting from my gaze swept over the surroundings, I saw how much had changed.
The first thing that differed was the earth around me, which had been torn apart as if a colossal storm had swept through it, and the absence of Jeong sago, whom I had naturally expected to still be standing her ground.
I turned to the wooden puppet, which remained in place, and asked,
“Myeong-gyeol! Where did Jeong sago go?”
From the puppet came an answer I had not expected.
“She followed the male cultivator who came looking for this place. As though she already knew him.”
He might have been called a guest cultivator, but there was no reason to think anyone from Hyeondo Sect would be coming to visit Jeong sago, who did not mix well with others. Then the other person was likely someone she had known back when she lived as a mountaineer.
But then Seop Myeong-gyeol’s next words sounded ominous.
“The woman’s innate fate was already ill-omened, but that man’s was even more sinister.”
As I frowned at that, I sensed someone approaching from far away. It was Jeong sago, in a miserable state, her clothes shredded to pieces and her body here and there marked with fresh wounds.