Chapter Eighty: The Shattered Core Gives Birth to the Infant

Water Yaoxian felt as though her whole being might explode apart. Of course she knew that the strike she had delivered just now had, in the end, taken effect.

What she did not know was that Lei Dong had just passed through the most difficult, and the most important, breakthrough of his life.

For Lei Dong’s heart had long since been thrown into complete disorder.

The instant he had taken Water Yaoxian into his arms, Lei Dong had already noticed that part of the spiritual power drawn in by the nascent soul was being intercepted by the woman in his embrace; afterward, through the continuous cycle of absorption and exhalation, the spirit-gathering formation had gradually steadied.

Lei Dong felt a slight easing in his heart and began to sort out the wildly surging spiritual energy within him, while also extending his divine sense to sense the condition of his comrades around him.

But the very first person he sensed made Lei Dong’s eyes turn red once more. Huang Xiwen lay quietly more than thirty feet away, drenched in blood from head to toe, only his left hand still pointing rigidly toward the north.

With a boom, Lei Dong’s mind seemed to have been struck by a bomb. The fury in his chest, the boundless grief and indignation, and the endless remorse born of his own lapse at the critical moment, when rage had clouded his mind, made his soul tremble and sting. In that instant, Lei Dong nearly lost the ability to think at all.

And in that brief instant of distraction, a sudden upheaval erupted within his body.

The spiritual power above the vast sea had already been far richer than within the realm of the Republic, and after being drawn together by the Five-Direction Spirit Gathering Formation, and then further refined by the white radiance transformed from the statue of the Holy Emperor of Light, it had become even more pure, inexhaustible, and boundless.

Once the heaven-and-earth spiritual power gathered by the formation was drawn into the body, it would swiftly circulate along the established meridians, becoming ever more abundant, ever denser and more viscous as it ran, until at last it entered the nascent soul.

This process was extremely rapid, completed almost in the blink of an eye. But the white radiance of unknown origin would spread swiftly through the body, circulating through the meridians for several cycles before it was finally devoured by the nascent soul.

This process was also quite fast, yet compared with the rest of the spiritual power, it always lagged somewhat behind.

But in the next moment, a second wave of heaven-and-earth spiritual power, together with that white radiance, surged violently into his body, just as the tail end of the first wave of white light was entering the nascent soul. With a thunderous crash, the boundless spiritual power, like gasoline meeting a spark, exploded and blazed up violently.

The erupting spiritual power struck every thread of Lei Dong’s muscles, every nerve, every capillary vessel. The searing pain made him feel as though his body were about to be blasted into a cloud of invisible ash.

This was not the first time Lei Dong had encountered such a thing.

Ever since entering the training unit of the Tiger Assault Team, Lei Dong had discovered that above the barracks, apart from the extremely thin heaven-and-earth spiritual power, there existed another extraordinarily strange substance. No one knew where it came from, no one could explain what it was, and it could not be absorbed and refined like ordinary spiritual power. Yet it possessed a very special effect: like the catalyst often used in chemical experiments, once heaven-and-earth spiritual power entered the body and encountered this substance, the operation of the Chaos Art would become faster and far more violent.

The reason Lei Dong was able to break through swiftly to the peak of the Golden Core stage and successfully nurture the embryonic form of a nascent soul owed much to this mysterious substance. In fact, after he entered the Furious Dragon Brigade, this substance was still present, and even more concentrated, which caused his cultivation to advance day by day at a far greater pace.

And now, this nameless white radiance was exerting the same effect—no, an even more intense one.

The turbulent spiritual power within him, under that violent combustion, slammed fiercely into his meridians and body, leaving him in danger of being reduced to ashes at any second.

Under normal circumstances, during a cultivation breakthrough, Lei Dong would still have been able to use the Chaos Art at full force, doing his utmost to gather the chaotic spiritual power: part of it would follow the meridians, part of it would strike and temper his blood and flesh, and the greatest portion would be driven to attack the Heavenly Spirit Lock at his chest.

But at the very moment this enormous change occurred, Lei Dong had actually lost control of his mind, too late to restrain the overwhelming spiritual power flooding into his body.

The tiny nascent soul inside the Golden Core opened its mouth and swept all the spiritual power clean away, and the spiritual power and white light outside seemed to sense some kind of summons, immediately surging in after it.

With another thunderous boom, the spiritual power, catalyzed by the white light, erupted once more in fierce combustion, and Lei Dong again felt that piercing impact, as though his whole body might truly be reduced to flying ash.

"Hngh!"

The spiritual power, flooding in and exploding again and again, brought a wave of unbearable pain from the depths of Lei Dong’s soul, and he could not help but let out a cry of agony.

Once, twice, three times—the appetite of the nascent soul seemed endless. The spiritual power and white radiance pouring into his body grew more and more abundant, and the torment lasted longer and longer.

And in Lei Dong’s perception, already reduced to a mere thread by the immense pain, the speed at which the nascent soul within him absorbed heaven-and-earth spiritual power suddenly multiplied by a thousandfold.

Lei Dong forcibly gathered his mind and tried to control the spiritual power, only to discover it was already too late. The frenzied influx instantly filled every meridian in his body, colliding and crashing about without order or restraint.

At the same time, the tiny embryonic nascent soul opened its mouth like a mighty suction pump, sweeping the spiritual power pouring into Lei Dong’s body clean away. Its pull was endless; within the span of a single breath, even the heaven-and-earth spiritual power outside was emptied out.

The ceaselessly surging spiritual power seemed determined to blow apart Lei Dong’s entire body and soul.

Under this violent absorption, the embryonic nascent soul expanded and grew before the eye at a visible pace. And with its continual swelling, its appetite seemed to grow ever larger as well. A slight inhale from that small mouth was enough to make Lei Dong feel his meridians go abruptly hollow, and even the spiritual power gathered by the formation seemed to sink downward as though the ground itself had collapsed.

On Lei Dong’s path of cultivation, almost every breakthrough had brought forth a scene like this. Yet every time, within his body there would somehow, inexplicably, arise a vast and inexhaustible stream of spiritual power, as though all his previous bitter cultivation had been for the sake of meeting the boundless demands of advancement.

It was so when he broke through the Refining Qi stage. It was so when he broke through the Foundation Establishment stage. Every time, Lei Dong was nearly sucked dry.

To be sucked dry sounded almost comical, but in the history of cultivation, it had happened time and again as a tragic reality. After all, reaching great accomplishment in the nascent soul stage was tantamount to gaining a second life. Even if the physical body were to perish, so long as the nascent soul survived, rebirth in another body was possible.

One could say that consummating the nascent soul was the most important threshold in a cultivator’s life. Cross it, and the path ahead would become far broader and smoother; fail to cross it, and the mildest outcome would be severed meridians and total ruin of cultivation, becoming a waste worse than an ordinary person. The worst outcome would be death of body and soul, reduced to nothing but dust. The peril in between was truly impossible to take lightly. More than one genius of immense promise had fallen before this gate, vanishing forever into the long river of history.

The path of cultivation was full of thorns and treacherous shoals at every step; one lapse, and no matter how dazzling one’s talent, death of body and soul could be only a matter of minutes. Perhaps one moment you were still immersed in joy, and the next you had become a wisp of flying ash between heaven and earth.

But at present, Lei Dong, because his mind had fallen into utter chaos, had stumbled into an unprecedented crisis.

As the nascent soul continued to swell, spiritual power was drawn in like a tidal wave. The abundant energy within Lei Dong’s body was emptied in an instant, and the meridians that had been full and surging with force withered away in a flash. Then a new flood of spiritual power, like ocean waves, rushed in from outside, causing his meridians to swell again. A fierce agony, as if the extraordinary channels and eight meridians were being torn apart, surged through him, and Lei Dong had to bite down hard before he could keep from crying out.

But this intense pain was only the beginning.

The moment spiritual power flowed into the meridians, it was instantly drawn out dry again by the nascent soul. Lei Dong’s meridians withered once more, then an even greater torrent of power flooded in, bringing him still more terrible pain.

Spiritual power was siphoned away, meridians shrank; spiritual power surged in, meridians swelled and ached; spiritual power was siphoned away again...

Once, twice, three times...

The cycle repeated over a hundred times, and Lei Dong was almost driven beyond the limits of endurance. Nearly every time, he felt he could no longer hold on, yet every time, he clenched his teeth and forced himself through it. From beginning to end, he did not even let out the slightest groan.

Yet the frenzied wash of spiritual power at last revealed its tremendous effect. In Lei Dong’s inner vision, the tiny nascent soul inside the Golden Core had somehow grown to over a yard in height, and the meridians within his body, already broad and robust beyond measure, had actually undergone another nearly impossible expansion. The amount of spiritual power they could hold in a single cycle was nearly ten times greater than before. And from the steadily diminishing pain, one could tell that the tenacity of the meridians had increased by who knew how many times.

The Golden Core, originally no larger than a fist, had also swollen to more than a yard in diameter. Yet the thick and deep body of the pill had become only a thin layer of golden membrane, like the shell of a giant egg, enclosing the swollen nascent soul.

At last, the speed at which the nascent soul was devouring spiritual power began to slow. Lei Dong had just let out a breath of relief and was about to carefully examine the changes within his body when, at that very moment, a sudden transformation occurred.

The nascent soul, already swollen to over a yard high, abruptly opened its eyes and shot forth two beams of golden divine radiance, illuminating every vein and meridian within Lei Dong’s body with crystal clarity. A vast quantity of true essence gushed out from every pore of the nascent soul.

At that moment, the latest wave of spiritual power happened to be surging into Lei Dong’s body. The two immense forces crashed into each other with a roar, instantly raising monstrous waves that rampaged through Lei Dong’s body in all directions. The agony pierced to the bone, and Lei Dong’s vision went black; he nearly fainted on the spot.

Before the searing pain could fade, the nascent soul, having spewed out all that boundless true essence, actually began to wither away at speed, collapsing inward as though caving in, and in an instant shrank back to half an inch in size. Yet the shrunken nascent soul did not lose its radiance. With a small opening of its mouth, the spiritual power and true essence still thrashing like a flood were sucked into it in the blink of an eye. The tiny nascent soul instantly swelled once more to more than a yard high, and Lei Dong felt as though he had been stabbed at once by ten thousand sharp blades. His head went boom, and he felt as though his entire body were about to burst apart.