Chapter 144 – Core Formation (1)
There were cold cores in his head, chest, and dantian. He had to break the balance between the three so the cold core at the head would sink and fuse with the one in the chest. If that succeeded, then that was the initial fusion.
The next step would be for that fused cold core to sink and fuse with the one in the dantian. The moment the three cold cores fuse, there is a chance for a real core to form.
Wang Lin quietly sat inside this small, stone room filled with Yin energy. His eyes were cold, his divine sense was in his body, and his focus was on the cold core in his head.
The first step for him was to make this cold core sink.
Wang Lin knew that it would be difficult to fuse the three cores before, but after experiencing it, he felt like difficult was an understatement. It was more like unimaginably difficult to fuse the three cold cores.
Wang Lin had already tried to sink the first cold core for more than a month, and he never stopped trying the whole time. There seemed to be some mysterious force blocking him. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t break through.
The requirements to cultivate the Underworld Ascension Method were to break the Ancestral point, Qi Sea, and dantian three times each with each time being harder than the last. The first time could be said to be difficult, the second time was very difficult, and the third time was extremely difficult. However, what Wang Lin was attempting to do right now was really making his Ancestral point break a fourth time, so one could only imagine the difficulty.
After attempting to break through many times, Wang Lin changed tactics and decided to slowly grind the barrier down. As time went on, that force that was blocking him weakened greatly.
However, the pain caused when grinding it was not something a normal person could imagine. Every time he grinded it, his body would shake and his forehead would be covered in sweat. His clothes had been dry ever since he had started this process.
Turning three cores into one was not something that could be achieved without great determination. However, determination was not something Wang Lin lacked. Even back in the Heng Yue Sect, his determination had left two streaks of blood on the road up the mountain.
If it wasn’t for his bad talent, he would have definitely been the focus of the Heng Yue Sect’s nurture and care. However, all of this was pointless now with the destruction of the Heng Yue Sect.
Wang Lin’s determination was unimaginable. After enduring three months of this pain, the Ancestral point finally broke once more.
The fist-sized cold core slowly sank down toward his Qi sea. As it sunk, slivers of energy from the cold core entered his body,
Every time the cold core sunk, more and more of these threads of energy appeared until the core was finally right above the Qi sea.
Wang Lin took a deep breath and started grinding the barrier in front of the Qi sea without any hesitation.
Another three months had passed before the barrier finally broke and opened. At the same time, the two cold cores collided with each other. Wang Lin heard a boom as a terrifying energy surged through his body.
Wang Lin’s face immediately became pale. After his throat moved a bit, he coughed out a mouthful of blood. The moment the blood came out, it froze and hit the wall, causing the wall to be covered in blood-colored ice crystals.
After coughing out the blood, he quickly took out eight medium quality spirit stones, all of which he crushed and turned to dust. The dust quickly circled around him and formed a strange symbol.
The symbol faintly glowed before disappearing. Then a black flying sword appeared and circled Wang Lin once before stopping before him. The devil’s figure slowly appeared from the sword.
The devil first looked at Wang Lin and began to struggle on what to do. Just at this moment, the divine sense implanted in the devil activated and it lost every urge to attack Wang Lin, then started to obediently guard him.
After finishing all of this, Wang Lin’s body fell to the ground. He only had enough time to place a formation before he passed out.
Speaking of this formation, Wang Lin had prepared several simple formations to use during emergency situations.
The devil guarded the cave and secretly glanced at Wang Lin a few times. He began to struggle again and thought, “Should I attack him? Well… he doesn’t seem to be faking it… it’s hard to say. This guy is just too sly… Ah, should I fight with him? But if I can’t defeat him…” The devil shivered and threw this idea out of his mind.
After one day, the idea he had thrown out of his mind came back again and he began to struggle. “Should I attack him? This is the perfect time. If I miss this chance now, then I might never have another… No, this Wang Lin is too cunning. How could he not have some sort of defense against me? He was passing out, yet he still let me out. This doesn’t make any sense.” The devil shook his head and looked viciously at Wang Lin. “I’m not going to fall for it. You can continue to pretend.”
The idea was once again thrown aside.
Another day passed. The devil looked at Wang Lin and became tempted again. “Forget it, lets fight! I don’t think this guy is faking it. I wanna fight, fight, fight!”
His eyes turned red and he jumped at Wang Lin. The defensive formation had no effect, so he managed to touch him.
But shortly after, the devil let out a miserable scream as green gas came out of his body and he seemed like he was about to disappear. He quickly backed up while miserably crying, “I knew this guy was cunning. Why else would he let me out without a care? Damn it, when did he leave that divine sense inside me. How… how am I going to live from now on?” The devil slumped to the ground and began wailing.
After experiencing this, the devil obediently stayed in a corner. He stared at the wall with eyes filled with anger.
On the third day, Wang Lin woke up and let out a bitter smile. He underestimated the difficulty of the fusion. The destructive force created by the fusion was the key part of the process.
He couldn’t let this energy escape or the fusion would fail, but if he were to keep it in his body, his body wouldn’t be able to withstand it. Wang Lin’s expression was very dark and unsettling.
In truth, his body couldn’t handle this level of Yin energy, which confused him greatly. How did the senior that practiced the Underworld Ascension Method fuse the three cold cores? Forget about others, how did Situ Nan succeed in cultivating the Underworld Ascension Method?
Wang Lin thought very hard but couldn’t come up with an answer. This was one point Situ Nan had never brought up.
“How could I make my body be able to withstand the Yin energy?” Wang Lin muttered to himself for a long time before letting out a sigh, then his gaze landed on the devil in the corner.
After Wang Lin woke up, the devil had constantly been taking peeks at him. Now that Wang Lin looked at him, his body quivered and he quickly said, “I have been guarding you this whole time and was always vigilant.”
Wang Lin grabbed the devil and threw him into the flying sword before leaving the stone room.
Wang Lin looked into Li Muwan’s room and saw her slumped over a table, sleeping soundly. Her silky hair was tied up in a ponytail. Part of the ponytail was on the side of her face and the rest was behind her ear. Her face was slightly red and had a glow like sunlight reflecting off snow.
The purple dress she had on made her look like a painting and would cause anyone’s heart to beat faster. At this moment, there were slivers of white smoke escaping from the pill furnace next to her, making her look like a fairy in a painting.
The decorations Li Muwan had added to her room, like the green vines she had picked up somewhere, made this scene look even more like a painting.
A faint aroma of herbs came out of her room. When Wang Lin breathed it in, his mind immediately became clearer.
He looked for a long time before withdrawing his gaze and looked at the other stone room. His room. Half of the room was filled with herbs and the other half was filled with other materials. The dragon’s skull was among those materials.
The dragon’s corpse was too large, especially the bones. It would be too wasteful to use it all on the formation, so Wang Lin came out once to tell Li Muwan to save some of it.
After giving out that order, he began fusing the three cold cores. Wang Lin began to ponder. There was a bit of purple on this bone that make it look more like metal than bone. He thought that this must have been formed due to the dragon’s unique bodily structure.
Just as Wang Lin was observing, his heart suddenly moved and he turned around. Li Muwan stood up with a yawn and opened the door. She was surprised to see him. All of her drowsiness went away.
In these past few days, Li Muwan’s mentality had been slowly changing. At the start, she was always on guard against Wang Lin because she was afraid he might suddenly attack her. After all, people who practice the Death Spell often harvested Yin energy.
But then she realized that this Wang Lin was almost always in closed door training. Before, she thought that her brother was diligent in cultivation, but after seeing Wang Lin, she felt that he was truly diligent.
In her view, Wang Lin was already at the peak of the Foundation Establishment stage and only one step away from the Core Formation stage. However, how could the Core Formation stage be that easy to reach? In Li Muwan’s memory, the youngest person to reach the Foundation Establishment stage was 17 years old, but that person took 30 years from there before they reached the Core Formation stage. This person was Hou Fen’s ancestor, the first person to reach the Nascent Soul stage, and the person who raised Hou Fen from a rank 2 to a rank 3 cultivation country.
But looking at Wang Lin’s appearance, she thought that he was only in his 20s. It would be impossible for him to form his core in a short period of time. When Wang Lin told her that he will send her home once he reaches the Core Formation stage, she secretly sighed. She believed that it would take him a few decades to successfully reach the Core Formation stage. She felt a hint of disdain toward Wang Lin. If he wanted to keep her, he could have just said so instead of using this trick.
Li Muwan pondered for a bit, then asked, “Your… your cultivation has reached a bottleneck?” Her soul blood essence was in his hands, so if he were to ever have some crazy demand, she wouldn’t know how to respond. This question had been in her mind for a long time. Today, when she saw his frown, she couldn’t help but remember that the death spell required the user to absorb Yin energy from females to cultivate. Based on her calculations, it has been months since he had last killed anyone or touched any woman.
Wang Lin didn’t know what Li Muwan’s was thinking. He looked at her and nodded.
Li Muwan’s heart skipped a beat. She took a few steps back and her face became pale. She struggled a bit as she bit her lower lip and said, “I… I only promised to help you refine pills. If I… I … even if I die, I won’t agree.”
Wang Lin was caught off guard by Li Muwan. He turned his gaze toward the dragon skull and asked, “Why is the skull of the dragon this color?”
She bit her lower lip and softly said, “The dragon’s body is filled with poison, so it is not surprising that the bone is this color.”
“Filled with poison?” Wang Lin was shocked as he carefully examined the skull.
“Before a dragon dies, its body gets filled with deadly poison. Once it dies, the poison can change its body to become a type of treasure. The most poisonous part of the dragon is its marrow, and the most valuable part is also its marrow.” Li Muwan’s expression gradually became cold and her voice calm.
Wang Lin silently stared at the dragon’s skull and began to ponder, his expression unsettled. He muttered, “A body filled with poison… why isn’t the dragon affected by the poison when it is alive…” An idea flash across his mind. The idea came quick, but it left just as quick. Wang Lin only got a hint before becoming confused again.
Li Muwan coldly looked at Wang Lin. Seeing that his frown had become tighter, she couldn’t help but say, “The dragon’s body is made of poison from its flesh, bone, innards, and even its saliva, so it naturally won’t be affected…”
An idea suddenly flashed across Wang Lin’s mind. The idea became clearer and clear and his frown gradually loosened up until he finally let out a laugh and put the dragon’s skull inside his bag of holding.
“Since my body couldn’t withstand the Yin energy, then let my body completely become one with the Yin energy. As a result, I will be able to withstand it.” Wang Lin took a deep breath, looked at Li Muwan, and walked toward her.
Li Muwan’s face became every paler. She backed up to the wall, her body trembling, and just as she was about to kill herself with a bitter smile on her face, Wang Lin said, “When I reach the Core Formation stage, I’ll send you back to the Lou He Sect.”
With that, he turned around, rushed out of the cave, and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Li Muwan was completely stunned. Her mind was in chaos as various thoughts flooded her mind. Finally, she sat down with her back against the wall.
Wang Lin activated his earth escape technique to its peak as he charged toward the corpse valley. After gaining insight from Li Muwan’s words, he was now 100% confident in making the three cold cores fuse.
His speed was very fast. He arrived at the corpse valley in three days. He charged directly in and flew from the first valley to the thirteenth valley. Outside of the fourteenth valley, he took a deep breath and stepped in.
In the fourteenth valley, the ground was covered in a layer of frost. As Wang Lin walked on it, slivers of Yin energy entered his feet. Wang Lin hesitated a bit before slowly sinking into the ground with the earth escape technique.
As he sank, the Yin energy became even more powerful. After he sank about 100 meters, he had to stop as the powerful earth Yin energy had frozen his body. This was his limit. If he were to go any deeper, than even his soul would freeze.
As for how deep the fourteenth valley was and what secrets might be within it, Wang Lin didn’t care. He carefully controlled his heartbeat and moved his body into the lotus position.
“I’m not leaving this valley until the three cores fuse into one!” Wang Lin muttered this in his heart and closed his eyes.
Time flew by and in the blink of an eye, three years had passed.
The disaster at Hou Fen was finally resolved. The rank 4 cultivation country had sent three Soul Formation cultivators. They had spent 19 days taming all of the fire beasts. They refined them all together into a medium quality spirit beast, then returned to their country.
The quality of spirit beasts have very wide gaps. They are categorized into abnormal, spirit, desolate, and celestial beasts. Each stage has high, medium, and low quality.
The fire spirit that was absorbed by the heaven defying bead was half a step into becoming a desolate beast. According to this scale, it would be at the peak stage of a high quality spirit beast. All of its descendants were low quality spirit beasts. This clearly shows the difference between high, medium, and low quality. If it wasn’t for the fact that the fire spirit was in a weakened state, it wouldn’t have been so easily devoured.
It has to be said that a high quality spirit beast is the equivalent of a peak late stage Soul Formation cultivator, a medium quality spirit beast is the same as a peak late stage Nascent Soul cultivator, and an early stage spirit beast is the same as a peak late stage Core Formation cultivator.
The dragon that died was a medium quality spirit beast.
Although the fire beasts were gone, the fire spiritual energy in the country made it impossible to cultivate. They could only wait for the fire spiritual energy to slowly dissipate with time.
The battle with Xuan Wu continued, but battles between hundreds of people were very rare now. Most of the battles now were between a few dozen people. After taking about ⅓ of Xuan Wu, the cultivators of Hou Fen really didn’t have any more power to push further, so everything stabilized.
As for the battle between the two countries, it turned from killing each other to a training ground for the disciples of the two countries. This was a great insult to all of the disciples that had died during the start of the war.
As for Wang Lin, after he sunk 100 meters into the ground of the fourteenth valley, he sat there like an old monk. His heartbeat slowed down even more as an endless amount Yin energy entered his body and spread to his flesh and bones.
Gradually, more and more extremely Yin energy gathered in his body, so his flesh was now blue. It was as if it was about to turn to ice. In the past six months, his heart had beaten 9,837,543 times and he had sunken down to 180 meters.
Another six months passed. The Yin energy had invaded all of his internal organs now. His flesh and blood started to freeze and his hands and feet had become ice crystals. It felt as if any amount of force would shatter them. In these six months, his heart had only beaten 487,659 times and he had sunken down to 730 meters.
Another 6 months passed. The ice crystals had extend to his arms and legs. If one looked at it closely, they would see his bones inside the ice. His torso was also starting to turn into ice. His heart had beaten a total of 3,865 times and his body had sunken down to 1460 meters.
Six more months passed. His entire body, besides his head, had became an ice crystal and his heart had stopped beating. His body had had sunken down to 3,672 meters.
Two more years passed. Half way through the third year, his head turned into an ice crystal as well. There was no more signs of life from Wang Lin. He had finally reached the Underworld state required in the Underworld Ascension Cultivation Method.
His body had sunken to 7,979 meters and appeared in a dark blue space. His surroundings were filled with bones of beasts. For some reason, all of the flesh of these beasts had disappeared, leaving behind this sea of corpses.
All of the bones here had been turned into blue ice crystals.
Wang Lin sat inside the sea of bones and spent one month to restore his heartbeat, two months to recover his divine sense, and three months to feel the three cold cores.
Afterward, the cold cores from his Ancestral point and Qi sea collided, creating a surge of powerful Yin energy. However, compared to the Yin energy currently in Wang Lin’s body, it felt a bit underwhelming.
He easily fused the two cold cores together and condensed them into one.
Shortly after, the fused cold core sank and arrived at the dantian. The barrier at the dantian lasted only half an hour before it collapsed.
The fused cold core sank and collided with the cold core in the dantian. Suddenly, more than ten times the Yin energy from last time surged forth. This Yin energy was very dense, but it was still a bit short of the Yin energy in Wang Lin’s body. Slowly, the three cold cores fused into one.
However, its color wasn’t golden but a very full gray.
Wang Lin didn’t know that the Underworld Ascension Cultivation Method had undergone some changes due to the heaven defying bead and the Ji Realm. It could be said that the difficulty he faced had never happened before.
The reason the Underworld Ascension Cultivation Method was said to be the fastest way to reach the Core Formation stage was because it formed a prototype cold core first. It would then use spiritual energy to turn it into a golden core.
He had now completed more than half of it, so he only needed more spiritual energy to make that final push. However, the Core Formation stage wasn’t that easy to achieve. There was a certain chance of failure.
If he were to fail, the prototype core would shatter and he would have to start again.