Chapter 15: Breakthrough
In the afternoon, Huo Yutong awoke.
Forcibly suppressing her grief, she paid respects to the late old butler. Afterwards, she dedicated herself to cultivation with far more effort than ever before.
This time, she didn't weep. Instead, she became strong, channeling her sorrow into motivation, which significantly enhanced her spiritual power.
Inside the room, Qian Zhaoguang held the lychee-sized Golden Spirit Fruit in his hand. Without any hesitation, he directly consumed it.
If any other Soul Master had witnessed this, their jaws would have dropped in shock on the spot.
The Golden Spirit Fruit, a heavenly treasure similar to Whale Gel known for helping Soul Masters temper their bodies, contained extremely potent and domineering energy. Typically, it was used in conjunction with various auxiliary ingredients to prepare a medicinal solution for bathing.
While consuming it directly offered better effects, nine times out of ten, it would result in the consumer's body exploding from the overwhelming energy.
Qian Zhaoguang, with his robust physique, didn't need to worry about this. Pushing his Golden Body Art to its absolute limit, his surging Qi and Blood formed a furnace within his body, forcefully extracting all the energy contained within the Golden Spirit Fruit.
Under the influence of the Golden Body Art, this domineering energy acted like countless steel needles, piercing into the major acupoints throughout his body.
A ferocious expression appeared on Qian Zhaoguang's face. In all these years, this was the first time he had pushed the Golden Body Art to its absolute extreme.
The energy felt like ten thousand blades piercing his heart, stimulating his body and continuously strengthening every inch of his flesh and blood.
His Qi and Blood circulated at their peak within his body, causing his surface temperature to rise dramatically.
Viewed from the outside, Qian Zhaoguang's skin had turned a horrifying shade of red, and his entire body seemed to have swelled by a size.
The not-so-abundant soul power in his dantian was swept along by the rampaging Qi, Blood, and energy, surging towards the parts of his flesh and bones that had yet to be tempered.
He could clearly sense his body progressively strengthening, sealing all the energy within, forming an incredibly powerful shackle.
Dark, viscous blood began to seep out from Qian Zhaoguang's skin, gradually staining his clothes red.
When the Qi and Blood force reached its absolute peak, Qian Zhaoguang could no longer suppress the agony within his body and let out a fierce roar.
A sound emanated from within him, like the roar of a tiger, yet also like muffled thunder, releasing a deep rumbling noise.
BOOM!
Just as Qian Zhaoguang felt his body was about to explode, he suddenly sensed as if some invisible restriction had been shattered, and an unparalleled feeling of relief and clarity washed over his entire being.
In the astonished eyes of Huo Yutong, who had rushed over upon hearing the noise, wisps of red steam began to evaporate from the surface of his body.
Qian Zhaoguang smoothly stood up and roared towards the heavens.
This time, it was no longer a cry of agony, but a roar of exhilarating release.
After six long years of cultivation, aided by this Golden Spirit Fruit, he had finally completed the cultivation of the Flawless Body.
Once the first stage of all three cultivation arts was completed, he could smoothly break through to the second realm of the Golden Body Art – the state of Blood Qi Wolf Smoke.
Simultaneously, the completion of the Flawless Body cultivation signified another crucial development.
Qian Zhaoguang could finally begin cultivating the Qi Refining Art, start increasing the soul power within his body, and ascend rapidly to Level 10.
Since that day, Qian Zhaoguang had become much more silent than before, and smiles appeared less frequently on his face.
At least, that's how it seemed to Huo Yutong.
What she didn't know was that Qian Zhaoguang's personality, even back in his previous life on Blue Star, had always been this indifferent, perhaps even bordering on cold-blooded.
He had witnessed the warmth and coldness of the world since childhood, tasted all the ups and downs of life.
Minding one's own business when things didn't concern oneself had already become his default state.
Huo Yun'er's death served as yet another harsh warning bell, making him hesitant and unwilling to casually interfere in matters unrelated to him ever again.
It wasn't until he traversed to this Douluo Continent that the old butler's kindness and Huo Yutong's attachment managed to crack open the ice around his heart.
Now, that crack had sealed itself shut once more.
Aside from burying his head in forging and cultivation all day, almost nothing else could capture his interest.
Whenever Huo Yutong spoke to him, Qian Zhaoguang would revert to his previous smiling appearance.
But Huo Yutong, who understood him extremely well, knew in her heart that this was merely a facade; he had simply buried that deep sorrow far down within his heart.
Half a year passed. Under Qian Zhaoguang's frenzied cultivation, he had successfully pushed his cultivation rank to Level 10.
This was a characteristic feature of the Three Refinements Period.
Once a cultivator completed the Flawless Body training, during the Three Refinements stage, their cultivation rank would experience a surge, rapidly reaching the peak of the current major realm (Level 10 in this case).
Sweetness comes after bitterness – this perfectly described the current state of this cultivation method.
Next, awaiting him was the even more arduous cultivation of spiritual power – the Spirit Refining Art.
This was also the reason why he hadn't rushed to obtain his first soul ring.
Qian Zhaoguang had a vague premonition that if he hastily broke through to the next realm before mastering the first stage of the Spirit Refining Art, known as Mortal Shedding, death would surely await him.
Unlike the relative ease of starting the Golden Body Art and Qi Refining Art, the difficulty of cultivating the Spirit Refining Art was far greater than before.
In the Mortal Shedding stage, the cultivator needed to continuously visualize a specific pattern provided in the technique manual within their mind using a special method, aiming to increase their spiritual power.
Once the spiritual power grew to a certain level, they then had to compress this mass of spiritual power as much as possible, continuing until it was compressed into a single point. This marked the official completion of the Mortal Shedding stage.
Once Qian Zhaoguang obtained his first soul ring and officially advanced to become a Soul Master, the three major cultivation arts would integrate and flow together, simultaneously erupting with even greater power than before.
Perhaps due to Qian Zhaoguang having lived two lives, his soul was significantly stronger than that of a normal person.
Consequently, his innate spiritual power was also far greater than that of a typical Soul Master.
Even Huo Yutong, immediately after awakening her Martial Soul, was far inferior to him in this regard.
This was also the reason why Qian Zhaoguang hadn't been overly affected by the Blood Tiger's Chaos skill a few years prior.
However, even leveraging this innate spiritual power, which was much stronger than others', it still took Qian Zhaoguang a full week just to formally begin the cultivation of spiritual power.
This highlighted the extreme difficulty of cultivating the Spirit Refining Art.
Yet, this did not cause Qian Zhaoguang to slow down his cultivation pace.
Based on usual patterns, such a high barrier to entry for cultivation would surely yield extremely rich rewards upon successful mastery.
The sooner he obtained formidable power, the sooner he could avenge the old butler!
Another half a year later, Qian Zhaoguang and Huo Yutong were nearing their tenth birthdays. Only one final year remained until the beginning of the main storyline in the original work.
As his spiritual power continuously strengthened, some details he had previously forgotten in the recesses of his memory now resurfaced.
Qian Zhaoguang once again reviewed the original story in his mind, meticulously writing down the details leading up to the encounter with the Tianmeng Ice Silkworm in Chinese, storing it in his storage bracelet to prevent forgetting.
Simultaneously, during these six months, he had been cultivating the Spirit Refining Art almost non-stop, day and night.
The mass of spiritual power in his mind, originally the size of a basketball, had already been compressed down to the size of a longan fruit. There was still some distance to go before compressing it into a single point.
Compared to other Soul Masters, his spiritual power was already completely on par with that of a Spirit-type Soul Venerable (Level 30+).
Even at such a formidable level, he was still just one final step away from completing the Mortal Shedding stage.
At most, it would take another month for him to complete the final phase of cultivation and reach the standard required to advance to the next stage.
The path of cultivation requires a balance between tension and relaxation.
No matter how eager Qian Zhaoguang was to break through, he still needed appropriate rest.
And forging, along with practicing his saber techniques, became his methods of relaxation.
(End of Chapter)