CHAPTER 146: BREAKTHROUGH, CORE FORMATION! 2

In the ancient era, before the knowledge of the upper realm existed, cultivators used to call it ’dao’ power. This was because the release of Core Formation power contained unique effects limited to the cultivator, previously termed ’dao rhymes’.

However, with the discovery of higher realms and even the immortal realm, this term was naturally shifted because how dare mere third realm fellows call their meager form of energy dao power or anything related to that? Even Immortal Emperors in the upper realm didn’t dare call their conceptual abilities the ’dao’, terming them as laws.

But in Firmament Heaven, the period between the discovery of the Core Formation realm and the Nascent Soul realm eclipsed the time it took cultivators to find the way forward from both Qi Refinement and Foundation Establishment by more than a hundred times.

For the longest time in the ancient era, Golden Core as they called it was the highest realm achievable and seemed to be such. That was why it had the highest reputation among mortals and the most documentation across all continents on Firmament Heaven.

One may have heard of the various embellishments and profound sayings, like ’I swallow the golden pill into my belly, I take my fate as my own’ or ’when the Golden Core is complete, a hundred calamities cannot invade’.

They even went as far as to term those in the Golden Core Realm as ’Zhenren’ (True Person), meaning that they had achieved the peak of the spiritual way and had become human immortals on the path of Immortality.

Dharma Power was special because it possessed these ’dao rhymes’, now termed Dharma Logic, which added more power and versatility to Magic Power. Comparatively speaking, Dharma Power was not that different from Magic Power in terms of quality and utility, but the addition of those dao rhymes was like adding on a new modifier.

For earthlings, it could be best understood by saying that if Magic Power was the ’base form’, then Dharma Power was the ’super form’. It just gained new power by transforming itself with a new property, so if you took out the Dharma Logic from Dharma Power, it would simply revert to Magic Power.

This was not the same as Refined Spiritual Qi and Magic Power though. No matter how you beat up, bullied, or dirtied Magic Power, it could never ’downgrade’, for it was an entire leap in essence from a fundamental level.

Talking so much about this, one would think that Dharma Power was the highlight of entering the Core Formation realm, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Back to the breakthrough, it was akin to the three stages of breakthrough for Foundation Establishment, but Core Formation was broken down into five steps. Foundation Establishment previously had the first step as Opening the Sea of Consciousness and Birthing the Spirit Sense, the second as Locating the Spirit Root and Distilling Spiritual Qi into Magic Power, then the final step as Circulating Magic Power and Refining the Meridians.

For Core Formation, the first step was the Condensation of Spirit Sense and Molding the Core.

There was all this talk of compressing the dantian and spirit root to form a core, but exactly how was one supposed to go about that? You couldn’t just cut yourself open, grab your dantian, and then put it under a hydraulic press, could you?

No, you had to use something that was ethereal and untouchable, much like the spirit root and the dantian, but also physical and able to effect force on anything. With regards to this, there was only one such thing that a cultivator possessed in their arsenal currently, and that was the spirit sense!

After passing through Foundation Establishment to reach perfection, one should at least have a basic 100-meter radius spirit sense with average strength. The only problem was spirit sense was too weak, unable to effect much, if any, force on things in the real world, much less the intangible.

Up until this point, it had mostly been used as a biological radar of sorts, its weak force applied to control the spirit root to produce magic power by reversing the flow of refined spiritual qi. However, if we were to give its strength a force rating, it would be about as strong as a toddler trying to push something.

That was naturally nowhere near the amount of raw power needed to grab the entire dantian and spirit roots, then squeeze them down till they merged into a solid spherical-shaped core. To get that kind of power, the spirit sense had to be transformed; it had to be elevated, just like magic power!

However, this step proved extremely difficult for cultivators of old. This was because, in the case of this kind of elevation, usually it would require mixing the spirit sense with something of a higher quality, but all they had was magic power in their dantians, and that was already used to generate spirit sense as they broke through from Foundation Establishment level 1 to Perfection.

So what to do?

Well, it was obvious given the nature of the cultivation world, but the old way forward was through resources!

Inasmuch as Li Ling and many earthlings might dislike the concept of cultivation realms being blocked off by resources, where no amount of hard work could substitute, that was just how the world worked unfortunately.

Even the second realm of the Blood Asura Descent had required specific resources for each sub-realm breakthrough, so it was already good enough that Qi cultivation could be ’freely practiced’ until the Core Formation realm.

Well, alternatively, one could still use hard work, as long as they learned the Sage Race method to the second realm and developed a powerful telekinetic force that could simulate the strength needed to compress the core.

So hard workers did have a way; it was just tangential and would take a lot of time off your lifespan, but all of that could be regained when one gained an extra 300 years of life from entering Core Formation, meaning that even if you were on your deathbed, you would now become middle-aged at worst and a veteran adult at best.

The resources required for those unwilling or unable to take the Sage Race path, or who didn’t have natural endowments that gave them strong spirit senses able to crush their cores anyway, was the Spirit Condensation Pill.

Skipping the lore of the pill, its price and production method, once it was taken, it would empower one’s spirit sense temporarily, giving it the necessary strength needed to compress the core. The Spirit Condensation Pill was redundant in this era, as the Core Forming Pill existed, which covered every requirement for all the five steps in the breakthrough.

For Li Ling, he didn’t even use his own spirit sense, whether it was that of the refined one from the Nine Heights Pagoda or his loose one from his natural cultivation. The Infinite Slaughter System directly manifested its own force to grab his dantian and spirit roots, then compress them neatly into a spherical shape in one go.

One should know that this was not normal, because it incidentally skipped the entirety of the second step of the breakthrough, Molding the Core. Like kneading bread or any malleable material, you couldn’t just smash down once and get the right shape, so many attempts were needed.

This step’s difficulty varied per cultivator. Some were just plain skillful and meticulous, able to get it right and shape it well in a few tries, while some were just not that great and would always end up with slightly awkward proportions no matter how they tried.

Since this one came down to personal ability, there was not much to talk about.

Either be good or fail your breakthrough due to ’butter fingers’.

The third step of the breakthrough was naturally the Revolution of the Dharma Cycle. This was where one converted their Magic Power to Dharma Power, but unlike going from Qi Refinement to Foundation Establishment, where the energy was raised by one tier so there was quantity loss in exchange for quality gain, the same did not occur here.

How much Magic Power one had, and its quality compared to others, would also decide how good one’s Dharma Power would end up compared to others. This was why the Foundation Establishment realm was called that, because it established your foundation for the entire cultivation process.

There would not be another realm like it where you completely birthed new things or elevated things organically up a tier. Most later realms featured adding in ’extra’ or ’side’ things to enhance power further, most of which were still dependent on your work during Foundation Establishment.

For a normal cultivator making a breakthrough, one would simply have to use their temporarily enhanced spirit sense to perform the very difficult but unique characteristic of the Core Formation realm, which was to make the core spin.

Only through making the core revolve could everything that came after be possible!