Archfiend

In Xu Yangyi’s body, his meridians became brighter and brighter. He didn’t feel strange whatsoever, on the contrary… it was like the Divine Flame of Conviction suddenly scattered and split into fire snakes that thoroughly fused with the vortex.

Next, he discovered that the speed of the vortex’s revolution was becoming faster and faster. At the same time, it shrunk at lightning speed!

Following the vortex’s shrinking, his pill-cauldron meridians continued to become more apparent. A few minutes later, his former meridians were in view again. This time, however, red meridians outlined a round head-sized gap in his dantian. Very soon, the shrinking azure vortex was fully slotted into the head-sized gap. At the center of the vortex, the bodhi seed floated up and down.

Swish… Gold veins streaked over the bodhi seed. Subsequently, his qi fused in like a stream, passing over the bodhi seed each time to cause it to sparkle. To his surprise, this immediately transformed into the purest qi, simply without need for his body to conduct a second filtering process. Madly, the current rushed through every fiber of his being!

“This… If this is qi liquefaction, maybe a single drop would’ve been congealed just now!” Xu Yangyi observed his bodily changes in shock, and forced down his excitement.

Was this anomaly from the Eternal Alchemy Canon’s total activation?

His cultivation speed now practically outstripped his speed when he was in the Clearcloud Realm!

“And this is just the Divine Flame of Conviction, a post-celestial spirit-object… If I had a pre-celestial spirit-object like the Vermilion Bird Fire, then what kind of sight would it be?!” He carefully used Innersight. He barely realized that behind him Angel was already in a complete stupor.

Xu Yangyi didn’t pay attention. Following each revolution of his arcane effort, the surrounding runes actually flickered steadily!

“This… isn’t from the full activation of the Spirit Focusing Formation… No! The Spirit Focusing Formation is fully activated, but… a high-level one can’t manage his absorption rate?” Angel watched Xu Yangyi in surprise. “D-Doesn’t that mean his qi is a lot greater than same-stage cultivators?”

“Absorption rate and qi reserves are directly proportional. Qi reserves directly establish the weak and strong between cultivators, and his current absorption rate… is even catching up with some weak quasi Grand Dukes!”

She looked around in awe, even able to hear the surrounding air rise and fall because of the inhalation and exhalation during the revolution of Xu Yangyi’s arcane effort. It was like she was standing in the belly of a behemoth.

“So formidable…” She fell into a daze for a few seconds and began to laugh. “Only a guy like this can interest me!”

Xu Yangyi was unaware of her thoughts, because as the Eternal Alchemy Canon activated in full, not only was one circular outline drawn, but a second one was being drawn on his chest on top of his body’s pill-furnace!

“What is this?” He furrowed his brows and stared closely at the circular shape formed out of meridians. Since the Eternal Alchemy Canon started up, his body was just like a freed wild horse, going on forever without turning back. The common things able to be found in any cultivator wouldn’t be found in him.

His meridians were gone, his qi sea was gone, and now his qi cycle were gone!

Hum hum hum… At this moment, the lower vortex faintly trembled, and a thumb-sized vortex was unexpectedly split out from his dantian’s vortex. It followed along a meridian and slowly hurried to his chest.

Bang bang bang! In the wake of the second vortex’s appearance, the violent shaking of bones fiercely rang out from his body. The entire space-time treasure was surprisingly shaking a little!

“This is… the establishment between the muscles covering the bone? The linking of joints?” By now, Angel was covering her mouth and standing. “I heard dad say… that only… only…”

“A legendary constitution?” She looked at Xu Yangyi in astonishment, not daring to believe her theory at all.

She’d once heard that during ancient times, when qi was still split into the Five Phases, that there were various kinds of legendary constitutions. There were some with the inborn divine strength of heaven, some that could become large and small, and some that could transform in multifarious ways. Some were undying. And there were some which had abnormally fast cultivation speeds. Nonetheless, following the arrival of the End of Days, ancient cultivators became fewer and fewer in number, and these rumors also gradually disappeared.

Still… the Core Formation masters knew that all cultivators, unless they reached Nascent Soul, didn’t have a complete body in a sense. In other words, no matter how one cycled their qi, there was undoubtedly wear and tear in the places where the bones and joints were interlinked. Only those legendary constitutions were able to establish a link through the muscles covering the bones, and then to the meridians, and then to the flesh.

Once a passage was created in the flesh, one would become a ‘perfected person’, as recorded by the ancient cultivators. That was to say that qi freely flowed through the body without impediment, as easy as the arm moved the finger. No matter how qi was absorbed, there wouldn’t be deterioration!

“If this is true… then did he just create a link between the muscles covering his bones? No, is he making the connection right now? No way… I have to go back and ask dad. This is ridiculous! Was he born like this or did he learn something?”

“Ancient cultivation arts have been lost for so many years, but I actually get to see one inside a time treasure. God… it won’t be long until I can’t believe my eyes.”

Xu Yangyi didn’t hear her gasp of surprise. Inside his body, he could only sense a layer of something that was hard to detect, perhaps something that a cultivator wouldn’t sense their entire lives, being opened. From his finger bones and toes it began… little by little, extending upwards to his elbow joints… knee joints… the speed was very fast. And with each passage of a joint, he could distinctly feel that his qi was becoming more active.

Crack crack crack… Brittle sounds rained down on his ears non-stop. Neither slow nor swift, the vortex ceaselessly approached his chest. He gazed at the vortex and mused to himself, The first vortex gave me double the spiritual force… and this one…

A thought in his heart caused his blood to boil, but he didn’t dare to voice it.

Four times the spiritual force!

What concept was his strength with four times more spiritual force?

Even a slightly weak quasi Grand Duke wouldn’t be his opponent! Even against the Throneless Grand Duke Bloody Moon on that day, he would’ve been able to resist for a period of time!

But at this time, the vortex suddenly flashed, and its speed unexpectedly slowed down by a fraction.

“This?” he mumbled to himself for a second and quickly realized the crux of the matter.

All along, he’d neglected a sentence from the Eternal Alchemy Canon.

The tome had always mentioned that the cultivation of the Eternal Alchemy Canon was a single nation nurturing a single person. Right now, though, he didn’t have such a feeling.

But that was because the Eternal Alchemy Canon had never truly activated.

Foundation Establishment was the creation of the pill-cauldron meridians, and Core Formation was the ignition of the pill scripture’s fire seed. The time when money would be spent like running water.

If a fire was to be ignited, fuel was needed, and this fuel… 

He didn’t hesitate at all. Under the wave of his hand, a sea of spirit stones that concealed the entire world appeared out of thin air. Streaming with light and overflowing with color, they piled up in front of him.

“Receive!!!” he shouted. Behind him, Angel was dumbfounded, eyes wide and mouth ajar. All the spirit stones rushed into Xu Yangyi’s dantian like raindrops!

The vampiress blanked out for three seconds and then bolted up to her feet, rolling her eyes.

“You squanderer! Squanderer!” She angrily stomped her feet repeatedly. “That’s the million-plus spirit stones you earned from your auction! You’re going to eat this much? Aren’t you worried that you’ll get kidney stones? Are there going to be any left for me to use later? Hmm… that’s wrong, it’ll probably a stomach stone…”

“But what is this thing? It’s so dang strange! I-I’ve never seen an arcane effort this weird before.”

Hum… The second cyan vortex trembled and then it’s speed finally resumed a little.

“Not enough?” Xu Yangyi was stunned. The slowing speed abated somewhat, but it still wasn’t enough.

What was to be done?

A wisp of anxiety flashed through his head. Soon, he gritted his teeth.

He did have another spirit stone.

The supreme-grade spirit stone he’d obtained in Nanzhou back then!

His hesitation lasted for merely an instant. In the next second, he decisively tossed the supreme spirit stone into his dantian.

Angel only sensed a rampaging qi suddenly appear, as if she was facing the entire ocean, but it promptly disappeared.

Swish… The moment the supreme spirit stone entered Xu Yangyi’s dantian, the second little vortex shivered, then… virtually just like a street race, it resumed in less than ten seconds!

Rumble! Xu Yangyi felt his entire body shake. His deathly still qi finally moved.

It was different from before. In the past, that gap was originally the outside world’s qi that he couldn’t absorb, so whatever qi he used was from what he had left inside him. This was also the reason he couldn’t act with full power in America. Once the Divine Flame of Conviction entered his body, he could absorb qi, but this qi only patched up his qi sea’s deficiency.

But now, it was rising.

An upwards advance!

When the second vortex began to spin, he sensed that the amount of qi he could store in his body was increasing again!

As expected, his spiritual force reserves were increasing again!

“But… I don’t even know how much this vortex will be able to upgrade.” He forced down the excitement in his heart. Gaining this increase before the Holy War was another fraction of certainty. Regardless, this also represented that the difficulty of his Core Formation was becoming even higher!

He performed Innersight on the vortex. The vortex’s speed increase was slow. He furrowed his brows. This was different from the instant feeling back then when his qi had risen by twofold.

It’s pill refinement! Several seconds later, he quickly confirmed this guess.

All of this was triggered by the Eternal Alchemy Canon. These two vortexes seemed to be gems embedded over a pill-furnace, and what the Eternal Alchemy Canon required was pill refinement!

Spiritual sense shifting away from his body, he stood up and quickly prepared to start refining the Spirit Forbiddance Pill.

“Can I be considered… to know your secret?” Angel vanquished all the shock on her face and said a little foolishly.

“That’s right.” Xu Yangyi was in a good mood. He cracked a rare joke, “Only one kind of person can keep a secret.”

“Your lover!”

Xu Yangyi’s expression sunk in a flash.

What was up with this weird way of understanding?

Even a ghost knew that wasn’t what he was talking about!

With much interest, Angel gazed at the instant tranquility on his face, but then she sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “At first, I wanted to see you laugh more later. Is it fun being a stick in the mud all day long? With no pleasure in life?”

“I’m going.” Although she was unruly, she also knew that Xu Yangyi would be refining pills next. This wasn’t a skill she could steal and study.

“Hold on.” Yet just as she turned around, Xu Yangyi called out to her.