Chapter 140: Primordial Spirit

However, Feng Ke’er remained busy without falling into disorder.

Because time flowed much more slowly inside the Spatial Sphere, she deliberately brought out the Mustard-Seed Dimension as well.

After advancing, she had always made a habit of entering seclusion for a period of time. This was mainly to consolidate her realm, refine the particles of auspicious light, review the process of advancement, and study the cultivation notes left by the Great God Pangu. The last time, after she advanced to the Grand Perfection of the Void Transformation Stage, she had spent nearly ten years in seclusion before completing all those tasks.

This time, she was advancing by an entire major realm. Judging from her past experience, the period of seclusion required would likely be even longer. Perhaps even ten years would not be enough.

Yet only a little over a year remained before the passage reopened. Clearly, she did not have enough time. Thus, she could only stack the two spatial treasures together in hopes of gaining more time.

The Mustard-Seed Dimension had never advanced. Time still flowed there at a ratio of one to sixty. Stacked with the Spatial Sphere, the flow of time inside the sphere was accelerated to a ratio of one to six hundred.

If all went well, she might be able to emerge from seclusion in two or three months.

Once she entered the Spatial Sphere, the bottleneck at the Grand Perfection of the Void Transformation Stage had already vanished from her Sea of Dantian. Freed from all restraint, her spiritual energy surged through the thousand Nascent Souls like a wild horse that had broken loose.

The Nascent Souls had never seen such a scene before and were so frightened that they huddled together.

Then something strange happened. They seemed to have turned into lumps of modeling clay. Once they touched one another, they could no longer separate.

And then something even more horrifying occurred. In the blink of an eye, all one thousand Nascent Souls had practically become a single conjoined being.

A conjoined being made up of a thousand people!

Every Nascent Soul struggled frantically in terror. Fortunately, they could not make a sound. Otherwise, the sheer volume of their screams would have been enough to stun one another.

Each struggle, however, was no different to her Sea of Dantian than a minor earthquake. Again and again, they jostled her insides until her stomach felt like a pot of boiling water. Feng Ke’er suddenly opened her eyes and retched repeatedly.

Did it hurt? It probably did. But after enduring so many bouts of excruciating pain, her nerves had long since been trained to an extraordinary degree. Her sense of pain had become numb.

She had to calm the Nascent Souls down!

Focusing her breath into her Sea of Dantian, Feng Ke’er forced herself to sit steady and used her divine sense to wrap the entire Sea of Dantian tightly, leaving not the slightest gap.

At the same time, she practiced the first level of the Purifying Heart Mantra again and again. The Nascent Souls and her true body were connected heart to heart. If she wanted them to calm down, she first had to remain calm herself.

The method worked remarkably well.

After countless repetitions of the Purifying Heart Mantra, the Nascent Souls finally quieted down. They stopped thrashing about.

The rampaging spiritual energy gradually settled as well.

Feng Ke’er secretly breathed a sigh of relief and looked inward toward her dantian. There, she discovered a single enormous Nascent Soul sitting cross-legged in the Sea of Dantian.

A thousand souls had become one!

Whether in appearance or physique, the enormous Nascent Soul looked exactly like her true body, as though the two had been cast from the same mold.

At that moment, the five-colored spiritual energy in the Sea of Dantian surged once more.

This time, however, it did not scatter chaotically in every direction. Instead, it gathered into a single mass, like a radiant, multicolored lotus slowly rising from the bottom of the Sea of Dantian.

The enormous Nascent Soul sat cross-legged precisely within the flower’s golden heart. It, too, was slowly lifted upward.

Little by little, as gradual as the rising sun over the sea, the enormous Nascent Soul emerged from the Sea of Dantian.

At last, all the spiritual energy within the Sea of Dantian gave it one final, powerful push. The enormous Nascent Soul broke free of its shell, cloaked in dazzling five-colored radiance, and hovered steadily above her head.

It was done!

This was what was known as ascension—the Nascent Soul ascending from the Sea of Dantian!

From that moment onward, this spirit body, identical in appearance to her, was no longer a Nascent Soul.

It was now a Primordial Spirit!

Bathing in five-colored radiance, Feng Ke’er gazed up at her Primordial Spirit.

It wore a white robe and sat cross-legged with its five vital points turned upward, looking down at her true body. It was as though a mirror had been placed between them. Even the expressions on their faces were exactly the same.

“Hi...” Feng Ke’er recovered from her astonishment, blinked several times, and greeted her Primordial Spirit. Since this was their first meeting, and she was the true body, she felt she ought to take the initiative.

Unexpectedly, at almost the exact same moment, the Primordial Spirit also withdrew the wonder from its eyes and blinked.

“Hi...”

“Huh?” The Primordial Spirit could actually speak! And what was with this astonishing level of synchronization?

“Huh?”

“Oh!” It truly was an evolved version of the Nascent Soul. The level of understanding between the Primordial Spirit and the true body was remarkably high.

“Oh!”

“Pfft!”

Feng Ke’er finally broke down and burst out laughing. This was far too amusing.

“Pfft!”

This was also what happened when one lacked a master to provide guidance. Many years later, Feng Ke’er happened to acquire a jade slip. Besides describing in detail what happened during the first emergence of a Primordial Spirit, it also explained that from the moment the Primordial Spirit left the Sea of Dantian until it returned, precisely ten breaths would pass.

During that period, the Primordial Spirit would release its innate radiance. The first release of this innate radiance possessed two effects: it could either reshape the spirit body or strengthen it.

Unfortunately, one could have only one of the two effects.

If the true body did not make an active choice at the moment the innate radiance descended, the Primordial Spirit would automatically assume that the latter option had been chosen.

Everyone loved beauty. Many cultivators, in pursuit of the legendary immortal bearing and otherworldly elegance, chose to reshape their spirit bodies. Since the spirit body was a mirror image of the true body, their forms and appearances would always remain identical. Whatever the spirit body became, the true body would become as well.

For this reason, Feng Ke’er had always been rather suspicious of a certain fox’s claim to have been “born beautiful.” In response, the fox had solemnly informed her that such foolishness was something only human cultivators would do.

The strength of a spirit body was related to the strength of one’s divine sense. Divine sense had always been a weakness of demonic beasts. Thus, the spirit bodies of demon immortals were far weaker than those of human cultivators at the same level. In order not to be controlled by human cultivators, they would do everything in their power to strengthen their spirit bodies. How could they possibly waste such a fortuitous opportunity?

Besides, for demon immortals, becoming beautiful was an exceedingly simple matter. There were countless pills capable of accomplishing it.

Feng Ke’er knew nothing of this. Therefore, while she was foolishly saying “hi,” her Primordial Spirit chose the strengthening effect.

The ten breaths passed quickly. The five-colored radiance faded, yet the Primordial Spirit appeared even more crystal-clear and translucent, like a person carved from jade.

“So beautiful.” Feng Ke’er gazed at it, entranced, and could not help murmuring in praise.

“So beautiful,” the Primordial Spirit murmured as well, utterly mesmerized, before slowly sinking back into the Sea of Dantian.

“Ding!”

A clear female voice rang beside her ear.

“Master has advanced. Ascension: one level.”

The moment the voice fell silent, a bang rang out, and a dazzling ring of five-colored auspicious light burst from someone’s body.

Feng Ke’er shuddered and came back to her senses. Almost rolling and crawling, she scrambled out of the Spatial Sphere. This thing was nothing like the five-colored spiritual radiance from before. It was several times more overbearing. She would never forget how those thousand Nascent Souls had come into being.

Of course, at the very instant she left, she did not forget to cast out a cloth bag condensed from her magical power and use it to catch a bagful of auspicious-light particles.

This time, she caught nearly half of the five-colored auspicious light. The particles that escaped scattered in every direction, burrowing into the distant white mist. Eventually, they struck the spatial barrier and released a series of thunderous booms. Even the Mustard-Seed Dimension hummed and shook for quite some time.

Feng Ke’er had devoted herself entirely to her advancement inside the Spatial Sphere and had completely lost all sense of time. The Demon King, however, had spent an entire month guarding the Heart of the Sea of Barriers with a nervous heart, finding each day as long as a year.

At last, familiar tremors and muffled, thunderous booms came from a point ten meters to his right. The tension in his nerves suddenly relaxed. He dropped heavily onto the ground, rubbed his forehead, and repeatedly cried out, “Thank goodness! Thank goodness!”

On the path of cultivation, there were several stages at which advancement was especially critical. Cultivators usually referred to them as thresholds.

Foundation Establishment was the threshold of entry. Ascension was the threshold of entering the hall. Tribulation was the threshold between life and death. Becoming a High God was the final threshold—one that could not be crossed.

When he had advanced to the sixth rank, equivalent to the Ascension Stage among human cultivators, his demonic core had been unable to transform into a Primordial Spirit for a long time. Fortunately, he had made ample preparations and gathered ten Soul-Transforming Pills.

Only after great difficulty had his demonic core evolved into a Primordial Spirit. But then another problem arose. There was not enough spiritual energy, and the Primordial Spirit could not leave the body.

It was much like a woman encountering a difficult childbirth. If the Primordial Spirit could not emerge for too long, it would be roasted alive and melted by the intense heat generated by the innate radiance.

Back then, he had swallowed high-grade spirit-gathering pills like candy. In the end, after narrowly escaping disaster, the Primordial Spirit had finally broken free at the very last moment.

In other words, advancing to the Ascension Stage was an extremely dangerous matter. Whether human cultivators or demon beasts, all of them would make thorough preparations beforehand.

Yet, in the Demon King’s opinion, Feng Ke’er had practically made no preparations at all.

No wonder he had been so anxious.

This time, he had genuinely been worried for Feng Ke’er’s life, without the slightest trace of selfishness. Looking back now, he felt deeply ashamed of all the entanglements between them in the past.

After his previous moment of enlightenment, he had thought everything through clearly. Feng Ke’er was right: cultivation was one’s own affair. Every hurdle along the way had to be crossed personally by the cultivator concerned.

Every tribulation existed for a reason. It made a cultivator more mature and more powerful.

Since those three tribulation bolts were obstacles that every demon beast had to pass in order to ascend to the Spirit Realm, there must certainly be some profound secret hidden within them. The Spirit Realm was filled with hidden dragons and crouching tigers, and the challenges he would face there would surely be far greater than those of the lower realm.

If he could not even pass this trial, how would he establish himself in the Spirit Realm in the future? Could he hide behind his master forever, clinging to life in disgrace?

If that were the case, why had he endured so much suffering to cultivate? He might as well have remained from the very beginning in the Sea of Barriers, a little silver fox trembling every day in fear for its life!

The Demon King had truly made up his mind. He would no longer run away.

He would face those three tribulation bolts alone.

Feng Ke’er naturally had no idea what he was thinking at that moment. After the five-colored auspicious light had been completely absorbed by the spatial barrier, she returned to the Spatial Sphere once more and examined the changes brought about by her advancement.

This time, she had advanced by an entire major realm. Her cultivation had increased geometrically.

Her Sea of Dantian, Sea of Consciousness, meridians, and other aspects had naturally expanded considerably.

Her spiritual power and spiritual energy were likewise incomparable to what they had been before.

Touching her face, which was even smoother and more delicate than a peeled hard-boiled egg, she felt more radiant and spirited than ever before.

Well... was she becoming a little too narcissistic?

She shook her head, put away her smug little mood, and estimated the passage of time. Only about fifty years had passed inside the Spatial Sphere, which meant that only around a month should have passed outside.

That left her with an enormous amount of time to study Pangu’s cultivation journal.

With that thought, she removed the Phoenix Jade Pendant from around her neck and opened the Heavenly Tome.

To be continued

The Heavenly Tome, Volume 140: The Primordial Spirit—Update Complete!