He gently smiled and caressed her face softly as she moved a little and turned to the other side after leaving his embrace but didn’t wake up.
‘Hmm… I will let her sleep for now. I need to break through as well; suppressing this raging Qi is getting harder and harder now, and her Primordial Yin only made it more impossible for me to do it.’
He quickly thought as he sat up straight and sat down in a meditative stance. He breathed in deeply and focused all his attention on his multiple dantians.
But before he could mobilize his Qi to break through, Yue Lan’s voice echoed in his mind:
[Yuan’er, you have too much excess Qi this time. You have to use more of it because your body is also passively absorbing Qi even if you don’t cultivate actively.]
Shen Yuan paused his movement as his mind churned. He quickly thought of various paths he could take, but in the end, he decided on the one which would benefit him the most.
‘Alright, I will start cultivating the technique which I got inside the Mystique Realm. Let’s see what this Inferno Smithing Technique can do.’
He focused his will inside his Sea of Consciousness and found the technique floating in one place.
It seemed to have become a rune with those words as he tried to comprehend it. And soon, he saw the vision of his entire Sea of Consciousness turning into an ocean of fire.
Even his body began burning as huge hammers made purely out of fire manifested on top of him.
His eyes widened as he saw the hammers swinging directly at his head. He hurriedly moved back to avoid them but soon realization hit him.
He stopped in his place and waited for the hammers to strike his body directly.
BAM!
His body got sent flying through the air as he seemed to have been struck by a huge force. He rolled on the ground a couple of times before standing straight.
His eyes lit up with clarity as he comprehended more of the technique. “Good, with this, I can comprehend the technique much faster, and this…” his voice trailed off as he felt something deeper inside him being formed.
But before he could look further into it, another hammer struck him and sent him flying, but he didn’t roll on the ground this time as he flipped in the air and landed on the ground.
…
After being struck by the hammer countless times, Shen Yuan finally understood the mysteries of it as his Qi began to rapidly overflow through the meridians.
‘Hmm? Why is the Qi not going inside the third Dantian?’ Shen Yuan thought to himself in confusion.
[Look inside the third Dantian.]
Yue Lan’s voice sounded in his mind just in time.
‘Ah, the Qi is actively avoiding the Abyssal Qi… but my purified Qi is not avoiding it… how strange,’ Shen Yuan thought to himself as he understood the cause of the empty Dantian but couldn’t understand why one Qi could go inside but not the other.
[Because your purified Qi’s quality is way higher than both the normal Qi of this world and the Abyssal Qi, and your purified Qi is also mixed with those three women’s Primordial Yin.]
‘I see, so my purified Qi is basically suppressing the effects of the Abyssal Qi?’ he asked back curiously.
[Yes, for now, that is. It might not be able to do that if you went ahead and absorbed a large enough amount of Abyssal Qi that it brings a qualitative change to it.]
Shen Yuan shook his head as he didn’t have to bother about that for now. He focused back on his fourth dantian where the Qi was being gathered.
But it was not the normal Qi nor was it the purified Qi but a blazing hot Fire Qi, which he refined from the normal Qi. Its purity was rapidly reaching the same level as the purified Qi of his body due to a multitude of factors.
He closed his eyes and started to guide the Qi throughout his body to achieve a breakthrough from his fourth Dantian as well.
BOOM!
He directly broke through to the Foundation Establishment Realm due to the purity of his Qi, and soon his cultivation rapidly advanced.
Second Level Foundation Establishment Realm
Fourth Level Foundation Establishment Realm
Seventh Level Foundation Establishment Realm
Finally, he achieved the Ninth Level Foundation Establishment Realm.
His churning Qi calmed down as he exhaled a deep breath.
‘Ugh, there is still a lot of excess Qi that I need to use,’ Shen Yuan didn’t expect that he would have accumulated this much during this time.
‘There is only one thing that I can do about this now,’ Shen Yuan thought with a shake of his head as he mobilized his Qi again.
But this time, he activated the Primordial Vessel Cultivation Art, moving the entire reservoir of his Qi from within the body.
He gathered it inside his main Dantian and began compressing it with his will.
Soon all the gaseous Qi of his body formed a ball inside the Dantian, but that wasn’t enough as he once again began to compress the ball.
Just as the ball of Qi got compressed to the extreme, a dense drop of Qi dropped from the bottom of the Qi ball.
It was as if a dam got released as more and more of the Qi began to drop, but with each added drop, the strain on his body doubled as his muscles stretched to take in the higher-level Qi inside his body.
Shen Yuan frowned his brows as the pain continued to increase relentlessly.
But he didn’t stop like the others who stopped after refining 1% of their gaseous Qi into Liquid Qi; he continued to squeeze the compressed Qi.
The liquefied Qi continued to increase in concentration, but he seemed to be nearing his limits as well.
The liquefied Qi seemed to be able to hold the power to crush even the very stars, but that power wasn’t easy to obtain as after reaching his limits, he tried to push for just a bit further.
But that small amount made him spit out blood.
“Cough,” his blood splashed on the bed, painting it crimson.
Bing Rong opened her eyes in shock as she saw Shen Yuan spitting out a mouthful of blood.
Her eyes filled with worry as she moved forward and held his back, “Yuan’er! Are you alright?”
She asked as she looked around the room for any possible enemies, but even with her Divine Sense, she didn’t find anything.
Shen Yuan raised his hand and placed it on top of hers and reassured her, “Don’t worry, just a slight problem.”
He didn’t speak anything else and looked inside his dantian. All the gaseous Qi had scattered back inside his body while he only managed to liquefy about 10% of it this time.
‘Good enough, this should be enough for me to fight anyone inside the Inner Sect,’ he thought and checked for any injuries that he might have sustained.
“Oh? I’m not injured at all?” he spoke aloud in surprise as he saw that he had no internal injuries, and even if he had any, they had healed already.
