~HUMM~

The humming of the spear got louder than it then started to glow. Then suddenly the three of them felt as if a weight was being lifted off of them. The invisible force that was weighing down on them and suppressing their spirit sense was gone.

They then saw the shrinking of the barrier stop.

"Huh… it stopped?" Ye Dai uttered with confusion.

All three of the men were a bit dumbfounded and didn't know what exactly was happening by now. At one moment they were close to death and now in the next, they were somehow fine. The terror the three of them were feeling in their guts also dissipated for a bit.

Then the spear in Shirong's hand glowed once more, this time releasing a glowing wave of light that spread in a curricular manner.

"IT'S THE SPEAR! It stopped it!" Bei Wen yelled with excitement.

"It saved us… IT SAVED US!" Ye Dai shouted in jubilation.

Shirong looked at the spear in his hand with a complex expression. He knew how lucky he was that he had found the spear before and even more so, now that he had been saved by it.

A minute passed, and the three had calmed down now, but then suddenly the spear started humming again and this time violently shaking too.

"Wha-What's happening?" Ye Dai and Bei Wen asked with fear in their eyes.

Shirong could tell exactly what was happening this time though, as the spear itself was telling him through his connection with it. There was only one thing it wanted, "QI," it said.

"It wants spirit qi…" Shirong answered.

He knew that that now was not the time to hesitate and he gave it what it wanted. Shirong started to pour all his qi into the spear and it kept on absorbing it. But after a minute, he was in a dilemma: he had depleted half of his entire store of spirit qi and the spear was still sucking it.

"No, this is too much," Shirong said with a bit of fear in his eyes.

"What's the problem, Young Master Shirong?" Ye Dai asked.

"You two quickly give it your spirit qi, the spear is sucking all of mine I can't sustain it for long. I think this is how it is preventing the force from affecting us and also how it stopped the Barrier from cracking." Shirong explained.

The two men did not even blink before they placed their hands on the spear and started pouring their spirit qi into the spear. The two had thought that perhaps Young Master Shirong had exaggerated it a bit, but once they felt the suction force for themselves they were scared too.

"How can it be so strong? Even with all our stores, we won't be able to sustain it!" Bei Wen stated.

The three of them were scared of having their spirit qi drained completely, but their fear of the situation was much worse. They knew that if it went beyond a certain point, their cultivation will regress. Shirong was relatively on the safe side since he was at the peak of the core condensation realm and perhaps even half step into the nascent soul realm.

But the two men Ye Dai and Bei Wen were still in the late stage of the core condensation realm. They looked into their dantian's and saw their cores draining rapidly. The thing they were scared about was their cores themselves shrinking as coming back from that would be incredibly hard.

For a core condensation realm cultivator, if they want to increase their cultivation base, they need to double the size of their core. At the start when they newly enter the core condensation realm and are in the early stage they have a very small core that the size of a tiny marble. This marble is condensed from all the liquid spirit that a cultivator accumulates in their dantian in the peak stage of the qi refining realm.

The total quantity of the spirit qi depends on the cultivator's talent, as the size of their dantian's can vary. But usually, it is between 1000 to 1500 drops of liquid spirit qi. For more talented cultivators, it can even reach up to about 3000 drops of liquid spirit qi.

Once a cultivator starts to further refine it into a solid form, that is when he is said to enter the core condensation realm. This stage is also quite dangerous as one small mistake can lead to qi deviation or worst, death.

After reaching the core condensation ream, if a cultivator wants to progress to the next stage, he or she will need to double the size of the core by refining more liquid spirit qi and then using it to increase the core's size.

So an early stage core condensation realm cultivator would have a core made from 1000 drops of liquid spirit qi, a mid stage one will have a core made from 2000 drops of liquid spirit qi, a late stage one will have a core made from 4000 drops of liquid spirit qi and finally, a peak stage core condensation realm cultivator will have a core made from 8000 drops of liquid spirit qi.

Thus this showed the difference between each stage only got larger and larger the higher they progressed. And this was only for a cultivator that had low talent and only had a capacity of 1000 drops of liquid spirit qi. For the others that had a higher capacity, their cores would only be that much more massive.

Shirong was one of those people and the capacity of his dantian was originally two thousand drops of liquid spirit qi which meant that his current core's size was much bigger than the other twos and was at 16000 drops of liquid spirit qi.

This was what had made them terrified. As even Shirong himself was unable to sustain the consumption of the green crystal spear. It didn't take long for Ye Dai and Bei Wen to let out a painful grunt.

Meanwhile, Lin Wu was rejoicing in his mind.

"MUHAHAHA! UNLIMITED POWERRR!"