A powerful surge of energy swept from Yaomu Shou’s direction.

Everyone looked over toward her to see her staring at herself in shock. She was experiencing a breakthrough!

****

A powerful pressure descended on everyone present.

Yaomu Shou was currently seated in the lotus position. Her cauldrons were behind her in all their glory, rotating at high speeds.

Long Di had now realised that he had never paid close attention to Yaomu Shou’s cauldrons before.

Sure, she fought with Long Di and the others before, but most of her prowess came from her sword as opposed to her cultivation.

Now, however, he took a good look at them. Doing this, Long Di had to admit that she was indeed talented.

Nine cauldrons were present as one would expect. However, while nine were orange at the supreme level, the ninth one, though orange, bore a golden tinge.

This meant that this particular cauldron was a quasi-perfect grade cauldron. Long Di remained unperturbed as the pressure it gave off was nonexistent to him, but Untethered Monk, on the other hand, was a different matter.

If he was being honest, he had expected much more from her since he was aware of the power of the Yuan family. Nevertheless, seeing it in person like this still shocked him.

What was even stranger to him, was that she chose to do this in front of him. A breakthrough puts one in a state of defencelessness as one must put all their effort and focus into the guidance of the energy necessary to rise to the next level. Any cultivator that sought to do so would make sure they were hidden away from the world or from those who they deemed untrustworthy before undertaking such a cardinal task.

Yet, in an instant, she did it here. This meant that she either trusted him enough to perform a breakthrough before him, which, if he took her earlier behaviour towards him (which was filled with killing intent, a sword and a scowl) into consideration, he knew this wasn’t the case.

That left one other explanation. He then looked to Long Di, who was busy patting his shish kebab clean of the dirt the earlier energy surge kicked up.

This meant that she trusted this boy, this unassuming, cauldron forging realm, charm-of-a-housefly, wielder of earth flame boy.

A light brimming with buddhist affinity flashed in his eyes as Untethered’s interest in Long Di grew, alas his interest in the meat was stronger. The light in his eyes lasted for only a flash and he returned to devouring the meat before holding his empty plate before Long Di, hoping for another piece.

Long Di wasn’t stingy at all and gave him more.

“Dear benefactor, if you have any trouble in the future just call on me!” Untethered was ecstatic and went back to eating with no care for his manners.

Long Di cared little for this and only paid attention to Yaomu Shou and her breakthrough.

As of now, five of her cauldrons had a crystal clear core embedded in a depression formed by the intricate designs covering the cauldrons. This was the core formation realm. It is here that one holds the moniker of Martial Adept.

The cores are usually formed by the purest spiritual essence. The more condensed the spiritual qi is, the purer it became. Once it was condensed to a certain point, it would undergo a qualitative change and turn into what is known as spiritual essence.

Somatic essence cultivators were a tad different since they didn’t use the spiritual energy as spiritual qi to condense spiritual essence. Instead, they would use the spiritual energy to nourish their bodies after their cultivation technique drew in the type of energy they needed.

The nourishing of their physique would strengthen their bodies and stimulate the creation of somatic essence. Once enough somatic essence was stored in the body, it could be compressed in one go, allowing for the creation of a core.

The creation of a core was countless times more difficult for a somatic essence cultivator than it was for a spiritual energy cultivator. However, the gains would be worth it in the end, as their bodies would be able to bear the brunt of powerful attacks with ease. Not to mention that somatic essence cultivators had stronger regenerative capabilities.

Yaomu Shou’s supreme-grade cauldrons drew in copious amounts of spiritual energy from hundreds of metres around. It was a beautiful sight since inside the Spiritual Bingqi Realm there was an unnaturally large amount of spiritual energy all around.

The gentle light of the spiritual energy lit up the plains for miles as it surged toward their location like countless waves before crashing into Yaomu Shou’s cauldrons.

He could see how her body shone with a purple light. Her chest rose and fell as she exercised a profound breathing technique in tandem with her cultivation technique.

As he observed this, Long Di could hear the faint growl of a primordial beast with every inhale and its roar with each exhale. It was as if a primal monster was lurking in Yaomu Shou’s body, desperate to break free.

He could also feel the power of her physical body increasing as well. The spiritual energy ceaselessly poured into her cauldrons, and the purple light covering her intensified. Following this, she gritted her teeth in response. Her fangs flashed with a striking glint as veins covered her forehead.

Her body then trembled, while sweat beaded down her forehead. It was obvious from this alone the pain she was under. This was the main reason why it was so difficult for body cultivators to grow and why their path was such a difficult one to tread. Their bodies suffered for every step they took on their dao path.

Even now, Yaomu Shou’s body was being nourished by the spiritual energy to increase its strength and, subsequently, its somatic essence. The pain, however, came from the fact that destruction follows creation as creation follows destruction.

The body needs to be destroyed before it can be rebuilt. Yaomu Shou’s cultivation technique adhered to this as well. Her cultivation technique broke down her body from the inside to the out before rebuilding it again.

As her body rebuilt itself from its destruction, it built upon its failures to increase in strength.

This increase birthed even more somatic essence. Her cultivation method easily converted the spiritual energy into the type of attribute she required. Though this energy broke her down, it built her up as well.

The waves of spiritual energy that descended upon her were like silk curtains that billowed under the urging of the wind. They eventually encased Yaomu Shou in a cocoon of dense spiritual energy.

Long Di was impressed that an increase in spiritual energy would engender such a phenomenon.

However, him being unaware of this isn’t unusual. Before he left home, he was in a remote region of the secular world, which was scarce in spiritual energy. He was only able to cultivate to his current height because of, again, his common sense breaking cauldrons.

After this, he was thrust into the demon region, where the inhabitants mostly cultivated somatic essence. Spiritual energy was not something he would find abundant there either.

This place had more spiritual energy than some sects’ top cultivation chambers, so it was to be expected that something like this would occur.

“Have you ever seen anything like this happenin-”

Long Di turned to the monk to question him about Yaomu Shou’s current state when a bizarre scene silenced him.

So there was the monk. His plate was clean. There was also an overly bombastic brawler rabbit whose plate was… not clean.

Though it ate the meat voraciously before, it was forced to slow down, since the spiritual energy within‌ the meat was too abundant. Overeating might result in a body explosion.

In truth, it probably couldn’t finish this part of the leg and wanted to save it for later, hence its current state of picking apart pieces of the meat to eat.

However, this was not the reason why Long Di went quiet. No, this was because, as we speak, this cultivator with the title Untethered Monk was currently rolling around on the ground tangled with the overly bombastic brawler rabbit in a bid to grab the few pieces of meat from the magical beast’s mouth, yes you heard me right, its mouth.

Where was the dignity? Where was the elegance? This monk was as far from a monk of one of the ten great sects as Long Di could imagine.

As for the magical beast, well, it wasn’t looking magical at the moment, let me tell you.

A slice of meat was still stuck in its mouth as it tried to eat it without going too fast lest it risk self-explosion. It had the other part of the leg in its paw, trying to keep it away from the tenacious monk!

This resulted in them tussling all over in the dirt like two old shrews from the fish market. One was trying to wrest the meat from the other whilst the said other was doing everything in its power to keep its meat from its attacker.

They were moving so wildly, and without care, that they eventually rolled up a hill and down the other side before disappearing from view.

Long Di just sat there dumbfounded. And who could blame him?

“The heck just happened?” he asked himself.

Whoosh!

Suddenly, a gust of cold air greeted Long Di. He lazily turned his head to see an icy-faced beauty staring at the piece of meat without nary a word.

This stalemate continued for a while until the ice-faced beauty broke it by asking, without turning her head.

“Do you know of a girl named Qin Ling?”