After cleaning up in a nearby spring that Yu Tian had found, the two settled in an open clearing.
"This place should be relatively safe," Yu Tian said. "You can try to breakthrough from here. I’ll keep watch," he added.
"Alright," Xueling said as she settled into a meditative position.
She thought to herself that when breaking through, one would be at their weakest state.
If they were interrupted during the breakthrough, their cultivation might regress or become unstable. That was why it was important to have someone trustworthy to watch over you. This was especially true in somewhere as dangerous as the Black Forest.
She thought to herself that although Yu Tian wasn’t exactly as strong as her, she felt she could trust him.
She took the flower and began circulating her energy.
The process of breaking through from the Foundation Establishment to the Core Formation realm wasn’t that hard. You just had to focus on your foundation, which was like solid walls supporting the dantian.
The hardness of the walls depended on one’s foundation - people with stronger foundations would have harder walls while those with weaker ones would have softer walls.
The softer walls were easier to turn into a core, as the process just involved hammering down the walls into a core. But for those with strong foundations, the process was really hard.
However, the strength it provided was all worth it. ᴛhis chapter is ᴜpdated by novᴇl(ꜰ)ire.ɴet
For her, although she couldn’t say that her foundation was extremely strong, it definitely wasn’t weak either.
She circulated the incoming energy around her foundation a few times to calm the energy.
After the incoming energy had calmed down, it started the process of forming the core.
She began circulating it using another method.
The qi slowly seeped into her foundation walls, softening them considerably. She was surprised by this at first, wondering if her foundation was getting weaker.
But she realized that this was the feature of the Starfall Blossom.
Usually, people would have to spend a lot of time hammering down their walls into solid cores, especially those with extremely strong foundations. This was why most people used the Starfall Blossom - it softened the foundation, making it much easier to hammer down without losing the quality of the strong foundation.
As the qi was circulating in her foundation, softening it, she began summoning her other qi and started hammering down the foundation. Even after the softening, it was still a little hard to do, but she could manage.
After hammering it down several times, the foundation walls had slowly transformed into a sphere. It still wasn’t at the level of a core yet though.
As she thought of this, she suddenly felt her body begin rapidly absorbing spiritual energy in the area. All the spiritual energy gathered and filled her core. As the core was filled to the brim, it hardened, finally becoming a solid core.
She slowly opened her eyes. She raised her hand, clenching and unclenching it experimentally as she felt the power flowing through it.
"How did it go?" Yu Tian asked, noticing her open her eyes.
She waved her hand, causing him to be lifted into the air. "What do you think?" she asked with a smile.
"I knew you could do it," he said, showing a thumbs up as she put him down.
"What about you?" she asked.
"What about me?" he echoed her question.
"Aren’t you going to use the core?" she asked. "Although I can protect you, it’s even better if you can do so yourself," she said.
"I think so too. It’s just that we don’t have much time," he said.
"And who said that? It’s just a few minutes past noon," she said. She then became serious. "Besides, I prefer working in the night," she said.
Yu Tian looked at her strangely. "That’s..."
She waved her hands frantically. "Not like that." She then sighed. "I mean it’ll be easier to deal with those who are waiting to ambush us at night, as they won’t be expecting us to leave the forest during the night," she said.
He nodded. That made sense. "But the beasts in the forest become much more active during the night," he said.
"Don’t worry, this is just the outer layer of the Black Forest. The strongest monsters here are level three. With my power, we won’t run into any issues," she explained.
"Is that so?" Yu Tian wondered.
He thought to himself that no wonder he hadn’t come across any strong monsters here.
Even though he was actively avoiding dangerous areas with his calculation ability, there was no way he wouldn’t have come across a strong monster. Strong monsters level four and above usually had territories where they could sense anything within range, like the spiritual sea of the Core Formation realm.
"Alright then," he said, settling into a meditative position and taking out the crystal-like monster core.
He looked at it, thinking to himself that it was quite huge.
He wondered how much energy he would get if he completely refined it. It was from a peak level three monster after all.
Although Xueling had told him that he could get to ninth layer Body Refining if he was lucky, he didn’t think so. This thing had so much energy, so why would he just get such low benefits? Not even entering the Qi realm.
It seemed the issue was with the absorption.
That’s right - those who used this thing didn’t know how to properly absorb the energy inside and thus ended up gaining lesser benefits.
If he used the Path to Heaven method, he would be able to absorb a hundred percent of the benefits in the core, thus gaining even more benefits.
He smiled. Something was really great for him. Since his spiritual roots were the lowest of the low, waiting to enter the Qi Gathering realm would take forever. But if he could take the energy from something , he should be able to enter it, bypassing his spiritual root limitations.
He was thinking of asking for a Qi Building Pill as a reward from Xueling, but it seemed he wasn’t going to need it after all...
"Besides, I prefer working in the night" - This phrase can be seen as sexual. "Night work" idk if it translates well.