Dual Cultivation God Returns

Leaving the heavenly beauties to get to know each other, he went into his room, sitting down in lotus position and closing his eyes in meditation.

His injuries were already closed, but still required constant attention from him so that they do not reopen or worsen.

As he took some medicinal pills to help relief a bit of fatigue, he started circulating the Chaos Refining Body Tempering Art.

This time, even though his injuries were made by Annihilation Lightning and still had some lingering aura of the Law of Annihilation, as Wu Long gained insight into the Concept of Annihilation the speed of his wounds healing was far above the previous time, even though the extent of the damage was higher.

The smaller wounds were now recovering at a slow but visible to human eye speed.

When he set everything in motion for recovery, he then was able to concentrate on his Dantian, as he was busy ever since his breakthrough, and did not have the time to properly examine anything, although he of course knew the gist of it.

"Haa~", he sighed with a slightly troubled look, thinking 'it's like this after all...'

The core he witnessed, confirming what he already knew but more clearly, was more condensed than any core he saw, but he also confirmed a few anomalies that he noticed but did not have the time to ponder on.

First, the Core that was supposed to be clear and half-transparent, like a crystal, was instead a bit opaque, darker in color, and though the inside could still be seen, a murky, various shades of gray color mist was taking up its center, very slowly moving and changing forms.

The second anomaly was that the vortex of Slaughter Qi did not enter the core like it was supposed to.

Intead, it became a spinning vortex of spherical shape, like a dark red orb with swirling crimson streams within, but not crystalized, remaining in an energy state.

'It's as if... it formed a separate core...'

He thought as he examined it very slowly orbiting his Crystal Core.

But the third, and most bizarre deviation from norm was that all of his Spiritual Qi was not actually within his Core like it was supposed to be, but in a small ring swirling around the core which orbit was a bit further than the orbits of the Dao Runes, but closer than the orbit of the Slaughter Qi 'core'.

'Heh, and I hit the first roadblock right away huh? How fitting, hahaha', he inwardly chuckled as he reconfirmed that, since he stumbled upon the first major deviation which also signified a hurdle in further advancement.

To advance into Mortal Transcendence Realm, one must achieve two things.

One is being able to condense their Spiritual Qi into liquid form, which was like a walk in a park for Wu Long, he would only require Yin Qi to facilitate the transformation.

Another was to transform the core into a vessel, a vessel for a small dimension which would be filled with their Spiritual Qi, forming a Spiritual Sea just like their Niwan Palace held a cultivator's Soul Sea.

This was part of what was known as Three Seas, Five Origins and Seven Roots.

However, here is where Wu Long would encounter a problem, because his Core was now Fundamentally different.

That said, he could still use his Core much like a regular one.

Meaning he would feel the Spiritual Qi stored in the ring around the Core just the same as if it was stored within it, and manipulate the Core just like normal. But when he sent out Spiritual Qi from the reserves, it would first travel from the outside ring into the Core, and only then emerge from the sphere.

The process from here on was not any different from usual. His Spiritual Qi would behave normal, as he could use it whichever way he pleased.

In fact the initial added process of Spiritual Qi going from the ring to the Core felt so natural he did not even notice his Spiritual Qi was not stored within his Core when he first used the power of the Core against the Heavenly Punishment.

What's more, a mysterious transformation would occur when the Spiritual Qi went inside, as it would emerge far more powerful, and much easier to convert to the Elemental Qi with the Dao Runes.

This was what allowed him to finally push off Annihilation Lightning, although he would have succeeded even without this as he was already turning the tides when his Core stabilized , it certainly made it a lot easier for him to achieve victory.

The problem was that this was where the similarities with the normal Core stopped.

He could not control the Core itself, as in, it did not respond to any stimuli other than functioning like a normal Core in terms of manipulation of Spiritual Qi. And he did not have a grasp of its exact structure and functions.

Even that enhancement his Spiritual Qi went through within the Core was not something he completely understood. Much like a mystery box, from the moment it went inside the Core and emerged outside something happened, but he did not know what.

He also tried using the small residual remains of whatever Yin Qi he had left unused during breakthrough to try and cultivate, making a microscopic step toward Mortal Transcendence Realm just to see if it would work, but was unable to do anything with the Core, that remained unresponsive and did not reveal any change.

"Heh, I guess I'll just have to think of an another way", he sighed, not agonizing over what was already done, and panicking was not helpful to anyone.

Not to mention he still had time to figure things out, finishing his examination of the changes happening within his Dantian.

He focused on recovering his wounds, and after two days any external signs of damage completely disappeared, as he returned to looking normal. Though there was still extensive damage left within, but that would be far easier to restore by dual cultivating.

After that, he told his ladies that he was already much better and would take a nap, telling them to wake him up if he took more than 5-6 hours, and then laid down for a bit to relieve some of the fatigue, closing his eyes.

After about eight hours though, he gradually was woken up by a pleasurable sensation coming from the lower half of his body.