Chapter 22: Quantum Fusion
Xiao Ning sat cross-legged as the newly formed Quantum Core pulsed steadily within his dantian. Its rhythm was strange, neither fully spiritual nor purely physical. To him, it felt both familiar and foreign, exciting yet slightly unsettling.
"A Quantum Core..." he muttered, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. "Not what the Asura Scripture was meant to create... but it’s better. Much better."
He could feel that the Codex had interfered, but the result was beyond anything he had seen or read about.
"This might be for the best," he whispered. "If I had simply formed an Asura Core, then releasing the Paradox Meridians might not have pushed my cultivation forward like it used to."
With that, Xiao Ning took a deep breath and released the final seal on the Paradox Meridians.
A tidal wave of spiritual energy erupted inside him. It surged through every meridian like a roaring flood. The Quantum Core trembled violently, glowing with flickering patterns of gold and crimson. In just a few breaths, he had broken through to the peak of the Core Formation Realm.
But he didn’t stop there.
"It’s time... to split the core."
He guided a stream of Asura Qi into the Quantum Core’s strange structure. Unlike traditional cultivators who cleanly split their core to form a Nascent Soul, Xiao Ning’s core resisted. It was chaotic, full of conflicting energies.
He forced the Asura Qi deeper, twisting it into a spiral. Then—
Crack!