Vessel of Worlds

Only after entering the crafting workshop did Andy finally let out a long breath. He had always kept a low profile because of the treasures he carried, yet these three Foundation Establishment Pills had made him far too conspicuous.

By the time he emerged, the news that he had returned safely from Dragon Descent Valley and exchanged for three Foundation Establishment Pills in one go would surely have spread to every Qi Condensation disciple in the Great Void Sect.

He was beginning to feel that the Great Void Sect was no longer a place he could stay for much longer. Drawing this much attention meant that sooner or later, someone would pick up on something. If anyone followed the thread and unraveled his secrets, he would be subjected to soul-searching on the spot—denied even the chance of reincarnation.

Speaking of reincarnation, Andy would never have believed in it before. But he had been born into this Tianyuan Continent by some inexplicable means, and he had witnessed cultivators perform feats that defied all reason. Such mysteries no longer seemed so easy to dismiss.

According to certain texts, when cultivators and mortals died, their souls dissipated into formlessness and returned to the cycle of reincarnation.

Whether this was true remained a matter of endless debate. Even within the cultivation world, no consensus existed.

One point, however, was widely accepted: once a soul had been refined through certain special methods, it lost any possibility of reincarnation and became a kind of ghost entity. Among the practitioners of dark and heterodox paths, there were cultivators who specialized in precisely this—the Ghost Dao.

But Andy knew almost nothing about such matters.

Regardless, his most pressing concern was whether the Vessel of Worlds could enhance the Foundation Establishment Pills.

With other pills, he would have been quite confident. But Foundation Establishment Pills were reputed to be extraordinarily miraculous, and he wasn't entirely certain the small bowl could improve them in the same way.

He opened a square wooden box, took out a round, red pill slightly smaller than a chicken egg that exuded a rich medicinal fragrance, and placed it inside the small bowl. After replacing the lid, he picked up a high-grade water-attribute spirit stone and sat down to meditate.

A day and a night later, when he opened the bowl, the pill's color had indeed grown more vivid, and its spiritual energy and fragrance were noticeably richer.

He replaced the lid and continued the cultivation process.

After seven days and nights, the Foundation Establishment Pill finally stopped changing. By then it had become nearly transparent, and the fragrance and spiritual energy it radiated bore little resemblance to the original. By Andy's estimate, this peak-grade Foundation Establishment Pill produced by the bowl contained roughly four to five times the spiritual power of an ordinary one.

Since the bowl could produce peak-grade Foundation Establishment Pills, everything became much simpler.

Andy first placed his remaining Tendon-Transforming Pills and other Qi Condensation stage pills into the bowl, enhancing them one by one. He consumed each in turn while meditating, gradually raising his cultivation to just below the peak of the twelfth layer.

Then he enhanced the other two Foundation Establishment Pills into peak-grade versions as well.

With his preparations complete, Andy bathed and changed into fresh robes using the crafting workshop's spirit spring water. Then he sat in silent meditation—for three full days and nights without stirring.

Only after this, with his spiritual power, spiritual sense, and state of mind all at their peak, did Andy finally take the first peak-grade Foundation Establishment Pill.

The moment the glistening, translucent red pill entered his stomach, it dissolved into a mass of refined, dense, and ferociously potent spiritual energy that surged through his meridians. Andy was instantly seized by agony like ten thousand insects gnawing at his bones. Cold sweat poured from his body in streams, and he nearly blacked out from the pain. Only his extraordinarily powerful spiritual sense kept a thread of consciousness intact. He immediately followed the Chasing Waves Technique's formula, circulating the currents of spiritual power through every meridian before gathering them into his dantian.

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After only two or three minor circulation cycles, Andy felt his cultivation shatter through the twelfth-layer bottleneck and surge into the thirteenth layer. Yet the vast majority of the spiritual energy still rampaged wildly through his body, leaving him in unbearable torment.

Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to continue practicing the thirteenth-layer formula, channeling strand after strand of spiritual energy into his dantian. His cultivation soared. In barely ten days, he had rocketed to the absolute peak of the Qi Condensation stage.

Then he encountered the final bottleneck of Qi Condensation. If he broke through it, he would ascend in a single leap to become a Foundation Establishment cultivator.

But this bottleneck was fundamentally different from all the ones before it.

Previous Qi Condensation bottlenecks had been matters of quantity—accumulate enough spiritual energy in the dantian to force open new meridians and expand the dantian's capacity, thereby advancing one layer. This bottleneck, however, demanded a qualitative transformation: compressing the gaseous spiritual energy inside the dantian again and again until it condensed into liquid form. Only then could the dantian store enough power to sustain a cultivator at the next realm.

Foundation Establishment was precisely this process—converting gaseous spiritual energy into liquid true essence. Success meant joining the ranks of Foundation Establishment cultivators. Failure meant remaining forever at the peak of Qi Condensation. And if one forced too much spiritual energy into the dantian without achieving liquefaction, there was a very real risk of the body exploding.

The power of the Foundation Establishment Pill lay in the fact that it not only provided an enormous quantity of spiritual energy in a single dose, but also improved the constitution of a Qi Condensation cultivator's dantian. Its miraculous properties purged impurities from the body that hindered Foundation Establishment and made the dantian more receptive to liquid true essence. For any cultivator attempting the breakthrough, it was indispensable.

And the peak-grade Foundation Establishment Pills Andy had taken were several times more effective at breaking through the bottleneck than ordinary ones.

Andy painstakingly guided the spiritual energy from the peak-grade pill through his meridians, thread by thread, into his dantian. After two full months, he could clearly feel something stirring within it—the densely compressed spiritual energy was beginning to show signs of liquefaction.

Though a considerable amount of medicinal power still lingered in his body, it was far less potent than before. Seeing his dantian's energy on the verge of liquefying, Andy feared that an insufficient supply of spiritual power at this critical moment might undo everything. He steeled himself and swallowed a second peak-grade Foundation Establishment Pill.

This pill brought the same bone-deep agony, the same torrents of cold sweat—no less severe than the first time. Only his spiritual sense, far stronger than any cultivator of comparable rank, kept him from losing consciousness.

Thread by thread, he drew spiritual power from his meridians, circulated it through the minor cycle, and channeled it into his dantian. The further he progressed, the more grueling it became. Two more months passed before the spiritual energy in his dantian finally began to liquefy, slowly at first, then faster and faster as the dantian's absorption rate accelerated. Half a month later, Andy had converted every last wisp of gaseous spiritual energy in his dantian into liquid true essence. From this moment forward, he had entered the ranks of Foundation Establishment cultivators.

Beside himself with joy, Andy leapt into the air and danced about wildly—which immediately set the still-unstable liquid true essence in his dantian sloshing and threatening to evaporate. Terrified, he clamped down on his elation, dropped into a seated meditation, and managed to stabilize the true essence before it dissipated and killed him.

A significant amount of spiritual energy from the Foundation Establishment Pills still lingered in his meridians. If left unprocessed, the pain in his meridians would be excruciating, and over time the residue could cause lasting damage.

But the Qi Condensation technique he had been practicing—the Chasing Waves Technique—was no longer suited to his current level of cultivation.

With no better option, Andy picked up a water-attribute Foundation Establishment stage technique called the Raging Sea Technique—found in the storage pouch of some cultivator who had died at his hands, he could no longer remember which—and began practicing it.

A Foundation Establishment technique that even Qi Condensation cultivators could get their hands on was naturally nothing exceptional. But Andy had very few Foundation Establishment techniques available, and none of them were better than the Raging Sea Technique. Moreover, water-attribute techniques were generally quicker to cultivate, which suited him. As for the technique's combat power or long-term potential—those were concerns for another day.

From the day he entered Workshop Nine and began his closed-door cultivation, more than half a year had passed. Andy had finally refined every last trace of medicinal power from both peak-grade Foundation Establishment Pills into his own true essence, and had at last become the early-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator he had longed to be.

But he was in no hurry to leave. He could sense that he had attracted the attention of people like Lu Wen within the Great Void Sect, and he needed to be thoroughly prepared.

He emptied his storage pouch of crafting materials and set about forging several treasures that would dramatically increase his strength.

In the cultivation world, strength was everything.

In many situations—Dragon Descent Valley being a prime example—encountering another cultivator was either a windfall or a death sentence. With strength, enemies were simply delivering treasure to your door. Without it, they were delivering you to your grave.