Vessel of Worlds

This advancement wrought little change in the Ice-Wind Python's size—only its scales grew more vivid in color.

The scales of its back gleamed a green so rich it seemed about to drip, while those of its belly shone crystalline as white jade.

Beyond that, atop the python's skull a new protrusion had grown, about a cun long—like a nascent horn, though still soft.

Yet under Andy's testing, the beast had gained no additional powers or secret arts from this advancement.

Its ice-attribute spell remained the single gout of frost from its jaws—though the breath's power and coverage had grown by a margin, and it could now carry ice spikes of assorted sizes within it, adding further bite.

As for its wind arts: beyond loosing several wind blades at once, there was its remarkable flight. Untested outside the dwelling, but by Andy's estimate it now matched his full-powered Wind-Treader Dragon for speed—and in short-range twisting and turning surpassed it handily.

Beyond this the python seemed to have nothing new, and its help to Andy remained limited—but he was untroubled. For his own spirit beast, he had patience in abundance. He handed over the bowl-enhanced rank-four Dragon Transformation Pills and instructed it to swallow one at set intervals.

Then he entered the meditation chamber himself. After three days of stilling his mind—spirit, power, and sense all at their apex—Andy at last began his assault on the Core Formation bottleneck.

In the chamber he had laid out a small Five Elements Spirit-Gathering Formation—a costly high-grade auxiliary array which, as its name declared, gathered a portion of the ambient five-element energy from several kilometers around into itself. It was a standard aid for high-ranked cultivators breaking through bottlenecks: the denser the surrounding spiritual energy, the greater the help.

More to the point, the most critical step in breaching the Core Formation bottleneck was drawing the world's spiritual energy into the body—flooding the dantian, emptied by the solidifying of true essence, with vast power in a short span, to anchor the new realm and prevent the essence from evaporating back to liquid and casting him down into Foundation Establishment again.

To push the array's power higher still, he had extravagantly seeded it with five high-grade spirit stones, one of each attribute.

Andy sat cross-legged and took from his pouch the Heart-Cleansing Pill—translucent as jade, sweet with medicinal fragrance, and, curiously, richer in spiritual power now than when Yun Mengli had given it. He swallowed it and began its slow refinement.

The instant it reached his stomach it melted away. A current of cool spiritual power soaked through his eight extraordinary meridians; his whole body lightened; organs and viscera eased beyond describing, and even his thoughts sharpened wonderfully. Old knots that had gnawed at him abruptly unraveled, dissolving in a faint, detached smile.

In that moment, everything past seemed to drift away like passing clouds. His heart settled toward the stillness of an ancient well that no wind had ever ruffled—without grief, without joy, gathering toward perfect calm.

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The Heart-Cleansing Pill was worthy of its thousand-year renown: it truly dispelled the heart's demons and tempered the mind's ground. Nor was that all—deep in his dantian something shifted subtly, growing warm.

A day later, feeling the pill's vast work complete, Andy took the other core-aiding medicines—the rare pills from Recluse Ximen's dwelling, each rumored to carry a wisp of essence-solidifying virtue. But beyond a slight fullness of energy in his dantian, he felt nothing from them at all.

Perhaps their effects, beside the Heart-Cleansing Pill's, were simply too slight to register beneath it. Or perhaps his poor spiritual roots blunted what little they offered.

With those refined and their potency still in his blood, Andy took out a scarlet jade bottle three cun tall. A light sweep of his sleeve set it floating three chi before him. He flicked his right hand—pop—the red stopper leapt free, and a mass of scarlet liquid a cun across, shaped like living flame and breathing a faint stench, sprang from the bottle, driving the chamber's temperature up in an instant. The Three Flames Heavenly Fire Liquid!

It was well that the chamber's furnishings were all of jade and stone—wooden tables or rattan chairs would have ignited on the spot.

Andy's hands wove seals, and a film of pale purple qi rose over his face, then spread slowly down his whole body. At a sharp word—rip—his garments fell away of themselves, baring most of a body sheathed in purple light.

Resolve hardening in his eyes, teeth clenched, he pointed lightly at the flame-liquid. It drifted up, hung a chi above his head, then split in two and spread itself evenly across his bared chest and back.

Andy's whole body flushed scarlet at once, as though blood might bead from the skin, his face twisting in ferocious agony. The thin purple qi about him breathed with his endurance—thickening a fraction when he neared his limit, thinning when he could bear more.

Under that furnace heat, not one drop of sweat fell—each was boiled to vapor before it could even form.

His frame, always on the lean side, was rendered leaner still by the heat and the loss of water.

After an hour of inhuman torment, his flesh at last absorbed and held the Three Flames Heavenly Fire Liquid. His body still glowed red as fresh blood, the skin swollen half-translucent by the heat.

Were he not a late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator—his body long tempered by floods of spiritual power, and guarded throughout by abundant reserves—he would have burned to ash before the liquid's refinement ever finished.

He meditated briefly to recover, then took out the green jade bottle. From it leapt a mass of dark liquid a cun across, dense with haunting fragrance—the Nine Colds Mystic Nether Water. At its appearance the temperature plunged; any cultivator below mid Foundation Establishment in that chamber would have frozen solid on the spot.

The corner of Andy's mouth twisted in a bitter half-smile. He laid down another film of purple qi, then spread the Nine Colds Mystic Nether Water evenly across his scarlet body.

His face turned strange beyond describing—now corpse-green, now dripping red, sometimes half frozen livid and half burning crimson—and through every color, the agony written on it never eased by a fraction.

A cultivator of weaker will, under the twin refinement of utmost cold and utmost heat, would inevitably have poured out spiritual power to shield himself and dull the pain—and gutted the liquids' body-tempering effect in the bargain.

Andy, for the fullest effect, rode the very limit of his flesh and refined both liquids to the last drop. Against a will fixed on the Dao as firmly as his, such torment counted for little.

Hours later, the ordeal ended: both liquids fully refined into his flesh. His body had hardened greatly, his skin turned smooth and fine as jade—and he could clearly feel that his dantian, tested by extremes of heat and cold, had grown far more stable. The help this lent his assault was no small thing; he judged the two liquids even better than their legend.

All of this was merely auxiliary—percentage upon percentage added to his odds. Now came the true work: by the Primal Unity Technique's method, to condense the Primal Unity Golden Core.

Andy shook his sleeve. In a flicker of light, dozens of fist-sized, semi-translucent spirit stones of varied colors settled around his body. Had any other cultivator seen that sight, they would have cried out on the spot!