Chapter 316: Core Formation 1st Layer
After discussing the game plan with the Empress, Li Yao, and the World Core, Xiang Yu was alone once again in the cave after they had left.
He settled into a meditative posture, his breath slowing as he began cultivating. He remained for a long time until he was suddenly interrupted by the system reset notification. He slowly opened his eyes to examine it.
He thought to himself that with his consciousness working simultaneously through multiple bodies, his perception of time had become increasingly distorted. As this thought crossed his mind, he suddenly paused.
A powerful wave of energy washed over him without warning, originating from his dantian. His foundation began to tremble as spiritual energy hammered down upon it, gradually forming toward a solid core.
While this transformation took place, another process was occurring in parallel.
His bloodlines churned violently within him, each striving to assert dominance over the other following the sudden advancement to pure blood.
Fortunately, he had experienced this sort of thing multiple times before and had developed a certain tolerance to the pain and accompanying effects. Without this, he would have certainly fallen into qi deviation while attempting to breakthrough with his body in such a chaotic state.
Adding onto the chaos was his chaos body entering its fourth level.
He felt his body being rearranged in all sorts of ways. This sensation was amplified by how his body continuously broke apart and regenerated as his bloodlines fought for supremacy.
As these three processes continued relentlessly inside his body, Xiang Yu maintained deep concentration, regulating his qi flow. After nearly an hour of intense focus, the first process – the bloodline upgrade – neared completion.
The benefits of his bloodlines’ upgrade finally began to outpace the destruction and regeneration cycle, allowing his body to remain relatively stable even as the internal conflict continued even more violent than before.
The bloodline enhancement brought no new abilities, just boosts to his existing abilities.
The only development he thought was worth mentioning was perhaps the ability to condense bloodline essence, though he had already expected that. His existing abilities received substantial boosts, becoming significantly more potent. His regeneration ability, which had already been instantaneous, reached such a remarkable level that he could now regenerate even vital organs when completely destroyed.
In his phoenix state, he would be virtually indestructible, capable of regenerating from the slightest fragment of himself.
Though he hadn’t yet reached the ability to regenerate from a single drop of blood in his base state, his current abilities were nonetheless impressive. He assumed he would get a similar ability when he eventually reached the progenitor stage.
As he thought of this, he paused, turning back to the system screen floating before him. He noticed something strange, the experience bar next to his bloodlines was now gone.
What did this mean? Could it be that advancing to the progenitor stage was impossible for him? His bloodlines still continued their fierce battle and he could feel that they were still slowly growing stronger with each passing moment. Yet he wasn’t gaining any experience points.
He wondered if this involved some sort of rule. He had seen things like these from the novels he read in his previous life. Like perhaps there could only be one progenitor of each bloodline in existence, and he would need to defeat and absorb the essence of an existing progenitor to claim that position.
Xiang Yu decided to consult the Empress about this.
Before departing, Li Yao had taken “her” senior brother Hei with her after Yao Yao’s insistent demands. Through this partition, he asked the Empress about this, but she informed him that no such restriction existed. This left him deep in thought, wondering if he had done something wrong.
No! That wasn’t it. Just like before with his intent realm, he must be missing something.
After contemplating the issue for some time, he formulated another hypothesis.
The progenitor stage represented the absolute purest form of a specific bloodline. If this were true, then a true progenitor would need to possess only the specific bloodline they embodied, undiluted and uncontaminated by other bloodlines. In other words, since he carried both phoenix and dragon bloodlines simultaneously, he might be fundamentally incapable of becoming a progenitor of either.
This was merely a hypothesis though, but he found it quite plausible.
Xiang Yu released a soft sigh as he decided to test his theory later. Since he had recently gained the ability to condense bloodline essence and was already planning to create bloodlines for his clones, he could use this opportunity to test out his hypothesis.
He would give a clone both the phoenix and dragon bloodlines at the noble level and have them stimulate each other until both reached the pure blood stage. Afterward, he would continue the stimulation process until he felt they had advanced sufficiently as even without the visible experience bar, the bloodlines were still developing through stimulation.
He would then isolate each pure blood type and transfer them into separate clones, allowing each bloodline to completely dominate its respective vessel. This might reveal whether a single, isolated bloodline could advance to the progenitor stage after taking over an entire body.
Even without the experience bar appearing, Xiang Yu wasn’t overly disappointed as he could still sense the bloodlines growing stronger with each passing moment. He speculated that the bloodlines might actually evolve themselves if he allowed them to contend with each other long enough. If they were to reach power levels equivalent to a progenitor stage while technically remaining in the pure blood stage, would they advance to the divine rank? And what if they continued growing in power indefinitely?
As these thoughts flowed through his mind, he suddenly felt his core formation reach a critical stage. All his foundation had been successfully hammered into a solid core, which now rapidly filled with qi. The surrounding spiritual energy was being endlessly drawn into it, fortunately, with the advancement of his spirit vein, the core could absorb as much qi as needed without worry.
As this was going on, he noticed something unusual. Right beside his newly formed core, another hammering process had begun. Confused, he turned his attention inward, focusing his divine sense on this.
He observed that beneath his core, blood was consolidating into a spherical structure. As the blood gathered, it slowly began to rotate, with half of the sphere turning gold and the other half blue. Then, qi continuously hammered on this sphere until it solidified completely.
It was then that Xiang Yu realized what was happening, he was actually forming a second core.
Today it’s all about Xiang Yu. Let’s give the side characters some screen time