Spirit Realm

Streaks of lightning interweaved to form a tight electrical web, and heavenly thunder roared incessantly inside a secret cultivation room.

Controlling the Thunder Soul, Qin Lie floated at the center of the web as his thoughts gave birth to numerous thunderclaps.

Some time later, his figure slowed as until he sat quietly on the web once more.

The enlightenment in his understanding of the power of thunder that had been interrupted during the earlier battle seemed to have been rediscovered, and lightning began to appear around his body once more.

Time passed bit by bit.

A long time later, he slowly awakened as his electricity shot out of his open eyelids. When he got up and worked his joints, they let out a series of loud crackles.

He then observed the miniscule changes happening inside his body with his True Soul bit by bit...

The Soul Lake in his soul consciousness seemed to have grown a little larger, and many tendrils of lightning that looked like silver threads were swimming inside it. As his thoughts gathered, the tendrils of lightning became attached to his consciousness.

“Heavenly Thunder Eradication!”

He condensed his True Soul with a wisp of soul consciousness, and the soul energy gathered inside his Soul Lake abruptly poured out.

An unfathomable and invisible dark light shot out of his eyes and landed on a stone pillar in the cultivation room.

“Boom!”

The sound of exploding thunder and lightning could be clearly heard from the stone pillar.

Qin Lie’s eyes abruptly lit up.

He had truly mastered the fourth stage of Heavenly Thunder Eradication, Thunder Conception. This meant that his soul consciousness would be imbued with thunder and lightning of formidable power from this point onwards!

In the future, he would be able to create a wisp of soul consciousness, send it into his opponent’s mind, and detonate the power of thunder and lightning inside his soul consciousness to attack his enemy’s soul.

Thunder was the bane of all souls, and anyone who allowed his thunder-imbued thought to break through their defenses and enter their mind would most likely suffer a huge blow, even if their realm was higher than his.

This was just like how the Spirits of Void and Chaos had managed to hurt Wen Bin and Chu Miaodan.

Wen Bin and Chu Miaodan didn’t know about the Spirits of Void and Chaos. They didn’t know that these strange creatures had been given the infamous title “Soul Altar devourer” because they could eat a martial practitioner’s Soul Altar if they summoned it out of their consciousness. That was why the two of them had dared unleash their Soul Altars in combat.

As a result, the Spirits of Void and Chaos easily slipped into their Soul Altars and ate the five element essence they used to build their Soul Altars. They suffered injuries because of that.

Once a cultivator had cultivated Heavenly Thunder Eradication to the fourth stage, they could imbue their soul consciousness with the power of thunder and lightning. It gave them the ability to deal a deadly blow to their enemy’s soul.

“My cultivation realm is still at the middle stage of the Fulfillment Realm, but I feel like my bloodline power has grown stronger…”

While thinking, he stopped circulating Heavenly Thunder Eradication and circulated his bloodline power instead.

Blaze divine characters appeared from his boiling blood like crystalline stars. They were imprinted on his veins, bones and flesh.

Suddenly, he felt as if he had become mighty strong.

“Crack crack crack!”

An odd noise came from all over his bones, and he discovered that he had actually grown a little taller. A cold and tough luster was covering his skin, almost as if he had just undergone an evolution.

This was just like Xue Li and Jiang Zhuzhe transforming into a blood demon, or the experts of Ten Thousand Beast Mountain suddenly manifesting into a beast.

The transformation caught him by surprise. He hastily stopped urging his bloodline powers.

The moment the his bloodline power was stopped, the evolution earlier was also cut short.

His heights and the bones that had turned thick and broad turned back to normal. The cold luster covering his skin and sudden spike in physical strength had disappeared too.

“The Heaven Fighting Race’s bloodline... the Heaven Fighting Race is a race from outer realm, so their flesh, blood and bone structure must be vastly different from a human being’s. As my bloodline power grows stronger, as I grow more and more dependent on them, it is only natural that my physical form… will change and adjust itself to become more suited for bloodline usage. I will slowly take the form of a member of the Heaven Fighting Race.”

Qin Lie frowned when he figured this out. He didn’t think that this was a good thing.

He was living in a Spirit Realm where the Heaven Fighting Race had been exiled to outer space. To most of the species of Spirit Realm, the Heaven Fighting Race was an invader they hated deeply.

If one day he activated his bloodline powers, and his body transformed his bones, his veins, his flesh, and his blood completely into that of a Heaven Fighting Race clansman, he might be targeted and hunted down by every person and force out there.

This was absolutely not the outcome he wished to see.

“No, this absolutely isn’t the time to activate my bloodline power and undergo a massive transformation!”

He began attempting to activate his bloodline power while suppressing the physical changes, using it for other purposes.

He activated the Ring of the Burning Sun directly with his bloodline power, and this time his boiling blood and the sparkling blaze divine characters didn’t imprint themselves onto his bones, veins, flesh, and blood. Instead, they gathered together at the center of his palm.

The result was a blazing disc that slowly appeared on his palm.

He probed his body and didn’t notice his physical appearance undergoing any changes.

He let out a hidden sigh of relief for being able to find a way to avoid the transformation while still employing his bloodline power. He knew that his bloodline power must have gotten stronger because it had transformed his body and given him great strength after spreading all across his body.

If he didn’t wish to expose himself, all he needed to do was to gather his bloodline power in one place and stop it from spreading throughout his body.

“Let’s see how many lifeblood essences I can refine this time with the Blood Spirit Art.”

He took out the Demon Sealing Tombstone and pressed fingers of his left hand onto its surface, circulating the Blood Spirit Art.

A thick scent of blood quickly permeated from the surface, and a vast amount of refined flesh and blood energy was transmitted into his body.

He absorbed the power with the Blood Spirit Art and refined it into his blood. Then, he started refining a lifeblood essence with the Blood Refinement Art.

The Demon Sealing Tombstone contained a large amount of fiendish aura and blood power. He didn’t know where all this energy and blood had come from, but he knew that they were vastly beneficial to the cultivation of the Blood Spirit Art.

He vaguely noticed that the Blood Spirit Art was also largely beneficial to his bloodline power.

The cultivation principle of the Blood Spirit Art was to convert the spirit energy inside his dantian’s spirit sea into blood spirit energy. Blood spirit energy could be used to temper his flesh and blood, enhance his physical body, and be used for combat or spirit art just like normal spirit energy.

To put it bluntly, blood spirit energy was also a kind of spirit energy. It just had blood inside it.

Blood Spirit Art was also a kind of spirit art, just like how blood spirit energy was a kind of spirit energy.

A Blood Fiend Sect disciple’s cultivation and evolution required not just a powerful soul, but also a vast amount of refined blood spirit energy. In this regard, it was similar to a martial practitioner needing a sufficient amount of quantity and quality of spirit energy to be able to break through to the next realm.

Blood Spirit Art was a method to temporarily store energy inside one’s blood. To a Blood Fiend Sect disciple, their blood was another dantian, another spirit sea with specific purpose of storing spirit energy.

Bloodline power was different, however. Bloodline power was a power inside the blood itself!

If blood were to be described as a human being, then blood spirit energy was the spirit energy stored inside a human body, whereas bloodline power was the human’s original strength. It was the original strength that came from a combination of the flesh, the blood, the veins, the bones, and the soul.

What the Blood Refinement Art did was to extract the blood spirit energy inside one’s blood and store it inside special droplets of blood. As a result, the blood contained a far greater amount of blood spirit energy and was a lot more purer than norm.

Because these special blood droplets contained a much, much greater amount of blood spirit energy than norm, they could often unleash terrifying power when used with the spirit arts of Blood Fiend Sect.

These things were called lifeblood essences.

Of course, lifeblood essences were still blood, so they also contained bloodline power. When he executed a powerful Blood Fiend Sect spirit art with his lifeblood essence, the bloodline power contained inside these lifeblood essence would erupt too. Therefore, his lifeblood essence could burn with imperishable flames and become even deadlier than before.

Qin Lie refined the lifeblood essences and left them floating around him like translucent blood red carnelian.

A while later, a total of one hundred and eight lifeblood essences were floating around him and sparkling with scarlet flames. The insides of the lifeblood essences were emanating with a shocking amount of energy, almost if there was a fire burning inside them.

Right now, one hundred and eight lifeblood essences were his limit. Even if he possessed more energy and blood, he wouldn’t be able to possess another lifeblood essence.

It was as if the refinement of lifeblood essences was deeply connected to his soul and realm. It was as if they were restricted by some invisible rule.

“Return.”

The soft exclamation prompted the one hundred and eight lifeblood essences to flying into his body and disappear.

An intimidating red glint appeared in his eyes after that.

“I’m now at the middle stage of the Fulfillment Realm, and Heavenly Thunder Eradication had reached the stage of Thought Conception. I’ve refined one hundred and eight lifeblood essences, and I possess Thunder Soul, Heaven Cloud Armor and eight slabs of Thunderblitz wood. In combat, if I have time to inscribe the ancient spirit diagram and activate the Profound Thunder Heart, I can threaten even Nirvana Realm experts…” He pondered to himself while walking out of the cultivation room.

“Are you done with your seclusion, island master?”

Outside the cultivation room, a girl of just thirteen of fourteen years of age with twintails asked respectfully while waiting for him to respond.

“Who are you?” Qin Lie asked in surprise.

“My name is Song Xiaoyu, and I’m Aunt Tingyu’s niece. However, I have left Profound Heaven Alliance and joined Flaming Sun Island a long while ago,” said Song Xiaoyu softly while bowing towards Qin Lie. “Originally, Aunt told me to take care of you by preparing you some food or something. However, you have been in seclusion up until now, and you’ve not gone even once. Therefore, I’ve been waiting here without disturbing you until now.”

“How long have I been in seclusion?” Qin Lie asked casually.

“You’ve been in there for almost a month,” Song Xiaoyu said seriously.

“A month…” A moment of surprise later, Qin Lie nodded. “I understand.”

He walked to a window and looked down on Flaming Sun Island. He discovered that a lot of new buildings had been built on the island, and a lot of Fulfillment and Fragmentation Realm martial practitioners were going in and out of them.

He saw Ge Rongguang and others among those people.

When he looked up to the sky, he noticed that many crystalline war chariots flying in and out of the nearby Gray Island.

A lot of Fragmentation Realm and even Nirvana Realm martial practitioners seemed to be operating around Gray Island. They seemed to have visited specifically to purchase Blazing Profound Bombs.

At Blood Island, the Blood Spear martial practitioners were all cultivating. Many of the previously dried up blood pools seemed to have been refilled with blood.

The entire Flaming Sun Island was becoming more and more prosperous.