Chapter 52: Foundation Establishment 2
While this might seem awesome, this was only the first of three steps to breakthrough to the Foundation Establishment realm.
Next was to turn one’s refined spiritual qi into magic power, which started with locating the spirit root. This was done autonomously for Li Ling by the Infinite Slaughter System which was handling the process of the breakthrough, and in the next moment, he was able to see the legendary ’spirit root’ that everyone spoke about.
His eyes narrowed greatly, as Li Ling realized that the shape of the spirit root was precisely akin to that of a ginseng plant. It had a short, carrot-like upper body that connected to the governing vessel, the chief meridian of the body, and five legs that pierced into the dantian from the top, each one bearing a different color that corresponded to each of the five elements.
The problem was that apart from the earth element ’leg’, the others were shriveled and emaciated, as if they were malnourished, while the earth element one was fat and thick, exceedingly corpulent in comparison. It almost seemed like the earth ’leg’ had forcefully absorbed its ’brothers’, leading to its strong and singular development.
The spirit root had other smaller legs, nearly thousands of them, that connected to the 360 acupoints of the body, using them like pores to breathe in the ambient spiritual energy before entering its core to be refined, then passed through the meridians before being deposited into the dantian through the earth element ’leg’.
Seeing the structure, Li Ling could deduce the true function of the various parts with ease. What left him confused was why his talent was judged as poor if his spirit root looked normal and the earth element leg was so thick that it seemed like a ’fatty’.
Li Ling introspected further and saw within the earth element leg, his ’eyes’ widening as he was shocked by what he saw inside.
If the spirit root was seen as a refinery with different parts, then the part corresponding to the earth element appendage that connected to the dantian was akin to a blocked vessel full of cholesterol, but in this case, it was choked with some sort of glowing brown-colored essence.
The issue was that Li Ling recognized this brown-colored substance as pure Heavenly Earth Essence. This was one of the five Heavenly Essences that were greatly sought after in the cultivation world, said to be able to concoct special pills for Dao Integration powerhouses to break through their realms.
Heck, he even only knew about this because the Qing Shan Sect’s ancestor, who was at the Dao Integration Realm, was furiously searching for each of the Heavenly Essences corresponding to the five elements to further his power, so the sect posted tasks for them in the marketplace, making sure that even the most illiterate cultivator could identify this precious resource when they saw it.
The Qing Shan Sect offered a core disciple position with direct mentorship from the ancestor himself for anyone who could turn in one of the Heavenly Essences.
Even Li Ling, deep in his coward phase back then, had been a smidgen away from being tempted to go out and search for this material, as it caused a huge craze when it was first promoted.
And now what was this? His spirit root was choked with it, which blocked his ability to speedily refine spiritual energy and was why his talent was marked as trash.
No wonder, no wonder.
No wonder that bastard Foundation Establishment friend of his grandfather made that solemn announcement without hesitation. Now in possession of a spirit sense like that fellow and able to see the situation for himself, Li Ling fully agreed that unless some special methods were used, or unless he ingested some special treasure, he would never have been able to advance to the mid stage of Qi Refinement.
If one lavished common resources like pills and demon beast meat on him, he would have been able to brute force himself to Qi Refinement level 3, but level 4 was out of the question.
The more Li Ling saw, the more he felt reverence toward the Infinite Slaughter System for being able to bypass this natural blockade and still perfectly elevate him painlessly through these levels. It seemed he ought to take his criticism of its ’missing features’ back, because even its base features were too heaven-defying.
The second stage began as the Infinite Slaughter System commandeered the refined spiritual qi in his dantian to surge through the spirit root once more, this time ’distilling’ it into the liquid-like magic power which was heavily strained.
Li Ling watched the process intently, which should have been slow. The term ’Hundred Days of Foundation Establishment’ was not a joke, as the entire process was usually done in one sitting, from activating spirit sense to forming magic power, but both stages were instant for him, as if fast-forwarded.
His refined spiritual qi which was colorless and like a thick nebulous cloud was soon converted into a small puddle of magic power that was about 10% of his entire dantian’s size. On top of that, the newly formed magic power was blazing hot, a mixture of reddish-orange in color and possessing the viscosity and liquidity of Fanta rather than lava like one would expect.
Once the magic power settled in Li Ling’s dantian, he had crossed the second of three stages of his breakthrough seamlessly, and not even a full minute had passed.
The final stage of the breakthrough was actually the simplest yet the most dangerous, because it required the most care. Now that one had converted their magic power, it was time to take this more powerful energy through a cycle round the meridians, enhancing the flesh and cells while also upgrading the meridians to withstand its circulation.
This stage was difficult because the meridians had already reached their limit when one attained Qi Refinement Perfection and their connate strength could not typically withstand the power of magic power right away. So one had to burn their vitality to let their meridians be damaged by the magic power and then recover, continuing this over and over until the meridians ’upgraded’ to be able to withstand it.
This was only one aspect of the danger. Do not forget, a normal person had by now smashed open their Sea of Consciousness, birthed spirit sense, and commandeered their spirit root to slowly refine their spiritual qi into magic power.
Even if they had taken the various pills and used the heavenly treasures most typically used to increase Foundation Establishment success chances, they were more than likely tired and overwhelmed. However, one could not stop here, and had to slowly train their meridians for the next realm, otherwise it would be for naught if they could not even call out their powerful magic power to perform daoist arts because their meridians kept rupturing.
This obviously was not a problem for Li Ling because not only was he a qi cultivator, but he was also a body cultivator. Whether qi or body, both used the meridians and the spirit root to do their business, but the body cultivation path bolstered the meridians much more than qi cultivation due to different focuses.
So Li Ling only had to do a little bit of refinement of his meridians to turn them into the necessary strength to bear magic power.
This was precisely why cultivating multiple methods was valuable, because they often helped each other out in direct or indirect ways. Only that without extreme natural talent, a transmigrator or chosen one cheat, or some form of heavenly treasure to shorten the time requirement, who had the time to divert their focus?
The average fellow did not even have enough lifespan to finish just qi cultivation and now you wanted him to split it in half with body cultivation? Then, to further split it into a third with the Sage Race method? Just for Foundation Establishment which gave one 300 years of life?
Then what about Core Formation or the troublesome Nascent Soul?
Li Ling breathed out when the procedure was done, now firmly stable in the first level of Foundation Establishment. After marveling at his power and feeling his overall changes, he noticed that the Infinite Slaughter System had changed significantly.
｢The Infinite Slaughter System has detected that the host has advanced to a new realm of cultivation and has attained a new level of life. As such, the Growth Protocol of the Infinite Slaughter System has been activated, which guarantees that the system will undergo fundamental, positive changes each time the host raises their level of life based on the experience of the host during that period of time.｣
｢Congratulations Li Ling (Andrew Han), you have activated version 2 of the Infinite Slaughter System and the changelog is provided below:
1. Age and Lifespan will now be calculated and displayed.
2. Slaughter Points can now be accumulated from assisted and indirect kills.
3. Daoist Arts can now be limit broken and upgraded to a new level based on your cultivation realm.
4. Slaughter Points can now be used outside of the system. Explore the methods on your own, host.
5. The system can now perform an identification of living and non-living things, generating a panel for them with their basic details. The effectiveness of this is based on your cultivation level and spirit sense strength.｣
｢Remember Host, all allotments by the heavens are simply errors awaiting correction. Life, Karma, Time, and Identity are concepts measured by the inferior laws of reality. Sever the false, seize the truth, annex what ends in others to begin in yourself. Establish death as a tithe paid to you by existence and ascend by slaughter until only your will remains.｣
Li Ling trembled as he read this, feeling a surge in his mind. He had already fully converted to the path of slaughter, even killing those who were conventionally marked as ’innocent’ by the flimsy morals of the weak, walking down a road that could never be retracted.
But it seemed that the Infinite Slaughter System, or the one behind it, was not satisfied with his work so far. It was as if it was saying that Li Ling was strong enough to have it all, but he was too weak to take it.
To incentivize him further, it had even bestowed him new features on top of what had been there previously, making the path of slaughter twice as easy and more lucrative to walk.
Whew...
Li Ling breathed out and focused his mind. Since the Infinite Slaughter System had increased his arsenal of tools and expanded his options, Li Ling would naturally make the most of them, pursuing the ends of killing power to be able to harvest lives as freely as a person could chop grass.
But even so, he would need to stabilize himself in Firmament Heaven. As much as he could kill wantonly without a care for death or suffering, as well as judgment for his actions, he had to make sure that his slaughter was sustainable.
Just like other demonic cultivators, he would need to start creating and growing his own ’farms’, raising suitable beings, preferably cultivators, to be periodically harvested by him when they were ripe for collection, allowing him to gain a stable number of Slaughter Points rather than rely on random killing.
To achieve that, it seemed he would have to expedite his need to join the Six Paths Demon Sect, for only when he had such a huge force backing him could he manage such an endeavor with ease.
But right now, he still had to finish his Foundation Establishment growth and see how far he could go. With that in mind, Li Ling glanced at the Infinite Slaughter System, seeing the new changes for himself.