Chapter 683 Cultivating Alone
Had he reached the “My Thoughts and I Are One” Realm when he faced the Moonlight Fairy that day, that demoness would not have succeeded in her sneak attack.
Standing on the 10,000-meter-high ice peak, Ding Hao released his spirit. Everything below the mountain was vividly captured in his mind. He could “see” clearly a primeval forest on the mountainside, with a warm climate and numerous wild beasts. As detected by his Divine Senses, Ding Hao could even hear the sounds of crawling insects and ants distinctly.
He was slowly adapting to this process.
In the end, whenever he released his Divine Senses, he could observe any object he wanted at will. Amidst the tens of thousands of voices and images, he could proficiently pick out the one he wanted.
It was as though the entire mountain had become his eyes and ears.
Ding Hao soon concluded that his new and powerful Divine Senses could cover a radius of 10,000 meters, from where he was standing.
Since he had just reached the “My Thoughts and I Are One” Realm, it had not stabilized yet. It was absolutely impossible for his spirit to travel out of his body. Once his spirit left his body, it would dissipate and disappear almost immediately.
Ding Hao took out a 10,000-year-old Green Jade Ginseng from his Storage Ring, chewing it like a radish in big mouthfuls.
The medicinal power turned into a hot current, spreading out inside his body.
Ding Hao coursed his Qi around his inner meridians and continued maximizing the medicinal efficacy, turning the Qi into vigorous vitality and constantly infusing it into every cell. Under the sunlight, Ding Hao’s formerly shriveled skin had become luscious and moist, at a speed visible to the naked eye, his hollow flesh and blood slowly recovering.
Ding Hao’s self-healing over the past few days had almost depleted all the vitality and blood vigor in his body.
It was time to replenish them with a tonic.
Ding Hao chewed dozens of 10,000-year-old Green Jade Ginsengs in one go like they were radishes, refining them all. In the end, his body returned to his former luster, his skin clear and luscious like jade, his flesh, blood, bones and marrows firm and glowing, and his whole body flushing with blood and Qi like a gigantic dragon. All the vitality he consumed in the past three months had been replenished in this process.
By now, Ding Hao’s temperament had changed greatly.
Standing at the ice cliff, he was like a peerless divine sword finally purged of the thick dust on its blade, showing its keenness and unique temperament for the first time. Even if he was amongst thousands of geniuses, Ding Hao would still stand out at a glance. He had a unique demeanor and spirit, as if an invisible divine halo was over him.
After suffering this serious injury, Ding Hao seemed to have been reborn.
He directed his inner Qi around his meridians.
Within his Twelve Meridians and Six Strange Veins, his Hell Ice Qi and Heaven Fire Qi were surging.
In the lower dantian of his abdomen and the middle dantian of his chest, two Qi Seeds, like new suns, emitted a glowing brilliance as well as an indescribable Chaotic Aura, turning continuously into a liquid mystic power. Like a tide breaching a levee, it flowed along the meridian channels that had been unsealed, rushing through the acupoints and circulating in the meridians, nourishing his body.
As Ding Hao directed his Qi around his meridians with all his strength, two streams of flowing light—one silver and one gold—flowed out of his body. Like a divine dragon, they changed shapes constantly, gyrating around his body as if alive.
At the same time, the unsealed acupoints in his meridians were like vast planets in the universe, shimmering brightly as they gushed out of Ding Hao’s body, making it seemed almost transparent like jade. This was the ineffable aura of the Great Tao.
It was a terrifying Tao aura.
“I can’t suppress it any longer. I must try breaching the acupoints immediately…”
Ding Hao felt the Qi inside his body surging, unprecedentedly vigorous and active. There were stabbing pains in his Twelve Meridians and Six Strange Veins, as if they were about to explode. The speed at which his Qi rushed through each acupoint had exceeded what was normal, eddying rapidly like a whirlpool in the sea.
The big duels Ding Hao had fought over these days, as well as his activation of the rusted sword and the devil saber to the extreme, had made him suppress his cultivation, postponing his breakthrough in an effort to heal himself. By now, he could no longer suppress it. His Qi cultivation was finally about to break through to the next level.
He immediately went into the ice cave behind him and set up an inscription barrier around himself to isolate all his aura. Then, he began breaching the new meridian channels and acupoints.
Ding Hao was at the Six-apertured Great Grandmaster Realm.
Almost at the same moment when this thought crossed his mind, a violent stream of Qi surged up. With a boom, his “Daguan acupoint,” the seventh acupoint of the Yangming Sixth Channel of Hand, was breached. The whole process took an incredibly short time, far beyond Ding Hao’s expectations.
“It seems that the energy I have accumulated is really too powerful.”
Ding Hao steadied his mind and entered the state of emptiness. In just a few dozen breaths, all the bruises on his “Daguan acupoint” faded. The quicksilver-like Hell Ice Qi coursed inside his meridians, as the acupoints emitted a silvery light, streaming out of his body, showing its infinite abstruse nature. The whole process was like the birth of a star.
He had succeeded in unsealing a meridian!
A Seven-apertured Great Grandmaster.
Chapter 10 The Giant Increase in Strength
Without any hesitation, Ding Hao immediately activated the Heaven Fire Qi Seed in the middle dantian of his chest.
The Heaven Fire Qi was flowing and surging about like golden lava, rumbling like a volcanic eruption. The 10th acupoint of the third meridian of his Six Strange Veins—the Jutu acupoint of Chong channel—was almost instantaneously breached by this mad outburst of Heaven Fire Qi.
The whole process was too fast and violent. Ding Hao could not help but let out a muffled groan. There was a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth.
“It doesn’t seem a good idea to suppress it too hard…” Ding Hao ran his Qi around his meridians and warmed his body. Soon, he controlled the raging Qi, making it eddy around that particular Jutu acupoint.
If anyone were to learn about this violent method, and how much it could help accelerate their cultivation, their jaws would definitely drop.
Genius warriors who had practiced for years and accumulated enough latent power would still take one or two months to complete the breakthrough. Not even one out of ten million warriors could break through into the sixth-apertured level instantaneously like Ding Hao.
Dozens of breaths later, a fiery golden flame gushed out from Ding Hao’s back.
He had succeeded in unsealing another meridian!
Ding Hao took less than 15 minutes to successfully reach the Dual-Meridian Seven-Apertured Great Grandmaster Realm, unsealing two meridian channels.
But that was obviously not the end.
After breaching these two acupoints, the surging and vigorous Qi inside Ding Hao’s body did not seem to be much relieved. His Twelve Meridians and Six Strange Veins were all bursting with Qi, causing the meridian channels to swell and ache. This pain was acute, as the Qi eddied and gushed around his meridians most violently.
“I can still advance.”
After thinking for a while, Ding Hao decided to continue breaching the next acupoint.
In the silvery ice cave, Ding Hao sat cross-legged in the center of the ice chamber. Golden and silver flames surrounded his body, morphing into the shape of dragons, releasing mysterious and resplendent colors, illuminating the entire room as if it was paradise.
Layers of invisible energy, centering on Ding Hao, contracted and expanded with great regularity like a beating heart, accompanying his breaths.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The whole cave boomed like a dragon making roars.
This kind of energy was frightfully strong. Had Ding Hao not set up an inscription barrier around the cave, its ice walls would have shattered long ago.
The clothes on Ding Hao’s body had long been shattered by this energy, disintegrating into powder and vanishing. His body was stark naked—clear, luscious and almost transparent like jade. The 20 bones of his chest and rib cage seemed plated with silver, with Yin and Yang Qi interchanging. The large bones down his spine had morphed into a purple divine dragon, usurping his back.
Moreover, a silvery ray of light was orbiting from his abdomen to every part of his body, in a specific trajectory. Here and there, some silvery star-like ball of light would appear. Another golden ray of light was also orbiting around his body from his chest, in another trajectory, together with other similarly large shimmering golden stars.
These were the trajectories of two kinds of Qi in his body, as well as the acupoints of his Twelve Meridians and Six Strange Veins that had been breached.
Ding Hao’s body, like a newly-formed universe, was evolving and expanding little by little. The golden and silvery tracks were naturally formed, containing the aura of the Great Tao. The acupoints formed different constellation pathways, and a mysterious power was generating slowly inside Ding Hao’s body.
This strange and magnificent phenomenon continued.
Gold and silvery threads continued to spread and expand. As time went by, new balls of light kept shimmering in Ding Hao’s body, releasing starry brilliance.
Time passed slowly and yet quickly.
He did not know how long it took, but the raging Qi coursing inside Ding Hao’s body finally stabilized.
The golden and silvery flames surrounding him became more and more dazzling. The temperature on his right side was extremely cold, with even the air crackling like freezing ice. On his left side, however, it was like a ball of solar fire. The air was distorted, and even the space seemed to be melting.
These two forces reinforced and counteracted each other.
In the end, half of Ding Hao’s body was coated in an extremely mysterious layer of cold ice, like an armor, while the other half was burning with golden flames. There seemed to be an invisible line dividing the two, splitting his body into two halves—one half extremely cold, the other extremely hot. It was a strange and magnificent phenomenon, utterly incredible.
Ding Hao was not done yet.
He was making a last effort to continue the breakthrough.
The inscription barrier around him began to shatter and disintegrate, and the ice that had accumulated for tens of millions of years started to melt.
Under the dual effects of Ding Hao’s ice and fire, the water droplets would freeze into ice, before melting into water droplets again. Over a distance of four to five meters, a droplet of water would freeze and melt many dozen times before hitting the ground.
15 minutes later, the inscription barrier surrounding him had completely disintegrated.
There was a surge of Qi energy and a loud boom. Unable to withstand that terrible power, the entire ice cave had exploded.
The entire mountaintop was blown away in an instant, with at least several hundred meters shaved off.