34 11th Stage of Xiantian

The moment the flashing light landed on Kaelen's unconscious body; he suddenly rose from the ground. He looked around and waved his arms as if a baby realizing he was alive.

"Wow, it's a really weird feeling to get back into a physical body after being out for a while," he mumbled to himself.

"Junior brother, you're awake!" Yu Hao, who sat beside him, exclaimed in a pleasantly surprised manner.

"Senior brother, how long was I unconscious for?" Kaelen asked.

"About five hours," Yu Hao answered.

"Oh." Kaelen tried standing up, but slight pain came from his chest as he bent forward.

"Right. I am still injured." Touching the cut on his chest, he sat cross-legged instead and began cultivating to accelerate his recovery process.

"Senior brother, did you notice anything unusual about my body while I was unconscious?" he asked.

"Not really. I began cultivating while you were unconscious and didn't see anything until I heard you move again," Yu Hao responded calmly.

Nodding, Kaelen thought that it made sense. He thought maybe the real amber seal bead might have acted up while its spiritual projection protected his spirit body.

"In a few years, the golden crow's eggs will hatch, and the giant crow senior wants me to go retrieve and have it follow me along. It looks like I'll have made a new brother." Smiling, Kaelen looked forward to meeting the young stellar beast.

"So, the hidden lands are places where remnants of the ancient great world were left. The Abyssal void… Teacher mentioned it in his lecture about the southern desolate land's territory and forces. The Abyssal void is known to be a place where great talents go to challenge themselves and seek supreme opportunities; I definitely would have to go there even if the stellar beast wasn't hatching there. However, for that, I have to be stronger. First, recover."

Filled with determination, Kaelen went into cultivation. He swallowed the surrounding Heaven and Earth energy as he circulated his qi through his 720 primal meridians for a dozen revolutions, stimulating his cells for repair and healing.

While Qi does not have healing properties, unless it is a special type of Qi with healing properties, it can accelerate the rate at which a cultivator's body heals by a great margin. The better the cultivator's own recovery, the faster he will recover with the addition of Qi.

Naturally, being a physical freak, Kaelen's recovery is greatly abnormal; in fact, his wound had already closed a bit while he was unconscious, blood no longer leaking out of it. Unfortunately, he didn't recover fully as his spirit wasn't inside his body, putting it into a kind of half dead state. If not for that reason, he might have recovered already after five hours.

Kaelen recovered for the rest of the day, his wound fully healing in the process. As he meditated, he assessed his progress after the fight.

"In that last strike, though I lost because of the wide gap between me and senior brother, I still managed to put a hundred per cent of my strength into the thrust while having absolute control of my spear. My spear mastery even went up to peak initial mastery all at once; I can fully control the spear as an extension of my hand. Next will be Spear Intent at high mastery, but that level is a bit more complex, so I probably won't reach it before my fight with the beasts. Though I may break through in battle since I seem to improve quite fast while I fight. I reached peak Initial mastery from peak middle level initial mastery in one go after five days of sparring with senior apprentice brother…"

Kaelen reviewed his strength as he replayed the last scenes of the sparring session with Yu Hao.

"Next is to try and break through the 9th stage of Xiantian Refinement. Since I have three days left. My current strength is at four hundred sixty thousand pounds without activating my bloodline or using any power-enhancing technique. After my breakthrough, I'll gain an additional twenty thousand pounds. Then it will be the last two extreme stages: brain and eye refinement. While eye refinement doesn't increase physical strength, it will increase my fighting ability tremendously as I will be able to see attacks more clearly and won't be at a disadvantage in dark spaces, which could be helpful for my fights in the following days. I can try to break through twice, since I have three days left and the eye refinement is much more straightforward."

Making his plan for the next few days, Kaelen took out a dozen source stones. He placed most of them on the ground and kept two of them in his hands, thus beginning his breakthrough to the ninth stage.

The last three stages of Xiantian, including the ninth stage, require the refinement of organs, making them sturdier and more able to absorb shock during intense battles.

Being at the peak of the eighth stage, Kaelen had already done most of the process, leaving only the last step.

Absorbing the refined Qi from the source stones, he directly began impacting his organs, going for the last round of refinement.

…

The three moons shone in the sky, bathing the world in their silvery purple splendor.

Kaelen rushed to finish refining his organs to maximum capacity. As he had already done most of the refinement, the pain was much lower than the last two stages, making this last stage much easier to go through.

He sat bare-chested in a lotus position next to the tree he crashed into. The wound on his body now fully healed.

"One round, and I should be done. Then I go for the eye refinement." He rushed through as he took two more source stones.

If one could look inside his body, they would see his major organs, notably the liver, pancreas, kidney, etc. All his vulnerable spots were glowing with a pristine crimson sheen. Of course, this was not just because of the refinement but also his bloodline activation. An incredibly pure, transparent qi traveled through his arms and merged with the crimson blood qi that circulated in his bloodstream. The crimson Qi increased in volume as it circulated towards the major organs beside the brain and coated them for the last round of refinement. Just like with the heart, the organs were destroyed on a microscopic level and restored at the same time, becoming sturdier after each round of refinement.

Time passed as night turned into morning.

When the two stones in his hands turned to dust, a blazing crimson light shone in different parts of his upper body. Kaelen finally woke up from his cultivation.

"Ninth stage of Xiantian, now for the tenth extreme." Not standing up, Kaelen took out a dozen more source stones to begin the next breakthrough.

The refinement of the eyes was the same process, but the eyes were extremely fragile, so it was best to take it even slower when refining the heart.

Swallowing the energy in the stones, Kaelen willed his Qi into his eyes.

A blazing pain immediately overtook his body the moment he started refining his eyes. They glowed with a bright red light, shining through his eyelids.

He gritted his teeth as he pushed through the pain.

"This is really painful, much more painful than all the other refinements I went through," Kaelen exclaimed in his mind.

A few hours passed, and the pain became more and more overbearing, forcing Kaelen to open his shut eyes.

A radiant crimson light burst out of his eyes while he opened them, piercing through a tree nearby.

The burning pain in his eyes alleviated after some of the accumulated energy was released, but that also caused the refinement to become much slower.

"Shit, I need to hurry, or I won't be able to finish in two days."

Taking a deep breath, he took two more source stones and increased the energy again. Of course, the pain that had lessened now increased back. He forcefully withstood the pain and began reciting the True Heart Sutra's mantra.

The words of the sutra seemed to float within his mind as he recited them. Each character releasing a calming and serene, cool aura that made him forget the pain he was in; he entered a state of deep cultivation.

If a cultivation technique can tilt towards a philosophical path, then the True Heart Sutra definitely tilted towards the Buddhist path. Finding the true heart, forming the heart spirit, aiming for the true self, and nurturing it throughout one's cultivation journey is a very Buddhist paradigm. This is also exactly the technique to have when challenging oneself to extreme levels, as Kaelen was currently doing; it allowed him to let go of his mortal shell and exist within his consciousness, forgetting pain and suffering. The extreme stages of the foundational realms were no joke, and the three stages of the Xiantian realm were the most difficult. The vast majority of young talents that manage to reach the extreme stages at the Houtian level do not do so in the Xiantian level. Those that do will refine one organ and give up refining the other two, mostly the heart. Of course, it is not just pain tolerance that prevents them, but also physical limitations; the heart may recover fast enough if they have a good recovery speed, but the eye and the brain are two much more fragile organs.

While he entered a flow-like state, Kaelen forgot not only his pain but also time.

The hours passed, morning turned into afternoon, afternoon turned into night, night into morning.

The cycle went on for another day.

On the morning of the seventh day of the week-long training period, Kaelen abruptly opened his eyes.

This time, there were no flashing flares, but his eyes themselves had gone through a significant transformation; his irises kept their bright amber glint but now had a crystallized luster about them. Additionally, if one were to look very closely at his eyes, they would notice his pupils were a mix of black and red and were slightly less round and a bit more vertical, similar to a dragon's.

His eyes now gave a mystical aura on their own, adding to his already outstanding looks and presence.

He stood up from his place and gauged his new strength.

"I actually gained forty thousand pounds of strength; it must've further activated the dragon cells swimming within my body. Now I have around five hundred and ten thousand pounds with no enhancements or activating my bloodline; if I did, my strength would quickly soar to a million and more. My Heart spirit also reached the peak bronze while cultivating the True Heart Sutra and is now able to double my strength. If I use all my abilities, my strength should be around three million pounds; my bloodline is considered my basic strength, so if I activate it, my strength should reach one and a half million, plus doubling it with the heart spirit, it is three million. Of course, there is more to power than strength; my spear mastery and strength control make me much more difficult to deal with even against someone with similar or even more physical strength. There's also elemental power that cannot be converted to physical strength; you may need a hundred thousand pounds of strength to crush a large rock into dust, but only a handful of fire elemental energy that weighs nothing to completely pulverize that same rock.

Still, not everyone's elemental energy is that powerful, and normal Qi can defend against elemental energy to a certain extent, while powerful blood Qi, which is a mix of Qi and blood energy, can even crush elemental energy completely. In a sense, it can be considered a different form of blood elemental Qi; however, it is not restricted to Elemental Resonance and above. My blood Qi is very powerful, and no Elemental resonance can compete with me in terms of physical strength, so I have no rival there, unless it's top talents like Rai and Thorin."

Thinking about the last two, Kaelen wondered what they were doing.