Vast Life Essence

Usually, the Nirvana Life heavenly blessing took a few seconds to completely form. However, after waiting for ten minutes, Yaan still found himself staring up, watching as the golden cloud expanded further and further, until it covered the entire sky for as far as the eye could see.

Yaan glanced at Rui, who decided to watch his blessing from outside of the stone ring, and he showed a doubtful expression.

"Hey, what's going on? This is way too big, even given my strength, right?"

"Right…" She nodded slowly. "This…is something I cannot explain. I have never heard of a Nirvana Life heavenly blessing growing so large."

"I see." Yaan pondered for a moment, then laughed dryly when he realised the issue with this. With blessing, came calamity…

"My Nirvana Death heavenly calamity is going to be difficult, huh?"

Rui remained silent. At this point…she didn't have much hope that Yaan would be able to survive his heavenly calamity. The size of this blessing had exceeded her wildest expectations, and not by any small margin. This heavenly blessing was easily ten times larger than her estimation of the worst case scenario, and it was still growing!

A large heavenly blessing could be a good thing, but after the blessing exceeded a certain size, it simply became far too difficult for the cultivator to handle the following calamity. Ga Shu's blessing was extremely impressive and his calamity was also very large, but it wasn't so ridiculous that he was unable to fight back. Besides, Ga Shu had his dao of life comprehension, which gave him an innate advantage when it came to resisting the Nirvana Death calamity.

Yaan's insight into life and death had become quite deep, but it was yet to reach the level of immortal stage comprehension. But, even if he did reach that level, it was highly unlikely that he would be able to resist his calamity in three years!

It wasn't only Rui, the Primordial Sage and the Blood Plane Lord thinking this, Yaan also knew it. However, he showed no fear, no unwillingness, and no bitterness. He simply watched on as the golden cloud continued to grow, wondering just how large it would become.

The golden cloud covered the entire forbidden region created by Yaan within the Kingdom of Reptil. It expanded further and further, resulting in countless shocked warriors outside of the forbidden region seeing its absurd size.

Finally, the cloud stopped growing. As soon as its growth came to an end, a golden beam of light shot down from above, converging inwards, before the concentrated rays landed on Yaan.

Golden light filled this entire region, but every ray found its final destination within Yaan's body. As the light fell down, clearing away the bloody mist which lingered in this place, golden dust and golden droplets rapidly formed within the cloud.

When Ga Shu's heavenly blessing descended, Yaan remembered seeing a few golden droplets fall from the sky, along with a vortex of golden dust which landed on Ga Shu's powerful body. However, compared to the following scene, those phenomena were simply insignificant.

Within seconds, a golden storm covered the lands. Golden droplets formed within the clouds, then rained down torrentially. The heavy rain was swept up by the golden winds, which carried thick golden dust across the region. Before long, the colour gold had taken over each and every inch of space; nothing was able to escape its fine coating.

The golden winds were almost violent, ripping into Yaan's body and forcing him to absorb a seemingly endless stream of mortal life essence. Yaan's eyes widened in shock when he realised that if he did not focus on stabilising this influx of life essence, he might actually become over-filled, resulting in the detonation of his body!

What sort of blessing was this?! This blessing was so intense that his body could barely endure it! This was simply a tribulation!

Gold seeped into every fibre of Yaan's being. He no longer had the luxury to watch the magnificent golden storm around him, all he could do was shut his eyes and focus on absorbing the life essence. He absorbed this life essence into his blood, into his Vital Qi, into his slaughter soul, and into his sea of consciousness.

At a certain point, Yaan was unable to contain the life essence any longer. Just when he thought that he would be forced to defend against this 'blessing', preventing any more life essence from dangerously entering his very full body, Yaan found something unexpected.

When his body, blood, Qi and mind were no longer able to absorb anymore life essence, the remaining life essence began to flow elsewhere. This bewildered Yaan, because when he tried to follow that channel, he became lost, unable to comprehend what he was looking at. In fact, the further he delved into that mysterious channel, the more he felt the desire…to turn back.

Eventually, a terrible feeling of foreboding overcame him. In this moment, Yaan suddenly felt like if he took a single step closer towards that place, the entire world would crash down upon him, burying him within a pit of fear and despair. This was just a feeling he had, but he was certain of it; that which lay at the end of the channel was something that he did not want to face!

Yaan's face turned pale as shock filled his heart. He hastily pulled back, no longer daring to search for the mysterious place that this life essence was being funnelled away to.

Yaan's mind worked quickly. With his Myriad Sage Grade sea of consciousness, it didn't take him long to deduce the destination of that channel, the place where his excess mortal life essence was being taken to…

Since it was entering his body, but it was not released back into the outside world, it could only be flowing into his dao soul!

Yaan had never heard of something like the dao soul directly absorbing life essence from a heavenly blessing, but he had no time to care about this. He also decided not to dwell on the eery fact that, as he approached his own dao soul, he was afflicted with an overwhelming terror like no other he had felt before…

Since his dao soul was absorbing this life essence, then let it absorb more!

Rather than rejecting this 'kind gift' from the heavens, Yaan crazily devoured as much golden rain, golden dust and golden light from all around him as possible! After finding that channel which led towards his dao soul, he madly forced more, and more, and more life essence into this channel, watching in amazement as it flowed in endlessly, as if it could absorb an infinite amount of life essence without ever becoming oversaturated!

As if noticing his discovery, the heavenly blessing rapidly subsided. However, even though it looked like the heavens were pulling away this blessing at their fastest possible speed, the blessing was simply too large, so it actually took a few minutes for it to dissipate entirely!

By the time Yaan realised that there was no more life essence to absorb, the heavenly blessing had already vanished.

He blinked, but didn't pay any attention to the outside world right now. No, rather than that, he was far more concerned about the state of his own being. After closing his eyes and observing his internal condition for a few minutes, Yaan was able to discern everything within him, with the exception of his dao soul, in great clarity.

He had reached the Nirvana Life realm! He had reached the Nirvana Life realm by cultivating all four paths to the peak!

Not only that, but his life essence, or at least, the life essence which he was able to see, had reached an unspeakable height. It had accumulated to such a vast, unbelievable quantity, that Yaan took some time to finish measuring it.

"Seriously?" He muttered to himself. "A normal amount of life essence from the heavenly blessing is around 5,000 drops. Ga Shu gained 18,000, which is already incredible…but I…gained two million drops of mortal life essence…and that is not even considering the absurd amount that I absorbed into my dao soul, which I am unable to see!"

When it came to the life essence that he absorbed into his dao soul, Yaan felt quite confused. As far as he was aware, life essence was something that existed within a person's cultivation. This was why their life essence would be exposed to the world if their body and cultivation were destroyed.

Now that Yaan had reached the Nirvana Life realm, his understanding of life essence had reached a new level. He could sense the life essence within his body. He could feel how it encompassed every single fibre of his being. He could feel that this life essence was equivalent to his own life; if this essence was depleted, his life would be over.

But now, there was life essence contained within his dao soul. Yaan's understanding of the dao soul was too shallow, he could not even locate his own dao soul. He didn't even know if dao souls were supposed to be supported by life essence, but he felt that they should not need to rely on such a thing. The dao soul was too ethereal after all, how could it even interact with something like life essence…?

He was getting nowhere by asking himself these questions, so he decided to consult someone more knowledgable.

"Rui, does the dao soul contain life essence?"

Rui raised an eyebrow when faced with this sudden question. She was yet to say anything following his heavenly blessing, yet he asked this seemingly random question right away? But, despite her doubts, she still answered him.

"No. The dao soul has no need for life essence. Life essence is something that supports 'life', but the dao soul exists outside of the confines of life and death."

Hearing this answer only left Yaan feeling even more confused.

"So a dao soul can't absorb life essence?"

"I don't see how it possibly could, or why it would even need to…" Rui replied, looking at him oddly. "Why? Are you thinking that even your dao soul absorbed a portion of that ridiculous quantity of life essence?"

"I'm not sure…" Yaan shook his head lightly, deciding not to dwell on this matter any longer. Since even Rui couldn't comprehend his situation, there was no point overthinking it right now. Of course, Rui still felt curious towards Yaan's query, but she was immediately distracted by his following words, which were simply too shocking.

"Rui, I gained two million drops of life essence. Do you have any methods that could make use of this to resist the calamity in three years?"

As Yaan and Rui conversed, the Primordial Sage watched on calmly. As she watched him in this place, she was simultaneously divining a plan…a plan which would reveal itself in three days time.