A large smile hung on John's face as he sent his divine sense into his essence dantian to inspect it.
A strong aura radiated from his essence dantian, several times more powerful than when he was in the Mist Creation Realm.
As the name Qi Condensation suggested, the Qi in his dantian was now condensed into a liquid form, while it was misty and ethereal in the Mist Creation realm. He could feel a much greater control over his Qi now.
"Not only is my dantian more powerful now, it's also much larger in terms of Qi reserves."
John inspected his essence dantian for quite some time, and started circulating his Qi to get used to the new power. With a thought, small arcs of lightning started to dance along John's skin.
After playing around with his new cultivation, John quickly noticed that his soul space had grown larger, and his divine sense more powerful.
John was pleased to find that his Nascent Soul had also advanced to the Soul Essence Realm. His divine sense now stretched several hundred yards, and his soul space was much larger. A larger soul space meant a stronger soul power, which improved things such as divine sense, memory, and comprehension speeds.
"I nearly forgot, unless once specifically focuses on soul cultivation, essence cultivation and soul cultivation are closely linked. As long as my soul is powerful enough when I advance in essence cultivation, it will naturally advance as well. Improving my soul strength in front of the holy gate really is beneficial.
Normally cultivators would also have to focus on their soul, and improve it in many different ways to have it keep up with their essence cultivation. Otherwise, if their soul was weak, a soul cultivator could eliminate them with a thought. However, all John had to do was mediate occasionally in front of the holy gate.
"Isn't this palace realm a bit too powerful. It's basically cheating for cultivation."
John shook his head and once more focused on his soul space.
"Now that I have the Primordial Extermination Lightning cultivation technique, I can freely control lightning, although I still need to learn some battle arts. There is that one thing Celestial Soulrend gave me, but I haven't had time to look at it until now. Let's see what it is."
John sent his divine sense into his soul space to inspect the battle art. The technique floated in his soul space in an isolated area.
As John's divine sense approached the floating ball of lightning, his face began to scrunch up before a look of fear appeared on his face.
"What the fuck? This isn't a technique. This is a condensed ball of pure lightning essence. If this thing exploded, it would shatter my soul and erase my mind. What the hell was that con artist thinking?"
John couldn't' help but curse Celestial Soulrend for doing something so dangerous. Although the ball of lightning essence seemed stable enough for now, as it seemed to be contained by a mysterious soul power than Celestial Soulrend put in place, John didn't know if it would ever become unstable.
If not for that layer of soul power, John would never be able to hold a ball of pure lightning essence into his soul space. Not only that, but his divine sense was far from strong enough to touch it at the moment, making him unable to move it at all.
"Why the hell did he do this? I just have a lightning bomb in my soul now? What good does that do?"
John had been expecting an amazing lightning battle art, and Celestial Soulrend had actually seemed pleased with his suggestion of Miko as a successor, at which point he gave John this lightning essence.
"Whatever, it seems stable enough for now, and I can't do anything about it for now anyways, so I'll just ignore it."
Just as his mind was about to leave his soul space, John felt a slight tremble in another part of his soul space.
"Hmm?"
John sent his mind in the direction of the trembling, and quickly discovered the source.
"You? You're awake now huh?"
He quickly discovered the source of the trembling in his soul space was the egg that he had received in the lightning trial land. It had been in a slumber as soon as he obtained it, but it seemed as if it had awoken slightly now.
John tried to send his divine sense into the egg to see what type of creature was inside, but his divine sense was unable to penetrate the egg. A frown appeared on his face, but he was unable to do anything about it.
"You called me over here. So what do you want?"
The egg trembled once more, and the image of the lightning essence ball appeared in John's mind.
He thought about it for a moment before his eyes lit up.
"Do you want the lightning essence?" John asked.
The egg trembled rapidly once more, seemingly more excited than before.
John thought about it for a moment and finally put all the pieces together.
"Celestial Soulrend clearly knew that I had obtained this egg, so he must know that it needs pure lightning essence, or powerful lighting to grow. He also mentioned that the holy aura said I could only obtain one technique from him, so this was probably his way of getting around that, since the lighting essence technically isn't a technique."
After figuring everything out, John felt less pissed off at Celestial Soulrend. Although he still would have preferred for a battle art, this was still something he could make use of.
"Fine, but be careful. If you trigger this ball of lightning essence, I'll die. And since you're in my soul space, you'll die as well, so don't do anything stupid."
Although John was unable to directly communicate with the egg, their shared soul connection from the companion pact allowed him to somewhat understand its intentions. John used his divine sense to pick up the egg and carefully brought it over to where the ball of lightning essence was floating.
The egg started to tremble rapidly in excitement, and John placed it directly next to the ball of lightning. His eyes widened in shock as the egg rapidly dashed into the ball of lightning.
"What are you doing?" John shouted, but was too late to stop the egg. He braced his mind for the explosion, but was relieved to find that nothing happened. He slowly opened his eyes and stared at the ball of lightning, which now contained an egg inside. The egg seemed to be at home within the lightning.
"Whatever, just don't make it explode!" John commanded before his divine sense left his soul space.
"The less I think about the bomb inside my soul, the better."
Although he said this, John was still slightly sweating in nervousness from the ordeal. He took quite some time to calm down and clear his mind.
"Now, let's get my body dantian to the Qi Condensation Realm as well."