“Wh-what are you doing?” Rona asked the moment he noticed what Alex was up to. As he brought the core close to his mouth, he panicked.
“Stop!” he cried out at once. “You’ll die!”
However, Alex didn’t pay any attention to Rona’s cautions and placed the beast core into his mouth.
Alex heard the glowing hot beast core sizzle on his tongue, the pain akin to a spiciness that he hadn’t enjoyed in a long, long time. He could smell the charred skin inside of his mouth as he swallowed it entirely at once.
The hot energy flowed down to his stomach, wherein his body got to work.
Alex waited for a moment, wondering what was going to happen. Firstly, he wanted to know if the beast core was like a Sunheart, which would absorb the heat from the surroundings.
However, Alex had already noticed the lack of absorption of heat or yang from a Beast Core on the verge of birthing a Sun Wraith, so he could only imagine that the result would be different.
He also wondered if the yang-filled beast core would somehow improve his body once again. However, it appeared that it didn’t do so at all. Alex could feel a hot and thick yang energy flow out of the beast core, but it did nothing to improve his physique at all.
It turned out to be quite different from when he ate his Sunheart.
So, all that Alex got from eating that was pure Yang energy that went entirely into his body without causing him any pain. His body converted the energy into Yang Qi immediately, filling his already filled dantian.
Alex couldn’t let such energy go to waste, so he immediately started cultivating.
It had been such a long time since Alex had the opportunity to cultivate. The last time he had cultivated was when he had formed his Axiom, after he had broken through to the Immortal Origin 3rd realm. That had been in the middle of the tournament. Those days seemed so long ago at the moment.
Since coming to hell, he had absorbed a lot of energy to fill his dantian, mostly through beast cores and herbs, and even once by eating the Sunheart, but never had it been an actual cultivation where he could improve his cultivation base.
Now was that opportunity.
Alex circulated the thick energy throughout his meridian, the hot yang Qi passing throughout his body, slowly improving everything. He had only circulated the Qi for a few minutes before he realized that this energy was much better than what he had expected it to be.
The strength of the Qi he formed was better than the regular Immortal Yang Qi that he collected from the atmosphere in the other realms. If he had to describe its strength, it would be two-thirds of the way to becoming Divine Qi.
That made his cultivation speed much faster.
‘Incredible,’ he thought. ‘My cultivation will progress greatly if I do this every day.’
Although, he did wonder if the strength of the Sunheart was the reason behind this. Other Sunhearts were either bound to be stronger or weaker, which would vary his speed a lot. Weaker ones would of course be slower in increasing his cultivation base, and the stronger ones might even be difficult to eat.
‘I will need to find the right ones and use them for my cultivation,’ Alex thought.
It was a shame that this didn’t improve his physique or aid him in directly providing Sun aura for his Origin later on, but he was happy that he could improve his cultivation base at least.
“Bring the other warriors and have them protect me,” Alex quickly said to Rona beside him who was still in shock at what he had just watched.
“What… what have you done?” he asked, failing to understand.
“Something only I can do,” Alex said. “Now go call them. I don’t want any beast to disturb me if possible.”
Saying as much, he closed his eyes and began cultivating deeply.
Most of the outside world was lost to Alex at that moment, with the occasional voices and rumblings passing through his focus to distract him. He opened his eyes from time to time to check if everything was alright, and when he made sure it was, he focused back on cultivation.
Alex purposefully slowed down the release of energy in his stomach so that the other Qi would have time to be refined inside of his body. When that was done, instead of letting the Qi go to waste by throwing it outside of his body, Alex used Provenance Duality: Division to help improve his Origins.
Even though he couldn’t do anything about his lack of access to his Spiritual sea, the seal still allowed for regular energy to pass through, just like it allowed Spiritual energy to pass out.
And the pain he felt from the Origins splitting up in his head was a sign for him to know how many were split up and in what order. He was well acquainted with the mental pain at this point after all.
It took Alex 5 hours to be fully rid of the energy in his stomach, allowing most of it to improve his Origins, while a bit of it went to improving his cultivation base.
‘I should be able to improve my Blood Aura on my own with the blood I get,’ Alex thought. ‘So the only thing I need to improve is my Body cultivation. Once I manage that, cultivation will become much easier.’
Alex had no access to the Mountain Crushing formation at the moment, so he couldn’t improve his Body Cultivation even if he wanted to.
As he opened his eyes after finishing up, he stared at the corpse of the just dead spider and watched the warriors place it into their Storage bag for the citizens of Sunspear to eat afterwards.
Alex saw that and wondered, could he too improve his body cultivation by consuming this meat?
