Aside from the Twelve Standard Meridians and the Eight Extraordinary Meridians within the human body, there also existed hundreds upon hundreds of acupoints. Although those acupoints weren’t as important to cultivators as to mortals, there were still tiny advantages within each one of them.
Those who cultivated the martial path would eventually open up all the acupoints within their body to further strengthen it. It was akin to how a spiritual cultivator connected their Twelve Standard Meridian to create a qi circulatory system within their dantian.
Only after a Core Formation realm martial cultivator connected all their acupoints into a system would they reach the peak stage of the Core Formation realm. The most ideal circumstance would be to open up all the acupoints within their body before connecting them, otherwise, it would be nigh impossible to alter the system afterward.
To have all the acupoints opened, was considered the perfect Core Formation Martial Body. But the number of people able to do so before they entered the Nascent Soul realm was pitifully few in comparison to all the Huang Realm. Tianyi was already in the late stage of the Core Formation realm of the martial path with over 300 opened acupoints.
From the outside, Tianyi’s body appeared extremely abnormal. At some points, his skin would become translucent and reveal the inside of his body that resemble boundless darkness, and other times it resembled the star-filled night sky.
Tianyi had already spent over a month comprehending the Spring Autumn Scripture and dissected the profundities within. Strangely Tianyi was able to easily grasp the basic concepts, it was like a floodgate had opened within Tianyi and he greedily drank it all. Even stranger was that Tianyi actually did deduce several spatial concepts. It was like Tianyi had become a fish in the water, not even when he learned the concepts behind lightning did he have this easy of a time.
But the stranger part was that when he learned the spatial technique previously, his abilities to comprehend the spatial concepts were not as prominent as now.
Tianyi didn’t dwell too deep on the oddity of the situation as he was completely immersed in comprehending as much as possible. Right now he was deducing and testing on how to transform the Martial Body he gained from cultivating the Dragon Emperor Fist into a spacetime attribute Martial Body.
At this time the Heavenly River within him played an immense role.
Each acupoint within his body had become tiny pseudo dantians capable of storing vast amounts of qi. There was no comparison between the previous size and the current size of the acupoints. And within each acupoint tiny stars were taken from the Heavenly River floating aimlessly, each acupoint resembling a cluster of stars.
Tianyi’s eight miniature dantian had been moved and merged with his main dantian with the alteration of his Martial Body. Now there was no miniature dantian and main dantian, only one dantian. All nine of his Spiritual Cores were now in one place and the Taiji symbol no longer encompassed everywhere and now existed only in his dantian. This was Tianyi’s core point of his cultivation, his most important strength and weakness.
The Dragon Yin Pearl Violet Gold Core revolved in the center of this all. His eight Yang Gold Core all orbited his Dragon Yin Pearl on the same plane in a counterclockwise direction. All of them were a different distance from his Dragon Yin Pearl Violet Gold Core. Tianyi’s nine Spiritual Cores at this moment greatly resembled the solar system of which Earth was a part of. But the structure of the celestial bodies became reversed, rather than eight planets revolving around a star, it was eight stars orbiting an extremely large planet.
At the same time, the grey cloud qi that had inhabited his dantian disappeared and became a black translucent qi with countless tiny lights within. When you looked inside Tianyi’s whole body, it soon resembled a lone solar system against the Heavenly River as a background.
His body was still under great pressure from the ever-increasing production of the true qi of chaos, but it no longer felt as if a mountain was weighing down upon. Tianyi could feel his skin pulse as if a giant heart was beating, with each beat the miniature cosmos within his body pulsed as increased in size.
This was the concept of the ever-expanding universe that subsisted from the explosion of the big bang. Of course, back on Earth this was only a theory known as the Big Bang Theory, but Tianyi substituted the big bang with his Sole Yin, Eight Trigrams Yang Formation. Just as Tianyi’s nine Spiritual Cores was creating an endless amount of energy that was expanding, his Martial Body was constantly trying to shrink.
There was also an additional feature within Tianyi’s dantian. Surrounding the nine Spiritual Cores were countless tiny frozen droplets the color of gold. This was the blood essence of the Dragon Emperor Tianyi had fused into his marrows. Tianyi had decisively stopped his cultivation of the Dragon Emperor Fist once he created this embryonic method and so the leftover blood essences were stored inside his Dantian for later use. The blood essence of the Dragon Emperor was still very valuable and rare material.
His only regret was that the pain he went through to absorb all the Dragon Emperor’s blood essence was ultimately futile in the end. Although it provided great help to Tianyi, otherwise if he had not cultivated the Dragon Emperor Fist he would have long died due to his nine Cores.
But he still couldn’t get over the fact that he suffered tremendous torture for a technique he ultimately abandoned. Ultimately this complicated emotion was pushed back by the joy of the embryonic Martial Cultivation that Tianyi had formulated.
Tianyi held his face in his hand and began laughing madly.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!”
It was a laughter of liberation and happiness yet seemed to contain a hint of madness. For four years, he had been plagued with the constant threat of death from his own cultivation base. But now although it wasn’t completely fixed, there was a clear direction for Tianyi to tread.
Tianyi’s skin no longer appeared translucent, and the cosmos hidden within his body was no longer able to be seen. His skin for the first time in years was no longer sickly pale, it was still an unhealthy pale but not to the point of sickness. And his body was no longer that of a child just before youth and instead resembled a beautiful and handsome youth at the age of fourteen. An appearance closer to his true age now.
“Still the Martial Cultivation method I came up with is really flawed as well.” Tianyi chuckled, but there was no resentment in his voice. “If someone cultivated it alone, even if they had a spiritual cultivation base at the same rank then they would still die. The Martial Body formed is constantly contracting, without an opposing force to counterbalance it, the cultivator would be squished to a pulp.”
“So the spiritual cultivation is flawed, the martial cultivation is also flawed. These two are perfect for each other, as long as the balance issue is solved then it can be the creation of a completely new manual that encompasses both the spiritual and martial way.” Tianyi got excited while thinking about it. “Since I’m the creator it should have a great name that will reflect my title right? How about Nine Dragon Classics or Scripture?”
“Wait no, I no longer cultivate the Dragon Emperor Fist so I have no fate with dragons and nothing about the cultivation method really involves dragons.”
“How about…Big Bang Manual? Ugh…forget I said that.”
“Cosmos Genesis Scripture? Ugh, forget it for now, I don’t even have a title aside from my name…Heaven’s Will Scripture? Nope! Nope! Nope!”
In the end Tianyi decided to hold off the matter of naming the cultivation technique, it were still incomplete after all. What attracted Tianyi’s attention next were the members of the Bliss Earth Sect that had entered the legacy site of Riverrat.
Tianyi could see a Nascent Soul Grandmaster and three Core Formation Masters furiously fighting the stone soldiers. Unlike when Tianyi passed through the road, the number of soldiers was twice as many as the number passing through. So the group of four had to face a total of eight stone soldiers each round.
At least that was the situation when they first entered, nearly two weeks ago. Even after all this time they couldn’t pass the trial and could only stand by and watch Tianyi cultivate. Right now the three Core Formation Masters waited outside the gate while the lone Nascent Soul Grandmaster attempted to clear the trial by his lonesome self.
The Nascent Soul Grandmaster wore a plain white robe and had a head full of white hair and exuded an air of regression. Tianyi observed him. This guy doesn’t fit the description of the Roving Dragon, the Sect Master of the Bliss Earth Sect. As expected the number of Nascent Soul Grandmasters on this island isn’t just one. But so what? This guy looks like he could keel over anytime, he already doesn’t have much lifespan.
“Junior if you give up and return the inheritance to us, I’ll let you die with a complete body!”
Tianyi ignored the half-dead cultivator’s words, it wasn’t like it was the first time Tianyi had been threatened since coming into the legacy site. Besides, Tianyi was completely unworried. He had numerous treasures and even without them, Tianyi had enough strength to defeat the Nascent Soul cultivator from the Bliss Earth Sect.
As a backward island, the only reason the Nascent Soul Grandmaster could have reached his realm was probably because of a fortuitous encounter. The unique aura to a Nascent Soul Grandmaster on the old elder of the Bliss Earth Sect was incredibly weak, he probably had at most an Orange grade Spiritual Core and a one-color Nascent Soul.
Instead, Tianyi walked to the edge of the land and looked at the artificial river of time.
The individual silver threads that made up the river were extremely beautiful, like a strand of silk thin silver. When all of them formed together, it gave a feeling of the passage of time like something was slipping through one’s fingers.
Tianyi held his chin deep in thought as he eyed the river and the jade pendant on his waist.
“This amount should be enough to make a sea right?”
Once he decided to do it, Tianyi immediately acted on it. He tapped his finger onto the jade pendant and one real mountain and eight illusionary mountain and nine illusionary seas descended onto the legacy site.
The Nascent Soul Grandmaster instantly felt the powerful pressure from the formation and disengaged with the two Nascent Soul realm stone soldiers. Upon regrouping with the Core Formation Masters, all of them had solemn looks on their face as they stared at the formation Tianyi had called upon.
Unlike back in the Immortal Court where Tianyi had relied on the Pendant of Nine Mountains and Seas to forcibly uproot the mountain and merge it, he controlled a small stream from the artificial River of Time and began to merge it with the illusory First Sea in the formation. Tianyi quirked his lips upward as the legacy site began to tremble with the decrease in size of River of Time. It seemed that the artificial River of Time was the anchor that held the legacy site together.
Last time Tianyi merged something into the Pendant of Nine Mountains and Seas it resulted in the crumbling of the secret realm created from a fragment of the Immortal Court. And now it seemed that history was repeated itself.
Outside of the legacy realm, more than ten Core Formation Masters were gathered at the mountain and even more Foundation Establishment realm cultivators. They were all summoned here and waiting for one reason and one reason alone.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what the reason was.
However, at this moment the mountain began to tremble and with each passing moment the shaking increased in strength.
“What’s happening?”
“Did something happen inside?”
“Are the Grand Elders fighting with the intruder?”
“What could cause something like this?”
“Not even the Grand Elders’ battle would result in the mountain shaking like this!”
The ten leaders, the Core Formation Masters, upon sensing something amiss with the ever-increasing shaking of the mountain.
“Retreat! Get as far away from the mountain as fast as possible!”
Alas, it was too late as the mountain began to collapse into itself. All the trees that had dug its root into the mountain did nothing as they too shattered and snapped. Not only were the trees getting buried from the imploding mountain but the various beasts as well. But the most heart-wrenching thing for the Bliss Earth Sect was the unaccountable number of Foundation Establishment cultivators that were unable to fly or escape in time, being buried alive by the calamity.
One had to know that in the Tianwei Continent, an average Foundation Establishment cultivator took at least 40 years to come into being and they made up the bulk of the force behind the Bliss Earth Sect’s power. To lose so many at once would result in the Bliss Earth Sect’s influence drastically lowering.
But what could they do?
The Core Formation Masters could only try their best at saving as many Foundation Establishment cultivators as possible, yet at the same time, they couldn’t help but worry for the Nascent Soul realm elder and the three Core Formation realm elders within the mountain.
When the shaking finally calmed down, before anyone could release a breath of relief they immediately suffocated again when a heavy pressure began to bear down on them.
Emerging from the imploded mountain remain were nine mountains and nine seas. Eight of the mountain and seas appeared resembled phantoms and seemed to be able to flicker into nonexistence at any time, but there was one mountain that was even larger than the collapsed mountain and it was surrounded by an argent sea.
To the relief of all those suffocating under the pressure, the nine mountains and seas soon faded away to reveal a single person standing in the air.
The Core Formation Elder that had been struck by lightning when his neck had been grabbed by Tianyi’s hand shivered. Although Tianyi’s appearance had slightly changed, he would never forget the person who caused his fatal injuries, even now he was still injured and barely managed to keep his Spiritual Core from shattering.
To the Bliss Earth Sect’s member’s surprise, the figure in the air made several hand seals and then silver strands descended onto fallen Bliss Earth Sect members. Before they could panic they realized that their injuries were being healed and even those near death or just died had revived.
Under the amazement of the Bliss Earth Sect members, the damage caused by the collapse by the mountain was being erased. The only one who was happy was a certain elder whose body returned to its previous state before consuming several life-saving pills.