Chapter 242: The Most Subtle Changes
All of a sudden, one of the fragmentary stars in Nie Tian’s soul began to shine as brightly as a diamond.
In the next moment, a wisp of starlight flew out of it and merged with a wisp of his psychic awareness.
Unlike before, the mixture, which Nie Tian referred to as a Heaven Eye, didn’t fly out from within him. Instead, it sank deep into him.
The moment it roamed through his muscles, Nie Tian was able to capture the most subtle movements that were going on around it.
Via the Heaven Eye, Nie Tian discovered that his muscles were absorbing a strand of blood essence that was ten times finer than a hair.
He could see the fine muscle fibers slowly expanding and rapidly shrinking as they swallowed the strand of blood essence bit by bit.
That was something he had never experienced before.
At that moment, he was convinced that he currently had two different types of power that shared the same origin within his soul.
One was the more basic psychic power and the other was the more advanced soul power.
Using psychic power, cultivators couldn’t possibly have a clear sense of the most subtle movements within their flesh. Only a vague feeling could be drawn.
However, the Heaven Eye that contained soul power from the fragmentary stars allowed Nie Tian to sense every subtle change and movement within his muscles and meridians with great clarity.
Normally speaking, only powerful experts at the Worldly realm, Profound realm, and Spirit Realm would be able to refine their psychic power and upgrade it to soul power.
Considering that he was only in the Lesser Heaven stage, it must have been the Fragmentary Star Incantation he had obtained from the Ancient Fragmentary Star Palace that had enabled him to possess such divine power at such an early stage.
“Fragmentary Star Incantation!” The thought of the Fragmentary Star Incantation made him suddenly realize something.
The very reason why Hua Mu had taken him to the Realm of Split Void was that he had the Fragmentary Star Incantation on him, and the Heaven Palace sect would spare no effort to get it.
According to Hua Mu, only when he had truly mastered the first and middle parts of the Fragmentary Star Incantation and merged them with his body, would he not need to fear the Heaven Palace Sect and be able to openly go to other realms.
By that time, they would no longer be able to strip the two fragmentary star marks from him.
If they wanted his fragmentary star marks, they would have to beg him to join the Heaven Palace Sect and cultivate him wholeheartedly as their core disciple.
Furthermore, at that time, he would be able to use the Flame Dragon Armor without any issues.
Once he became the core disciple of the Heaven Palace Sect, even the Flame God himself wouldn’t dare to snatch the Flame Dragon Armor from him.
“It seems that I need to spend more of my time studying those two fragmentary star marks.”
That was when he realized that he had been focusing on practicing cultivation and breaking through to the next stage, and forgotten about the reason why he had come to the Realm of Split Void.
He temporarily put the thought aside and refocused on observing himself with his Heaven Eye.
His Heaven Eye roamed about inside of him and saw tens of thousands of blood essence strands that were even finer than hairs gradually disappearing into his blood, muscles, internal organs and bones, turning into pure power and nourishing his body.
As time passed, all the strands of blood essence gradually vanished, and the burning sensation went away with it.
During the whole absorbing process, he only experienced a rapid heartbeat and nothing else.
At that moment, he suddenly thought about the green aura that was coiled up in his heart, which was the embodiment of his bloodline.
Although it wasn’t very thick and large, he had a feeling that it was the most fierce and powerful thing in him.
He was certain that if it had joined in the absorption of the blood essence he had channeled into his body, the essence he had refined from those four barrels of blood wouldn’t be enough for it alone.
He was becoming increasingly aware that, not only was the green aura that represented his bloodline fierce and powerful, but it was also intelligent.
For example, it must know that Nie Tian’s body was in need of copious amounts of blood essence to strengthen itself, and that when his body was tough and resilient, it would also benefit a great deal from it.
Therefore, it had intentionally allowed Nie Tian’s blood, muscles, internal organs, and bones to absorb the pure blood essence and temper themselves with it.
The Heaven Eye enabled Nie Tian to obtain a deeper and more thorough understanding of every part inside of him.
At that moment, he could no longer feel any strange sensations. Then, he rose to his feet and walked to the window, finding that it was already daybreak.
“Wow, I can’t believe a night passed so quickly…” Nie Tian was surprised how fast time flew. He hadn’t been able to get much done, but the night had already passed.
He could feel that although the blood essence had infused into his body, it would still need time to fully process and digest the power.
Hence, instead of refining more of the Golden Stone Rhino’s blood, he took out a handful of spirit stones and started using their spiritual power to refine and expand his spiritual sea.
He didn’t leave his room once in the following days and practiced around the clock.
As one spirit stone after another cracked after he had absorbed the power within them, his vast and misty spiritual sea expanded quite significantly.
However, from what he could tell, he still had a long way to go before his spiritual sea could expand to its limit.
Only when it did, and he had refined every vortex in his spiritual sea, would he meet all the conditions to break through to the next stage.
Seven days later, Pei Qiqi arrived as expected.
The tunic-clad, slender Pei Qiqi had fashioned her black hair into a ponytail. The moment she entered, Nie Tian’s eyes went wide, feeling as if the entire room had been lit up by her radiance.
The garments Pei Qiqi wore were ocean-blue and close-fitting, bringing out her curvaceous frame.
“It’s been seven days already?” Nie Tian snapped out of his daze and muttered to himself before rising to his feet.
Pei Qiqi took a deep look at him with her eyes that were as bright as stars before saying, “It seems that you’ve been cultivating hard. You even forgot the time.”
Nie Tian smiled and replied, “Yeah, I guess I did.”
Then, Pei Qiqi bent down to place her jade-like, slender hand on the stone floor. Her knees pressed against her ample chest.
In the next moment, the precious luster that only spirit stones had filled Nie Tian’s room, as numerous spirit stones flew out of Pei Qiqi’s ring of holding, piling up into a small hill that took up most of the room.
The precious luster bedazzled Nie Tian, making his entire body radiate joy and satisfaction.
After all, he had never seen so many spirit stones in his life.
“I sold all the spiritual materials for you, and got 5,600 spirit stones in return. Adding in the spirit stones for the Space Spirit Jades that you’ve sold to me, there should be 8,600 spirit stones.” Pei Qiqi rose up and took a step back. Looking at Nie Tian, who seemed to be completely mesmerized by the spirit stones, she smiled and continued, “As you requested, I spent 1,600 of those spirit stones on fire-attributed, wood-attributed, and starlight-attributed spiritual materials.
“Therefore, there are 7,000 spirit stones here in total. You can count them yourself.”
With a broad laugh, Nie Tian stored the 7,000 spirit stones into his ring of holding while saying, “There’s no need to do that. I trust you one hundred percent.”
Since the storage room of a ring of holding was ten times larger than a bracelet of holding’s, there was still plenty of room left, even after he had stored such a large amount of spirit stones in it.
“These are the fire-attributed, wood-attributed, and starlight-attributed spiritual materials that you requested.” With these words, Pei Qiqi once again bent down to place the spiritual materials on the stone floor.
As she did, her partly-revealed ample breasts seemed extremely ripe and tempting.
Nie Tian’s eyes didn’t focus on the spiritual materials as they should have. Rather, he couldn’t resist the temptation, and glanced her chest a few times.
When Pei Qiqi raised her chin to look at him, she immediately discovered Nie Tian’s gaze and yelled angrily, “What are you looking at?”
“N-nothing.” Embarrassed, Nie Tian hastily went back to putting away the spiritual materials that Pei Qiqi had placed on the floor, and no longer dared to look at her again.
Pei Qiqi gave a cold harrumph and said, “Spiritual materials with fire and wood attributes are easy to find, but spiritual materials that contain star power are extremely rare. I tried my best, but these are all that I could get. If you want to get more of them in the future, you can go check in Ash City or the Land of the Abandoned.”
“I see,” Nie Tian replied hurriedly.
Pei Qiqi had a displeased expression on her face as she said, “If you ever dare to peep at me like that again, I’ll make you suffer for doing it!”
Nie Tian put on a dry smile and didn’t say a word.
“By the way, now that you have so many spirit stones, if you want to speed up your cultivation and reach the breakthrough point as soon as possible, you can go and rent a cultivation room from the Blood Skull.” With these words, she shot a cold glance at him and stepped out of Nie Tian’s room.
Nie Tian’s expression flickered. “A room dedicated to cultivation??”
As much as he wanted to catch up to Pei Qiqi and ask her about it, she seemed to be so angry at him that she didn’t want to say another word to him.