Chapter 236: Huge Changes [PART 2]
Once his consciousness returned to his body, the first thing Xiang Yu noticed was that he was still conscious through his soul in the spiritual sea. He could think through both his physical mind and his soul at the same time, like having two conscious brains operating in parallel.
He was actually quite excited by this discovery. That meant he could work on things in his spiritual sea without having to leave his physical body unconscious and vulnerable.
But then this exciting realization was completely overshadowed by the pure, overwhelming amount of pain coursing through his body. He felt as though his consciousness was going offline every few seconds, his mind flickering like a candle in a hurricane, unable to maintain any rational continuous thoughts. Even his other consciousness in the spiritual sea was being affected by the physical agony.
His body was being remade in three different ways simultaneously, causing excruciating pain that he couldn’t even begin to describe.
In the first layer of transformation was his bloodlines who were still fighting. The fighting had especially intensified after the experience point doubling. They were destroying and regenerating his body at a rapid pace as each tried to expand into the other’s territory to contain their increased essence concentration.
In the second layer, his Chaos Body was attempting to evolve to the third level, breaking apart his body in strange patterns that were being instantly remade and destroyed by his raging bloodlines. This constant reconstruction only caused the Chaos Body to try even harder, creating a vicious cycle of destruction and renewal.
In the third layer, his Transcendent Dao Body was also trying to evolve to the second level, tearing apart and rearranging his entire physical structure. This process was directly interfering with both the Chaos Body’s upgrade and the bloodlines’ territorial war.
This nightmarish cycle continued for what felt like hours, with each enhancement attempting to advance while being constantly disrupted by the others as they tried to remake his body according to their own specifications. It was like three architects trying to build different buildings on the same foundation simultaneously.
But slowly, gradually, it all started to come together.
The excess essence of the bloodlines slowly began expanding inward rather than outward, condensing their concentration even further. Although their eternal conflict continued raging, it wasn’t as destructive to his overall body structure. This allowed the Chaos Body to finally begin slowly restructuring his body without constant interference.
Once that process stabilized, the Transcendent Dao Body could finally upgrade as well, breaking down and reconstructing according to its own blueprint.
When this complex transformation process finally came to an end, another one immediately began.
Xiang Yu felt a sudden intense heat sensation in his dantian, like molten metal had been poured into his core. He recognized the feeling instantly from the previous breakthrough, his spiritual root was advancing. The burning sensation intensified dramatically, climbing higher and higher until Xiang Yu started feeling physically uncomfortable.
The qi inside his dantian started boiling violently like water in a kettle. As it reached a rolling boil, it expanded rapidly and pushed against the walls of his foundation with tremendous pressure. And then... it popped.
Almost all the refined qi in his body was violently expelled due to the overwhelming pressure, shooting out through his meridians like a geyser erupting. But in the next second, everything changed completely.
The explosive pushing force transformed into an incredible suction force. He felt as though his dantian had become a miniature black hole, creating an irresistible gravitational pull. All the spiritual energy in the surrounding area started channeling directly into his dantian in torrential streams.
With the dramatically enhanced qi concentration inside the sect after his formation deployment, the available spiritual energy was enormous. But Xiang Yu absorbed all of it greedily, completely draining the small area around him of qi for several moments, leaving a temporary qi free zone.
The absorption rate gradually slowed as time passed, the initial hunger of his upgraded spiritual root slowly becoming satisfied, until it finally stopped completely and returned to his usual steady absorption rate.
Xiang Yu breathed out slowly, dispersing some of the leftover excess qi that hadn’t yet integrated into his cultivation base.
The transformation was finally over. Although this improvement in spiritual root was quite dramatic, when compared to the reality-shattering enlightenment jump he’d just experienced, it felt somewhat disappointing. Still impressively powerful nonetheless.
During the upgrade process, the spiritual energy influx had been so massive that he’d instantly broken through two qi cultivation realms. Combined with another two breakthroughs he had achieved during the advancement of his Chaos Body and Transcendent Dao Body, he was now at the sixth layer of Foundation Establishment.
...
Now that all the intense transformations were finally over, Xiang Yu settled down more comfortably to carefully observe the changes to his body. The benefits from his spiritual root and enlightenment upgrades were already clearly visible, so he began by examining the other major transformations.
Starting with his Chaos Body advancement. As usual with this physique, he received a significant boost to his raw physical strength, and another significant boost to his energy regeneration rate—almost four times the previous amount.
He also gained immunity to the wind element, though he was slightly disappointed as he had hoped for lightning element immunity instead. Well, there was nothing he could do about it.
Moving on to the main attraction—his Transcendent Dao Body advancement. The first benefit was another comprehensive reoptimization of his entire body structure for both combat effectiveness and cultivation efficiency. Every muscle, bone, and meridian had been fine-tuned to perfection.
After the optimization, he had surprisingly gained a new ability. An ability he hadn’t even thought possible. He could actually deal physical damage directly to souls. He didn’t even know such a thing was theoretically possible, well, he had guessed that at some point, one could become so physically strong that it didn’t matter, but he had assumed this was in the hundreds in terms of body refining layers, he hadn’t expected his Transcendent Dao Body to come in clutch like that.
This opened up entirely new combat possibilities against soul-based enemies. Xiang Yu’s main strength was his physical body so being able to deal physical damage to souls was a significant boost to his overall combat power.
He also received a substantial boost to his enlightenment attribute. Even though his enlightenment was already quite high in the Divine rank, the enhancement he received was nothing to scoff at.
Another significant benefit was a dramatic improvement in his regeneration speed. From the sensations he could detect during his ongoing internal bloodline conflict, he could tell that his healing rate had more than doubled. Though he didn’t feel like testing it on himself—especially after all the agony he had just endured—he decided to verify it through battle simulations instead, along with testing his overall combat power.
Speaking of his overall combat power, he summoned his status screen to see if there were any huge changes:
[Name: Xiang Yu]
[Realm: Body: 20th Layer (2000/20,000); Spirit: Foundation Establishment 6th Layer (2000/16,000); Mind: Level 7 (0/20,000); Soul: Nascent (0/200,000)]
[Species: Half Blood]
[Spiritual Root: Superior-Grade Omni-Element (1000/4000)]
[Physique: Transcendent Dao Body: Level 2 (0/2,000,000); Chaos Body: Level 3 (0/30,000)]
[Enlightenment: Divine (0/10,000)]
[Battle Instinct: Mortal (100,000/100,000)]
[Spirit Flame: Abyssal Void Flame: 4th Grade (0/60,000)]
[Professions: ...]
[Techniques: ...]
[Scriptures: ...]
[System Function: Double Exp (Cooldown: 24hrs); Fusion; Battle Simulation]
...
A/N: Officially surpassed the MC?