Chapter 365: Stellar Constellation
Xiang Yu sat beside the spirit spring, his face twisting with strain.
Beneath his skin, one could see something crawling around.
Suddenly, one part of his skin bulged and tore open. But before blood could flow, the wound healed instantly.
His expression grew more troubled as the strain increased.
Then, more than ten tears appeared across his skin at once. Just like before, they healed immediately. This continued for a long time until the movement under his skin stopped and his skin returned to normal.
Then slowly, his skin began turning see-through.
Through it, one could see absolute darkness instead of blood.
Slowly, tiny white sparks appeared across his body. The sparks grew larger as they pulled toward each other, some merging while others drifted away.
While this happened, Xiang Yu found himself floating in a complete void.
Nothing existed as far as he could see except a few tiny particles floating around. He watched as these particles slowly pulled together, forming a single dense core.
As the core grew, it attracted even more matter.
The process continued.
At some point, the core became so dense that nuclear fusion ignited, transforming the gathered matter into a blazing star. Around it, smaller clumps of matter began to orbit in perfect balance.
Suddenly, the scene changed.
Now billions upon billions of stars and other heavenly bodies filled the space.
Within this vast universe, Xiang Yu observed everything slowly pulling on each other, all connected by invisible strings. Even the tiniest speck of matter on the smallest planet at the furthest edge of the universe - everything was connected.
He looked at himself.
He raised his hands and saw strings beginning to wrap around him from everything in the surroundings. He was also pulling on the stars. It was just a tiny pull, not even noticeable to the millionth decimal point. But slowly, it began to change. It became barely noticeable, then clearly felt.
Before long, all sorts of heavenly bodies were orbiting around him.
"This is...gravity," he thought.
He was shocked. He had actually glimpsed a new law.
"No time to waste," he thought as he settled into a meditative position and began consolidating his insights.
Although he had glimpsed the law, this wasn’t useful to him right now. He needed to make it into a domain since that was what he could handle at the moment. When he finally condensed the domain and opened his eyes, he was surprised.
He raised his hands and looked at his body.
"What the actual fuck!"
His body looked like one of those space renders. It was somewhat see-through with a dark background, and tiny white specks that looked like stars moving around him.
[You have created an original physique, [Stellar Constellation Dao Body], choose a reward]
[1: Upgrade an existing system function]
[2: Unlock a new system function]
...
Xiang Yu stared at the system notification in shock. "I have what now?" he wondered aloud.
He looked at his body. "Stellar constellation?"
Before he could figure out what was happening, he suddenly felt something begin to stir within him.
"My core?" he questioned.
His core suddenly began vibrating. The second core did too. They then began moving.
"This... they’re moving to the spiritual sea," he thought.
He was actually breaking through to the Golden Core realm.
No. That didn’t make sense. For golden core realm, you just refined the core into a golden core, why was it moving to the spiritual sea now? Was he breaking through into the Nascent Soul realm directly? He felt it made sense, after all, he already had a soul so there was no need to nature one from scratch.
"Wait, the tribulation," he thought, before remembering that he was invisible to the Heavenly Dao. He sighed in relief. That would have been bad if lightning destroyed the home he was making for his wife.
As he thought of this, the two cores arrived in his spiritual sea.
The cores then began trembling violently.
All the qi gathering aimlessly in his spiritual sea suddenly began flowing toward the two cores.
The cores began condensing the qi into themselves, absorbing it and enhancing themselves endlessly. Slowly, they began to grow in size.
"Wait, I think I’ve seen this before," he thought.
Suddenly, one of the cores burst into flames. Not literal flames, but its qi started flaring like flames. Soon, the second followed and the two began orbiting around each other. "Just like the stars," he thought.
He quickly pulled up his status screen to see what was happening. And there, he saw it:
[Stellar Constellation Dao Body: Level 1 (1/1,000,000)]
Looking at the exp made him even more shocked. He had actually made something on the same level as the Transcendent Dao Body. As he thought of this, knowledge about the new physique began flowing into his mind. He became more and more amazed the more he learned about the physique.
The physique actually transformed his entire body into some sort of stellar reactor.
His core, or rather cores, became miniature stars.
Within his body, instead of having meridian acupoints, they would now become constellation points and act as nuclear stations where his qi would be endlessly refined. Inside, his bloodlines would endlessly undergo nucleosynthesis. The produced energy would be used by the constellation points to either pay for the next fusion or, if it was excess, refine it into the stars to strengthen them or even create new stars if the energy was sufficient.
Throughout the day, his body, and everything within it, like a star, continuously refined itself. Physical strength, body refining, comprehension, qi quality, bloodline quality - all of that was being continuously refined within his body throughout the day.
The more stars he formed, the stronger he would become.
Xiang Yu raised his palm and flexed it a bit. He then clenched it, without putting in much effort. Instantly, the space around him tore apart from the sheer physical strength. He slowly got up, wondering how strong he was now.
Could he match the Tribulation realm?
Speaking of tribulation, he finally had a chance to upgrade a system function. Without hesitation, he pressed the upgrade and chose the battle simulation function.
[Earth Immortal] × 8