Scarlet flames gradually spread across Yan Kuan's entire body, yet his temperature steadily dropped instead. The violent scarlet energy rampaging through him also slowly grew docile.
He circulated the Burning Art to refine the Vermillion Phoenix Blood, drawing out and refining the fire power hidden deep within the blood essence. In the end, he condensed the Vermillion Phoenix Demon Fire, then turned its Fire Seed into nourishment for the Burning Art, refining it to advance the technique and further strengthen his foundation.
During this process, Yan Kuan refined the pure energy contained within the Vermillion Phoenix Blood, and his cultivation naturally rose. Both his Sea of Bitterness and Divine Bridge reached a certain limit. Just as his mind relaxed slightly, he discovered something unusual.
Yan Kuan's vision turned hazy, as though he could no longer see anything, as if he had lost his direction. He activated his divine power and opened his Fiery Golden Eyes, quickly discovering the issue. He had encountered the Calamity of Lost Direction.
The Calamity of Lost Direction encountered when the Divine Bridge realm ascended to the Other Shore was a cultivator's first trial and tribulation. The mysteries of the human body were endless. If cultivators did not wish to remain trapped within the Sea of Bitterness and wanted to explore other Human Body Secret Realms, they had to cross the Sea of Bitterness.
Only by cultivating a Heavenly Meridian that stretched above the Sea of Bitterness could one reach the Other Shore. That was the meaning of the Divine Bridge realm, and the Calamity of Lost Direction was an especially crucial barrier.
The Heavenly Meridian grew and spanned the Void, but where exactly did it need to extend to reach the Other Shore? Some people spent their entire lives unable to see through illusion, trapped on this end of the Divine Bridge and unable to cross the Sea of Bitterness. This was the Calamity of Lost Direction.
When the Calamity of Lost Direction descended, the five senses would be stripped away and Spiritual Sense utterly lost, leaving one a useless person without knowledge or sensation. That was the most terrifying outcome.
When most people formed a Heavenly Meridian, they would encounter mist blocking their path, but it was not severe. If they calmed their minds, they could pass through it; it could not stop them. Yet according to certain cultivation texts, the greater a prodigy's potential, the more difficult the Calamity of Lost Direction they faced.
"The Calamity of Lost Direction thinks it can block my path?"
Golden light blazed from Yan Kuan's Divine Soul. His powerful spiritual force, nearly solidified into substance, surged forward, while his Fiery Golden Eyes directly pierced through illusion and pointed to the Origin.
"Rumble..."
Yan Kuan's powerful foundation revealed itself fully at that moment. Even the Calamity of Lost Direction could not halt his steps. The clouds and mist ahead churned before swiftly collapsing, and the heavens and earth became clear, everything laid bare before his eyes.
With the mist gone, his five senses recovered and became sharper than ever. A mysterious radiance enveloped him as he closed his eyes and accepted the Baptism of transformation after the tribulation.
Having seen through the Calamity of Lost Direction, his instincts underwent Baptism. His divine consciousness burst forth like a streak of light, reaching farther and farther, while his body and mind seemed to have been tempered anew.
Yan Kuan immersed his mind within the Wheel Sea. At this moment, that Heavenly Meridian Divine Bridge had become even broader and more crystalline, like a purple-gold beam spanning the sea, leading toward an unknown place.
His divine consciousness ascended the Divine Bridge and stepped forward. Just as he had said, wherever he went would be the Other Shore. He crossed the sea.
His divine consciousness crossed the Sea of Bitterness and reached its end. It was a pure land veiled in drifting clouds and mist. High in the heavens, he vaguely saw an enormous Dao Palace.
Beneath Yan Kuan's feet, endless scarlet divine power surged. The energy left behind after refining the Vermillion Phoenix Blood continued to be refined, and his cultivation steadily advanced toward Wheel Sea completion. His divine consciousness continuously rose, arriving before the Dao Palace with great ease.
The legendary Dao Palace corresponded to the chest region of the human body, where five deities resided. Cultivating this Secret Realm would give rise to all kinds of strange phenomena.
The valley spirit never dies; this is called the Mysterious Female. The gate of the Mysterious Female is called the root of Heaven and Earth. The five gods nurture the five elements, and the five energies are pure and subtle, connected to Heaven and linked to Earth, endless and unceasing, capable of generating Dao power.
Yan Kuan had ascended to the Other Shore, and his essence, qi, and spirit had undergone sublimation. Yet he was in no hurry to break through to the Dao Palace Secret Realm. Instead, he once more circulated all the divine power in his body and gathered it within the Sea of Bitterness.
Scarlet divine power surged wildly as all the energy in Yan Kuan's body gathered in the Sea of Bitterness. The Sea of Bitterness, which had only just stabilized, began to churn again, and its liquid divine power gradually grew viscous.
After this change continued for some time, the scarlet flame gauze covering Yan Kuan's body began to transform. The rolling flame energy continuously twisted, seemingly reconstructing something.
Faintly, the illusory flame-energy gauze began to display qualities resembling solid matter.
Yan Kuan's mind naturally sensed the changes in his body. He suddenly opened his eyes and swept his hand. Two Jade Vials glowing with purple light flew directly before him, and two streams of purple radiance were drawn into his mouth at once. A process similar to his previous refinement of the Vermillion Phoenix Blood began anew.
Within Yan Kuan's body, two streams of pale purple qi wildly released dense energy. With his previous experience refining Vermillion Phoenix Blood, he smoothly refined the Origin within the Dragon Sparrow Blood into Fire Seeds this time.
Threads of pale purple flame seeped deep into his body, adding another source of energy to his Sea of Bitterness. The changes in the nature of the energy on his body's surface became even more obvious. At this point, he focused all his attention on the Sea of Bitterness, his powerful spiritual force continuously guiding the energy's transformation.
After absorbing external energies such as Vermillion Phoenix Blood Essence and Dragon Finch Blood Essence, the scarlet liquid energy reached a certain limit.
As Yan Kuan shifted his hand seals, the energy in the Sea of Bitterness first fell utterly silent. A moment later, ripples began to spread outward, their fluctuations growing increasingly violent until, in the end, it seemed like boiling water, bubbling and churning with strange waves.
A slowly rotating vortex appeared at the center of the Sea of Bitterness, then suddenly accelerated. In less than ten seconds, it became a madly spinning spiral sphere.
The high-speed rotation formed rings of cyan arcs around the Sea of Bitterness vortex, while the bubbling pulses produced by its spinning affected every part of his body.
These sounds, seemingly containing some mysterious rhythm, passed through his meridians, through his bones, and out from the surface of his body. At last, they reached the flame gauze constantly twisting over his body.
The flame gauze slowly ceased twisting. An instant later, the firelight flashed fiercely. The scarlet blaze merged with the newly born pale purple flames, eventually blending into one. As the radiance dimmed slightly, a purple-red suit of armor appeared, its chest imprinted with streak after streak of flame patterns.
The purple-red flame armor was somewhat indistinct. Though it had only taken on an initial form, the deep purple-red gleam and the faintly erupting, majestic energy allowed Yan Kuan to clearly sense its formidable defensive power.
As this Flame Battle Qi Armor took shape over Yan Kuan's body, an extremely intense transformation was also taking place in the Sea of Bitterness within him.
The Sea of Bitterness, once brimming with divine power, gradually dried up. At the center of its vortex, a substance containing immense energy was slowly taking shape.
The liquid energy within the Sea of Bitterness gradually ran dry. A Purple-Red Rhombic Crystal, no larger than a thumb, slowly emerged and finally floated silently in the center of the Sea of Bitterness.
The flickering gleam around his body was like a candle guttering in the wind, as though any random gust could extinguish it, revealing the fragility of this newborn thing.
Yan Kuan's mind remained fixed on the Purple-Red Rhombic Crystal standing at the center of the Sea of Bitterness. The instant it appeared, he could clearly feel a sense of comfort welling up from the depths of his soul.
This was a Battle Crystal possessed only by experts above the Da Dou Shi realm on the Battle Qi Continent. In the eyes of Battle Qi Continent experts, only after gaining a Battle Crystal had one truly entered the hall of battle qi cultivation. This tiny thing did not look like much, yet it contained an astonishing amount of energy.
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