Planting Golden Lotus in Fire, Breaking Through to Refining Qi into Spirit!

The strange flame, black as ink, appeared and, like a venomous snake, ignored Xiao Yao's Innate Dao Body, tougher than divine iron, silently drilling in through the Yongquan acupoint on his foot!

"Hiss—!!!"

An indescribable, terrifying agony that came from the deepest depths of his soul, as if it would erase his entire existence from this world, instantly swept through Xiao Yao's body!

This was Yin Fire!

This flame was extraordinary, a void calamity fire born from the Five Elements innate within cultivators!

Xiao Yao felt the fire burn upward from his Yongquan acupoint, traveling against the flow through his dantian and qi sea, charging straight for his internal organs! Like poison clinging to bone, it seemed intent on burning through all the pure Immortal Family Mana he had cultivated, along with his vigorous essence, qi, and spirit, reducing everything to nothingness!

What truly startled Xiao Yao was that he vaguely sensed his innate lifespan, which had originally lengthened with his increase in cultivation, beginning to rapidly diminish beneath the scorching of that strange black fire!

The ultimate target of this Yin Fire was the cultivator's most vital core, the place where the spirit was housed—the Nirmana Palace! It sought to completely erode Xiao Yao's soul and Sea of Consciousness with its utterly yin and dark power of destruction! A thousand years of cultivation, ten thousand years of bitter training—countless cultivators had seen it all turn into an illusory bubble because of this!

"Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle..."

Wisps of ominous black smoke actually began to rise from his Innate Dao Body! His skin even showed horrifying signs of charring and cracking! The stronger he was, the fiercer the Yin Fire became!

"Hold on!!"

Xiao Yao roared frantically in his heart! He knew this was the first true life-and-death calamity he had encountered since embarking on the immortal path—a calamity on the Heaven-Piercing Immortal Path!

If he overcame it, he would leap through the Dragon Gate like a fish, with vast skies and open seas before him, ascending in a single step!

If he failed, he would perish in body and Dao, with his soul utterly destroyed and all things coming to an end!

"Ming Xin Jian Xing Jue, protect the clarity of my spirit platform!"

He crazily circulated the supreme soul-protecting art personally passed down by the Supreme Master! Within his Sea of Consciousness, that profound scripture radiated a dazzling, pure sacred brilliance! It transformed into an indestructible barrier, stubbornly guarding the final line of defense around the Nirmana Palace against the all-pervading dark corrosion!

"Merit Power, Samadhi True Fire, help me!"

Without the slightest hesitation, he took half of the 3,600 Merit Points he had just obtained and poured them all into the Sea of Consciousness like a golden stream, into the place where the true spirit of the Samadhi True Fire resided!

"Kid, even I didn't expect that the first time I woke up, I'd be burning you first. Keep it up! My flames will definitely benefit you greatly!"

"Buzz—!!!"

Nourished by that vast amount of Merit Power, the fire spirit's consciousness seemed to gain the force of a divine wind in an instant, becoming even more solid and powerful!

Golden Samadhi True Fire erupted from Xiao Yao's body! It formed a golden flaming barrier covered in sacred runes and began clashing with the black Yin Fire!

One within, one without; one yin, one yang. Two completely different yet equally tyrannical flames turned Xiao Yao's body into their battlefield!

"Kid! It isn't enough!" Grandpa Lu's exceedingly grave voice rang through his mind like a great bell. "Yin Fire is a calamity of the Great Dao, and brute force cannot withstand it! You must comprehend its true meaning! Quickly circulate the Eight-Nine Arcane Arts and use the power of Divine Ability to dissolve this calamity—that is the proper path!"

"Eight-Nine Arcane Arts, Divine Ability activate!" Enduring the horrifying pain that could tear even his soul apart into fragments, Xiao Yao formed an incomparably profound hand seal in an instant!

"Ward off calamity! Relieve misfortune! Communicate with gods! Drive out fire!"

"Buzz!"

The ancient Eight Trigrams Furnace appeared out of thin air at that moment. Its body expanded in the wind, directly enveloping Xiao Yao within it!

The Eight Trigrams runes on the furnace flowed endlessly, seeming to transform into an enormous vortex that madly devoured and expelled the violent fire-element energy of this Earth Core World, forcefully converting it into the purest immortal spiritual qi and continuously supplying it to Xiao Yao within the furnace!

At the same time, a peculiar barrier that formed its own world and cut off karma between inside and outside quietly took shape within the furnace!

The golden Samadhi True Fire and the pitch-black Yin Fire unexpectedly achieved an incredibly strange balance of yin and yang upon Xiao Yao's body! They no longer merely destroyed each other, but became an enormous, slowly revolving and terrifying yin-yang millstone, crazily refining and tempering Xiao Yao's flesh, mana, and already overburdened soul together!

Watching this incomparably familiar scene, Grandpa Lu's vague face, formed from consciousness, revealed an expression of profound nostalgia and complex reminiscence.

"This scene... really resembles that unruly monkey who was refined in the original Eight Trigrams Furnace for a full seven times seven, forty-nine days!"

Yet Xiao Yao, trapped within the yin-yang inferno millstone, entered an incomparably mysterious state, one almost approaching the Dao itself.

His body was destroyed and remade. His immortal power was worn away and purified. His essence, qi, and spirit were scorched, then slowly returned to their source like countless rivers flowing into the sea!

All his cultivation, all his insights, all his Divine Abilities seemed to transform at this moment into a vast, endlessly cycling grand circuit that encompassed life and death, destruction and rebirth!

Within his mind, the scripture of the Great Grade Heavenly Immortal Art, which he had long memorized by heart, surfaced on its own and radiated a dazzling supreme light containing the true meaning of the Great Dao!

One line of scripture exploded in the deepest part of his soul like an evening drum and morning bell!

"Intertwined in form, firm in nature and life, one may yet Planting Golden Lotus in Fire!"

"Planting Golden Lotus... in Fire..."

"Ha... hahahaha... So that's how it is... so that's how it is! This Dao master has understood!"

At that moment, Xiao Yao laughed wildly in his heart! His consciousness had never been so lucid and open!

He finally understood!

The so-called Three Calamities were not only disasters, but also... an immense fortune bestowed by the Great Dao!

The changes of the cosmos were infinite and endless. The human body was a small world; heaven and earth were a great human body! When yin and yang complemented one another, spirituality was born, and only then could creation be achieved!

The Calamity of Yin Fire was not merely destruction. It refined everything acquired through later cultivation into perfect harmony! It allowed one to reshape one's true self within the flames of destruction, see through life and death, and comprehend one's origin! Thus, it transformed this mortal body forged through later cultivation into spirit!

Refine mortal qi, transform it into innate spirit!

Refining Qi into Spirit!

Having understood this most crucial point, Xiao Yao no longer resisted or fought back in the slightest!

He completely opened his body, mind, and soul, allowing the twin fires of yin and yang to devour him!

His body disintegrated inch by inch within the flames, turning into the tiniest particles.

His mana seemed to dissipate within the flames, returning to nothingness.

His soul was burned to the verge of destruction within the flames, leaving behind only a single undimmed true spirit.

Yet, at the final moment before he was completely extinguished and erased from this world!

A golden lotus containing all his origins and insights quietly, slowly bloomed from the center of that slowly turning yin-yang sea of fire!

"Rumble—!!!"

A deafening boom, like immortal thunder descending and splitting heaven and earth, fell from above the nine heavens! At that instant, the entire Tagor Desert trembled violently! It was as though the mortal world itself had fallen silent!

"Hahahaha! Only today do I know that I am truly myself! Refining Qi into Spirit—success!"

A bold and uninhibited laugh, filled with endless freedom and ease, rang throughout the entire Earth Core World from within that golden lotus!

[ Ding! Detected that the host has successfully passed the Calamity of Yin Fire, comprehended the true self, and broken through in realm! ]

[ Congratulations, host! Your cultivation has officially entered the "Refining Qi into Spirit" realm! ]

The system prompt sounded at just the right moment.

The next instant, his personal panel appeared on its own.

[ Name: Xiao Yao ]

[ Lifespan: 16/8000 ]

[ Cultivation: Early Refining Qi into Spirit Realm, Complete Perfection (Eight-Star Dou Zong) ]