The Realm of the Dou Practitioner

The heavy black stone door completely isolated everything from the outside world.

This was the most heavily guarded secret chamber in the Miteer Auction House, yet now, it had become the place of Su Chen's seclusion.

The mountains of gold coins that once stood there, enough to make even a Dou King gasp for breath, had already vanished.

In their place were nearly a hundred jade bottles neatly arranged on the floor, along with a scroll radiating an ancient aura—the Profound Tier High-level technique, Burning Wave Art.

This was the cornerstone for stepping onto the path of the strong, purchased with 1.35 million gold coins.

Su Chen sat cross-legged in the center of the secret chamber.

Before him, the stopper of a jade bottle was blown off by Dou Qi, and a fiery-red Qi Gathering Pill rolled into his palm; without the slightest hesitation, he swallowed it whole.

BOOM!

A violent medicinal force, like a volcano being ignited, erupted fiercely within his gut.

A torrent of scorching energy savagely scoured every fragile meridian in his body.

Tearing pain instantly spread throughout his entire frame.

Sweat seeped from his temples, quickly soaking the black hair at his sides.

Su Chen's body trembled slightly, his teeth clenched tight, yet he did not let out even a single muffled groan.

He was no longer the youth who had first arrived, fearing pain like a tiger.

To obtain power, one must pay the price.

He understood this principle better than anyone.

The cultivation method of the Burning Wave Art circulated rapidly through his mind.

Under his guidance, the Dou Qi stimulated by the medicinal force began to scour his Qi meridians, over and over again, following an arcane path.

It was a dull and agonizing process.

One day.

Two days.

Five days.

When the medicinal power of the tenth Qi Gathering Pill was completely exhausted, the Dou Qi within Su Chen, which had originally been a mere trickle, had more than doubled in strength.

The barrier of the bottleneck was clearly visible to his senses.

"Break!"

A low shout originated from his soul.

He condensed all the Dou Qi in his body into a sharp spike and slammed it fiercely against that invisible barrier!

Pop.

A soft sound, like a bubble bursting.

Seventh Stage Dou Qi, achieved!

Su Chen did not stop.

A new jade bottle was opened, a new medicinal pill was swallowed, and a new round of impact began once more.

Time lost all meaning within this secret chamber.

Eighth Stage Dou Qi!

Ninth Stage Dou Qi!

Peak of Ninth Stage Dou Qi!

When the medicinal power of the very last pill merged into his Dou Qi, which had already grown to its limit, Su Chen's cultivation had firmly arrived at the threshold of a Dou Practitioner.

The Dou Qi within him had reached an astonishing level of vigor, even several times more refined than ordinary Ninth Stage Dou Qi.

This was the most luxurious foundation, forcibly built with a massive fortune of gold coins.

Now, only the final step remained.

It was also the most difficult step.

Condensing Qi into a vortex!

Su Chen did not begin the breakthrough immediately.

He sat in silence for a full day and night, adjusting his essence, energy, and spirit to their absolute peak.

Then, he opened his eyes.

Those eyes, hidden beneath the shadow of his bamboo hat, no longer held their usual calm; in its place was a look of gravity and determination.

The breakthrough began!

Driven by his will, the surging Dou Qi within his body began to gather frantically toward his Dantian in his lower abdomen.

If the previous cultivation had merely been widening the riverbed, then what he had to do now was to create, out of thin air, a massive vortex at the end of that riverbed capable of containing the vast ocean!

This was a process of defying the heavens.

The surging Dou Disciple energy was frantically compressing and colliding within his lower abdomen.

An indescribable sensation of bloating pain threatened to tear his body apart.

Su Chen's complexion turned deathly pale in an instant.

Beads of sweat the size of peas slid down his pale cheeks, quickly forming a small puddle on the black rock floor beneath him.

He could clearly feel his meridians beginning to groan under the unbearable weight of this terrifying pressure.

No!

It was not enough!

The compression was not enough!

He had to compress all the gaseous Dou Disciple energy into the first drop of liquid to serve as the core of his vortex!

"Condense... for me!"

A hoarse, low growl was squeezed from Su Chen's throat.

He mobilized every ounce of his mental energy, desperately suppressing that violent mass of power.

Sss...

A faint tearing sound emanated from within his body.

The inner wall of a main meridian finally failed to withstand the pressure, splitting open a tiny fissure.

The intense pain felt like the sharpest of knives, viciously gouging at his nerves.

Su Chen's body shuddered violently.

The pressure he had struggled so hard to maintain wavered for a split second.

BOOM!

The forcibly compressed Dou Disciple energy, like a beast breaking free from its cage, rebounded with a roar!

Violent shockwaves of energy rampaged through his body.

Pfft!

A mouthful of blood, no longer able to be suppressed, sprayed from Su Chen's mouth and splattered onto the ground before him, a shocking sight.

The first attempt had failed.

Su Chen did not lose heart.

He simply wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with calm, swallowed a healing pill, and silently repaired his damaged meridians.

Once his injuries had slightly stabilized, he immediately began the second attempt.

Failure.

The third.

Still a failure!

Every failure was accompanied by the tearing of meridians and the agonizing pain of the backlash.

By the fifth failure, the meridians within his body were already covered in fine cracks, as fragile as a spiderweb.

One more time, and perhaps his entire sea of energy would be completely ruptured by the violent Dou energy, leaving him a cripple.

An ordinary person, faced with such a situation, would likely have long since retreated.

Yet Su Chen, amidst this extreme agony, became increasingly calm.

His consciousness did not sink into the pain of his flesh.

Instead, it descended into that dark, void space that belonged solely to him—a space under his absolute control.

There lay his greatest reliance.

A soul perception far exceeding those of the same rank, even stronger than many alchemists!

Using brute force to compress was the most inefficient and foolish method.

It was like forging iron; striking blindly ten thousand times was not as effective as finding the grain and striking precisely once.

What he needed to do was use his soul perception to find that "grain"!

The sixth attempt began once more.

This time, Su Chen did not focus all his attention on the forced compression of the Dou Disciple energy.

He diverted half of his soul power, like an invisible net, to meticulously envelop the violent mass of energy within his sea of energy.

In his world of perception.

That mass of Dou Disciple energy was no longer a chaotic mess.

Instead, it was a majestic gaseous nebula composed of billions of tiny, glowing points of energy.

They were colliding at high speeds in a completely irregular manner.

Su Chen's soul perception, like the most precise instrument, began searching through this chaotic nebula for that one-in-a-million "singularity."

A "gravity point" that could trigger a chain reaction, causing all the chaotic energy to rotate in a single direction!

Time, at this moment, seemed to slow down infinitely.

The excruciating pain from the outside world and the roaring within his body all faded away.

In his world, nothing remained but that nebula of constantly colliding energy.

Found it!

Right at the very center of that energy storm, a strange node, thousands of times brighter than any other speck of light, flickered into his perception!

Now!

All of Su Chen's mental energy erupted in that instant!

He no longer cared about the violent Dou Disciple energy on the periphery; instead, he condensed his entire will into an invisible needle, precisely striking that fleeting "singularity"!

Hum--!

It was as if the first rhythm of the universe's creation had sounded.

The "singularity" he struck shuddered violently!

The next moment, an indescribable suction force erupted from within that "singularity"!

The Dou Disciple energy that had been frantically colliding and rampaging everywhere seemed to have found its king.

They ceased their chaos and began to rotate slowly and orderly around that "singularity"!

One circle.

Ten circles.

A hundred circles!

The speed of rotation grew faster and faster!

That massive gaseous nebula was continuously compressed inward by the high-speed rotation, its volume shrinking rapidly.

Its color shifted from the initial pale white to something deeper and more refined!

Finally, when the nebula was compressed to the size of a fist.

Quantitative change triggered a qualitative transformation!

A single drop of milky-white liquid Dou Qi, radiating a lustrous glow, was quietly born at the very center of the vortex!

Boom!

The appearance of this first drop of liquid Dou Qi was like dropping a ten-thousand-ton boulder into a calm lake!

The rotation of the entire cyclone stabilized instantly!

Surging Dou Qi, like floodwaters finding an outlet, rushed frantically into that small cyclone, where it was refined and compressed into drop after drop of even purer liquid Dou Qi.

A perfect Dou Qi vortex, emitting a faint radiance, roared into existence within his Dantian!

Dou Practitioner, one star!

It was done!

All the pain receded like a tide.

An unprecedented, full, and powerful sense of strength surged from the cyclone in his Dantian throughout his entire body!

Su Chen could clearly feel that the Dou Qi within him had undergone a qualitative transformation.

If the previous Dou Disciple energy was loose cotton, then the Dou Qi within him now was tempered steel!

Neither in quality nor in power could they be mentioned in the same breath!

He slowly stood up from the ground.

His bones emitted a series of crisp, crackling sounds.

He clenched his fist.

A surging power gathered in his palm.

He even had the feeling that, as he was now, a single punch could easily kill ten of himself from before this seclusion!

This was the power that truly belonged to him.

This was the foundation for survival in this continent where the strong were respected!

Wealth and schemes were, in the end, external things.

Only one's own strength was eternal.

Su Chen slowly raised his head and looked at the heavy stone door that had been tightly shut for nearly a month.

Beneath the shadow of his bamboo hat, his eyes were startlingly bright.

The winds and clouds of Wutan City were merely the beginning.

A much broader world was still waiting for him.

He took a step forward, reached out his hand, and gently pushed open the door leading to a new world.