Next, he would charge toward his ultimate goal: the thirteenth layer of Qi Refining!
Before the sect tournament, he would push his cultivation to the absolute limit of Qi Refining.
His seclusion continued.
For an entire month.
The stone chamber's spiritual energy never ran dry, and piles of spirit stones burned away.
From the tenth layer of Qi Refining, he continued to force his way upward!
The further he cultivated, the more Su Yun felt the terrifying cost of advancing through the higher layers of Qi Refining.
After the tenth layer, each breakthrough required a geometrically increasing amount of spiritual energy.
Tenfold, even dozens of times more!
The difference was nothing like the earlier layers.
The resources an ordinary cultivator spent breaking through from the ninth layer to Foundation Establishment wouldn't amount to even a fraction of what Su Yun needed to advance from the tenth to the eleventh.
The instant he entered the eleventh layer,
Su Yun clearly felt a transformation in his body, meridians, and connection to heaven and earth.
Ancient texts recorded that anything beyond the tenth layer was transcendent Qi Refining.
It was beyond the realm of ordinary cultivators. The body neared a spiritual form, and the efficiency of resonating with and drawing in energy rose dramatically.
Descriptions in books were ultimately shallow.
Only experiencing it himself revealed the terrifying difference.
His ability to absorb, harmonize with, and control the spiritual energy of heaven and earth surged severalfold!
The spiritual energy around him seemed to bow in submission, moving at his will and arriving at his thought.
By the time he broke through to the twelfth layer of Qi Refining,
his dantian's capacity had exploded.
If an ordinary ninth-layer Qi Refining cultivator's dantian was a common well,
and a Foundation Establishment cultivator's dantian was a small pond,
then his dantian now was a great pond!
Its capacity dwarfed that of someone in the Foundation Establishment Early Stage!
His meridians had also transformed to their utmost limit.
At the tenth layer of Qi Refining, his meridians had been as broad as a four-lane road.
After reaching the twelfth layer, they widened straight to twelve lanes!
On top of that, the Thousandfold Amplification continued to scour them, while a perfected body-tempering technique laid the foundation.
His body rivaled a high-grade magical artifact, and the resilience of his meridians surpassed that of every cultivator below the Golden Core realm.
The violent rush of spiritual energy didn't harm him. Instead, it continuously tempered him and strengthened his foundation.
The speed at which the Golden Spirit Art circulated reached a terrifying level.
Before, completing one Greater Celestial Circuit took a minute.
Now, he completed a full Greater Celestial Circuit in just a few breaths!
The faster his spiritual power circulated, the more efficiently the technique transformed it; the more outrageous his breakthrough speed became, the more inexhaustible his reserves grew.
But the terrifying consumption of spirit stones came with it.
An entire month of frenzied cultivation.
The mountain of low-grade spirit stones was completely depleted—not a single one remained!
Even Su Yun was stunned by the rate of consumption.
That enormous hoard of spirit stones
would have been enough to take an ordinary prodigy from Qi Refining all the way to the Foundation Establishment Late Stage, perhaps even to the threshold of the Golden Core realm!
In someone else's hands, it would have been half a lifetime's savings.
In his, it was enough only to reach the twelfth layer of Qi Refining.
At that moment, he understood completely.
Why had no one throughout the ages been willing to pile up more than ten layers of Qi Refining?
It wasn't that they didn't want a perfected foundation.
They simply couldn't withstand the cost!
Ordinary cultivators couldn't afford this kind of outrageous consumption.
With the shackles of a fifty-year lifespan ahead of them and a vast drain on resources behind them,
who would dare take the gamble?
No wonder none of the ancient texts recorded the complete cultivation process for the twelfth or thirteenth layer of Qi Refining.
Because almost no one could reach that point.
Su Yun grew all the more certain.
Just because others couldn't do it didn't mean he couldn't.
He had Thousandfold Amplification, abundant resources, and a heaven-defying physique.
Other people's limits were merely his starting point.
Su Yun held nothing back.
He raised his hand and took out everything left in his storage pouch.
More than fifteen hundred mid-grade spirit stones lay in a neat pile before him, their light soaring into the sky!
"One last step."
"Thirteenth layer of Qi Refining—break through!"
Su Yun gathered his thoughts and slowly closed his eyes.
His cultivation technique surged at full speed.
Rumble—
The spiritual energy in the stone chamber poured toward him in a frenzy.
Brilliant streams of spiritual energy became rivers of solid light, rushing into his seven orifices, pores, meridians, and dantian.
Su Yun was like an engine running at impossible speed.
He devoured, transformed, and amassed his foundation without pause.
His dantian expanded, compressed, solidified, and grew in capacity again and again.
His meridians continued to widen, his body to be tempered, and his soul to be nourished.
A faint golden glow rose around him. His entire body shone as spiritual energy coiled around him.
Who knew how long had passed?
The last shackle inside him shattered completely!
The thirteenth layer of Qi Refining—achieved!
In an instant, Su Yun felt as though he had undergone a second cleansing of his meridians and marrow.
Every trace of impurity, every blockage in his meridians, every flaw in his body was purged.
He slowly opened his eyes.
A flash of golden light vanished from their depths. His aura was as weighty as a mountain, yet completely contained.
He examined himself inwardly and was utterly stunned.
His dantian's capacity had surged severalfold again. Even someone at Foundation Establishment Perfection likely couldn't compare!
He casually picked up a mid-grade spirit stone.
With a draw of his fingertip,
he drained all the spiritual energy from the entire stone in less than a minute!
Even a powerful cultivator at Foundation Establishment Perfection couldn't absorb energy at anything close to that speed!
Su Yun rose and looked toward the Foundation-Grade Testing Stone at one side of the chamber.
This testing stone could withstand a full-force strike from someone at Foundation Establishment Late Stage without breaking.
He formed a hand seal with his fingertips.
A golden blade condensed in an instant.
Golden light flashed.
In the next moment,
the incomparably hard testing stone, capable of withstanding attacks from someone at Foundation Establishment Late Stage,
was pierced straight through!
A smooth, clean hole ran through the entire boulder.
The cut was even, and the lingering force of spiritual energy burst outward in all directions.
Su Yun nodded in satisfaction.
At this moment, it was no exaggeration to say—
he was invincible within the Qi Refining realm!
He could kill those of the same level in a flash and crush those above him!
Time flew by.
Only a few days remained until the Azure Cloud Sect's tournament.
The atmosphere across the sect quietly tightened.
Disciples who had been cultivating in seclusion gradually stopped and emerged one after another.
At the outer sect's various Martial Arenas, figures were everywhere, sweating as they honed their spells and practiced their moves.
Everyone was using the little time left to prepare, hoping for a better ranking in the tournament and a chance to compete for the precious slots in the Magneto Secret Realm.
Only Cloud Abode remained as quiet as ever.
Since breaking through to the thirteenth layer of Qi Refining, Su Yun hadn't tried to advance further.
His cultivation had reached the pinnacle of Qi Refining. Beyond that lay Foundation Establishment.
So Su Yun devoted all his energy to improving his secondary crafts.
He began studying second-tier talismans in earnest.
With Thousandfold Amplification backing him, the success rate, power, and quality of his talismans remained heaven-defying.
Second-tier spirit talismans were more complicated, but for him, they merely required a little more time to learn the patterns.
Alongside talisman-making, he also began refining second-grade pills.
With pills and talismans progressing side by side, he could sell a batch after the tournament and bring in a huge sum of spirit stones.
Beyond these money-making crafts, he also set aside time to study the fundamentals of formations.
Formation masters held a lofty status in the world of cultivation.
Offense, trapping enemies, concealment, mountain-protecting formations—formations were indispensable everywhere.
A top formation master would be welcomed as an honored guest by any sect or faction, wherever he went.
One could never have too many skills.
Every additional craft he mastered gave him another path forward and another trump card.
Since he had time on his hands anyway, he might as well learn a few more skills before the tournament, so he'd be better equipped to travel the world in the future.