Not Pretending Anymore-I Cultivate Immortality

To Lin Fan, this was nothing more than a single-player VR game with pain simulated at one hundred percent.

The system had dealt him a disastrous start: Yu Xiaogang at twenty, his Soul Power stuck at level twenty-nine with no way to advance, just as his family had shoved him aside as worthless.

An ordinary player would have obediently followed the plot, hidden away at Notting Academy, studied those lousy theories of his, and played the so-called "great master."

"Not that I can't work with this!" A wild glint flashed in Lin Fan's eyes. "This trash game thinks a status panel can lock me down? When I played my first game as a kid, your rotten system probably hadn't even written its first line of code!"

He sat cross-legged, his mind racing through the modern physics and human anatomy he had learned in his previous life.

"This so-called meditation on the Douluo Continent is a load of crap. Absorb stray energy from outside and store it in the Dantian? That's just slowly pouring water into a lousy vat. The vat fills up, and you call it a bottleneck? Bullshit!"

"Soul Power is basically a high-energy gas or liquid! If it's energy, it has to obey the laws of physics. The vat's full? Increase the pressure! Use terrifying pressure to force the energy into another physical state—compress gas into liquid, then liquid into solid!"

Lin Fan closed his eyes and formed a strange hand seal utterly foreign to the Douluo Continent's system.

"The meridians are high-pressure pipes, and my will is the hydraulic press! Compress... harder!!!"

The stagnant, unstable level-twenty-nine Soul Power inside Lin Fan surged under his brute-force control like an enraged dragon, rampaging through his Eight Extraordinary Meridians.

Pain! Agonizing pain!

Any native Soul Master of the Douluo Continent, even a Titled Douluo, would have stopped this near-suicidal act the moment they felt their meridians screaming on the verge of tearing apart.

But Lin Fan did not stop.

"Fuck! The pain feedback in this crappy game is way too damn real! But as long as my health bar isn't empty and the game hasn't called it over, what's one lousy debuff?! I crossed over painlessly anyway—I'll pretend a big truck hit me!!"

Lin Fan gritted his teeth so hard they nearly cracked. His eyes were bloodshot, yet his mouth stretched into a crazed grin.

Instead of stopping, he poured even more mental power into it.

"Two hundred percent load! More pressure! Pile it on!!!"

Lin Fan's skin turned bright red, like a giant boiled shrimp.

Veins bulged beneath his skin like coiled dragons. Unable to withstand the terrifying pressure of his Soul Power, his capillaries burst, and tiny beads of blood seeped from every pore until he was drenched in red.

Under this frenzied pressure, almost an act of self-mutilation, a miracle occurred.

The muddled mass of pale-purple Soul Power in his Dantian gave off a piercing frictional shriek as it was crushed.

As the temperature soared, the gaseous Soul Power was forced into liquid. The liquid was then mercilessly compressed again until, deep within his Dantian, it formed a crystal-clear solid no bigger than a grain of rice!

At that very moment, in the real world, every living creature across the continent was watching the screen in the sky.

At first, the sight of "Yu Xiaogang" cultivating like a madman and harming himself had left them all baffled.

But the next second, the screen helpfully peeled back Lin Fan's body in a holographic cross-section.

A gigantic X-ray view of human meridians and flowing energy appeared in the sky above the entire Douluo Continent.

"What is he doing?! Has he gone mad? How can Soul Power flow backward?! His meridians will snap inch by inch!"

Outside the Papal Palace, Chrysanthemum Douluo Yue Guan let out a shrill cry, his heavily powdered face twisted with fright.

His cry soon died.

In the cross-section on the screen, the Soul Power inside Lin Fan had not exploded.

The continent's strongest figures saw it clearly: the pale-purple, unstable Soul Power had been compressed into a dazzling golden solid crystal!

At the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, in the sect master's hall.

Bang!

Ning Fengzhi, usually the picture of refinement, shot to his feet. His knee accidentally overturned the purple-clay tea table before him, spilling scalding tea across the floor.

He stared at the screen in astonishment, his breathing quickening. "Uncle Jian... Uncle Gu... did you see that? He... he turned Soul Power into a tangible crystal?! No additional Soul Ring, no outside help—just his will and absolute control over his own body?"

At that point, Ning Fengzhi's voice dropped, trembling faintly enough that only the two Titled Douluo beside him could hear.

"The Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect has built its standing on support-type Soul Masters. But their Soul Power grows several times more slowly than a Battle Soul Master's. Our disciples stuck at the level-forty-nine and level-fifty-nine bottlenecks number eight hundred, if not a thousand."

"If this Soul Power Compression method could spread, even if only a small fraction could use it, the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect's strength would double outright!"

Sword Douluo Chen Xin did not answer Ning Fengzhi. Instead, he closed his eyes.

"Sect Master, this method is called Soul Power Compression, but in truth, it pits one's will against heaven and earth. He is... defying the heavens! He uses his body as a forge and his Soul Power as raw iron, hammering his very foundation a thousand times over. Not everyone can walk such a path. But if he makes it through..."

Chen Xin opened his eyes, a flash of sword light in them. "His combat strength will surpass Soul Masters of the same level several times over! I'd like to see whether Soul Power compressed to its limit can withstand my Seven Kill Sword!"

"A madman... He's an utter madman! And yet this madman has actually carved out a road to the heavens no one has ever walked!" Bone Douluo Gu Rong murmured.

"But he's paved that road with his own blood and life! Look at him. Not an inch of his meridians remains intact. Even if this cultivation method were made public, how many would dare learn it?"

It was not just them. Every Titled Douluo and Soul Douluo across the continent now felt their entire understanding of the world crumbling.

And their reactions went beyond simple shock.

Some were afraid. Some schemed. Others were already considering how to claim this method for themselves.

The "laws of meditation" they had revered as sacred for ten thousand years were nothing before the blood-drenched young man laughing madly on the screen!

The shock hit them like an attack from a higher dimension, leaving them feeling as though every year they had spent cultivating had gone straight into a dog's belly!

And it ignited the deepest greed in countless hearts.