The sensation was exceedingly strange. His body had clearly been taken apart, dismembered into hundreds of pieces scattered across the operating table, yet he could still feel his complete body!
Li Chen knew this was the body of his primordial spirit, which existed in another, higher-dimensional spacetime. It was also called the divine soul, or the true spirit body.
The people of this world understood it as the Dao suspended in the void, shining upon myriad worlds. It was the Great Dao cultivators sought, as well as the spiritual essence of their true selves, their original nature, which they tirelessly pursued as transcendent beings.
Mortal flesh was a material manifestation, both the vessel through which it appeared in the mundane world and the cage that confined it.
Only after opening the bridge of heaven and man, the mystery gate of life and death, and reaching other such stages could the essence of the true spirit reveal itself through some mysterious means.
The most direct manifestation was a pill-like core containing the Cosmic Dao's mysteries of space and time, which began to flicker into view.
This core seemed to exist on this shore and the other shore alike, without any fixed abode, impossible to fathom. Ordinary mortals could not observe its existence at all; only those at Core Formation or above could control and use it.
Upon reaching the Nascent Soul realm, it could also serve as a dwelling for the primordial spirit, uniting the three souls and casting off the mortal body.
This was the origin of three flowers gather at the crown and five qi returning to the origin, inherited from the Great Dao of the Golden Core.
From the perspective of ancient cultivators, Li Chen was now gathering the five qi within his chest, returning them to the