His aura grew stronger and more immense, only slowly stopping once it reached a level that made even Li Mingyue's heart pound with alarm.
When Cui Jiuyang opened his eyes again, a sharp gleam flashed through them. He opened his mouth and exhaled a foot-long stream of white vapor.
He looked at Li Mingyue, who had stayed beside him all this time, and smiled like a man who had survived a calamity. "Senior Sister, thank you for... watching over me."
Li Mingyue's tightly furrowed brow finally relaxed, and a radiant smile appeared on her face. She asked softly, "Six Extremes?"
Cui Jiuyang shook his head. "No, five extremes peak."
"If... I had another Numinous Treasure, I should be able to ride this momentum into Six Extremes."
In truth, he was being somewhat modest.
Earlier, to stop Hu Seventeen, he had frantically absorbed the supremely pure Spiritual Energy within the Spiritual Vein, stuffing his entire body to bursting, ready to explode like a demolition charge in a brilliant burst of fireworks.
Although King Hanli's icy crystal breath had frozen him into an icicle, it had also completely frozen and compressed that violent, pure Spiritual Energy, sealing all of it within his dantian.
When Cui Jiuyang had looked inward just now, he had seen a sea of azure dotted with starlight inside his dantian, all of it Spiritual Energy of the utmost purity.
It was no exaggeration to say that, with that one breath, King Hanli had practically crammed a small offshoot of a Spiritual Vein into his dantian!
This Spiritual Energy should have been enough to support his advance to the seventh level.
However, for one thing, he did not have enough Numinous Treasures to suppress the violent Spiritual Power of consecutive breakthroughs.
For another, cultivating The Eight Extremes was not