Chapter 223: False Golden Core

His physical body was intact; not even a single strand of hair seemed to be missing.

His soul state appeared unchanged, and even the Blue Light Treasure Bottle remained as it was before, with no discernible difference.

Extending his Divine Sense did not meet with much obstruction, but without the support of Qi, he could not form a powerful field of vision, and everything he saw was extremely illusory.

Furthermore, apart from the dantian, his entire body's meridians and all apertures remained complete.

After finishing his physical examination, Xu Chen tried to circulate his usual cultivation technique, and his expression slowly turned rather ugly again.

Once the refined Qi entered the dantian along the meridians, it was as if it had entered a bottomless abyss, disappearing without a trace; moreover, it was impossible to mobilize any Qi from the dantian, which meant that almost no Magic Treasures or Magic Spells could be used.

Xu Chen felt this was incredibly thorny, but after a moment, he pulled himself together and began to circulate the Grand Void Demon Refining Art.

This time, he did not encounter any obstacles; accompanied by Blue Starlight escaping from his body's apertures and transforming into an illusory nebula flowing about, a large amount of white mist sprayed out from the mouth of the Blue Light Treasure Bottle, beginning to strengthen his soul and physical body.

Under Xu Chen's deliberate guidance, a large amount of white mist surged into the position of his dantian.

Amidst the churning white light, the area around his hollowed-out dantian flickered with blue light, eventually slowly converging into a starlight vortex that roared and spun, swallowing the large amount of white light into it, after which it disappeared without a trace.

Xu Chen introspected on all the changes within his dantian and began to ponder deeply.

Although the dantian was gone, it seemed to still exist, just unusable.

Now that the white light could not repair the dantian, it could not store Qi.

If he could not recover the circulation of Qi, he would be unable to do anything and would completely become a cripple.

Of course, if absolutely necessary, he could still rely on the Blue Light Treasure Bottle to use Divine Pattern Battle Techniques, but that was a last-resort outcome.

He still wanted to become a true cultivator, step by step eventually cultivating into a True Immortal with eternal life; he absolutely did not want to degenerate into a native of Minghuang just like that.

Therefore, he currently needed to find a way to repair his dantian.

Xu Chen began to rack his brains to search through the memories in his mind, digging out all kinds of inherited knowledge from the Taiyuan Sect and Yuqing Hall, carefully recalling anything related to the dantian.

He did not know how much time had passed when Xu Chen opened his eyes from a state like an old monk in meditation, his face full of dejection and helplessness.

The heritage of Yuqing Hall was long-standing, and there were indeed many methods and Spirit Pills for repairing one's Dao foundation, but in reality, they were all aimed at very minor damage; a situation like Xu Chen's, where a large hole had been gouged out of his dantian, was not only unrecorded, but had never been encountered by any cultivators in past generations.

However, Xu Chen was not a person who liked to give up easily.

Since he could not borrow a method, he would have to find a way himself.

In his view, the dantian was indeed broken, but the positions of the apertures were still there; because of the Blue Starlight, the apertures could even receive Qi as usual, only they could not store or mobilize it.

In other words, the dantian was actually still connected to the meridians of his whole body and had not completely disappeared.

Although he could not feel it, he could find some clues through the circulation of Qi and white light.

According to knowledge from the Immortal World, if the dantian were completely destroyed, it would be like a tree with its roots severed; Qi could not circulate or flow at all, and the meridians would soon wither and collapse.

However, it appeared that his meridians were still quite normal and he did not feel any signs of collapse, which should be due to the long-term repeated strengthening by the white mist, which had made them strong to a terrifying degree.

The reason it could not store Qi was that this black hole swallowed all the refined Qi.

The only way now was to plug this hole.

But apertures were not a real physical body; they were merely breathing channels for Qi circulation within the meridians, communicating with the Qi of heaven and earth, existing only where the Divine Sense could see them, with no physical form. Therefore, wanting to plug this hole was as difficult as placing a brick out of thin air in the empty, hollow air.

Thus, how to plug it was a huge problem.

Additionally, there was another major difficulty: what to use to plug it.

"Dantian... Qi... Magic Treasure... Spirit Pill..."

Xu Chen introspected his dantian, muttering to himself, his mind mining all the information he knew as if struck by lightning.

"False Golden Core!"

Suddenly, Xu Chen's eyes lit up, and a piece of information jumped into his mind.

This was a peculiar pill formula he had once seen in the Scripture Pavilion of the Alchemy Hall at Yuqing Hall.

Although this pill formula led to an almost certain death, for him, it was no different from a life-saving straw.

Furthermore, analyzing it based on his own situation, the outcome of using a False Golden Core would not necessarily be death; first, his soul, meridians, and physical body were already strong enough to rival a cultivator in the Danyuan Realm, and he could already fully withstand the violent aura of a Level 3 Demon Core, and perhaps even eventually refine this Demon Core completely, making it a part of his own cultivation.

And his greatest reliance was that the Blue Starlight seemed to possess an extremely strong protective power; although the dantian had disappeared, it still protected the apertures, so the dantian had not been completely destroyed and still had the possibility of being repaired.

He did not need to fully repair the dantian now; he only needed to make the dantian stop leaking and allow himself to recover the circulation of Qi. As long as his cultivation was restored, the current difficulties would cease to exist.

As for other matters, that would be for later consideration.

Xu Chen's Divine Sense probed into his mysterious gold bracelet to search inside, and soon his expression turned very ugly again.

He had many things on him, but no Third-Tier Demon Core.

However, there were many things similar to Demon Cores, but almost all of them were Nether Beast Soul Cores.

The largest one among them was from the Fourth-Rank flying lizard Nether Beast that he had killed not long ago in cooperation with three Divine Pattern Warriors including Feng Liu; a single Soul Bead was the size of a normal person's head, over a foot in diameter, and the terrifying aura contained within was enough to instantly freeze a cultivator in the Kaiyuan Realm to death.

In addition, there were seven or eight Soul Beads the size of rice bowls, one of which had white cloud patterns and was left behind by the giant octopus beast that had dragged him into Minghuang, while the others were obtained by the Feng clan warriors who had gone out to exterminate Nether Beasts recently.

As for the Nether Beast Soul Beads the size of goose eggs or chicken eggs, which were rarely seen outside, there were at least dozens, all of which were sent by the Feng clan people.

These Soul Beads were not Demon Beast inner cores; they were actually somewhat similar to the Primordial Spirit of human cultivators. As long as the conditions were right and they were placed in a place rich in Underworld Qi, they would slowly recover their powerful physical form.

Apart from these Soul Beads, there was the huge glowing pearl dug out from a clam shell.

The method for refining a False Golden Core was relatively complex; it required using Spirit Fire in a Pill Furnace to continuously roast and refine away the toxins and residual Demon Beast aura, then using a powerful Divine Sense to guide the Qi to carve three layers of restrictive Arrays inside and outside the Demon Core, and after the pill was formed, operating a special technique to fuse this Demon Core into the dantian.

Although the production and fusion process was complex, it was not considered dangerous; the real danger was that after the Demon Core was fused into the dantian, one still had to open these three layers of restrictive Arrays to borrow the Demon Core's powerful Qi.

Because the Qi contained in the Demon Core was too terrifying and far from what a cultivator in the Zhenyuan Realm could control and use, the Qi would exert an unprecedented impact on the dantian and meridians during the release process. Coupled with the fact that the strength of a Zhenyuan Realm cultivator's soul and physical body was far inferior to that of a Danyuan Realm cultivator who had already passed one Small Heavenly Tribulation, most cultivators would completely collapse before the False Golden Core was consumed.

Many cultivators would only have time to unleash one Magic Spell equivalent to that of a Danyuan Realm expert before their meridians were severed and their dantian shattered, followed by the Qi losing control and exploding, causing their bodies to be completely blown to pieces.

In fact, from ancient times to the present, there had never been a lack of intelligent people among the human race, nor a lack of those who walked crooked paths.

There were many people in the Immortal World who used Demon Beast inner cores for cultivation.

There were even many demon cultivators.

So-called demon cultivators used special methods to directly swallow and refine Demon Cores or even demon souls, turning them into their own Golden Cores or Primordial Spirits.

This cultivation method allowed for very fast advancement, even skipping the Heavenly Tribulation; although they were not as good as cultivators of the same realm, they could obtain stronger power and longer lives by relying on the inner core and Primordial Spirit.

However, the realm obtained by such opportunism was a one-time increase, with no possibility of further advancement; one would be limited to the current realm for life, and their cultivation would never be able to progress even an inch.

Furthermore, as time passes, the various toxins and demon souls contained within the demon core will form a continuous corrosion and erosion of the cultivator's body; in the end, when reaching the later stages of life, one will either die from the demon toxins flaring up and the whole body rotting, or completely turn into a humanoid Demon Beast devoid of any humanity.

The False Golden Core is clearly a strange method summarized and tested by some brilliant person proficient in alchemy during the process of refining and using demon cores in the Immortal World.

It can directly allow those in the Zhenyuan Realm to utilize a demon core to unleash strength equivalent to a powerhouse of the Danyuan Realm.

Although the consequences are serious, the effect is absolutely incomparably powerful; it can be said that it is no longer as simple as just a whimsical idea.

Once used, death is certain.

But many times, when forced into a desperate situation, when one wants to go all out to drag the enemy to their death together but cannot even do that, that kind of ending is even more despair-inducing.

Xu Chen looked at the large pile of beads of various sizes before him, swallowed a Gathering Qi Pill, slightly closed his eyes to exhale and circulate his cultivation technique, and waited until the vital energy began to surge into his Meridians before bringing out the Pill Furnace, placing in three Spirit Stones, activating the Array to ignite the Spirit Fire, and then using his Divine Sense to sweep up a fist-sized Soul Bead and toss it into the Pill Furnace.

(End of this chapter)