Heaven Refining physique-Chapter 42: The Black Star Within

He arrived at the training location of the peak where he had fought with Ming Yue. It was empty right now. He was a little disappointed because he was hoping for another spar with her.

He looked towards the cave abodes and sighed internally. He hadn’t asked which cave abode she had chosen. Since she liked pestering him, she wouldn’t have minded if he knocked on her door and disturbed her, right? novelbuddy.cσ๓

Since she had a Heavenly physique, she didn’t even need to concentrate on cultivation, just like him, so it wouldn’t have caused any problems anyway.

He was eager to fight with her again, as she would be free from restrictions. He wanted to test if there really was any difference between Heavenly and Celestial physiques.

Others thought that his physique was battle-oriented, but he thought otherwise. It was more likely cultivation-related since it was all about refining everything into the purest form of qi.

Ming Yue’s physique was definitely battle-oriented since it was related to an element, and it was also an ice element, which was quite rare.

A Heavenly physique that was also battle-oriented should be quite strong, and it might match his battle strength—maybe not in his physical strength, since his body was refined to the extreme, but it should have something else to minimize the difference between them. Well, once they battled, he would be able to gain some insights.

He sat down near the training field and started to concentrate on his heart. The heart was said to be the focal point where all meridians met at least once.

It could also be termed as a second core within the human body, other than the dantian they would have after reaching the Core Formation Realm.

The reason he was focusing on his heart was to see if he could gain any insight from his physique. He had learned about this technique from Ming Yue yesterday.

He kept concentrating his whole focus on the constant rhythmic sound of his heart, and eventually, his consciousness felt like it was being sucked inside. When he opened his eyes, he was in some kind of dimension again.

It was similar to his ring, but instead of being black, it was totally red, and it was completely empty. He looked around and felt like he was floating in the middle of the whole dimension.

Eventually, he looked above, and when he saw what was there, his eyes widened. A pitch-black star was floating just above his head. It was so big that he looked minuscule in front of it.

It gave him the feeling that if he entered that star, maybe he would be refined to nothing and disappear into it. It was just his instinctual feeling, as he doubted he would get hurt in his own physique, but even then, he was reluctant to move towards it.

But there was nothing else here, and if he wanted to find what he was looking for, he might have to enter it.

Well, it was just a black orb. How bad could it be? He willed himself to move towards it, and his body really began moving. Consciousness was an amalgamation of thoughts, and his body right now was made of his consciousness. If he wanted, he could directly teleport in front of this black orb since it was his own body he was inside, but he decided to move slowly towards it.

As he got closer to it, the first thing he noticed was that this black orb was far bigger than he had imagined before. Now that he was so close to it, all he could see was black. If he didn’t look below or straight ahead, he wouldn’t even know that he was in a place where everything was red.

Also, he felt a strange kind of suction from this black giant orb. It wasn’t strong, but it was enough to make him move even if he didn’t want to. Eventually, he entered the black orb, and everything went dark for him.

He looked around but found nothing. However, he knew that his body was still moving, and it was gradually increasing in speed. He had a feeling that he was moving toward the center of this giant orb.

As expected, after 10 minutes of journeying—during which his speed increased every second—he reached the core. Finally, he saw something golden in color. It was characters floating in midair, forming the name of his physique: "Heaven Refining Physique."

He had already stopped moving. While he was thinking about what to do next, those characters vibrated, and suddenly, a golden stream of light entered his glabella.

His eyes opened, and he was out of that dimension, but now, there was something else inside his mind: knowledge about his physique.

It wasn’t too different from what he had figured out till now, but there was one thing he would change—the name he had given to his skill. He felt a little embarrassed when he thought about the name he had chosen.

The real name of that skill was Primal Essence Sphere. Its meaning was simple—giving the sense of returning all things to their purest energy form.

Everything in that sphere was refined to the purest form of spirit qi, so it really lived up to its name.

The tier of this skill was Celestial, the same as the grade of his physique.

The skills were graded a little differently from cultivation techniques. There were six tiers in skill classification: Common tier, Black tier, Yellow tier, Earth tier, Heaven tier, and Celestial tier.

Although the real strength of a skill depended on its user, skill tier also made a lot of difference. A higher-grade skill could do more damage than lower-grade skills if they were used with the same amount of spirit qi.

So, if a cultivator used a Common tier skill to fight against a Black tier skill, he would have to use more qi than his opponent to match its strength, which would be detrimental in life-and-death battles if the strength of both parties was the same.

But there’s one thing that works in favour of lesser tier skills, It is the minimum threshold required to activate a skill. For lesser tier its very less, but for higher tier its very high.

So activating higher tier skills every time will also become detrimental in life and death battel if their opponent dodged them easily.

"Junior brother, are you done thinking?"

Jiang Hao was stunned when he heard that. He had really been lost in his thoughts and hadn’t paid any attention to his surroundings. Of course, if there was any danger to him, his instincts would have warned him.

But still, to not be able to sense someone approaching him was almost impossible unless that person had good concealing abilities.

"Senior sister, you could become a good thief."

"Ohh, that I am, junior brother. You think Aunt gifted me that knife for nothing?"

Jiang Hao couldn’t help but sigh inwardly at her response. He had wanted to make her a little flustered by calling her a thief, but she was really quite thick-skinned.

When he looked at her again, his eyes opened a little in surprise. He could clearly feel how dangerous she was now.

She was at the peak of the Mid Stage of the Foundation Establishment Realm, and he had a feeling that he wouldn’t be able to beat her. In fact, it was almost impossible to defeat her with his current peak Early Stage strength.

Even if he reached the Mid Stage, he doubted he would be able to win against her. But he wasn’t disappointed. He had only explored his physique for just ten months. If he had absorbed a lot of elemental spirit herbs and gained control over those elements, then he would have been even more terrifying.

The longer he spent in cultivation, the stronger he would become. That was just how his physique worked.

"What do you see, junior brother? You have quite sharp senses, right? Since you were able to sense those Blue-striped snakes without even seeing them, there can only be one explanation for that—you perceive danger quite easily. So, tell me, junior brother, am I dangerous enough or not?"

Jiang Hao was surprised when he heard that question. He knew that Ming Yue might be able to figure out how he had located the Blue-striped Snakes, as he had to touch the trees to sense them.

Since she had never mentioned it before, he thought she was still oblivious to it, but he was wrong. Well, he really wouldn’t have hidden it from her, if she had asked him about it, so it didn’t matter.

"Senior sister, you are quite terrifying in every way possible."

He gave her a cryptic answer.

"What’s that supposed to mean? Junior brother, are you implying something else with that answer? Come clean!"

Of course, Jiang Hao wasn’t going to admit it, so he simply changed the topic, as he always did.

"Senior sister, should we spar? I have already broken through to the peak of the Early Stage, and I want to test my limits."

Ming Yue smiled when she heard that. He always changed the topic whenever he felt he couldn’t answer. She liked pestering him but not too much, so she let it slide.

She also wanted to fight after removing her restrictions, so she answered very enthusiastically.

"Of course, junior brother! I am even more eager than you for this battle. But we should wait for Aunt and Master, or Aunt will definitely sulk about it and keep bickering about why we didn’t wait for her. You know how she is, right?"

Jiang Hao nodded. This was definitely something she would do.