“Still so arrogant even with death staring you in the face!” Cave Old Three sneered at Ye Chu, his face dark and twisted with malice.
Ye Chu remained completely unaffected by the other man’s words. He suddenly took out the Extreme Intent Jade that Tan Miaotong had given him.
Cave Old Three’s eyes lit up the moment he saw the Extreme Intent Jade in Ye Chu’s hand. Greed shone openly across his face. Extreme Intent Jade was an excellent item. Even within the Thirty-Six Caves, only the Grand Cave Master possessed a few pieces. He had not expected this young man to have one. But showing it now — was he trying to bribe them into letting him go? What a pity. Once they killed him, the jade would fall into their hands anyway.
Greedy gazes fixed on the Extreme Intent Jade in Ye Chu’s hand. Just as their eyes gleamed with avarice, Ye Chu took out something else that made their breathing quicken sharply. Even Tan Miaotong could not help turning her head. “Baleful Core! What is Ye Chu planning to do?”
Baleful Core! A pill refined from baleful qi. Baleful qi inflicted immense harm on cultivators. Yet Baleful Cores were different. They were forged through special methods that stripped away most of the destructive, violent properties harmful to practitioners. What remained turned the Baleful Core into a great tonic for cultivation.
It could be considered an alternative form of spiritual energy. Consuming a Baleful Core brought tremendous benefits to cultivators.
Baleful qi was like an unparalleled beauty. If you tried anything while her unruly traits remained untamed, she might very well kick you where it hurt most. But once you had tempered away her violence and made her gentle and yielding, then doing anything to her became an exquisite pleasure.
A Baleful Core was precisely that beauty after being thoroughly tamed.
Spiritual qi and baleful qi were opposites. Under normal circumstances, cultivators could not touch baleful qi. But what if one day someone could absorb baleful qi without harm? What kind of situation would that create? The opposing nature of baleful qi would stimulate the body, accelerating cultivation and providing immense assistance.
One of the old madmen from Qingmi Mountain had once said: The world divides the essence of heaven and earth into baleful and spiritual qi, but they do not realise that baleful qi is spiritual qi, and spiritual qi is baleful qi.
For the vast majority of races and cultivators, only spiritual qi could be absorbed. Baleful qi was their great enemy. Yet for certain special beings, they could only absorb baleful qi their entire lives; spiritual qi was what they could not touch. For them, baleful qi was spiritual qi.
Both baleful and spiritual qi belonged to the same category of heaven-and-earth essence. The difference lay only in what the world could absorb and cultivate. Both were forms of energy, and energy itself carried no inherent good or evil.
The fact that people could refine baleful qi into Baleful Cores was proof enough that it too belonged to the essence of the world and could be used by cultivators! Spiritual qi was abundant in the world, while baleful qi was far rarer. In a sense, baleful qi was even more precious than spiritual qi, and the effects it produced during cultivation were superior. As long as one could endure it, cultivating with baleful qi yielded far better results than using the same level of spiritual qi.
But how many people in the world could withstand the invasion of baleful qi during cultivation? That was why some had taken an alternative path, forging Baleful Cores as an auxiliary cultivation aid.
In Ye Chu’s hand lay several such coveted treasures. Due to his unique physique, when baleful qi entered his body, it did not extinguish his vitality. Instead, he could guide it, condensing it into Baleful Cores that others envied — and of extremely pure quality. The only difference was that the destructive and violent properties in Ye Chu’s Baleful Cores had not been tempered away much.
Not even Pang Shao and the others knew that Ye Chu could condense Baleful Cores. Ye Chu exhaled lightly. In his mind, the words “baleful and spiritual as one, able to transform into yin and yang” resurfaced.
Directly merging baleful and spiritual qi into one was unrealistic. The two were opposites. Forcing them to coexist in the same body would turn that body into a battlefield where they clashed.
So Ye Chu had wondered whether the phrase should be understood in reverse: using the mutual interchange of yin and yang to let baleful and spiritual qi alternate. “Baleful and spiritual as one” did not mean simultaneous coexistence in the body, but rather alternating presence — like the sun and moon trading places: when the sun is out, the moon hides; when the moon appears, the sun retreats.
These past few days, Ye Chu had been testing this idea and felt his conjecture might be correct. But because he was not certain, he had never dared to try it.
Now, however, he had no other path. Whether right or wrong, he had to attempt it. Even if he failed, the Baleful Cores in his hand could still boost his strength somewhat.
“Tsk tsk! You really do have quite a few good things. But what a pity — all of them will end up in my hands.” Cave Old Three’s eyes burned with heat. He could tell the Baleful Cores in Ye Chu’s hand were exceptionally pure and of superb quality. Of course, he could not see that the destructive properties in Ye Chu’s Baleful Cores had barely been tempered away.
“I’m afraid you won’t get the chance to take them!” With those words, Ye Chu clenched his hand around the Baleful Cores. Several of them began seeping into his body.
This scene made Cave Old Three and the others’ expressions change. At the same time, fear flickered in their hearts. Though Baleful Cores had been refined and most of their destructive aura stripped away, they were still condensed from baleful qi. Using them required extreme caution — let alone absorbing several at once. Doing so would almost certainly cause severe internal injury.
Yet the result astonished them. Ye Chu absorbed several Baleful Cores without showing the slightest sign of distress. He forcibly suppressed the spiritual qi within his body, preventing his internal true qi from clashing with the energy released by the Baleful Cores.
Once his internal true qi retreated, the energy from the Baleful Cores rampaged freely through his body.
As it rampaged, Ye Chu’s physique slowly underwent tempering. This tempering effect was the complete opposite of what spiritual qi produced, causing strange yet profound changes in his flesh.
It was like forging steel: only by subjecting it to alternating extremes of cold and heat could truly superior steel be produced.
The repeated cycles of cold and heat induced transformation in the steel. Right now, Ye Chu’s body was undergoing exactly that process. Previously, his own true qi had tempered his flesh. Now, the opposing baleful qi took over the tempering role — equivalent to alternating ice and fire in forging steel.
The effect was immediate. Ye Chu could clearly feel himself undergoing a metamorphosis.
Of course, such a method was not something anyone could use. Only someone with Ye Chu’s unique physique, immune to the invasion of baleful qi, would dare attempt it.
“Cultivating one’s own primal essence!”
Ye Chu had now reached this stage. At this level, the most important thing was cultivating one’s own essence, energy, and spirit. Before the Intent Transformation Realm, the qi produced within the body was merely turbid qi.
Only by transforming turbid qi into one’s own primal essence could one step into the Innate Realm and advance to higher levels.
What Ye Chu was doing now was precisely this transformation. Success would mean shedding his old skin like a snake and being reborn into a new realm.
He took a deep breath and worked to suppress the energy produced by the Baleful Cores, allowing his own true qi to reclaim dominance in his body.
When fire suddenly surged into a body accustomed to ice, it was like a violent collision of tempering forces. Ye Chu’s body trembled involuntarily. His muscles and bones contracted and expanded in rapid succession.
This instant of contraction and expansion shattered a great deal of the true qi within Ye Chu’s body. He could not help exhaling a mouthful of turbid air.
Realising that his internal true qi had diminished, Ye Chu felt no distress. On the contrary, joy surged through him. “Could it be… my guess was really correct?”
All of this happened extremely quickly. Cave Old Three had no idea what Ye Chu was doing. He stared greedily at the Extreme Intent Jade in Ye Chu’s hand. “Let’s see how many more good things you have on you. This Cave Master wants them all.”
As he spoke, he suddenly reached towards Ye Chu.
“I’m afraid none of you will get anything today.” Ye Chu’s eyes suddenly flashed with brilliant light as he stared straight at Cave Old Three.