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51.73% A Desolate Life / Chapter 134: Flesh Core Extraction Formation

บท 134: Flesh Core Extraction Formation

Aside from the Qi refining cultivation base, Yaan now possessed all of the required cultivation components to form the Vital Qi core. Of course, he first needed to remove his current vital core before forming the Vital Qi core, but he also needed to regress his vital energy cultivation in order to step onto the Qi refining path once again.

Now that he was in possession of all five progressive body constitutions at the obsidian rank, Yaan was able to completely turn away from body cultivation for now, finally turning his attention back to something that he had longed for ever since he was 12 years old; Qi refining!

Yaan's vital energy cultivation was at the Late 4-Star realm, but he didn't need to raise it any further. In fact, it was unnecessary to build up his cultivation to this extent in the first place. His vital energy had risen as a consequence of training in the Grey Mist Pressure Chamber, he never sought this out. That said, it would have some use…

Because now, Yaan was going to remove his vital core! When he attempted to form the Vital Qi core, this vital core would be an excellent supplementary medicine, since it contained his own vital energy and could be used with 100% efficiency with almost no negative side effects!

As for the method he would use to remove his vital core, there were two reasonable possibilities that could be attempted. Unfortunately, the first possibility was cut down by the Immortal Ancestor without mercy as soon as Yaan brought it up.

"I won't directly help you to remove your vital core. That said, if there is another method you have in mind, I will provide you with assistance such that you are able to help yourself."

Yaan sighed, feeling somewhat dejected by how this person seemed to randomly choose when to help him, and when to refuse his requests.

It would be perfect if the Immortal Ancestor could just extract Yaan's vital core himself. The removal of the vital core was dangerous to put it lightly. Typically, the removal of one's own vital core would result in immediate death. It was like a mortal trying to cut out their own heart, there was simply no way to survive this under ordinary circumstances.

However, even a mortal could survive for some time if a Qi master doctor used certain methods to remove their heart. Similarly, Yaan's chances of survival, and his ability to recover quickly afterwards, would be hugely improved if an immortal just did it for him.

Apparently, such an idea was just wishful thinking, so Yaan had no choice but to go with the method that he originally intended to use, before the Immortal Ancestor intervened in his life so thoroughly.

This method was naturally taught to him by the Spirit Plane Lord, since she wanted to ensure that Yaan survived through his cultivation of the Four Paths Cultivation technique.

It was another formation, one even more complex than the Golden Sage Runic Formation. The formation that Yaan would be using this time was called the Flesh Core Extraction Formation. This formation was actually originally developed for use on demonic and spirit beasts as a way to extract their cores without causing any damage to the core itself. Such a method could only be attempted on captured, live demonic beasts. However, the formation was eventually adapted for use by body tempering cultivators who wanted to regress their cultivation.

This method was not only used by those who wanted to cultivate the Four Paths Cultivation technique, there were other reasons to cripple one's own cultivation, though almost all of these reasons involved stepping onto a different path of cultivation.

Yaan recalled everything that he knew about the Flesh Core Extraction Formation as he laid out the many resources before him. All of these resources were given to him by the Immortal Ancestor, who seemed to have an endless supply of all sorts of resources contained within his spatial ring.

Many of these resources were those used in the refinement of body tempering medicines…Yaan had a feeling that this immortal could definitely obtain such medicines for him, but simply chose not to do so. Anyway, the golden elixir and the Grey Mist Pressure Chamber were superior to typical medicines, so this made some degree of sense.

Again, like before, the Immortal Ancestor gave Yaan only one set of materials, stating that if Yaan failed to create this formation and lost the materials in the process, he would not replenish what was lost.

Yaan asked, should he make a blunder and destroy an essential resource during his building of this complex formation, would he be permitted to leave and procure those resources for himself. The Immortal Ancestor gave an extremely unsatisfactory answer of 'perhaps, perhaps not'.

With this in mind, Yaan was excruciatingly careful and therefore slow in his creation of this formation. There was no guarantee that he would be able to recover any resources if they were lost, so he was forced to waste a large amount of time just to protect the more common and inexpensive materials.

Whenever he built a formation, Yaan had developed the habit of laying out every material neatly in front of him, then spending an hour or so picturing in his mind where everything would go, all the connections he would build, and how the final product would look. By visualising the process of building the formation, he found that he made fewer mistakes when he came to actually acting.

And so, after completing his visualisation preparation, Yaan began.

There were over 3,000 components in this formation. This was a large amount, especially for a formation which had an effect that only affected a single individual sitting within the formation. Typically, formations with such a use were not as complex compared to territory protecting formations which had multiple effects like offence, defense, detection and so on. Naturally, there was a reason for this; the Flesh Core Extraction Formation also produced multiple effects.

This formation would pierce into Yaan's chest, connecting to his body, then slowly and methodically cutting away the connections between his vital core and his body, before finally extracting the core. However, even after doing everything perfectly like this, the user would still be left in an extremely tentative state after their cultivation regressed and their body readjusted to its new-found lack of a core.

The vital core was the centre of a body temperer's life. So long as a body temperer possessed their core, they could survive, but if the core was destroyed, they were destined to die! Undoing this fact could not be accomplished without resulting in severe injury, no matter what, this would take time to recover from.

The formation would help to stabilise Yaan's condition whilst also providing him with a significant healing effect which was specifically tailored to assisting the recovery from the vital core's removal.

Without the formation, if Yaan tried to simply remove his own core, there was a 95% chance that he would die from the injury, but even if he survived, there was another 95% chance that he would die later on.

With the formation, there was less than a 5% chance of dying from the shock, but even this was after taking into account the strength of Yaan's psyche power. Afterwards, the chances of dying from the regression of his cultivation before he properly healed, was around 20%.

Of course, these were merely Yaan's own estimations and deductions, he had no way of knowing for sure. Even so, it was obvious why he needed to build this formation, and why he was willing to spend a full month on setting it up perfectly.

After one month of arranging his most complex formation to date, Yaan was thoroughly exhausted. He spent three days resting properly, sleeping and meditating to relax both his mind and body, before he turned back towards the formation with a gleam in his eyes.

The formation was shaped like a triangular pyramid. The pyramid emitted a blood red light, filling the Grey Mist Pressure Chamber with a sturdy bloody aura. It looked like a powerful treasure as it sat there imposingly in this hall, it was truly quite impressive, to the extent that Yaan felt quite satisfied with his progression in the art of formations.

As Yaan walked towards the pyramid, he stopped just besides its front face. He placed one palm onto a golden rune on this face, then injected his vital energy.

This variation of the Flesh Core Extraction Formation was designed to be operated using vital energy. Yaan would not be able to continue operating the formation during and after the extraction of his vital core, and for this reason, it used multiple Rank 5 beast cores as a power source. The injection of vital energy that allowed Yaan to control the formation, let him connect his body to the formation, whilst opening up a gateway in the front face of the pyramid.

Yaan walked inside, disappearing within. For any other Foundation Step cultivator, it would be impossible to see within the pyramid without using some sort of spell. Even then, only those at the Spirit Core realm and above would be able to achieve this. The formation did not actively seek to conceal the person within, but the natural bloody light emanated by the pyramid caused this to be the case regardless.

Of course, the immortal just outside of the pyramid did not need to do anything special to see within, he could easily see past this bloody light without making any effort at all. Yaan still did not understand how it was that immortals seemed to possess such shocking innate abilities, transcending all Foundation Step cultivators by such a large margin, but really, all Foundation Step cultivators felt this same clueless intrigue towards immortals.

After making his way into the centre of the pyramid formation, Yaan sat down and stretched out his two arms to either side. He sat like this with his eyes closed for some time, before finally, his eyes shot open. He took a deep breath, then with a ferocious glint in his gaze, he clenched his fists shut suddenly, initiating the formation's activation!

Vrrr…

The activation of the formation was not very loud, but the faint buzzing sound that droned in his ears let Yaan know that the formation was now active. Now that it had been activated, it would not stop until the removal of his core and his subsequent recovery were completed.

The red pyramid started to rotate slowly. After ten rotations passed by, red chains began to shoot from the inside of the formation, wrapping around Yaan's body. Before long, Yaan was entirely encased within a cocoon of red chains.

The chains began glowing with an increasing lustre. As the glowing built up, the chains rotated around Yaan's body, eventually forming a hole at the centre of his chest.

CHI!

Yaan stiffened, though he was quite thoroughly held in place right now, he couldn't actually move much. Still, the piercing sensation that penetrated his chest was quite shocking due to the complete lack of warning, but he quickly calmed down and tried to relax.

Whilst the red pole that shot out from the pyramid and imbedded itself deep into Yaan's chest looked imposing, it had not yet touched his vital core, nor any of the core's connections to the rest of the body.

But after the red pole stabbed into Yaan, it began to release a continual stream of extremely thin, almost invisible red chains. The chains were so small that they were impossible for mortals to see with the naked eye, but a cultivator could perhaps use a spell to observe them.

If they were to look into Yaan's body just as the Immortal Ancestor was doing right now, they would see countless red chains stretching out, digging through Yaan's flesh, tunnelling towards and around his vital core.

This process was just as uncomfortable as it sounded.

The individual chains were so tiny that on their own, they would not hurt much. However, after an hour passed by, there were now thousands of these chains drilling through Yaan's body, making him feel as if an ant nest had been implanted into his chest. It was extremely itchy, not to mention unnerving as Yaan remembered that these chains were currently wrapping around every single vital connection between his vital core and his body.

Five days flew by.

At this point, not only the outside of Yaan's body found itself encased in chains, the inside of his body was also the same. His entire vital core was contained within a red cage, whilst every blood vessel, both major and minor connecting to the core, was now wrapped up and pierced through by the small chains.

Whenever one of the tiny chains pierced these connections so close to his vital core, a terrific surge of pain assaulted Yaan's body, as did a sense of danger and impending doom that was difficult to ignore.

At Yaan's level, when his life was in danger, he would feel it as a distinct sensation in his mind…having an external force digging into his very lifeline was about as 'dangerous' a feeling as one could experience.

Chi…chi…chi…

Five days into this grotesque operation, the chains began constricting suddenly around the smaller vessels. The connections were cut by the chains, then manipulated and reconnected elsewhere, away from the core. Every single time one of these smaller vessels leading to his vital core was severed, Yaan's body trembled as he experienced the shock response from such a dramatic injury.

As more and more of the smaller vessels were severed, then re-assigned elsewhere in the body and welded together with an intense bloody light in order to complete their reattachment, the vessels that were being cut were no longer small and insignificant, but large and central to Yaan's vital energy cultivation, and to his life itself.

CHI!

CHI!

CHI!

Three of the largest vessels leading to the vital core were cut. Yaan's face became extremely pale as blood flowed out from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears. He would be convulsing violently right now, were it not for the red chains holding him in place.

The blood-red light looked imposing, but it was actually extremely beneficial to healing Yaan's injuries and stabilising his condition. Unfortunately, in his current injured state, it was impossible to fully stabilise his condition without undoing all of the progress in severing his core. For this reason, the final vessel was detached just minutes after these last three.

"Puh!"

A muffled choke was prevented from spreading outwards by the red chains cocooning Yaan within the formation. Blood spurted out from every pore across his body, his eyes rolled back and a feeling of impending death washed over him. Not only was his final vessel detached, but the core was suddenly dragged out from his body by three thick chains in a single instant!

Yaan's every cell throughout his body was violently vibrating, even the power of the golden elixir within him and the red cocoon around him, were unable to fully prevent this. These two powers assisted in healing his body and preventing his immediate death, but the shock to Yaan's consciousness was severe.

Finally, Yaan was forced to utilise his psyche power. As the psyche power within his sea of consciousness surged, Yaan calmed down slightly, though his heart was still racing and palpitating wildly as his body struggled to understand what it should do to remedy this situation.

Yaan quickly realised that if he did not possess psyche cultivation, he would have certainly died at this step!

It was possible for some individuals to survive this process without psyche cultivation, but it seemed that Yaan was not such an individual. Perhaps only those superior races with innately powerful bodies could actually do so.

Removing the vital core from one's own body was not simple, it was extremely dangerous, no ordinary individual would ever attempt such a thing. In fact, just having the determination to regress one's own cultivation like this was already shockingly rare.

As time continued to pass by, Yaan's condition worsened before it got better.

At one point, his entire body was almost completely void of blood; thankfully, his obsidian rank blood possessed extraordinary innate vitality, allowing it to avoid dropping to absolutely nothing. Whilst he no longer possessed any blood essence, the power of vitality in Yaan's body that was granted to him by the obsidian rank blood, was akin to having a blood stream completely filled with blood essence!

As the red chains clenched around Yaan's body, his condition finally stabilised at an extreme low point.

Although his stable condition was almost on the verge of death, it was stable, meaning that from thereon, Yaan gradually began to recover.

His recover was excruciatingly slow. In fact, another two entire months passed by before Yaan was finally able to tiredly open his eyes.

As he did this simple action, the red chains around his body immediately loosened. The chains rotated around him, then retracted back into the pyramid. The pyramid itself also stopped rotating and the red light faded back down to a dull level.

Yaan stood up and let out a heavy breath. His eyes were tired, but a hint of joy could be seen within.

He survived!

He survived…he was one step closer to making it through this…


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I have no idea if anyone is interested in donating, but I figured it can't hurt to put it out there!

บท 135: Origin Soul Slaughter Aura

Yaan exited the Flesh Core Extraction Formation, storing the blood-red core in his spatial ring.

Following the removal of his vital core, Yaan's vital cultivation regressed back down to the Mid 3-Star realm. Under a perfect removal, he would retain Peak 3-Star cultivation, but this was basically impossible in reality, only dropping to the mid stage was already very good.

Recovering the remainder of the vital energy would not be difficult at all, simply consuming his extracted vital core would be sufficient to achieve this. After consuming his own vital core and returning to the Peak 3-Star realm, there would even be plenty of vital energy left over, so he could immediately continue on and use this energy to assist with the Vital Qi core formation!

There were benefits to having a lower cultivation though, since the lower Yaan's vital energy cultivation, the easier he would find his cultivation of Yuan Qi. Or rather, the closer together those two paths of cultivation, the less they would hinder one another.

When Yaan first started cultivating, Rui simply stated that it was mandatory to cultivate the body and Qi side by side, and that each of the realm ascensions needed to proceed simultaneously. This was not entirely true, but to the Yaan of back then, it was basically the case. Yaan now understood that at that time, Rui was simply trying to convince him to continue on with the best option he had available to him.

Trying to cultivate his Yuan Qi from scratch whilst possessing 3-Star realm vital cultivation was really a tall order, it would be inefficient beyond belief, no matter how he accumulated Yuan Qi. Each breakthrough would be similarly arduous. That said, since Yaan had already attained the True Yuan Qi realm in the past, there would be no difficulty in comprehending the realm boundary up until this point, not to mention that his psyche power was now at such a level that these lower rank breakthroughs were far less of an issue compared to how others would fare in the same situation.

As Yaan stared at the Origin Soul realm captives with a hesitant expression, the Immortal Ancestor suddenly spoke.

"These are the only resources I will give you to cultivate your Qi."

This white haired immortal spoke of Origin Soul realm Qi masters, powerhouses that shook the world of Foundation Step cultivators, as if they were mere materials. Though, Yaan was used to this by now.

Yaan sighed and nodded, having more or less expected this situation already.

He did not want to begin his Qi refining cultivation by killing an Origin Soul realm powerhouse. The slaughter aura from doing this would be phenomenal and extremely difficult to absorb properly, since he currently possessed no Qi cultivation whatsoever.

It would be easier to start off with a weaker cultivator, there was no doubt about that. Due to the fact that his stronger vital energy cultivation would hinder his progress in Qi refining, merely killing someone at the Qi Gathering realm was insufficient, even those at the True Yuan Qi realm would not be enough. However, Qi Temple realm cultivators? Killing such individuals could be enough to assist Yaan in returning to the Qi Gathering realm!

Back when Yaan first developed the Fiend Foundation, he was only considered a half-fiend, he needed to kill many people in order to complete the Fiend Transformation, becoming a fully fledged fiend and stepping into the Qi Gathering realm and 1-Star realm simultaneously.

Now, things were different. Yaan was already a complete fiend, there was no need to meet that killing quota again, nor would doing so help him to step back onto the Qi refining path. In a way, Yaan's path forwards now was more ordinary, he needed to become a Qi refiner in the same way as anyone else, by developing a trace of his own Yuan Qi in his body…

Of course, in reality, Yaan was far from ordinary. He would develop this Yuan Qi by refining slaughter aura, and he would naturally refine far more than he needed after slaying an Origin Soul realm Qi master.

All of these thoughts flashed through Yaan's mind as he approached the far left pillar in the Grey Mist Pressure Chamber. There were a total of 18 pillars in this hall, each with 10-20 cultivators sealed onto their surfaces, tied up with some sort of unknown power.

In truth, Yaan did not know how difficult this first step would be. Would he succeed in breaking through immediately? In theory, the amount of slaughter aura that could be refined from killing an Origin Soul realm Qi master should be far more than enough to enter the Qi Gathering realm, but perhaps it would be too much, making it impossible to focus on the ascension…?

In the end, Yaan stopped thinking. With a sword in his hand, a decent sword he bought from the sect in exchange for some of his resources, Yaan pierced forwards in a single, swift motion.

"Wait."

Yaan paused before landing the strike, pulling back at the last moment. He turned towards the Immortal Ancestor with a questioning look, wondering why this person had stopped him at the last moment.

"Do you possess a method to kill the origin soul?"

For a moment, Yaan's mind went blank at this question, because he realised that he had completely overlooked this point. Perhaps he had been too overeager to begin cultivating again…

An Origin Soul realm powerhouse possessed an origin soul, unlike mortals who were limited by their mortal soul. The origin soul resided in the dantian, sitting in the lotus position on the highest level of the Qi Temple or Qi Palace.

Unlike those in realms below them, Origin Soul realm cultivators could survive the complete destruction of their body! However, they could not remain in this state for long; the origin soul was a spiritual entity, whilst the Qi Plane was a physical world. Without a physical form to tie the soul down to this world, it was well known that the origin soul would fade away, perhaps dying, or perhaps travelling to an unknown place…

Yaan was not like others, he knew well that the origin soul would enter the Spirit Plane after crossing the plane boundary!

Whilst this immediate separation between himself and the Origin Soul realm cultivator might seem like the difference between life and death, it was not quite so. Yaan would indeed be able to harvest slaughter aura by killing an Origin Soul realm cultivator without bothering about their soul, but unless he killed the origin soul also, he would not be reaping the full benefits of this situation!

He had overlooked this point mostly because dealing with his enemy's souls had never been an issue until now, it was an aspect of combat and killing that was quite foreign to Yaan. Not only that…

Yaan was only a 3-Star demon right now, how could he possibly possess a method to kill an origin soul? In fact, it was their complete inability to harm the origin soul that made Spirit Core realm Qi masters helpless against those in the Origin Soul realm!

"Use this." The Immortal Ancestor did not need Yaan to answer, he could tell right away that Yaan indeed had no method to slay an origin soul.

He passed to Yaan an ordinary looking sword. After catching the weapon and examining it, Yaan showed a doubtful expression, glancing at the immortal and hoping to receive an explanation. Unfortunately, the white haired man simply watched Yaan silently, he clearly had no intention of explaining himself.

Silently, Yaan put away his own sword, holding the plain looking sword in one hand. He used various methods to examine the sword, from enhancing his eyesight with his three powers, to injecting his vital energy and astral power in an attempt to activate this 'treasure'.

However, the plain looking blade had no reaction, it was as if it were a mortal sword.

Not bothering to think about this any longer, Yaan retook his position before the Origin Soul realm Qi master. He knew that this immortal would not actually give him an ordinary mortal sword, there must be something special about this blade that he could not see.

Puchi!

An Origin Soul realm powerhouse was cut down ruthlessly, not even having the chance to resist, or to even realise that his life was being harvested like some sort of resource.

Qi masters, when unconscious and unprotected by any sort of treasure, formation or spell, were often completely vulnerable, almost as much so as an ordinary mortal. Some Qi masters possessed constitutions or other abilities that protected their body even when asleep, but most relied on the active usage of their Qi in order to showcase their power. For a Qi master like this one who was suppressed entirely by the Immortal Ancestor's methods, there was simply no possible way to resist Yaan's ordinary strike.

As the blood splashed out and flowed across the blade, dripping down from the Qi master's body and onto the ground, Yaan stared forwards with a narrowed gaze.

Until the moment the sword drew blood, it seemed entirely ordinary. But, the moment that it became soaked in this dead man's blood, it transformed into an entity that was anything but ordinary!

HAAAAA!

A low growl like that of a savage beast resounded out from the sword, causing Yaan's expression to become serious.

Bang!

Almost instantly after he noticed the change to the blade, which was now covered in black runes and emitting a severely demonic aura, A sharp 'bang' echoed out from the Qi master's body, around the region of his dantian. His body immediately seemed to lose any remaining signs of life, rapidly ageing until it was like a completely dried up corpse!

Yaan's expression changed once again, but now for an entirely different reason. He immediately stopped paying attention to the bizarre demonic sword and the shocking state of this corpse, as the slaughter aura generated from slaying an Origin Soul realm powerhouse stormed into his body like a torrential wave. He staggered back, gritting his teeth as his eyes reddened and a bloody desire filled his mind.

It had been too long since Yaan last felt the unusual bloodlust that was generated from the refinement of slaughter aura…but he was not the same as before.

Within seconds, Yaan's body relaxed and his expression became calm. This overall tranquility looked out of place when paired with his bloodshot eyes, it gave the strange impression that he had become detached from his own emotions.

Yaan realised very quickly that he was only overthinking it before, there was no chance that he would lose his rational mind under the influence of this slaughter aura.

For a moment, he recalled the difficulty that he faced back in the Heavenly Path Sect, whenever he was met with a single strand of slaughter aura, thousands of times weaker than this…

Years later, he had killed far more people compared to when he was a child back in the Heavenly Path Sect.

He had lost his unwillingness to kill.

He was no longer so susceptible to being manipulated by this feeling of frantic bloodlust.

A mere slaughter aura, even that born from the hatred and resentment of an Origin Soul realm Qi master, could not shake Yaan's heart.


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