Chapter 4329 — A Breakthrough to the Mid Golden Core Stage!
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
True, when he had refined Foundation Establishment Pills in the past, pleasant surprises had often come his way. Yet on reflection, both the two Myriad Crossing Golden Core Fruits taken from the gray-robed man and the auxiliary materials he had afterward bought on the fly were only of middling quality.
Under such circumstances, successfully producing two top-grade pills was already quite remarkable; to hope for more was simply impossible—there was no such cheap good fortune under heaven.
Gazing at the two freshly emerged top-grade Golden Core Pills in his hand, Wei Zhao felt his blood stir. To speak plainly, spurred on by Wang Xinyan and by so many formidable experts of the Morning Star Academy, his hunger for power was now fiercer than at any time before.
What was more, Huang Xiaotao's departure meant the strongest of his techniques, the Mad Flame Eight-Trigram Combined Palm, could no longer be used—as if he had suddenly cut off one of his own arms. For all that Wei Zhao still held various formidable trump cards, he could not help feeling somewhat out of sorts, and even a little unnerved.
After all, in terms of rank he was only at the early Golden Core stage. The waters of Zhenduan and Weihu were places where dragons and snakes mingled, thick with Nascent Soul experts at every turn; his meager strength hardly counted for anything there. Should he truly run into trouble, he might not even be able to protect himself.
Now that the top-grade Golden Core Pills were ready, there was no room left for hesitation.
Holding his breath and focusing his mind, Wei Zhao swallowed one top-grade Golden Core Pill, and of a sudden felt the meridians within his body blaze as if his true qi had been set alight, searing him with unbearable agony.
Where there is pain, there is blockage—a saying that holds just as true on the path of cultivation. Once the meridians within the body are wracked with pain, it means they are undergoing a transformation, reborn anew: perhaps growing stronger, perhaps veering into madness. Between the two lies only a matter of degree.
Wei Zhao had taken a Golden Core Pill once before, but that had been to break through to the Golden Core stage, and in concert with the Star Ink Stone for a flawless breakthrough. That earth-shaking transformation was not to be spoken of in the same breath as this simple upgrade.
The worst of the pain then had come from the Star Ink Stone; now it was the pure searing of his meridians. Yet in true experience, what he felt now was not much easier to bear than it had been then.
Still, Wei Zhao could only grit his teeth and endure in silence, not daring to let his resolve slacken in the least; for at this moment his true qi was surging wildly through his meridians, and the slightest loss of control could easily bring grave consequences, beyond all remedy—it was not even impossible that it might tip over into a deviation of madness.
So he burned for a full two hours, until even Wei Zhao's endurance began to falter, and at last the searing agony in his meridians slowly abated. When everything had returned to normal, Wei Zhao suddenly found that his meridians were far sturdier than before, and that his true qi was fuller and more abundant than ever!
"This realm is..." Feeling the newfound power surging within him, Wei Zhao froze, then cried out in disbelief, "the mid Golden Core stage!"
He had taken only a single Golden Core Pill—even a top-grade one—and had never thought it could leap him across a stage. In his original reckoning, reaching the peak of the early Golden Core stage would already have been a triumph, merits complete and virtue fulfilled! (To be continued) R466