It was a situation in which survival could not be guaranteed even for an External Force Tier martial artist, let alone someone in the Body Refining Tier. A True Demon Tier monster possessed far more mana, strength, and power in their bodies than humans did. Even if the red troll was in a thoroughly injured state, its final attack was still a True Demon Tier monster's self-induced mana implosion, and making matters worse, the space was enclosed.
The exit was blocked, so the heat and shockwaves couldn't escape. They filled the whole cave and swirled through it over and over again. The soil where the spirit herbs and spirit fruits were cultivated was also melted and turned into a dark goo. The air continuing to burn, the whole environment became a hell where breathing was difficult.
Fortunately, the rock wall cracked a little in a few places, and the fact that a bit of the heat could disperse through the cracks was a saving grace.
"Huuk!" Leonard let go of his sword, which had been reduced to only the handle due to the heat, and vomited blood.
Both his internal and external wounds were lethal. He managed to block the heat and firestorm with the Sword Curtain, but the shockwave that had hit the cave wall had reverberated and then violently struck his back. His clothes were burnt, and the molten pieces of his outfit exuded a smell of burning leather and flesh.
... If this goes on, I'm going to die.
The flow of the Five Elements Qi circulating inside him gradually slowed down. It was a warning signal that the moment the flow of qi stopped, he would die. In fact, if it wasn't Leonard and someone else instead, he would have died a long time ago.
He was still alive because the Five Elements Qi in his body resisted the fire energy and he had managed to block a direct hit with the Sword Curtain. By responding with dissonance and an incompatible element, he could drive back several times more power than he possessed.
If he circulated the fire energy according to the principle of fire nurtured earth, earth nurtured gold, and gold nurtured water, the energy would transform into water energy that was amplified several times. Because the inside of his body was protected by his primitive energy shield, he could avoid turning into a lump of charcoal.
The difference in p-power... is too great...
It was the best defensive method possible with Leonard's capabilities, but the problem was that there was a difference in the output between him and the red troll. One was in the Tenth Degree Body Refining Tier and the other was in the True Demon Tier. The gap between the two tiers was tremendous. If it was only a small difference, perhaps his skin would only be slightly burnt. However, if the output difference was dozens to hundreds of times greater, then this defensive method usually doesn't work.
Even if it was a fight of techniques, it was a miracle that Leonard had managed to defeat the red troll and survive the monster's mana implosion. However, with his injuries, he would die in less than five minutes.
I have to break... break through...
That was the only way for Leonard to survive this ordeal. One of the things he realized when breaking through to the Tenth Degree Body Refining Tier was that the "breakthrough" phenomenon could revitalize his body. Of course, he suffered from the breakthrough's aftereffects and a period of stabilization, but his mild wounds disappeared.
If breaking through a Minor Tier brought about such a result, there was a good chance that the light pillar that occurred when breaking through a Major Tier was not an outburst of overflowing energy, but a phenomenon that would heal his body. Metamorphosis also produced a similar outcome.
If one had lived too long as an amputee, the wound would not heal even if they went through Metamorphosis, but if they went through Metamorphosis immediately after losing an arm, there was a precedent where their arm grew back.
No h-help... would... come anyway.
He had to survive on his own. He had secretly entered the depths of the island in the middle of the night, and no one could have seen what had occurred inside this cave from the outside. Even if some knights were patrolling, they would have only seen the fight between two True Demon Tier monsters, with one winning and the other one losing.
Leonard could not afford to waste time rummaging through his subspace pouch, so he just turned the pouch upside down and shook it. A huge amount of items poured out. There were about 1,500 mid-grade mana stones, 500 low-grade spirit herbs classified according to the Five Elements, and about 100 items he had harvested from the elixir cave.
From by-products such as the skin, teeth, and claws of various monsters to more than 10,000 low-grade mana stones, it was an amount large enough to form a small hill, but the items Leonard needed now were fixed.
I need the spirit herbs first.
The water element low-grade spirit herb looked like a reed with a few small translucent beads hanging from it. Leonard picked up five or six of them and put them in his mouth.
Crunch, crunch.
He swallowed the herbs without chewing them properly. He did not have the time or reason to, as even stone could be digested in the digestive organs of a Body Refining Tier knight. The spirit herbs disintegrated rapidly inside him, and they were converted into mana with element properties.
Leonard reached for the wood element spirit herbs. He ate according to the principle of the generating interactions of the Five Elements in an effort to increase the effectiveness of the spirit herbs, even if by a little.
One Origin Five Elements Cultivation Method
Five-Star Creation Sutra: Life
He began circulating his energy. His jaw muscles could not chew well, so bits of spirit herbs leaked out, and the area around his mouth was covered with saliva and herb residues, but he did not let that stop his hands and jaws from moving.
His method looked very messy on the surface, but the effect was certain. Water nurtured wood, wood nurtured fire, fire nurtured earth, earth nurtured gold, gold nurtured water, and then water nurtured wood again—it was an infinite cultivation cycle using the generating interactions of the Five Elements.
... There we go. I've reconstructed the basic flow.
Although they were low-grade spirit herbs, there was a huge amount. Moreover, the supply of energy was considerable because he used the principle of the generating interactions of the Five Elements to circulate his energy with the One Origin Five Elements Cultivation Method. The flow of internal energy, which had been completely severed, also began to flow again like a stream of water.
Even the consciousness he was desperately holding on to returned little by little, and vitality returned to both his eyes. However, Leonard knew that he had only passed the first hurdle.
I've only stopped my injuries from worsening and prevented myself from dying due to qi deviation. If I don't recuperate my body, I will die within fifteen minutes.
His condition improved because he had reconnected the flow of internal energy and managed to regain control over his dying body. The time he had left was extended slightly, and he could last for fifteen minutes, but there were no other means of recovery except to break through to the External Force Tier.
Leonard's condition became a little better, but he was still close to being in the worst possible condition. He reached out his hand without hesitation. He wanted to grab the mid-grade mana stones. If he tried to break through to the External Force Tier with low-grade mana stones, he would take all day just to absorb the energy and would run out of time.
A mana stone quickly crumbled as its energy was instantly sucked out, and Leonard immediately grabbed another. Just absorbing ten mid-grade mana stones could fill him up with energy, but because his body was in such a bad condition, it was like pouring water into a bottomless jar. Nevertheless, his hands did not stop, and before he knew it, he easily consumed over a hundred mid-grade mana stones.
The principle of breaking through to the External Force Tier is not much different from making breakthroughs in the Body Refining Tier.
The method was to fill the body with an enormous amount of energy, which would then expand the acupoints in his whole body due to the pressure, and then finally discharge the remaining energy. If a meridian was clogged even slightly, the energy would flow backward and explode, but this danger was unknown to the people of this world because it did not apply to the people here.
Leonard continued to absorb the mana stones while lost in thought, but he became flustered when he realized that the number of mana stones he had absorbed had already exceeded a thousand.
This is beyond my expectations. It may not be enough even after I absorb all 1,500 of them. I will probably have to use all the spirit herbs I found.
The mana stone's advantage lay in the fact that it was attributeless, but that was also its disadvantage. Unlike the low-grade spirit herbs he had just consumed, it could not be amplified by the principle of the generating interactions of the Five Elements, so there was no other use after all the energy contained inside the mana stones was absorbed.
After consuming about 500 mid-grade mana stones and all the spirit herbs cultivated by the trolls, Leonard finally felt something.
Since I didn't consume a uniform amount of spirit herbs for each element, I have to personally supplement the five elements that lack elemental power... but this is good enough.
He did not expect to consume the spirit herbs as soon as he obtained them, but it was worth it for the sake of keeping his life intact. Each spirit herb was equivalent to dozens of mid-grade mana stones, and he had absorbed them all. He had lost track of time when he was repeatedly consuming the spirit herbs and mana stones.
Fortunately, he had made it in time and was about to break through to the External Force Tier. As soon as he sensed the internal energy in his body boil in a rampage, Leonard closed his eyes and stopped all his movements. He wasn't giving up. Rather, he had done his level best and was leaving the rest up to fate.
Now that he had done everything he could, all that was left to do was wait for the will of the heavens and see the outcome. The breakthrough phenomenon was not something that could be controlled even with a Creation Realm expert's willpower.
Even so, is it normal for it to be this powerful? Leonard wondered, feeling that something was out of place. However, he was well aware of the reason.
Normally, the amount of spirit herbs and mana stones needed to break through to the External Force Tier from the Body Refining Tier was a quarter of what Leonard had consumed. However, he was on the brink of death, and his body had recognized the sudden supply of power as a lifeline that could be cut off at any time. Thus, his body had compressed the energy in his body instead of using it to break through.
Usually, the remaining energy was emitted in the form of a light pillar when breaking through to the External Force Tier, but the energy accumulated in Leonard's body was nearly five times more than that.
The outrageous energy began to run wild. The tremors reverberating inside Leonard were so loud that they could be heard outside his body. Just like when one messed with a dragon's reversed scale and incurred the dragon's wrath, the energy that had exceeded the critical point while expanding the eight extraordinary meridians and twelve main meridians went crazy due to their narrowness.
His internal injuries, which were under control, burst open due to the violent disturbance from the outrageous energy. It healed again in a few seconds, and he experienced a shooting pain. Even the pain caused by a torturer stripping the bones from one's flesh was not comparable.
Even during his murim days, he had never experienced a pain comparable to what he was feeling now. If he had to compare it to something, it felt similar to when his intestines were melting from being inflicted with the Gut Destroying Poison.
The pain was so great that Leonard, who was calm even when his heart was pierced by the Heavenly Demon, had to grit his teeth. If he vomited blood here, his body would immediately shatter, and he would die.
It's coming!
Still, he successfully broke through to the External Force Tier. His blood vessels were torn apart and reconstructed, and the flow of energy rode on the momentum and extended to his limbs. It transpired in an instant.
Six meridians in his body—namely the lung meridian, the heart meridian, and the pericardium meridian located inside the arm; and the ?triple energizer meridian, the small intestine meridian, and the large intestine meridian located on the outer side of the arm—swelled significantly. The clothes that wrapped Leonard's arms burst open.
Then, the six meridians located on the inside and outer side of the feet exploded, and his clothes, which had been reduced to rags, lost its form, leaving only a few cloth fragments behind.
In normal situations, the breakthrough should have been completed at this point, and the energy that soared through the governing vessels should have been discharged from the Baekhoe point.
It's not over yet.
Just like he thought, the energy that had unclogged the twelve main meridians was still moving vigorously, proof that it still had strength to spare. As both the eight extraordinary meridians and twelve main meridians widened to the point that the energy could run wild at will, the excited wave of energy spun rapidly inside Leonard along the widened path.
Just like that, it circulated through his body once, twice, thrice. If it could maintain a smooth flow, the speed of the energy would be almost limitless. At first, the speed could be managed, but it gradually increased, and it became impossible to grasp which part was the beginning and the end.
My body can't endure any more than this!
The flow of energy became more powerful with each cycle, and eventually, it became out of control for Leonard. As the rotational force continued to increase, it would either begin to converge inward endlessly or blast out. In Leonard's case, it was both.
At some point, Leonard floated into the air while in a lotus position, and he was wrapped by a brilliant five-colored glow. His body was undergoing a change within the glow of light.
Penta-cores were the key to revealing the secret within the Cardenas bloodline. They were the downgraded version of a Dragon Heart, but with Leonard fueling his with his Five Elements Qi, his penta-core was evolving, becoming something like a Dragon Heart. Leonard was reenacting an almost forgotten legend.
The mana, which was compressed into the shape of a ring around the heart, finally placed pressure on the heart, condensing an organ larger than a fist into the size of a small marble. Black, white, green, red, and yellow. As the Five Elements Qi converged on one point, they turned into five different colors.
The Five Elements Augmented Qi that the Sword Emperor Yeon Mu-Hyuk pursued as the pinnacle of his martial arts took the form of an organ that replaced the heart, though it was shaped a little differently.
A middle dantian?!
The three dantians were based on the martial arts system of Taoism. Among them, the Danjung point referred to when the heart and the middle dantian coexisted, and it was sometimes referred to as the Okdang point.
However, the One Origin Five Elements Cultivation Method that Leonard trained in was a martial art that used the upper dantian and lower dantian as the middle point, using it as an acupoint that operated like a qi core.
No, it's also functioning as a qi core. Was it because the Five Elements Qi reconstructed the entire heart from the start? It wasn't inclined towards fire qi.
The heart possessed a strong fire attribute, and it would greatly disorient the Five Elements Qi, which pursued harmony and coexistence. Therefore, the middle dantian was not formed. Nonetheless, if the heart itself acted as the middle dantian, there would be no problem. The progenitor of the One Origin Five Elements Cultivation Method would never have imagined that the middle dantian would be formed in this manner.
Leonard was not aware of it, but his heart, which had become infinitely similar to that of a dragon, was strengthening his body to a whole other level.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The sturdiness of his bone, which reached its limit in the Tenth Degree Body Refining Tier, was strengthened further and reached the state where it was immune to any attacks from sabers and swords. Moreover, his flesh, which had suffered burns, was peeled off, revealing denser, stronger muscle.
It was a legend that was passed down hundreds of years ago, but it was stated that the one who was covered with the blood of a dragon would obtain an invulnerable body. In reality, it was nothing more than folklore, but his body seemed to give credibility to that legend.
Immediately, the storm of energy, which had been constricted within Leonard's body even after all the changes had taken place, was discharged from his Baekhoe point, and it shot toward the cave's ceiling.
Like a lightning bolt striking not down from the sky but up from the ground, Leonard's energy shot up from the first acupoint, the Janggang point, to the twentieth acupoint, the Baekhoe point, without anything standing in its way. The pressure alone expanded the blood vessels in his entire body, and Leonard felt as if his acupoints were being forced open.
Just like that, he broke through the First Degree External Force Tier and then the Second Degree, ultimately reaching the Third Degree. The aftereffect of breaking through a Major Tier helped Leonard break through three more Minor Tiers. Finally, a wave of energy in the form of a dragon was discharged from him.
The dragon-shaped energy shone brilliantly in five different colors. The tree, which was the only source of light inside this cave, had dried up due to the flame storm. However, the dragon-shaped energy brightened the areas filled with only darkness. Due to the characteristic of the cave wall, the dragon-shaped energy could not penetrate through the cave even after crashing into the ceiling several times. It gradually lost its form, dispersed into small particles, and infiltrated the tree, which was left all alone in the cultivated plot.
Leonard was still in a trance, so he had not realized it yet. A fruit blossomed at the end of the golden tree's branch as it mustered all the power that flowed from the dragon-shaped energy as well as the vitality that remained in its roots.
At the same time, the air in the cave, which was contaminated by the heat and smoke, was cleared up. It was a miracle that Leonard himself had brought about.