Beast Taming: I Have an Immortal Mansion

And so, Fang Qingyuan felt the full moon within his Sea of Consciousness grow even brighter.

As the Demons perished one after another, somewhere unknown in this world, deep within an abyss a million zhang down, lay a dark and gloomy Underground Palace. The palace’s main hall was empty and silent, save for an enormous, lidless coffin resting quietly in its center—a coffin that had existed for an unknown number of millennia. Inside it, a will-o’-the-wisp flickered to life on the skull of what looked like a giant’s skeleton. It flared for an instant, then died.

This whole series of changes within his Sea of Consciousness took but a few breaths, and just like that, Fang Qingyuan had overcome his Demon Tribulation.

.....

In the outside world, Fang Qingyuan slowly opened his eyes and immediately felt as if his body was an empty shell, completely drained of Magical Power.

The ground beneath him was soft, the dust deep enough to cover his ankles. He took a few steps, raising a cloud of it, and felt a sudden cool breeze below his waist.

When the final tribulation bolt from the Heaven and Earth Law Will had struck, everything around Fang Qingyuan was obliterated into fine powder. The Seven-Star Altar, as well as the Magical Artifacts and robes he wore, had not been spared.

But as the saying goes, out with the old, in with the new. Fang Qingyuan took it in stride. With the Celestial Tribulation over, it was time to reap the rewards.

Just then, the tribulation clouds on the horizon began to roil and churn. The hundreds of miles of black clouds transformed into pure white, auspicious Dao clouds, and wisps of the True Meaning of the Great Dao rained down, entering Fang Qingyuan’s body.

This True Meaning of the Great Dao gathered in Fang Qingyuan’s Dantian. According to the standard method, he was supposed to use this True Meaning of the Great Dao as a nucleus. He would then supplement it with his own True Essence Magical Power, causing his liquid Magical True Essence to envelop the core. From there, it would solidify and gradually evolve into a Golden Core, allowing him to officially join the ranks of Golden Core Cultivators.

This was the orthodox method for a Cultivator’s Core Formation. However, just as the True Meaning of the Great Dao entered Fang Qingyuan’s body and prepared to converge in his Dantian, a powerful suction force erupted from his Sea of Consciousness. Like weary birds returning to their roost, the strands of the True Meaning of the Great Dao were powerless to resist the pull and rushed toward his Sea of Consciousness instead.

Fang Qingyuan was aghast. It was clearly the gateway to the Immortal Mansion in his Sea of Consciousness, trying to absorb the True Meaning of the Great Dao. ’But this is the very foundation for my Core Formation! If it’s gone, how am I supposed to form my Golden Core?’

But faced with a divine object like the Immortal Mansion, whose power level was far beyond his own, Fang Qingyuan had no means to stop it. He could only watch helplessly with his spiritual sense as all the True Meaning of the Great Dao he had worked so hard to obtain was pulled into the Immortal Mansion.

Before the bitterness of his loss could even set in, his own soul was sucked into the Immortal Mansion as well.

In the next breath, Fang Qingyuan felt wind.

It was a gentle breeze, something utterly ordinary in the outside world. But inside the Immortal Mansion... ’Without me using any techniques, how could there possibly be wind?’

Besides, he had entered as a soul, not a physical body. Even if he could perceive the wind, it shouldn’t have felt so physical, as if he had flesh and bone.

After the wind came clouds, then rain, and then scenery that looked identical to the outside world.

At that moment, the Immortal Mansion seemed to have come alive. It no longer had that artificial, meticulously designed feeling, that sense of stiff and uncoordinated fakeness.

Witnessing this scene, Fang Qingyuan understood. The True Meaning of the Great Dao had supplied what the Immortal Mansion had previously been missing.

In other words, the Immortal Mansion was, for the very first time, genuinely interacting with the outside world on its own, not just using his soul as a conduit.

No matter how powerful his soul became, it could never serve as a permanent bridge between the two worlds. Now, however, these two "heavens and earths" were finally beginning to touch.

From Fang Qingyuan’s perspective, it was as if an immeasurably vast bubble had collided with a minuscule one. But instead of repelling each other, they linked together and began to merge.

Logically, the larger bubble should have absorbed the smaller one, but reality was proving otherwise. Fang Qingyuan could feel his Immortal Mansion’s greed. In that instant, all the Spiritual Power for a thousand miles around began converging toward it.

It was as if the Immortal Mansion had obtained certain ’permissions’ within this world—the True Meaning of the Great Dao—and was now using them to mobilize resources for its own gain.

This development horrified Fang Qingyuan. ’At this rate, isn’t the Immortal Mansion going to attract another Thunder Tribulation?’

As it turned out, his fears were unfounded. The Immortal Mansion’s methods were far more sophisticated than he could imagine. After devouring enough Spiritual Qi to make a dozen Nascent Soul Cultivators explode, the Immortal Mansion proactively severed the connection between the two worlds and went dormant, all before this world had a chance to react.

In the sky far away, a thousand-mile stretch of thunder clouds had just begun to gather before they abruptly dissipated. The sight was rather amusing.

But Fang Qingyuan was in no mood to appreciate the spectacle. He only wanted to know one thing. ’Now that the True Meaning of the Great Dao is gone, did I succeed in forming my Golden Core or not?’

’Am I going to have to go through all that again?’

’And what if I succeed, only for the Immortal Mansion to hijack the True Meaning of the Great Dao again?’

Before Fang Qingyuan could work it all out, the Immortal Mansion, now sated with Spiritual Qi, seemed to perceive his thoughts. The illusory gateway in his Sea of Consciousness abruptly vanished, and along with it, his natal Five-Colored Divine Tree.

When it reappeared, the Immortal Mansion was inside Fang Qingyuan’s Dantian, having taken the place where his Golden Core was supposed to form.

Then, the Immortal Mansion expelled a stream of pure Spiritual Qi to envelop itself. Together with the Magical Power Fang Qingyuan had just generated, it forged a perfectly round, dazzlingly brilliant Golden Core.

Fang Qingyuan peered inside it with his spiritual sense and discovered an entire world manifesting within the Golden Core. Countless living beings moved within, so vivid and lifelike they seemed both illusory and real, like something from a dream.

’Whoa, my Golden Core is formed!?’

The thought had barely crossed Fang Qingyuan’s mind when, with a mere intention, the Inner Golden Core unleashed a tremendous amount of Spiritual Qi that flooded his body. In the next instant, his cultivation aura skyrocketed, reaching the Peak of the Early-stage Golden Core in the blink of an eye.

The Spiritual Qi inside the Immortal Mansion still seemed endless, but Fang Qingyuan’s body and soul were reaching their limit. He forcibly halted the influx. He had something more important to do now: find out to what extent the Immortal Mansion had evolved through this process.