Chapter 81 - Enlightenment of Chaos
Su Ming pivoted, using the recoil to slide under its head and launch a swift upward thrust. But the Tyrant’s bone-wing flared with violet light, warping the local space. The distance bent, and his sword passed through empty air where the throat had been. Simultaneously, the beast’s massive tail swung in a blindside arc. Su Ming barely moved clear, the wind pressure shredding the sleeve of his robe as the heavy mass sailed past.
He landed fifty paces away, his sword tip pointing down. ’It is not fighting like a wild beast,’ Su Ming observed. ’It is testing me, trying to understand how I react. The intelligence behind its actions is terrifying.’ The Tyrant lowered its head, its crimson and blue eyes locked onto him. It was clear it would not let him leave alive.
Releasing the pressure on his soul cultivation, Su Ming channeled his Void Dragon Soul and let loose the True Dragon Roar. A wave of golden draconic pressure turned the damp soil to dust, striking the Tyrant head-on. The beast’s scales vibrated under the soul-shaking sound, but its eyes remained calm; its chaotic soul frequency dispersed and absorbed the pressure completely. It was immune to draconic suppression.
Realizing the threat, the Tyrant stopped holding back, releasing its full high-tier Demon Lord pressure. The air grew heavy, and the ground beneath Su Ming cracked and sank several inches. The beast lunged, its claws, tusks, and wings converging in one massive physical assault that blocked out all paths of escape.
Su Ming realised that he now had to go for the kill. He stood his ground, raising the Dragon Emperor Sword. He channeled his Yin-Yang Origin Qi to its limit to execute the second move of the Cloud Dragon Sword Technique, compressing the raw force behind his draconic roar attack into a single thread powered by his Qi.
"True Dragon Calamity," he murmured. A single line of silent light, split perfectly between golden-white and dark purple, cut through the dark valley, bisecting the Tyrant diagonally from shoulder to hip.
As the slash sliced through, the Yin-Yang Qi acted as a conceptual divider, forcing the chaotic, mixed Hundun energies of the beast’s body to separate. For a second, the beast remained frozen, as if the cut had not yet registered.
Then, the beast split. The two halves fell in eerie silence, with no death-cry. As the carcass divided, a thick, black-violet mist drifted from the wound. Through Essence Sight, Su Ming watched in fascination as the left half of the body and mist resolved into pure, dark, motionless Yin, while the right half resolved into pure, active Yang. The chaotic asymmetries settled into perfect, balanced symmetry in the moment of death.
Standing in the drifting mist, a flash of profound enlightenment struck his mind. His own Golden Core was locked in an absolute, perfect Yin-Yang balance. It was so stable that it was impossible to split under normal circumstances, refusing to budge.
But splitting the Golden Core was a necessary step to achieve breakthrough and step onto the nascent soul realm. By watching his Yin-Yang Qi force the chaotic energy to split, he realized the key. To break the locked stability of his core, he had to introduce the unformed energy of Chaos.
He only needed a fraction of its chaotic energy to act as a catalyst. It would introduce just enough chaos to disrupt that absolute balance for a moment, giving it the brief window it needed to split the Yin-Yang golden core.
A quiet smile touched his lips. ’I understand now.’
He stepped forward, channeling a thin thread of Qi to form a delicate needle. He carefully extracted several drops of the rich blood essence from the beast, storing them in jade vials within his spatial ring. Next, he reached into the cavity and extracted the core, which swirled with brown and blue light, placing it in a sealed box in his spatial ring.
As the box vanished, Su Ming examined the lingering traces of violet energy on his fingers.
Sensing his dantian hum, Su Ming closed his hand. The long-stagnant barrier of his Golden Core stage was trembling. The bottleneck completely cleared. He looked at the quiet clearing as the mist settled over the carcass. He needed a secluded place, free from any distraction. With a soft leap, Su Ming rose into the air and vanished into the mist-covered ridges to find a cave for his breakthrough.
***
Deep within a sheer granite cliff in the southern wilderness, a narrow cave sat hidden behind ancient, hanging vines. The stone walls wept cold moisture, and the ambient spiritual Qi was still and heavy. Inside, the space was small, damp, and cold. Su Ming sat cross-legged upon a flat, smooth boulder, the hem of his white robes draped neatly over the rock’s edge.
Outside, the world was a howling tempest of wind and rain, but inside, not a single sound or vibration could penetrate the silence. Su Ming had set up a complex array. The Five-Element Concealment Formation and a heavy defensive barrier suppressed all light, sound, and spiritual leakage. To the external world, the cave was nothing more than a solid, silent stretch of cliffside.
He sat in the dark, entering a state of deep focus. The barrier of his Golden Core was already on the verge of snapping, demanding his immediate attention. Within a couple of minutes, he stabilized the trembling energy paths, drawing the cold air into his lungs to settle his Qi. The noise of the outside faded into nothingness. Here, he was alone with his path.
When his breathing became virtually imperceptible, Su Ming opened his eyes. He waved his sleeve, retrieving the mutated Tyrant core and the jade vial of extracted blood essence on the stone before him. The mutated Hundun core was the size of a fist, its surface covered in faint, irregular scale patterns that glowed with a slow, swirling brown and blue light.
As he opened the lid, the chaotic energy spilled out, creating a faint localized pressure that bent the light around it. Beside it, the jade vial held the dark, heavy blood essence of the beast.
The raw, undifferentiated potential of the chaos energy was what he needed from these. The path of his breakthrough required him to accept the raw, unrefined danger of the chaos energy, and introduce its chaotic nature directly into his own golden core.
Su Ming closed his eyes once more, activating his Essence Sight and his Insight Halo at absolute full power. Faint, golden-and-white light flickered beneath his closed eyelids as his vision focused.