Chapter 299: Peng Kai’s Heart Demon
"Hahaha! Yes! With this, I can rebuild my foundation! I can tear those hypocrites from the Golden Cauldron Merchant Union apart!"
Shen Yu watched him with cold, impassive eyes, leaning his massive, fur-clad frame against the damp cave wall.
He raised his wine gourd, taking another slow, deliberate swallow.
"Don’t waste time celebrating, Peng Kai. The Imperial Competition begins in a week. Start your breakthrough now, I’ll guard you."
The reminder cut through Peng Kai’s hysteria like a whip.
A frantic urgency replaced his laughter.
Without a single second of hesitation, Peng Kai bit down hard on the containment runes etched into the cork of the vial, using his sharp, demonic-corrupted teeth to shatter the sealing formations.
CRACK!
The moment the runes fractured, a dense, terrifyingly heavy shockwave of bestial aura erupted from the bottleneck.
The violent image of a phantom Earth-Tremor Vajra Bear roared into existence within the chamber, its spiritual pressure causing the stones overhead to crack and rain dust upon them.
The thick, metallic scent of pure Tier 4 lineage blood filled the air.
Peng Kai didn’t shrink back.
Driven by pure, unadulterated madness and the desperate urge for vengeance, he threw his head back and poured the thick, throbbing drop of essence blood straight down his throat.
BOOM!
The moment the blood hit his stomach, Peng Kai’s entire body violently convulsed.
His crimson eyes rolled back into his head, exposing the whites, as a suffocating explosion of dark red energy blasted outward from his pores.
"ARGHHHHH!"
A scream of absolute agony ripped from his lungs.
The essence blood of a Tier 4 beast was incredibly volatile, containing the violent, unyielding remnants of the creature’s soul and primal strength.
For an ordinary peak Golden Core cultivator, refining it would require weeks of preparation, protective arrays, and purifying pills.
But Peng Kai’s body was already a chaotic mess of demonic corruption, the beast blood didn’t integrate, it violently clashed with his existing power.
His muscles began to violently expand and tear beneath his skin.
The dark purple veins throbbing on his face grew to the thickness of worms, pulsing rapidly as the tyrannical Vajra Bear energy stampeded through his meridians like a wild beast.
CRACK! SNAP!
The sound of his bones fracturing and reshaping echoed sharply through the subterranean ruins.
His fingernails elongated, sharpening into thick, black, bear-like talons.
Coarse, dark fur began to sprout aggressively along his shoulders and forearms.
The sheer, overwhelming pressure of the breakthrough forced him down to his knees, his hands slamming into the bedrock, shattering the stone beneath his palms.
Inside his body, the true war was being fought. The corrupted, shattered remnants of his Golden Core were being ruthlessly assaulted by the savage beast energy.
"Hold it together, you pathetic piece of trash," Shen Yu’s deep, gravelly growl resonated through the chamber, carrying a subtle thread of soul-suppressing Qi that forcefully stabilized Peng Kai’s slipping consciousness.
"If your mind collapses now, the beast soul will devour you, and I’ll have to slaughter a mindless monster instead."
Hearing ’Ni Tian’s’ chilling voice, Peng Kai’s eyes snapped wide open, burning with a hellish, desperate crimson light.
The fear of death and his burning hatred for the Golden Cauldron Union forced his fragmented willpower to lock down.
"I won’t... die... HERE!" Peng Kai roared, his voice completely morphing into a dual, beast-like cadence.
He violently circulated his corrupted demonic technique, forcing his fractured Golden Core to expand, opening the floodgates to completely swallow the Vajra Bear’s essence blood.
The dark red energy began to condense, wrapping around his core like a thick, bloody cocoon.
The spiritual pressure in the cave began to skyrocket, spinning into a violent, localized vortex of Qi that dragged all the ambient demonic energy of the ruins directly into his chest.
The bottleneck between the Golden Core and the Nascent Soul realm was beginning to tear open under the sheer, brutal force of the impact.
Deep within his fractured body, the true crucible had begun.
Peng Kai’s consciousness plunged straight into his dantian, where the peak Golden Core sat atop a crumbling, nine-layered spiritual altar.
The foundation was weeping with dark demonic Qi, but the pure, violent essence of the Earth-Tremor Vajra Bear was now ruthlessly hammering against it.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
The solid golden sphere began to split open, the distinct layers of his altar vibrating violently as if a volcanic eruption were occurring inside his soul.
Driven by raw, survivalist instinct rather than standard cultivation manuals, Peng Kai tapped into the deep recesses of his own mind.
Gritting his teeth against a pain that transcended the physical, he reached into his own sea of consciousness and violently tore away a massive fragment of his own soul.
"ARGH!" he bellowed internally, the agony of a fractured soul making his physical form twitch erratically.
With a desperate, chaotic heave, he pushed the torn soul fragment directly into the center of the splitting Golden Core.
The solid golden sphere of his core violently snapped shut around the freshly torn piece of his soul, acting like a suffocating spiritual furnace.
Now came the most dangerous phase, refining and fusing his mortal soul with the core to give birth to a powerful Nascent Soul.
But as the volatile fusion began, the chaotic demonic energy and the raw, bleeding trauma of his past combined to trigger a terrifyingly deep Heart Demon.
Suddenly, the cold, damp cave vanished entirely from Peng Kai’s perception.
He found himself standing in the ruined, ash-choked courtyard of the Peng Clan manor in Thousand Waves City.
The air smelled of burning flesh and iron.
The ghosts of his fallen elders materialized from the smoke, their eyes hollow sockets weeping black blood, their spectral fingers pointing directly at him.
"You ruined us, Patriarch," their voices echoed in a hollow, mocking chorus that vibrated in his skull.
"You destroyed our centuries of heritage and ran away instead of fighting with us. You are a spineless coward, Clan Head."
"No! Shut up! I did what I had to do for the clan! If I hadn’t ran away, who would have taken the revenge for the clan!!!" Peng Kai shrieked in denial, his expression twisting into a mask of pure desperation.
Sweat mixed with blood poured down his face as his mind began rapidly collapsing into absolute madness.
The smoke parted, and a figure stepped forward, Peng Bo.
-x-
A/N:
Weekly PS: 82/80
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Hell yeah!
We finally broke the weekly goal after a long time! You guys absolutely crushed it.
As promised, the bonus Chapter will be dropping tomorrow (Monday)!