Two cauldrons, each a heavy bronze, burst into existence behind them.

It was at this moment that Tie Lang and Jia Yan knew they were both at the 1st Duan Cauldron Forging realm.

****

“We…!”

[Steady yourselves young ones!]

The Destiny Scale’s ancient will rang out once more to keep Jia Yan and Tie Lang from jumping up in joy and breaking their momentum.

This situation was still dangerous for the two. After all, the fire-attributed spiritual energy was still rampaging within the barrier like a berserk dragon!

The Destiny Scale was an ardent believer that only danger would be able to truly stimulate one’s potential.

This was evident by the way Jia Yan and Tie Lang were both able to not only charge right into the bottleneck separating them from the Cauldron Forging realm, but to break through it in one go bringing their first cauldron into the world.

[Take the opportunity to ameliorate your cauldron! The moment when it has just been created is its most vulnerable moment and is now much easier to upgrade!]

Hearing this, Jia Yan and Tie Lang took this moment to calm themselves and control their breathing.

[Now drive the cultivation technique and direct the fire-attributed spiritual energy towards your cauldrons.]

The Destiny Scale urged the fire-attributed spiritual energy towards the three disciples with relentless ferocity.

However, the fire-attributed spiritual energy didn’t cause them as much pain as it did in the beginning.

This was because their cultivation base had taken a leap forward, pushing their body to new tenacious levels. They could now more easily handle the situation that they were only barely hanging on by a thread from before.

‘The fire-attributed spiritual energy within this area is thinning out. I need to move these disciples closer to the volcano. I will let the keyholder know and make movements.’

…

Some distance away, atop a small peak, sat a solitary figure like a wise sage.

Heavenly levyance tribulation lightning was crackling all over his body. Nine black cauldrons spun slowly behind the figure as pearls lodged within the notch of each cauldron shone with a brilliant light.

The figure’s body shuddered for a moment before it returned to a moment of stillness. Who else could it be but Long Di?

The moment he had shuddered was him reacting to the message that the Destiny Scale transmitted to him. They were still connected all the same, so it was easy for them to communicate if needed.

‘I’ll need to find them soon, but we have a little less than a month here, so I need to use this time to really get my cultivation method to an acceptable level. Now, how… how can I have my body contain more tribulation lightning?’

Clouds had long gathered overhead at Long Di’s location. The emergence of Heavenly Levyance tribulation lightning was enough to call forth such a phenomenon.

Long Di’s consciousness had descended to his own inner world where his dantian was located.

This was a different location from his mind sea. The Destiny Scale had been here when it was refining the tribulation lightning energy for itself before going to his mind sea.

Now that he thought about it, that Destiny Scale was just going where it wanted without consent in Long Di’s body. ‘This must have been how Shen Ling and Feng Yu felt when I put my tribulation lightning inside of them.’

Long Di eventually put these thoughts behind him as he stared intently at his dantian. It was spherical in shape and rippled as if it was composed of condensed water.

HIs consciousness drifted to his dantian as he placed a hand on it. Surprisingly, his hand went through without too much trouble.

He quickly took his hand out, not expecting that to happen. There weren’t many books on the dantian in his parent’s library, so this was uncharted territory for him both figuratively and literally.

What he knew for sure was that the dantian would be able to accommodate more spiritual qi the more his cultivation base increased. However, it wasn’t enough to satisfy him at the moment.

‘As I light more pearls, I’ll be able to store, hold and use more tribulation lightning, but it still drained me to use one attack that I myself created. Plus, the only way for me to get more pearls is to increase my cultivation base, and that takes time. So I need another way.’

He stared at his dantian in complete silence before he came to a decision. ‘I can’t hesitate too much. I need to know what my dantian looks like on the inside so I can know what to do.’

Making up his mind, Long Di quickly calmed himself and placed his hand back on the rippling dantian.

Just like before, his hand went through without much resistance. He then drifted forward inch by inch until he was in, all the way to his shoulder.

Feeling nothing wrong up to this point, he threw caution to the wind and rushed inside!

Unexpectedly, he found where his feet met the ground. This came as a surprise to him so he bent down to inspect what he was standing on.

'Earth?'

Long Di realised that what he held in his hand was dirt. He seems to be in what was some sort of small world.

The only thing was that this world was entirely dark. It was impossible for him to see anything.

Even though he was effectively 'blind' at this point, he could still tell that this world was incredibly small at around maybe a hundred or so meters all around. Quite frankly, calling it a world was being very generous.

However, there was not much information that he could get from here. Nor was there anything he saw that he could use to increase his current capacity, so he exited his dantian and recalled his consciousness.

In the real world, his eyes opened and confusion pervaded them as he thought about how to go about solving this issue.

With a change of thought, Long Di compelled his cauldrons to revolve around him instead of staying behind.

It was for no other reason than he was bored and he liked inspecting them from time to time.

"I wonder why my cauldrons never change to reflect my special-grade physique?"

This was a good question, another aspect about special grade physiques was that they came with their own types of cauldron outside of the normal ranking. So even though Long Di's black cauldrons were nowhere to be found on the current ranking, he could somehow feel that it was still in line with said ranking but that most likely no one had ever gone this far to bring their cauldrons to this level.

They revolved around him slowly as he stared back, watching the pearls that were inlaid in each cauldron shine and flash with a resplendent light.

The pearls pulsated with spiritual essence aside from the one that shone grey light to indicate it being lit. This was his first Star Core.

As it revolved, it disappeared from view, replaced by the others. After a while, Long Di was completely mesmerised by his cauldrons and pearls as they commanded his attention. It was really miraculous how in the future they would be used to bring his cauldron to the next level.

Suddenly, his eyes narrowed, and he stared at the cauldrons with more scrutiny. To be more specific, he was looking at the pearls within each cauldron.

Like a flash of lightning, inspiration struck him, and it struck hard.

"Why did I never think of this!?"

Not wasting anymore time, Long Di’s consciousness sunk back into his body. He looked at his dantian suspended in a place of darkness and ran his cultivation method according to his will.

‘I am so glad that Master didn’t let me set it in stone by naming it. Anyway, let’s see if this works.’

Long Di stretched out his hand and drove some of the spiritual qi in his body to accumulate at a random spot some distance away from his dantian.

As his spiritual qi was perfused with Heavenly Levyance tribulation energy, it appeared like a clump of grey lightning.

Long Di’s expression became seve… well, it didn’t change, but he would like for it to be severe and that is an ‘A’ for effort.

In any case, using this spiritual force, he caused it to wrap around the clump of spiritual qi, causing it to condense into a sort of pseudo-crystallised form.

‘Success.’

This pseudo-crystal was the accumulation of Long Di’s entire spiritual qi as a 1st Star Core Martial Master.

In other words, when Long Di fills his dantian once more with spiritual qi, he will have twice the spiritual qi of other experts at his level in the Core Flame Evocation realm.

All Long Di would need to do now is to integrate this pseudo-crystallised form of spiritual qi into his cultivation technique and it would automatically feed it and his dantian going forward. The connection process of this new core to his cultivation technique was the complicated part, but Long Di was sure he would be able to get that done given enough time.

What really flew into Long Di’s mind at this moment was, why have one core, when you can have nine? He didn’t want too much as he could only imagine the headache he would have come normal cultivation time when he needed to advance.

So Long Di used the better part of a day to create nine perfect pseudo-crystallised cores of spiritual qi.

They all hovered around his dantian like the stars praising the moon. It was truly a beautiful sight. He wished that this was all he had to do to make it work, but sadly, this was not the case.

If he just left them as is, he would need to spend his spiritual force to constantly keep them in this pseudo-crystallised form and that was not economical. Making them a part of the cultivation technique would be much better since it would do all the work for him once it was completed. In layman's terms, he was programming his cultivation method.

‘Alright, let’s get to it.’

So Long Di ran his cultivation method once more and began the integration process of all nine cores.

Everything was going well. He could actually feel these cores becoming a part of his own spiritual qi reserves.

He started to feel a bit proud of himself again. This was the second time in his life, ‘I’m pretty smart. Dare I say, a genius?’

As soon as he thought this, he saw where the integration process of all nine cores suddenly became chaotic!

He drove the remains of his spiritual force to keep it under control, but nothing he did worked!

Seeing that this was a losing battle… and that he was now out of spiritual force, he stopped fighting it. This was going to hurt, but eh, what could he do?

He simply looked at the energy of the cores becoming more unstable and asked himself a very relevant question, ‘Was genius too strong a word?’

Boom!