‘Crap.’ I stared at the ticking time bomb before I ejected it outside his body like before.

Boom!

****

In the last episode of Long Di Ball Z, I failed!

Another explosion around 9x weaker than the first went off, though I erected another shield, it still broke apart in the ensuing explosion!

Each core was a Long Di at peak strength. I know I referred to myself in the third person. Give me a break, I’m exploding!

Anyway, it broke apart due to it being constructed using some of my energy. Because of that, it couldn't stand up to an explosion that was composed of all my energy.

However, the distance saved me once again. Of course, I still ended up being flung quite far away.

“Darn it,” I’m pretty sure I mirrored a meerkat sticking my head out the ground like this.

No idea on why that didn’t work.

“Maybe I should create the cores just before I connect them to the technique, instead of having them wait.”

Let’s give that a shot. I took out a pile of spirit stones and got to work once more.

The end result was…

Boom!

“Hold on, do I…”

Boom!

“What about…”

Boom!

“Am I a joke to you…”

Boom!

“Nuclear Gandhi said…”

Boom!

“Christ!”

Was it supposed to be this hard? I’m pretty sure that so many explosions in one day weren’t healthy.

It took some time, but I managed to calm down. “Okay, maybe I should go about this another way.”

B-B-B-Boom!

Several explosions later, I took a break from failing and tried to see where I was going wrong with this.

“Why is this so hard? Every time I try to connect the second core specifically, I always blow up.”

The first core was still connected to the cultivation technique inside, it just wasn’t connected to my dantian yet. So one core was ready for use, the others were just not going my way.

I brought out a spirit stone and ran my cultivation technique.

Dum!

My cauldrons heeded the call when they made their august appearance. I compelled them to revolve around me once more.

They were the reasons why I chose to go down this route to begin with. Maybe they had a way to fix it.

I stared at the pearls that were inserted into the surface of each cauldron, and kinda felt jealous that my cauldrons didn’t have to go through the struggles of being blown up like I was.

The lone pearl that shone with grey light caught my eye as it made its way around me.

All the pearls shone with an inherent spirituality but only one at the moment could be thought of as truly lit.

Wait a tick. This is eerily similar to what I’m going through, is it not?

“No way!.” I slapped my forehead when this idea sprouted. ‘If this works, I will feel like the biggest idiot in the wor… well, let’s not get crazy.’

I had an idea that was both simple and complex in its operation.

I quickly recovered to my peak state and then I descend into the space where my dantian resided once more.

There was only one core over yonder. That crystal core is the only thing that has yet to blow up.

In any case, I drove the spiritual qi in my body and created eight more pseudo-crystallised cores, just like before.

They were much smaller than before, so it was obvious they were not the full manifestation of my current spiritual qi reserves.

Don’t get me wrong, I exhausted my spiritual qi just to make one of these bad boys, so I was getting spirit stone wasted.

However, I didn’t focus on filling them with spiritual qi like I did before, so that slowed down the expenditure thank goodness.

They were basically hollow crystal cores. They didn’t have anything inside them at the moment and I didn’t intend to fill them either. These were going to be hollow all the way through, well… apart from the first one.

So at the moment, I had nine pseudo-crystallised cores, where only one was lit, and the others were dim.

Do you get it? Do you see the stroke of my genius and the inspiration it came from?

I then went ahead and tried to integrate them once more. I didn’t even blink, which is weird to say considering that I am doing all this with my consciousness, but just roll with it. I didn’t want to miss the point where life got all explode-ish.

The integration process went smoothly with every single one of them. It was so easy and seamless that I partly wondered if I suffered brain damage from the explosions and was hallucinating.

I mean, I did go through a LOT of explosions.

After some time, the integration process was completed and not wasting any more time, I then connected all nine cores at the same time to my dantian.

Vrrrm!

My body trembled when this took place. I could clearly see the spiritual qi between my primary dantian and the first core running back and forth in a mesmerising fashion. The rest of the cores remained unlit and would stay this way for a while.

Success!

I got to explain how this worked. Hear me out.

This method was effectively following the rules that my cauldrons followed.

I’m a peak One-Star Core Martial Master. This meant I only have one-star core and because of that, I could only have one operational crystal core. By making sure that only one was active, I was keeping the cultivation technique in balance with my current achievements.

It was like a child that went to a school with different grades, and went to the 11th grade class simply because he could walk there. However, this didn’t mean the child was an eleventh grader, he simply got too big for his britches.

So this was me before, a child that was too big for his britches.

Do you understand?

Of course, by having the other cores remain empty in their pseudo-crystallised form, I could fill them whenever my cultivation base increased.

So at the moment, I had twice the spiritual qi reserves of cultivators within the same realm.

“Alright, so this is enough for now. Need to get the little ones’ shock therapy ready.”

I got up off the ground, dusted my butt and headed in the direction that the Destiny Scale said it would take the kids.