Chapter 1052: Luo Chen's Fall

For cultivators, what could truly be called the most powerful attack? Was it an overwhelming barrage of spells, the unrivaled might of enchanted treasures, or an unavoidable divine soul attack?

Truth be told, it was none of these. The most terrifying attack was one that even the cultivator could no longer control, one capable of reducing dozens of li to ruins and sending shockwaves across regions hundreds of li away.

Self-detonation!

That was especially true for Adepts. Once they deliberately shattered their Golden Core, the resulting explosion was outright cataclysmic. Even higher-tier cultivators would avoid such an explosion at all costs.

A Golden Core was the culmination of countless days and nights spent refining mana and tempering cultivation. Once all of that accumulated power was released at once, the resulting destruction became almost impossible to withstand. Unless they had been driven into absolute despair with no hope of escape, no Adept would willingly choose such an end.

In fact, many never even considered detonating their Golden Core, even when pushed to the brink of death. Once it exploded, death was all but certain. There was no possibility of survival, and the instinct to avoid such a fate was so deeply ingrained that few cultivators could ever bring themselves to make that choice.

Over the years, Luo Chen had only known of two such cases. The first took place during the Frontier War launched by the Falling Cloud Sect in the Eastern Wilderness, when the Supreme Elder of the Myriad Phenomena Sect detonated his Golden Core while surrounded by Demon Kings to buy time for his disciples to escape. The second happened after Luo Chen arrived in the Northern Sea. At the docks in Jadecold City, Wu Di of the Wu family had attempted to kill him by detonating his Golden Core, only for him to escape the blast radius because he had prepared in advance.

Never had Luo Chen wanted to face the self-detonation of a peer, much less imagined that he would one day experience the same fate himself. Yet that was exactly where he had been driven. Although it was not his Golden Core, this Nascent Core contained power not inferior to that of a late-stage Adept's Golden Core. As long as that power was released gradually, it remained under his control. But if it erupted all at once...

At that very moment, an unimaginable storm of mana was ravaging through his body. Had it been anyone else, the moment the Ninefold Beaconfire detonated the Nascent Core, they would have exploded into a cloud of blood. Luo Chen had only avoided that fate because his fourth-tier Archaic Beast physique was powerful enough to withstand the initial blast.

Even so, it was still as though a late-stage Adept had detonated a Golden Core inside the body of a relatively small ancient beast. The destructive force had nowhere to go, so it was transmitted in its entirety to Luo Chen's body.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

His innards turned into mush, and jets of blood burst out from the countless tears opening all across his body. His condition worsened with every passing moment as he teetered on the brink of complete collapse. Worse still, the destruction of his sea of qi sent wave after wave of agony crashing into his divine soul. One moment, the pain overwhelmed him, and he lost consciousness. The next moment, the same pain violently dragged him awake again. Even Luo Chen's unyielding will could barely endure such torment as he drifted endlessly between unconsciousness and painful awakening.

"AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGHHHH..."

A guttural growl, more beast than man, escaped Luo Chen's throat. His face contorted in agony as veins bulged across his features.

"NOOOO! I WON'T ACCEPT THIS! I ABSOLUTELY CAN'T LET IT END LIKE THIS!!"

The roar echoed through his chaotic divine soul.

For over a hundred years, Luo Chen had never once slacked off. He had devoted everything to cultivation, surviving one life-and-death crisis after another and walking on the edge countless times before finally achieving what he had today. Every opportunity had been won through blood and hardship. And after enduring untold trials, he had finally acquired a Monarch's inheritance and the Five-Spirit Dao Body, a physique with the potential to carry him all the way to the Divine Transformation Realm. How could everything end here?

He absolutely, unquestionably, stubbornly refused to accept it! As that defiance surged within him, streams of origin energy burst forth from every corner of his body, barely holding his crumbling physique together.

Yet even as they struggled to stabilize him, he could tell that it was nowhere near enough. With his thoughts already clouded by pain, Luo Chen gritted his teeth and forcibly drew upon the deepest reserves of his own life force, converting it into origin energy to suppress the raging mana storm inside him. Crimson mana crashed relentlessly against the overwhelming origin energy, turning his body into yet another battlefield where destruction and suppression fought for dominance.

Everything had begun with the clash between the Nirvana Sacred Fire and the Ninefold Beaconfire. The former had used Luo Chen's body as the battlefield to suppress the latter, while the latter had simply chosen to destroy the Nirvana Sacred Fire's home ground instead. In the end, Luo Chen was the one forced to bear the consequences.

Gradually, he felt the origin energy he had painstakingly accumulated running low. It was no longer enough to stop the violent mana released by the Nascent Core.

The problem was not that origin energy was weaker than mana, but that he simply did not have enough of it. After all, he had only reached the fourth tier not too long ago, and almost immediately after his breakthrough, he had entered the Land of Fallen Devils with Ding Yi and Devil's Cloud. There had been simply no opportunity to refine and accumulate more of the energy. To top it off, much of what he had already gathered had been consumed during his battle against Liu Jun and later while refining the Law Scrutiny Pill in the Alchemy Realm. That was why he now found himself desperately short of origin energy.

"I NEED MORE!"

Barely clinging to consciousness, Luo Chen forced himself to focus and reached into his storage ring. A white lump of flesh appeared in his hand—the Flesh Ganoderma's main body! He had already consumed a small portion of it while refining pills, but that was just a drop in the ocean. He still had most of it. Desperate enough to try anything, he prepared to swallow the entire remaining mass in one bite while forming a seal with his left hand.

Rumbleeee...

His head suddenly swelled to an enormous size, as though the head of a giant beast had burst from a human body. Opening his mouth wide, he swallowed the one-zhang-wide Flesh Ganoderma whole. The instant it entered his mouth, rows of razor-sharp teeth frantically ground it apart. Thick juices gushed out as an incomparably rich life force flooded into his body. Before the raging mana could taint it, his origin energy seized upon that life force and immediately began refining it.

As a fifth-tier fungus that had developed sentience and comprehended part of the Law of Wood, the Flesh Ganoderma contained an immense life force that ranked among the very top of all living beings. Heaven Refiner had relied on that overwhelming vitality to nurture other spirit plants and use it in their experiments. Now, as Luo Chen absorbed the Flesh Ganoderma's immense life force, his depleted origin energy rapidly recovered. The sudden influx of vitality was so overwhelming that he could not help letting out a satisfied burp.

BUUUUURRRRPP...

His origin energy erupted explosively, finally restoring a measure of stability to his collapsing body. Only then did Luo Chen have the presence of mind to inspect himself. The moment his inner sight swept through his body, however, his heart sank.

His sea of qi had been completely destroyed, and nearly all of his meridians had been shattered by the rampaging mana. The hundreds of acupoints he had painstakingly opened over the years, once shining like stars throughout his body, had either been obliterated or clogged with the same violent mana. Even his internal organs had been ravaged in such a miserable state that he could not bear to look.

Had it not been for the immense life force constantly pouring from the Flesh Ganoderma and sustaining him, he would already have become nothing more than a skeleton draped in human skin.

"My Five-Spirit Dao Body!"

***

"My true body!"

Within one of the realms of the Heaven of Bright Illumination, a chubby cultivator who had been struggling forward suddenly clutched his head and let out a miserable howl.

Just moments earlier, a searing pain had ripped through the Flesh Ganoderma's divine soul, and when the agony finally subsided, it discovered in horror that its connection to its main body had been completely severed.

It's gone! GONE!!!

The main body that held its cultivation foundation, which had spent ten thousand years cultivating and had only awakened sentience three thousand years ago, was gone! It was the cornerstone of everything it had worked toward! Without it, let alone transforming and pursuing the Great Dao, even reaching the Divine Transformation Realm had become an impossible dream.

"How could this happen... What exactly did Luo Chen do?!"

Consumed by rage and despair, the chubby cultivator abandoned all caution and charged recklessly through the realm. It had to get out, find Luo Chen, and reclaim its main body!

***

"No... no... My meridians can be remade, my organs can be restored, and even my acupoints can be recreated. But without my sea of qi... my cultivation path is over. What am I supposed to do now? Physique cultivation may be powerful, but no one knows where it leads... and the Five-Spirit Dao Body..."

Luo Chen trembled uncontrollably as he struggled to accept the devastation before him. Yet even as despair threatened to overwhelm him, his inner sight swept through the ruins of his body... There, within a blocked acupoint, he caught a faint flicker of golden light.

He recognized it instantly. It was the source of all that had happened! Had it never entered his body, it would never have attracted the Ninefold Beaconfire, and he would never have been reduced to this state.

The Nirvana Sacred Fire!

"So that's where you've been hiding!"

Gritting his teeth, Luo Chen prepared to force it out of his body. But just as he was about to act, he suddenly froze. "Nirvana Sacred Fire... the Heavenly Phoenix Nirvana Scripture... Nirvana..."

A flash of inspiration struck him. Without waiting any longer, Luo Chen forced himself into the meditation posture and began cultivating.

Given the catastrophic internal condition, he couldn't cultivate normally. Even so, relying solely on the instincts built over years of cultivation, he forcibly guided his mana, attempting to reconstruct the Heavenly Phoenix Nirvana Scripture's circulation pathway within the space where his sea of qi had once existed.

"GET OUT!"

With a low shout, a crimson Golden Core rose from within the Primordial Unity Cauldron. As soon as it appeared, it blazed like a mini sun, immediately suppressing the internal chaos raging inside his body. The rampant mana gradually settled and converged around it like a river returning to its channel, giving Luo Chen the precious opportunity he needed to reconstruct the circuit.

Time slowly passed.

Guided solely by ingrained instinct, Luo Chen at last reestablished the full circuit. Then, his eyes flashed with a kind of determination that ordinary people would have rightfully called "madness"!

"Reverse!"

He resolutely reversed the circulation of his mana, practically using the cultivation technique in reverse!

Had any other cultivator witnessed such insanity, they would have thought he had lost his mind. Reversing the flow of energy in the cultivation circuit was no different from courting death, just as detonating one's own Golden Core was an act of certain destruction. Yet for Luo Chen, this was his only chance to survive. No! It was not merely surviving. It was to be reborn through Nirvana!

The Heavenly Phoenix Nirvana Scripture was the cultivation technique practiced by Sovereign Lord Rosycloud, and its foundation lay in the phoenixes' ability to be reborn through flame. To attain that rebirth, however, one had to pass through the Nine Tribulations and Three Nirvanas. Although the Golden Core chapter Luo Chen had obtained contained no detailed explanation of the Nine Tribulations, it did record the Three Nirvanas.

He knew with absolute certainty that he had already gone through the first. This was the Nirvana of Mana, and it had come with three tribulations: the Spirit Root Tribulation, the Sea of Qi Tribulation, and the Golden Core Tribulation. By overcoming those trials, his five spirit roots had given rise to a fire spirit root that was no different from a natural one. His sea of qi had transformed into a sea of flames, his five-colored Golden Core had become crimson, and even his mana had evolved into the domineering Heavenly Phoenix mana. Only after surviving those three tribulations had he truly stepped onto the path of the Heavenly Phoenix Nirvana Scripture.

As for the Second Nirvana, he believed it had to be the Nirvana of the Flesh. Upon completing it, an ordinary physique would undergo a complete rebirth and transform into a Fire Spirit Body, becoming perfectly suited to cultivate with the Heavenly Phoenix Nirvana Scripture.

Luo Chen had never seriously considered walking that path. To him, the Second Nirvana was nothing less than gambling his life in the hope of being reborn. Worse still, the stronger one's physique became, the greater the danger during such a process. For that reason alone, he had never dared entertain the idea. Especially after soaking in that extraordinary spirit spring within the Alchemy Palace and obtaining the Five-Spirit Dao Body; this physique was even more precious than a Fire Spirit Body. It guaranteed him a smooth path toward the Nascent Soul Realm and beyond, and it freed him forever from the limitations imposed by cultivation techniques.

Under those circumstances, there had been no reason for him to risk everything on the Second Nirvana. But now...

I'm already at death's door. The Five-Spirit Dao Body is nothing more than a pipe dream now. What future do I have left? What Great Dao is there for me to pursue? This is my only chance. I have to take it! Whether this broken body can be restored... it all comes down to this one gamble!

Luo Chen had never lacked the resolve to stake his life. Now that he had made his decision, he did not hesitate for even a moment.

Boundless mana poured from his Golden Core, sweeping up the violent torrent unleashed by the shattered Nascent Core as it surged through every corner of his body. The moment the two streams merged, the terrifying force became even more destructive. Bones cracked beneath the overwhelming pressure, while muscles started tearing off piece by piece. Then, all of a sudden...

BOOOOOOOMMMM!!!

A thunderous explosion shook the entire hall as Luo Chen's body violently burst apart! Within the cloud of blood mist, countless droplets of blood hung motionless in the air as though time itself had stopped. Of his entire body, only the spine still stood upright in the empty hall; faint arcs of lightning flickered across its surface, as if a mighty dragon was still standing tall, refusing to fall.

At that very moment, anguished cries echoed through the hall. "MASTER!!!"

A violent gale swept in as Heavenjade arrived in an instant. Close behind came the deafening rumble of something enormous charging forward. The next moment, the gigantic head of a one-horned flood dragon thrust into the hall. The instant it saw what remained of Luo Chen, its eyes widened so much they nearly split.

"MASTER! Heavenjade, what happened to Master?!"

Disbelief filled Heavenjade's eyes as she stepped forward with trembling hands, reaching toward the lone lightning bone. It was the spine Luo Chen had tempered with heavenly lightning within Bai Ye's pocket world in the Thundernet Mountains. Although it had never displayed any miraculous abilities over the years, it had remained firmly rooted within his body. And now, of everything Luo Chen had once possessed, only this single bone remained intact...

CRACK!

Heavenjade's hand froze. Through eyes blurred with tears, she watched a tiny crack appear on the spine. Then the crack spread with terrifying speed, branching across the entire surface.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

The cracking continued until the entire bone broke apart into countless smaller fragments.

At that instant, both of them felt a faint sensation of release pass through their minds. It was the slave restriction Luo Chen had placed upon them long ago, and they both knew exactly what its disappearance meant.

Silence fell over the grand hall. Heavenjade stood there motionless, clutching Luo Chen's empty suit of armor to her chest as tears streamed down her face.

"Master..."

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