Chapter 331 - The Radiant Thunder Root and the Reversed Blessing

Chapter 331: Chapter 331 - The Radiant Thunder Root and the Reversed Blessing

By the following morning, Su Bai had finally finished consolidating his Nascent Soul Realm.

His injuries had not vanished completely, but the remaining damage was no longer something he needed to worry about.

The Myriad-Calamity Vajra Body continued repairing what the Heavenly Burial Palm had left behind, while the Macro-Taiji maintained an increasingly smooth cycle through his physical and spiritual foundations.

More importantly, the Supreme Dual-Origin Scripture had begun revealing what cultivation at his new realm actually meant.

Su Bai sat cross-legged on his favorite flat stone with his eyes closed.

His Nascent Soul rested within the Nascent Origin.

For several hours, Su Bai had personally guided the new scripture through one circulation after another, familiarizing himself with every change.

Spiritual energy entered through his physical body and spread throughout the wider cultivation network before being refined and carried along the Macro-Taiji.

Part of that refined energy strengthened his physical foundation.

The spiritual portion passed through the Nascent Origin and nourished the Nascent Soul.

Once the cycle returned, the two sides had already become more closely integrated than before.

Cultivation no longer felt like filling a single reservoir.

It was more like strengthening an entire connected system.

Su Bai had already understood that much yesterday.

What surprised him this morning was something else.

He slowly withdrew most of his attention from the circulation.

The Supreme Dual-Origin Scripture continued.

Su Bai opened his eyes.

He waited.

Nothing went wrong.

His Nascent Soul remained seated inside the Nascent Origin, continuing the established circulation without requiring his full concentration.

Su Bai’s expression gradually changed.

This was not the passive circulation he had possessed before.

That had always been a natural movement of his method, useful for maintaining his foundation and slowly absorbing spiritual energy even when he was occupied with other things.

This was different.

His Nascent Soul was actively cultivating.

Su Bai raised one hand and moved his fingers.

The cultivation inside him did not stop.

He stood.

It still continued.

He walked across the room, looked around, and even sent his spiritual sense across Clear Cloud Peak.

The Nascent Soul remained seated within the Nascent Origin, faithfully following the circulation he had established.

Su Bai stared into his cup.

’So I can cultivate while doing something else.’

He immediately checked the process more carefully.

The Nascent Soul was not thinking independently.

It had not suddenly developed another personality, nor was there another Su Bai living inside him.

It was still part of the same consciousness.

Once Su Bai established the circulation and gave it the intent to continue, however, the Nascent Soul could maintain that process with only a small portion of his awareness.

The efficiency was considerably better than his old passive circulation.

When Su Bai returned his full concentration to it, the difference became even more obvious.

The Nascent Soul and physical foundation cultivated together.

Spiritual energy around Clear Cloud Peak rushed toward him.

The Supreme Dual-Origin Scripture processed the incoming energy with a speed that made Su Bai open his eyes again.

His expression became strange.

Before, drawing even tiny amounts of Immortal Qi required extreme caution.

Now...

Su Bai glanced toward the Immortal Stone nearby.

He could feel that his current cultivation foundation would be able to process considerably more than those thin threads.

He returned his attention inward.

Another possibility had been bothering him.

With a thought, the Nascent Soul opened its eyes.

A translucent figure slowly emerged from his body.

Su Bai looked at himself.

The Nascent Soul looked back.

He raised his right hand.

The Nascent Soul raised its left.

Su Bai frowned.

The Nascent Soul corrected itself.

He laughed.

Controlling it while his physical body remained active was much harder than controlling it after his death.

Back then, there had only been one body available to him.

Now his awareness had to manage two at once.

If he concentrated entirely on the Nascent Soul, controlling it was effortless.

The difficulty appeared when he tried to move both bodies independently.

Su Bai walked around while making the Nascent Soul circle behind him.

Its movement became slightly awkward.

He tried again.

The result improved.

After several attempts, Su Bai managed to make the Nascent Soul hover beside him while his physical hands continued writing notes.

He looked between the notebook and his translucent counterpart.

A slow smile appeared.

’This is ridiculous.’

He had gained a partner.

That partner simply happened to be himself.

For someone who had always trusted his own judgment more than most things in the cultivation world, Su Bai could hardly imagine a more convenient arrangement.

If he became skilled enough, the Nascent Soul could eventually perform tasks while his physical body handled something else.

Combat possibilities immediately followed.

Nine Natal Needles controlled from one direction while his Nascent Soul attacked from another.

Different techniques performed simultaneously.

One body distracting an opponent while the other searched for weaknesses.

Su Bai stopped himself before his imagination became unreasonable.

He could barely make his Nascent Soul fly in circles without stealing half his concentration.

There was plenty of time to become shameless later.

As his realm deepened, the Supreme Dual-Origin Scripture indicated that this control would become more natural anyway.

Su Bai recalled the Nascent Soul.

It returned smoothly to the Nascent Origin.

His attention shifted toward another subject he had been eager to study.

The completed golden Spirit Root.

He took out his notebook.

The chest Gateway Dantian came into focus.

Within it stood the slender golden plant with its translucent leaves glowing faintly while white-gold arcs traveled through their veins.

Su Bai had spent enough time calling it the golden root.

It deserved a proper name.

He studied the way light and lightning existed within it.

They did not feel like two different affinities sharing the same Spirit Root.

The two had already fused too thoroughly for that.

Radiance could condense into lightning.

Lightning could loosen into radiance.

He could strengthen the piercing quality of Light with Lightning or allow Lightning to carry the brilliant, almost gentle appearance of Light.

After filling half a page with increasingly questionable names, Su Bai finally stopped.

Radiant Thunder Spirit Root.

He nodded.

That sounded acceptable.

More importantly, it described what the root had actually become.

It was not simply a Light Spirit Root beside a Lightning Spirit Root.

The two attributes had mutated into a single compatible affinity.

Su Bai experimented for the better part of an hour.

A sphere of golden light floated above his hand.

With a thought, white-gold lightning spread through it.

The light collapsed into an arc that crossed the room before diffusing back into soft radiance.

Su Bai’s interest grew.

The boundary between the two attributes was far more flexible than he expected.

Eventually, however, his thoughts returned to the Heavenly Blessing that had nourished the root.

Light could do far more than illuminate or attack.

Healing techniques existed.

Purification techniques existed.

Blessing methods existed.

He had personally experienced enough blessings recently to develop a complicated relationship with all three.

Soon, Su Bai gathered the Light attribute inside his chest Gateway Dantian and began shaping it into a simple restorative technique.

The moment the beneficial effect started taking form around the Radiant Thunder Spirit Root, discomfort spread through his body.

Reversal had already begun acting on it.

Su Bai immediately dispersed the technique before it could fully form.

"So that still happens."

He had expected it.

What interested him was the timing.

Reversal had begun immediately.

But the constructed technique had not transformed all at once.

There had been a short interval while its intended effect was still changing.

Su Bai stared at his palm.

If he could finish and release a blessing before Reversal completed the conversion, perhaps he could actually cast beneficial Light techniques on other people.

The problem was obvious.

He was nowhere near skilled enough.

His knowledge of Light techniques was mostly theoretical, while the methods available in Radiant Sky Sect were far less sophisticated than what he had seen among the Immortal inheritances.

That could be solved later.

Another question was more interesting.

What happened if he allowed Reversal to finish?

Su Bai looked toward a tree that stood several dozen steps from him.

He considered the idea.

’This is probably a terrible experiment.’

That had never stopped him before.

Su Bai recreated the simple restorative technique.

As it took shape within his chest Gateway Dantian, Reversal began acting on it almost immediately.

A sharp discomfort spread through Su Bai’s body, but he forced the technique to remain intact and watched the change carefully.

The gentle restorative property gradually twisted into something harmful. What should have nourished and repaired instead began carrying deterioration and corrosion.

Strangely, the Radiant Thunder Spirit Root did not lose its appearance in the process.

The light remained soft and golden, carrying almost the same gentle brilliance as before.

Only the effect hidden within it had changed.

Sweat appeared along Su Bai’s forehead.

Holding the technique within his own system while Reversal completed its work was unpleasant enough that he briefly reconsidered the entire experiment.

He persisted.

Finally, the conversion settled.

Su Bai immediately fired the golden radiance toward the tree.

Soft light washed over the trunk.

For one brief instant, nothing appeared wrong.

That’s when the bark darkened.

A patch of healthy wood began deteriorating as though years of decay had been compressed into several breaths.

Su Bai stared.

The technique looked like a blessing.

It felt like a blessing from the outside too.

But its actual effect was the opposite.

’A curse wearing the face of a blessing.’

Su Bai slowly smiled.

This was extremely unethical.

He liked it.

The smile disappeared when another pulse of pain came from his meridians.

Su Bai rubbed his chest.

There was a reason he would not be using this casually.

To reverse the technique completely, it had to remain within his body enough for Reversal to act on it.

During that process, Su Bai experienced the harmful transformation himself.

The stronger the original blessing, the worse that cost would likely become.

It was an excellent surprise attack.

It was also an excellent way to make himself suffer before the opponent did.

Su Bai sighed.

’So this is a trump card.’

His gaze returned to the damaged tree.

A slightly unpleasant satisfaction appeared in his eyes.

At least someone else could finally experience what good intentions felt like around him.

’Soon, someone else will understand the pain of being blessed.’

Su Bai chuckled quietly.

He tried one more variation.

This time, Su Bai formed another weak restorative technique within his chest Gateway Dantian and allowed Reversal to twist its effect completely before merging it with the Lightning aspect of the Radiant Thunder Spirit Root.

White-gold lightning gathered around his hand, still carrying the same bright, almost sacred radiance as the original blessing.

Su Bai released it toward the damaged tree.

The bolt struck with ordinary destructive force, tearing through part of the trunk. A moment later, the reversed restorative effect followed through the impact point, causing the surrounding wood to deteriorate even further instead of recovering.

Su Bai stared at the result.

Destruction followed by corrosion.

Both hidden beneath white-gold brilliance.

He nodded slowly.

"This will hurt."

He paused as another wave of discomfort passed through him.

"Both the enemy and me, apparently."

That was less ideal.

Still, Su Bai wrote everything down.

He would need better Light techniques before he understood the full potential of Radiant Thunder.

Fortunately, he happened to own several Immortal inheritances.

Perhaps somewhere inside those sealed rings was exactly what he needed.

Su Bai looked toward the remaining Immortal storage rings.

He smiled.

There were worse ways to spend the morning.