Chapter 85: Spiritual Core Realm

Back on Gu Yuan’s side, he was already undergoing his heavenly tribulation.

Things were progressing so smoothly that, rather than focusing on the bolts of lightning falling overhead, none of which could even scratch him, he concentrated on the transformation taking place within him. His Golden Core was slowly changing from its corporeal form into a Spiritual Core.

What had once resided in his dantian was slowly transferring into his soul. With this step, Gu Yuan could finally sense his soul more clearly.

Because of the Golden Mountain Scripture, he had already possessed a vague awareness of his soul before, but now that he was breaking through, that hazy sensation was becoming much more distinct.

The first thing Gu Yuan noticed was its size.

It felt... large.

Was a soul normally supposed to be this big? Before he could think about it further, another detail caught his attention. Within his soul space, a golden silhouette of something trying take the shape of a mountain. It was the defensive construct forged by the Golden Mountain Scripture to protect his soul.

Not far from it, was his Golden Core, still illusory, slowly solidifying.

Gu Yuan stared at it for a while before a sudden thought flashed through his mind.

He was already using the lightning from the Heavenly Tribulation to temper his body and Spiritual Power.

Why not temper his soul as well?

It was a reckless thought.

But now that the idea had occurred to him, Gu Yuan found it difficult to resist.

Carefully, he drew a strand of the tribulation lightning into his soul.

The moment it entered his soul space, lightning fizzled violently through it, wreaking havoc. His soul felt like something barely holding together, ready to be torn apart at any moment, and pain shot through him. But it lasted only an instant.

The Golden Mountain reacted almost immediately. Even while it remained somewhat illusory, it sensed the threat to his soul and began drawing the lightning toward itself.

The lightning raged through his soul, turning it into a battlefield.

Yet the result was completely one-sided.

The Golden Mountain easily withstood the lightning, and when the strand finally dissipated, Gu Yuan sensed something different about its manifestation.

It had become more substantial.

Gu Yuan stared at the golden silhouette, realizing that he had stumbled upon another way to strengthen it.

The next time he pulled a strand of lightning into his soul, he didn’t let it run wild.

He directly guided it toward the Golden Mountain.

Gu Yuan continued the process with quiet satisfaction, squeezing whatever benefit he could out of the Heavenly Tribulation. What should have been a dangerous trial had practically become another opportunity for cultivation.

Watching him from some distance away, Ji Yan couldn’t help but laugh softly in pride.

What Gu Yuan was doing wasn’t particularly unprecedented. There had been cultivators who had tried to temper their souls with tribulation lightning before, believing themselves capable of withstanding it, only to lose their lives in the process.

As far as Ji Yan knew, only those with special physiques related to lightning could safely endure something like this.

Yet her man, without possessing any such physique, was doing it anyway.

"As expected of my man."

There was a hint of pride in her voice as she watched him, as though she had never doubted that he could pull it off.

Unfortunately, the good times didn’t last. Just when Gu Yuan became more proficient at drawing the lightning into his soul, he suddenly sensed a change in the Heavenly Tribulation.

The color of the lightning changed from blue to purple.

Something similar had happened when he had broken through into the Golden Core Realm. The Heavenly Tribulation had suddenly intensified, as though the heavens had realized that the previous lightning was insufficient to test him.

This time, however, the increase was far more overbearing.

Gu Yuan immediately stopped what he was doing and took out his Heavenfall Saber.

There was no room for jokes with the lightning that was coming.

He used the Crimson Fire and the Blood Moon Severing Saber technique from the start, striking toward the descending lightning and overwhelming it from the very beginning.

Perhaps sensing that it still couldn’t inflict any injury on him, the heavens seemed to grow angry.

The purple lightning suddenly twisted and transformed into the shape of a gigantic dragon before roaring toward Gu Yuan.

Gu Yuan’s expression remained calm.

He swung his saber.

The Blood Moon strike descended, and the dragon-shaped lightning was cleaved apart before it could reach him, its violent form breaking into countless arcs of purple lightning that scattered through the sky.

The battle did not continue for long after that.

Perhaps the Heavenly Tribulation had finally exhausted its power. The clouds in the sky lingered for a while, seemingly reluctant to dissipate, before eventually fading away.

Gu Yuan had successfully broken through into the First Stage of the Spiritual Core Realm.

He didn’t immediately return to the ground. Instead, he remained in the sky, sitting cross-legged in midair as he began consolidating his newly advanced cultivation.

From some distance away, he could sense several cultivators approaching after noticing the disturbance caused by his breakthrough. But knowing that Ji Yan was watching over him, Gu Yuan wasn’t worried in the slightest.

One week later, Gu Yuan finally opened his eyes.

What appeared before him wasn’t the distant horizon from high above the ground, but the beautiful face of a woman staring closely at him.

"Congratulations on your breakthrough."

Hearing the sincerity in her voice, Gu Yuan answered softly, "Thank you for protecting me as well."

"Don’t mind it." Ji Yan shook her head as though it were hardly worth mentioning.

"I’m your woman. If I don’t protect you, who will?"

She said it so naturally that there wasn’t even a hint of hesitation in her voice.

"Anyway, should we go back to the sect?"

"Yes. Let’s go back... home."

Home.

At this point, Gu Yuan couldn’t imagine calling anywhere else home.

Not the Black Desolation Sect itself.

The place where the twins were.

That was where home was.