[What? Your soul already reached nascent maturity without you forming a core?] The empress stared at Xiang Yu in shock.
"Well, yeah, it was... but not anymore," Xiang Yu explained.
[What do you mean?] The empress asked.
"Well, I don’t know how, but after merging with the flame, I don’t feel like a Nascent Soul anymore. I feel like..."
Before he could finish his sentence, the empress interjected with sudden understanding. [Infant?] she asked.
Xiang Yu nodded. "Exactly. It’s like I’ve regressed, but I don’t feel any weaker."
[Ah, that’s understandable,] the empress said. [Since your soul has evolved, your standards have also changed accordingly. Right now, you should be just at the beginning stages of the infant realm.]
[Wait... even if you have regressed in classification, the actual power should have increased significantly. How can your spiritual sea possibly handle such a transformation?] She spoke in concern.
"My mind cultivation was at level seven before, but after the merge, it shot up to level ten. It seems to be hitting some kind of bottleneck there," Xiang Yu spoke.
The empress nodded in understanding. [I see. It seems I have underestimated you,] she admitted. [As for the bottleneck you’re experiencing, that represents the absolute limit for a mortal cultivator. If you want to advance beyond that threshold, you would need to either grasp a law, or undergo the immortal tribulation.]
"Grasp a law?" Xiang Yu’s eyes lit up with intrigue when he heard this.
[Don’t think about it too much right now. You still have a long way to go before reaching that level,] the empress spoke aloud, though internally, she wasn’t as convinced. With everything Xiang Yu had demonstrated up until now, surprise after surprise, she low-key wouldn’t be surprised if he casually mentioned grasping a law tomorrow morning.
[Anyway,] she continued, changing the subject, [you mentioned something about having a bridge structure in your spiritual sea?]
"Yeah, that’s right. What does it actually mean?" Xiang Yu asked.
[I suppose I should properly explain this to both of you,] the empress spoke thoughtfully. She then turned her attention toward Li Yao, who was helping the elemental clone water the herbs. [Come here.]
"Bye, Senior Brother Huo!" Li Yao called out cheerfully as she rushed back toward them, leaving the fire elemental clone to continue its careful tending of the herbs.
Xiang Yu sighed in relief as she departed from the garden. Finally! If she had continued much longer, she would have destroyed all his herbs.
Li Yao bounced over and settled herself comfortably between Xiang Yu’s legs, facing the empress eagerly.
[I’ll begin by explaining the Soul Formation realm, since both of you already understand the Nascent Soul realm,] the empress announced. Both of them nodded attentively.
She proceeded to explain that when a cultivator successfully enters the Nascent Soul realm, virtually all their accumulated qi becomes concentrated within their spiritual sea. The Nascent Soul then begins refining this qi, slowly turning it into the far superior true qi. This transformation is the only major qualitative change in qi energy before reaching the immortal realm, and its importance cannot be overstated.
In the higher cultivation realms, she continued, attempting to harm an opponent without true qi becomes virtually impossible. The energy differential is simply too vast to overcome through quantity alone.
"Did she just say several billion light years?" Xiang Yu thought in complete shock, his mind struggling to process such an incomprehensible distance. He couldn’t even begin to properly imagine such a massive scale.
To put this into perspective for you mortals out there, Xiang Yu’s divine sense coverage extended approximately five million miles—which represented roughly 0.0001% of a single light year. Just how terrifyingly strong had the empress been during her prime? And if she seemed genuinely afraid of the original void flame’s power, exactly how much stronger was it?
Observing their stunned expressions, the empress blushed slightly. "Who would have thought that these little tricks were this effective in showing off," she thought. Though she quickly corrected herself internally, she wasn’t showing off intentionally. It was just that these two are such monsters that it’s hard to surprise them.
"Now that I think about it, my senior sister and I were also called monster geniuses back in the day, kekeke," she reminisced fondly, a small smile playing across her lips as old memories surfaced.
She suddenly noticed both disciples staring at her with strange expressions. Realizing that her facial expressions had been changing while lost in thought, she quickly composed herself back into her usual dignified bearing.
[Ahem,] she cleared her throat with slight embarrassment. [As I was saying... when you successfully create or learn a domain-type ability, you become capable of breaking through to the Void Traversing realm.]
[People often say that the difference between the Soul Formation realm and the Void Traversing realm is like heaven and earth,] the empress said with renewed seriousness. [Thats because it actually is, a Void Traversing realm expert gains the ability to control absolutely everything that occurs within their domain. If you don’t possess a domain of your own to counter this influence, you might as well be facing the heavens.]
[Now, let us move to the main subject—the Soul and Body Integration realm...]
...
A/N: Is this boring lol (I’ll add it as an extra Chapter)
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