Li Yao sat quietly in the spring.
This was one of the special springs Xiang Yu had built outside the cave for his disciples to use. This particular spring had been made just for Li Yao, so its quality was excellent, almost as good as the main spirit spring inside the cave.
Li Yao thought to herself that the Empress had confirmed that the merit she had was enough to upgrade both her spiritual root and her enlightenment.
She had come to this spring because she needed as much spiritual energy as possible during the upgrade process. Since her senior brother had already used most of the qi from the main spirit vein and it was still recharging, this was the best place she could find at the moment.
[Are you ready?] the Empress asked.
"Let’s do this," Li Yao replied.
In an instant, half of her heavenly merit disappeared as it was used to upgrade her spiritual root. She felt intense heat bubbling up from deep inside her root. The heat grew stronger and stronger, making her qi start to boil violently. As it boiled, pressure built up more and more until... it exploded.
The explosion didn’t release much qi since she didn’t have much qi stored in her root anyway. All her qi had moved to her spiritual sea when she reached the Nascent Soul realm a few days ago.
But after the explosion, her spiritual root changed completely. It became like a black hole that grew more powerful with each passing second.
In just a few seconds, all the spiritual energy in the spring had been drained completely.
But the root was still hungry and kept increasing its suction power. Two more seconds passed, and all the qi in the entire room was sucked away, creating a complete qi vacuum. Yet the root still wasn’t satisfied.
In fact, it seemed even hungrier than before.
As the hunger kept growing stronger and stronger, the Empress began to panic. She realized she had underestimated what a celestial-grade spiritual root could do. At this rate, if they couldn’t find enough qi to stabilize the root soon, Li Yao’s cultivation might become unstable. She wondered what they should do now.
At that moment, the small tree at the center of the spirit spring suddenly began to hum softly.
"Senior brother?" Li Yao called out with strain in her voice.
"It’s okay, calm down," Xiang Yu’s voice came through the tree.
Instantly, the tree seemed to fill with energy. Its branches grew thicker and its trunk became longer and wider. It grew so much that it burst through the roof of the room completely, its branches spreading out to cover the room and form a new natural ceiling.
At the same time, massive amounts of qi started pouring from the tree into the room. The spring recharged instantly, and the room filled with more than a hundred times the amount of qi that had been there before. Li Yao’s root kept sucking in all the incoming qi, sometimes even overwhelming the production rate as it devoured everything so quickly.
But Xiang Yu wasn’t backing down. The initial burst from his spirit vein upgrade had created so much qi that he barely knew what to do with it all. Even pumping it into the ground wasn’t enough.
He smiled to himself - finally, a worthy opponent.
He stopped holding back and let all the qi flow freely into the room where Li Yao accepted it eagerly. After about a minute, the initial burst of qi had almost run out, yet Li Yao didn’t seem like she would stop anytime soon.
Xiang Yu was truly shocked by this. Wasn’t this too much? With the amount of qi she had already consumed, he felt that not even a hundred Integration realm powerhouses combined might have that much spiritual energy.
Once the initial burst of qi was over, the qi that started flowing in had changed significantly. This was no longer ordinary spiritual qi - this was immortal qi.
"Hehehe, I’m really smart," she thought to herself smugly.
As she was thinking about this, she suddenly noticed Li Yao staring at her with a strange expression. She quickly corrected her expression and straightened herself to look more dignified.
"Ahem," she said aloud, but then caught herself.
[Ahem, did you succeed?] she asked properly.
Li Yao looked at her with a disappointed expression. "I didn’t think you were this kind of person," she said.
Xiang Yu also spoke through the tree. "My image of the Empress is now completely ruined," he said.
Xiang Yu thought to himself that this was payback for last time. She had run away from him and didn’t even let him explain himself.
[You—] the Empress began, her aura flaring. [Is this how you treat your elders?] she demanded.
"I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking," Li Yao quickly backed down.
"My apologies, I have misspoken," Xiang Yu folded immediately.
[Hmph!]
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