Void Cultivation-Chapter 272

The moment his fiftieth Spirit Perforation was unlocked, an earth-shattering transformation erupted within Grey’s body.

In the Foundation Establishment Realm, breaking through levels was both simple and agonizingly difficult. Simple, because advancement required nothing more than time and sufficient spirit energy. Difficult, because both were demanded in terrifying amounts.

Each Spirit Perforation required an enormous quantity of spirit energy to shatter open. And with every new perforation unlocked, the next demanded even more energy than the last. The consumption multiplied exponentially.

For many cultivators, years, sometimes decades, could be spent trapped within a single stage. Advancement was not limited by talent alone, but by endurance, resources, and sheer will.

However, once a cultivator crossed a certain threshold, when enough Spirit Perforations had been opened, they would begin to resonate with one another. Acting as a unified system, they would give birth to a higher form of energy.

That energy was known as Spirit Power.

And from Spirit Power, the Special Brilliance Form could be awakened.

When Grey opened his fiftieth Spirit Perforation, the amount of Spirit Power that was born was so immense that his entire body trembled violently. His bones creaked. His muscles tightened. His meridians felt as though molten metal was being poured through them.

Then,

A wild aura exploded outward.

A wave of scorching heat burst from Grey’s body, sweeping through the surroundings like a raging tide. The air warped. The ground beneath him cracked faintly.

The heat far surpassed what he could produce when he possessed only a single Spirit Fire.

Which meant only one thing.

He had manifested his second ball of Spirit Fire.

Two blazing spheres of radiant energy materialized beside him, rotating slowly around his body like twin suns. Their light reflected in his eyes, which now burned with clarity and intensity.

The moment the second Spirit Fire formed, Grey felt his body undergo a profound enhancement.

His Sea of Consciousness trembled violently before expanding outward, becoming broader, deeper, more vast. His senses sharpened. His perception widened.

The Spirit Power surging through his meridians became dense and torrential. Waves of heat rolled off his skin in visible distortions, forming a protective current that forced the infiltrating cold aura to halt and retreat.

His vision cleared completely.

Then,

A tyrannical aura erupted from him as he summoned both Spirit Fires and activated his Special Brilliance Form.

It was as though a colossal volcano had awakened within his body. Lava roared through his veins. Power flooded his limbs.

For a brief moment, Grey’s expression revealed faint astonishment. The sudden breakthrough had caught even him off guard.

But it did not end there.

Without warning,

A violent, freezing aura burst forth from his body.

The moment it erupted, all the charging spirits froze mid-motion for a split second. Though it lasted only an instant, the pause was unmistakable.

Something ancient had awakened.

Within the depths of his body, where his true Spirit Fires resided, Grey sensed his dormant Cold Yin Core suddenly stir.

For a long time, ever since he ceased cultivating cold yin energy, the core had remained quiet, circulating independently, neither interfering with nor reacting to his spirit energy.

The two energies had always coexisted like strangers sharing the same body.

Even when they brushed past one another within his meridians, they refused to acknowledge each other’s existence.

But now,

The Cold Yin Core erupted.

Dense, frigid yin energy burst outward, instantly circulating throughout his body. The heat from his Spirit Fires did not extinguish it. Instead, a strange equilibrium formed.

Grey felt as though he had been plunged into an abyssal ocean of ice.

Then, shockingly, the Cold Yin Core expanded till it was twice its original size. Then without warning, it exploded.

The explosion was silent, yet devastating. The core shattered into over a hundred razor-thin threads of pure Cold Yin energy. These threads were so frigid that Grey’s organs nearly froze solid. Frost spread across his internal meridians.

Yet the threads did not disperse aimlessly.

They converged.

Gathering together, weaving into one another, they formed a small sphere.

This sphere ignited.

But instead of blazing with scorching heat, it burned with icy blue flames, flames that seemed to originate from the underworld itself. Flames that did not melt... but froze.

Even spirit energy would be suppressed in its presence.

Then, the Cold Yin Core reformed. But no sooner that it did, it expanded till it was twice it’s size before exploding again.

This process repeated itself multiple times.

Each time it exploded, hundreds more threads were born. Each time, those threads rushed into the growing sphere of icy flames, strengthening it, condensing it, refining it.

The small blue sphere gradually grew larger and denser.

It became even more terrifying until finally, a ball of icy blue flames comparable in size to his Spirit Fires was formed.

Yet unlike his blazing Spirit Fires that radiated volcanic heat, this new flame emanated an endless, abyssal cold. It felt as though it could freeze the world and drag existence into an era of eternal frost.

A halo of pale blue light spread outward, forming a cold corona around Grey’s body.

Logically, this freezing flame should have clashed violently with his two blazing Spirit Fires.

Fire and ice. Heat and frost.

They were opposites.

Yet instead of conflicting, they harmonized.

The heat intensified the cold. The cold refined the heat.

They augmented one another.

When Grey finally opened his eyes...

The world trembled.

An even more overwhelming aura erupted from him as the third sphere floated into existence.

But this one did not resemble a boiling volcano.

It felt like the birth of an endless frozen world.

A world where even time itself would slow beneath eternal cold.

At this moment, the malicious spirits that had pounced toward him suddenly froze mid-motion and began to shiver uncontrollably. Their grotesque, twisted faces contorted in visible fear and horror. Some of them even let out low, distorted wails as their dark, translucent bodies trembled violently.

These spirits originated from a realm of endless frost and suffocating cold. Against ordinary cultivators, their icy aura was overwhelmingly oppressive. It seeped into flesh, blood, and spirit alike, suppressing energy circulation and slowing reactions until their opponents could barely move.

But Grey was no ordinary cultivator.

He had awakened his Cold Yin core energy.

Cold Yin energy was the purest form of cold, a primordial force that was said to be closest to the origin of deathly stillness itself. It was the only type of energy that existed in abundance within the netherworld. Compared to it, ordinary ice and frost were nothing more than shallow imitations.

Before such power, the spirits’ icy aura felt fragile and inferior.

The malicious spirits screamed and moaned in terror. For the first time since their manifestation, they felt something greater than themselves. It was as though the cold energy they wielded did not belong to them at all, as if it had merely been borrowed from the person standing before them.

And the cold within Grey was far more terrifying than theirs.

It could... freeze their souls.

Even so, Grey’s expression did not show arrogance. Instead, a slight frown formed between his brows.

Although he now wielded three radiant balls of Spirit Fire and the terrifying Cold Yin core, the rate of consumption was monstrous. He could clearly feel the strain spreading through his body. A sharp, biting chill gnawed at his organs, and faint layers of frost began forming along his meridians.

His spirit power was being depleted at an astonishing speed.

If he continued like this for too long, his internal organs would truly freeze. His blood would stagnate. His spirit power would be completely drained.

At that point, he would be nothing more than a corpse waiting to fall.

Still... the power surging through him was intoxicating.

Earlier, the spirits’ movements had been impossibly fast. He could only react at the last possible second, narrowly avoiding lethal strikes. Their limbs had blurred through the air like black lightning.

But now?

Their movements were painfully clear.

He could see every twitch of muscle, every shift in their weight, every flicker of intent before they attacked. In fact, if he released his full power, he was certain he would become even faster than them.

Yet Grey did not allow that thought to inflate his ego.

"Having three Spirit Fires is good... but the consumption rate is too high," he analyzed calmly within his mind. "If I overextend myself, I won’t last. And the injuries afterward would be severe." 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

Grey was not someone who lost himself in newfound strength. Power did not cloud his judgment. Instead, it sharpened it.

After a brief but precise calculation, he made his decision.

"Eight breaths," he determined. "After eight breaths, I’ll deactivate my Special Brilliance form. Any longer, and my body won’t endure it."

The moment the decision was made, he moved.

His figure blurred and vanished from where he stood, leaving behind a faint distortion in the air. In the next instant, he appeared directly before the nearest spirit.

His eyes were cold and merciless.

He raised his fist and punched forward.

The strike was simple, without flourish, yet it carried condensed Cold Yin energy reinforced by Spirit Fire. The moment his fist connected, the spirit’s body froze from the inside out before shattering into black fragments that dissipated into mist.

He did not stop.

Grey stepped forward again, his body flickering through the battlefield like a phantom. Each punch was precise. Each movement was calculated. Spirits collapsed and disintegrated one after another under his fists.

Strangely, none of them resisted.

They did not counterattack.

They did not flee.

They only trembled as if bound by an invisible suppression.

Grey noticed this but did not dwell on it. There was no time to question why prey refused to struggle.

He continued advancing toward the captain.

"Four breaths left."

His eyes shone even brighter.

Without hesitation, he urged every remaining strand of spirit power within him to circulate at maximum capacity. His meridians trembled under the pressure as energy surged violently through his limbs, reinforcing muscle, bone, and tendon.

The air around him distorted.

In the next instant, his speed increased yet again.

His punches became nothing more than afterimages, silent streaks of destruction that tore through the remaining spirits like a storm of frozen annihilation.