Chapter 1363: Core Formation
Chapter 1362: Core Formation
The aura of the True Dragon entered his body, circulating along the Minor Heavenly Cycle before merging into his flesh.
Mo Hua felt every meridian trembling faintly. Even his Fate Pattern began to change in extraordinary ways due to this strand of True Dragon aura.
This was the True Dragon destiny of the Great Wilderness, mysterious beyond measure.
At this moment, Mo Hua was not alone.
The favored sons of righteous clans and sects, as well as saint sons, saintesses, and young masters of the demonic sects, all shared in this ancient strand of True Dragon aura. Their flesh began to transform, their spiritual power grew profound, and their Fate Patterns transcended the mundane.
All these profound changes would ultimately act upon their Golden Cores.
The Golden Core would become the seed of the Great Dao that fused with the True Dragon aura.
As the core formation of the righteous and demonic prodigies accelerated, strands of distinct prodigy auras filled the Dragon Pool, like dragons incubating within.
The True Dragon aura continuously transformed, stimulating their latent potential.
Phenomena began to brew.
The entire Dragon Pool bloomed with obscure radiance and an awe-inspiring pressure.
This pressure even spread beyond the Dragon Pool, passed through the Dragon-Bone Path, and reached the Dragon Hall, causing the waiting Golden Core elders of both paths to tremble in shock.
This was the sign of peerless prodigies being born.
Heaven-shaking talents were about to emerge from the Dragon Pool.
Even the blood-red sky brightened slightly as the black miasma dispersed under the vitality and gathering power of these dragon-aura seeds.
At this moment, inside the Dragon Pool, every prodigy focused on forming their core.
Mo Hua was no exception.
He took a deep breath and used the Taotie Twelve-Meridian Spiritual Skeleton Formation, which had only nourished the Hand Taiyin Lung Meridian, as his Life-Bound artifact and the foundation of his core formation.
Then he mobilized all spiritual power within his qi sea, forcing it along the Minor Heavenly Cycle and sinking it into his dantian.
Meanwhile, the spirit stones he had prepared were continuously crushed by formations, refined into pure spiritual energy, flowing through his acupoints into the meridians and finally converging into the qi sea of his dantian.
Vast internal and external spiritual power poured into his body simultaneously. Under intense spiritual pressure, it formed a vortex, gradually condensed, and ultimately crystallized.
During this process, blue Taotie patterns lit up across his skin.
Mo Hua now looked like a spiritual beast wearing human skin.
The Hand Taiyin Lung Meridian shone especially bright blue, a sign that the Life-Bound embryo was steadily becoming a true Life-Bound formation artifact.
This entire process was time-consuming and required extreme caution.
A single misstep could cause deviation, leaving flaws in the Golden Core.
But Mo Hua had already failed once before. With experience, everything progressed unusually smoothly.
Yet this familiar experience soon ended.
Because what followed differed from before.
First, Mo Hua’s divinity had been largely suppressed.
The failed core formation had shattered most of it.
The Huá clan’s Heart-Tugging, Emotion-Arousing, Desire-Falling Golden Needle still lay embedded in his Sea of Consciousness, sealing his fractured divinity while constantly stirring his seven emotions and six desires, preventing him from becoming the Divine-Shaman who once unified the Desolate wilderness.
This time, he could not form his core through divinity.
He could only rely on his humanity—on “Mo Hua” himself—as the foundation to break through and forge his Golden Core.
Thus, as his cultivation progressed, the outline of the core began to appear within his qi sea.
Without the infusion of divinity, this Golden Core was no longer radiant and pure like gold. Instead, it displayed mixed five-element colors, appearing rather ordinary.
But this matched Mo Hua’s spiritual root nature.
A minor five-element spiritual root normally produces a core like this.
Its grade was not high, at best intermediate-lower grade.
This was the true Golden Core of Mo Hua as a human.
Without divine augmentation, with mixed five elements and utter ordinariness, the form most common among wandering rogue cultivators.
In cultivation inheritance, spiritual roots determine cultivation methods and the upper limit of the Golden Core one can form.
The Golden Core is the first great watershed of cultivation, determining a cultivator’s future path and destiny.
Thus, the spiritual root one is born with determines one’s life.
But at this moment, Mo Hua intended to change that fate.
He would transcend spiritual root limitations through the Grand Formation of Transforming the Mortals into Dragons and alter his Fate Pattern.
He would form a different Golden Core.
…
Once the embryonic core formed and the five-element spiritual power circulated within it, Mo Hua forcibly activated the Taotie Twelve-Meridian Spiritual Skeleton Formation inside his body.
Its light surged.
Taotie patterns manifested across his body.
The spiritual power long nurtured within the Hand Taiyin Lung Meridian was forcibly extracted and reverse-infused into the embryonic Golden Core.
His core began to tremble violently.
With the additional influx of spiritual power, the core grew fuller and more vibrant.
This was the first step of “Transforming the Mortals into Dragons.”
If one’s innate spiritual root is poor, cultivation method low-grade, circulation cycles few, and spiritual power insufficient to form a high-grade core, then one installs a “spiritual skeleton,” refines it into a Life-Bound object, and uses it to supplement the spiritual power needed for core formation.
A Life-Bound spiritual skeleton is equivalent to one’s own meridians.
Its spiritual power is equivalent to one’s own cultivation power.
Core formation grade is determined by the total spiritual energy produced through one’s cultivation cycles.
Mo Hua’s roots were weak, his cycles few, his total spiritual power low, therefore he infused the spiritual power from his life-bound spiritual skeleton into the core, disguising it as power from his qi sea.
Thus, the first step of “cheating” was complete.
This was the heaven-defying nature of the life-bound spiritual skeleton:
Using its power to compensate for deficiencies in cultivation.
The effect was immediate.
Under this near-cheating method, additional power poured into the Golden Core.
Mo Hua’s core began to strengthen step by step.
Before long, its grade rose from intermediate-lower to intermediate-mid grade.
But the improvement was temporary.
The moment he relaxed and cut off the skeleton’s supply, the core’s quality instantly fell back.
Mo Hua remained calm.
This was expected.
A life-bound spiritual skeleton is not part of the orthodox system. Once its supply ceases, the grade drops because the power was “borrowed,” not self-generated, and cannot form a stable cycle.
Thus, a second step of “cheating” was required.
Within the Dragon Pool, he would use the Grand formation and True Dragon qi to lock the Golden Core.
This was why both righteous and demonic cultivators sought to form cores here.
Dragon Pool refinement not only tempers the core with True Dragon qi, it also locks the spiritual power within, preventing grade loss.
Dragon qi locks the core.
Mo Hua must first elevate the core using the skeleton’s power.
Then use True Dragon qi to lock it.
Only then could he forcibly raise its grade.
This was the original vision of the Great Wilderness sages.
A complete application of the Taotie devouring-assimilation principle in “Transforming the Mortals into Dragons.”
Their goal was to break the limits imposed by birth and allow every citizen, regardless of status, to form a Superior-grade Golden Core.
The Taotie Twelve-Meridian Spiritual Skeleton Formation.
The Transforming the Mortals into Dragons Formation.
And the other Four Sacred Absolute Formations of the Great Wilderness.
Even the Dragon Pool itself was part of the Grand formation.
The more Mo Hua contemplated it, the more shocked he became.
Yet locking the core with dragon qi was not simple, especially actively drawing and controlling it.
His situation was special; he might need to lock it more than once.
Other prodigies only needed a passive infusion once.
Mo Hua, however, was cheating to raise the grade.
He must grasp the Dragon Pool’s secrets, control part of the formation’s flow, intercept more dragon qi, and lock his core multiple times.
The difficulty was far greater.
Time was precious.
He had to unravel the Dragon Pool’s secrets quickly.
Mo Hua focused intensely, using his divine-sense computation to reverse-deduce the formation’s central meridians through the flow of dragon qi.
As time passed and he remained immersed within the Dragon Pool, his understanding deepened.
Soon he discovered:
The Transforming the Mortals into Dragons Formation was incomplete.
Large portions were unfinished and never truly operated in full.
Mo Hua felt both regret and inevitability.
The vision was too grand, the construction too difficult.
The sages of the Great Wilderness lacked the lifespan and resources to complete it.
Fortunately, they completed the core… the Dragon Pool.
Otherwise, if he wished to form his core and comprehend the mysteries of this formation, Mo Hua would not even have a place to begin.
Even so, the Dragon Pool’s secrets were far from simple.
Mo Hua frowned, then calmed his mind and continued using the Heavenly Secret Derivative Algorithm to deduce the formation’s structure.
After spending considerable time, he still could not calculate it.
At first he thought his computational power insufficient.
But repeated attempts yielded the same result.
The Dragon Pool was like a vast chaos, impossible to peer into.
Mo Hua’s brows knit tightly.
“Cannot be calculated…”
As time slipped away, anxiety crept into his heart.
At that moment, the various patterns on the stone stele surfaced again in his mind.
His past days in the Desolate Wilderness—when he neglected sleep and food, studying the Taotie laws day and night—also resurfaced, providing precious experience and reference.
He replayed the entire chain of laws in his mind and quickly realized where he had gone wrong.
These were ancient laws… not a practical formation.
One was metaphysical; the other, physical.
Their levels of derivation were entirely different.
Mo Hua abandoned outward form, focused his spirit, and sensed the flow of dragon qi within the Dragon Pool. Discarding appearances, he began deducing and comprehending the circulation of laws within.
Soon, within hazy perception, trajectories of laws appeared in his mind.
And these laws were not unfamiliar.
They were a variant of the Taotie law.
Taotie Devouring the Dragon…
In ancient times, the sages of the Great Wilderness comprehended Taotie’s laws and mastered its power. Only then could they dismember the true dragon’s corpse after slaying it, digesting, assimilating, and ultimately transforming the dragon’s power for their own use.
Matters involving laws were profound and mysterious; Mo Hua did not fully understand them.
But he grasped the overall framework.
Moreover, through extensive comprehension and practice, these Taotie laws had long been etched into him, becoming instinct.
Even his bones bore a Taotie formation.
Mo Hua himself was like a humanoid Taotie.
To the naked eye, the Dragon Pool was the immense and majestic remains of a dissected true dragon.
But when viewed through awakened divine sense, the entire dragon corpse could be seen being devoured everywhere by Taotie, digested and refined into a form of dragon qi diffused throughout the pool.
The Dragon Pool was, in truth, a Dao field of Taotie power.
The dragon was the form; Taotie was the essence and law.
Seated within the Dragon Pool, Mo Hua let his divine sense roam through an ocean of Taotie power, sensing its circulation and transformation.
Over time, his comprehension deepened.
Meanwhile, at the center of his forehead—upon the skin corresponding to his Sea of Consciousness—an ancient Taotie pattern faintly emerged.
As if the Taotie progenitor had branded him with its mark.
Yet Mo Hua, immersed in the ocean of Taotie, knew nothing of this.
He focused only on comprehending the laws, understanding the operational logic of the Dragon Pool, and grasping the core secret of Transforming the Mortals into Dragons.
After an unknown span of time, Mo Hua slowly opened his eyes and exhaled.
The surrounding dragon qi responded to his breath, flowing and surging in endless cycles.
In that hazy moment, as he inhaled and exhaled dragon qi, he carried a faint aura of Taotie Devouring the Dragon.
The circulation of dragon qi with his breathing meant his understanding of Taotie laws had risen to a new level.
To some extent, he could now manipulate the freely drifting dragon qi within the Dragon Pool.
He could finally attempt to upgrade the grade of his Golden Core.
Mo Hua inhaled deeply, closed his eyes, and after restoring some divine sense, actively mobilized true dragon qi through the Taotie power within the Dragon Pool.
At the same time, he accelerated his core formation.
The Spirit-Gathering Formation flashed, refining large quantities of spirit stones into spiritual energy and injecting them into his body.
The Taotie pattern on his body glowed blue, accelerating the extraction of spiritual power from his spiritual skeleton and channeling it into his Golden Core.
Within his qi sea, the Golden Core received massive infusion, and its grade began rapidly rising.
Soon, it rose from intermediate-lower grade to intermediate-middle grade.
When he cut off the spiritual skeleton’s supply, the grade immediately began to decline.
With a thought, Mo Hua drew in a strand of true dragon qi and manually locked his Golden Core.
Dragon qi entered the core like a golden dragon lock, completely stabilizing its state.
Its grade remained at intermediate-middle grade.
He resumed infusing power.
The core expanded slightly, its luster condensing, rising to intermediate-upper grade.
Again, he summoned dragon qi to lock the grade.
Intermediate-upper grade achieved.
He then drew upon the spiritual power of the Taotie Twelve-Meridian Spiritual-Skeleton Formation and poured it into the core.
The grade rose again.
His once calm heart began to pound.
He stared inward without blinking, barely daring to breathe.
The Golden Core grew steadily.
After an unknown time, it trembled with a hum, radiating brilliant light.
The five elemental colors grew vivid and lustrous, and powerful spiritual energy began circulating within.
A Superior-grade sign.
Though only lower-tier Superior grade, it had crossed the threshold.
Mo Hua immediately sealed it again with dragon qi, unable to hide his excitement.
“Superior-grade Golden Core!”
He had never imagined that with intermediate-lower grade spiritual roots, he could form such a core.
More exciting still, the Taotie spiritual skeleton formation retained considerable power.
This meant further advancement remained possible.
He steadied himself and continued pouring power in.
The core’s quality continued transforming.
Five-element power surged richly, no longer confined to the “minor five elements.”
Suppressing his excitement, he patiently infused energy.
After a long time, the five-element aura surged again.
Superior-middle grade.
He locked it once more and exhaled slowly.
Superior-middle…
And still, residual power remained within his life-bound spiritual skeleton formation.
The spiritual power within the Hand Taiyin Lung Meridian alone exceeded his expectations.
“And just one step more… to Superior-upper grade…”
Superior-upper grade…
Across the cultivation world, such perfection approached the level of the most supreme prodigies.
Now, that near-perfect Golden Core was only one step away.
Mo Hua felt uncontrollable tension; his body trembled slightly.
His divinity had shattered once, and the Huá clan’s golden needles had sealed it.
As a human, he could not maintain absolute divine calm.
He could only rely on his powerful Divine-Sense to forcibly suppress the excitement in his heart and the agitation of his body.
Once he calmed down, Mo Hua concentrated all his Divine-Sense and poured every remaining trace of spiritual power from the Taotie Spiritual-Skeleton Formation into his Golden Core in one surge.
For a moment, his Golden Core began to emit intense tremors.
Surging spiritual power formed an inward vortex, howling and circulating wildly within the Golden Core, attempting to break free from its restraints.
Yet every unruly strand of spiritual power was forcibly compressed inside the Golden Core by Mo Hua’s formidable Divine-Sense.
The spiritual power formed whirlpools, continuously crystallizing while simultaneously striking and tearing at the Golden Core, producing excruciating pain.
But to Mo Hua, this amounted to nothing.
Suppressing the pain, he forcefully restrained the chaotic spiritual power, stabilizing it within the Core according to his will.
As time passed, the fluctuations of the Golden Core grew increasingly intense.
At the same time, however, Mo Hua’s Golden Core grew larger, stronger, more radiant and perfectly rounded. Its spiritual power became increasingly abundant, and its luster more vivid.
The quality of the Minor Five Elements became fuller and fuller, even approaching perfection, step by step transforming toward the peak Great Five Elements quality.
The entire process consumed immeasurable patience and an immense amount of Divine-Sense.
Finally, accompanied by a clear cry that seemed to pierce the heavens… Mo Hua’s Golden Core trembled with a boom, ceased its struggle, and the spiritual power within it, like a tamed flood-dragon, gradually calmed and began to move in orderly circulation.
Within the Five-element hues of the Golden Core, there even appeared patterned lines representing perfection—gold, wood, water, fire, and earth.
These patterns seemed like laws born of heaven and earth themselves, filled with indescribable profundity.
Superior-upper Grade, Great Five Elements Golden Core!
Mo Hua trembled inwardly. Summoning the last of his Divine-Sense, he drew forth an immensely powerful strand of True Dragon qi and locked in his Core’s grade.
At this moment, Mo Hua’s Golden Core was fixed in rank.
Above his Golden Core, strands of dragon qi coiled like golden bands, firmly locking it in place.
Superior-upper Grade. Great Five Elements. True Dragon-Locked Golden Core.
For a moment, his heart surged like a raging tide. It nearly leapt from his chest, and his scalp tingled.
Then he suddenly realized, one final step remained.
Just one last step.
Mo Hua drew a deep breath and said in a low voice:
“Condense!”
He intended to completely refine this near-perfect Superior-upper grade, Great Five Elements True Dragon-Locked Golden Core and anchor it within his Qi Sea.
Only then would his Core Formation truly succeed, and he would become a Superior-upper grade, Golden Core great cultivator.
With a sharp motion, the Golden Core within his Qi Sea began to spin rapidly, spiritual power drawing inward as the final refinement commenced.
So long as the refinement succeeded, this Core Formation would be complete.
His core grade would be forever fixed.
A cultivator forms a Golden Core only once in a lifetime. The Golden Core determines a cultivator’s destiny. Once the core grade is set, it can never be changed.
Within the Qi Sea, the Golden Core spun rapidly. True qi transformed into dragons. The radiance of the Great Five Elements burst forth.
Everything proceeded smoothly. No one interfered.
The Heavenly Secret grandmasters also didn’t seem to be paying attention to Mo Hua as a “human,” and besides, he still had six straw dogs protecting him.
But at the very instant his Golden Core was about to complete its refinement…
An ancient, unfathomably powerful fluctuation suddenly spread through the void.
Mo Hua froze, then realized something. His expression changed drastically.
This fluctuation was not unfamiliar.
Amid such chaos, he had anticipated many possibilities and guarded against countless enemies.
But he had overlooked one thing:
The Heavenly Dao.
This was the aura of the Heavenly Dao.
Within Mo Hua’s Sea of Consciousness, a terrifying presence suddenly descended.
A pitch-black, unfathomable Heavenly Dao seal tore directly into his Sea of Consciousness, transforming into a bizarre barrier.
Nameless laws began to circulate within his Sea of Consciousness.
It seemed the Heavenly Dao had once again discovered this little “monster” that repeatedly challenged the laws of the Great Dao, cheating behind its back and attempting to defy heaven.
The Heavenly Dao began to correct itself and deliver punishment.
An infinite terror pressed down upon him. An irresistible force of law seeped into his Golden Core.
The newly formed Superior-upper grade, Great Five Elements True Dragon-Locked Golden Core suddenly seemed like a deflated ball, the spiritual power accumulated within it rapidly draining away.
At the same time, the perfect core grade he had just achieved began to decline…