Cultivation is just so scientific! Chapter 1552: 822: Inner Demon (Part 2)
Previously on Cultivation is just so scientific!...
He bellowed out in rage, desperate to unleash his frustration, yet no outlet existed for his wrath, leaving it bottled up inside.
“I am a Great Power, I am a Great Power!” His gaze slowly reddened as he repeated the phrase under his breath.
The persistence of the thundercloud had turned into his fixation; beyond that fixation, his Dao heart had shattered completely.
Why do Half-step Great Powers choose seclusion? Beyond the fusion process with the Grotto Heaven that bars them from the outside, it's mainly because, in this early stage of merging with their Grotto Heaven, they face their weakest moment for emotional stability.
Staying isolated inside one's own Grotto Heaven, cut off from the outer realm, offers the optimal method to shield the temperament from disturbances, drawing from the vast experience gathered by cultivators across endless eras.
Facing the brink of death, Yang Xing's Dao heart ultimately crumbled, dragging him into heart demon turmoil.
The threat of heart demon incursion grows fiercer at elevated cultivation levels.
Under the heart demon's sway, his once pristine white Nascent Soul darkened to pitch black, with his awareness overtaken by the heart demon in that instant.
The blackened Nascent Soul burst from his form, diving straight into the thundercloud.
Even amid the heart demon's eruption, the single fixation still guided its behavior; the heart demon kept upholding the thundercloud's endurance.
Yet, swayed by the heart demon, the thundercloud's upkeep now drew from the heart demon's might instead of Spiritual Energy.
Li Shiming remained unaware of the chaos unfolding inside the Grotto Heaven; he noticed the pulled Spiritual Energy had dwindled to a mere trickle.
“Something is wrong, the rate at which Spiritual Energy is decreasing is too fast!” He furrowed his brow and remarked.
Before, a Half-step Great Power had been actively channeling their own Spiritual Power Pattern to bolster the thundercloud, and the reserves of Spiritual Power Pattern in a Half-step Great Power rivaled an ocean's depth; sustaining the thundercloud's form could endure for months on end.
Li Shiming had planned to draw out Spiritual Energy gradually over time; after all, once stability returned here, he could station a Late-stage Golden Corpse as guard and depart for his own pursuits.
Yet he hadn't anticipated the extraction process accelerating so wildly. How much time had passed, and the Grotto Heaven's Spiritual Energy was on the verge of depletion?
In truth, he had underestimated the scale of Yang Xing’s Half-step Great Power Grotto Heaven and overlooked the crisis Yang Xing confronted.
Through his interference, Yang Xing succumbed to the heart demon, and since the Grotto Heaven held no objects to destroy, even with the heart demon's birth, it found no release, allowing the heart demon to supplant Yang Xing and sustain the thundercloud through an alternate means.
After another couple of hours, Li Shiming, via the siphoned Spiritual Energy, verified that the Grotto Heaven's reserves were truly all but exhausted.
He grew intrigued by the Half-step Great Power's condition; inspecting a Half-step Great Power's status proved straightforward—simply dispatch a wisp of Divine Sense into the Grotto Heaven to observe the events within.
For an ordinary Great Cultivator, such an action carried immense peril.
Divine Sense forms a fragment of a Great Cultivator’s soul, and any assault on it inflicts a spiritual wound.
Nevertheless, Li Shiming possessed one hundred ninety-one brains, sparing the need for his primary one, and he held Spirit Pills capable of mending Great Cultivators' spiritual injuries; should one brain's soul suffer harm, it would only demand rest for that brain, rendering it temporarily inert.
With his curiosity mounting, he could no longer resist, deploying Divine Sense from a single brain to scan the Grotto Heaven.
“Ah!” The moment Divine Sense pierced the Grotto Heaven, it clashed with a dark fog, the Divine Sense swiftly eroded by the haze.
Swift withdrawal of the Divine Sense limited the damage incurred.
Still, the soul agony relayed from that brain forced an involuntary yelp from him.
“What is the situation?” Li Shiming replayed the Divine Sense's glimpses, his expression clouded in confusion.
If this Half-step Great Power hailed from the Demon Sect, the Grotto Heaven's spectacle might make sense.
But as a Half-step Great Power of the Yuqing Sect, how could the Grotto Heaven resemble a demonic lair?
“No, it’s a heart demon!” He swiftly dismissed his initial assumption, pinpointing the odd sensation from before.
This wasn't his initial brush with a heart demon; the long-dormant Venerable Huijing had fallen under his sway after a heart demon ordeal.
He instantly grasped the plight befalling the Half-step Great Power; evidently, his Spiritual Energy drain had triggered the Half-step Great Power's demonic instability.
A grin spread across his face, savoring the payback for a deep-seated grudge.
Such a loss of control for a Half-step Great Power proved astonishing.
Li Shiming pondered the heart demon; among cultivators, he ranked as the one least troubled or fearful of heart demons.
For he commanded a Heavenly Ghost, an exceptional Spiritual Pet, and the Heavenly Ghost served as the bane of heart demons, a fact proven in the past.
He called forth the Heavenly Ghost lodged in Great Cultivator Luo Pei’s form, though he paused before issuing commands to it.
Dispatching the Heavenly Ghost into the Grotto Heaven to purge the heart demon posed little risk if it truly was one.
But should it form a deliberate snare by the Half-step Great Power, the Heavenly Ghost would face grave peril.
Li Shiming reflected on the dark fog met by his Divine Sense upon entry, coupled with that soul-eroding feel, solidifying his assessment.
He directed the Heavenly Ghost into the Grotto Heaven, keeping a brain within the Heavenly Ghost’s form to guard against surprises and guide its maneuvers.
Upon the Heavenly Ghost's entry into the Grotto Heaven, it met a swirling cloud of dark fog.
Via the Heavenly Ghost’s senses, this dark fog stemmed from a heart demon, woven purely from malign sentiments.
The Heavenly Ghost plunged into the dark fog, which appeared utterly indifferent to its presence.
This reaction aligned with expectations, given the Heavenly Ghost’s exterior derived from Heavenly Demon hide, classifying it among the rarest and most elite of soul-bound entities.
Through the bond of his contract with the Heavenly Ghost, Li Shiming partook in its awareness.
He noted the Heavenly Ghost possessed a natural affinity for detecting heart demons, locating it right away inside the Grotto Heaven despite the dark fog's veil.
Just as the Heavenly Ghost prepared to lunge forward, Li Shiming commanded it to halt.
The Heavenly Ghost had fixated solely on the heart demon, ignoring surrounding details.
Yet Li Shiming sharply detected the Thunder Rules looming nearby, and via the shared insight from the Heavenly Ghost, understood this represented the lone Thunder Rules across the whole Grotto Heaven; no other rules lingered.
Propping up the full Grotto Heaven with a single rule suggested the initial phase of its development.
He failed to grasp that initially, numerous rules had thrived; regrettably, his aggressive Spiritual Energy pull had starved them out.
In that instant, Li Shiming recalled something else, how certain ancient texts described a Half-step Great Power’s Grotto Heaven crumbling upon their demise.
He could no longer detect the Half-step Great Power's vital signs, leaving only the heart demon behind. So why did the Grotto Heaven persist?
Furthermore, if the Thunder Rules vanished too, would the Grotto Heaven endure?
The bizarre display within the Grotto Heaven probably signaled an unprecedented event in the Cultivation World.
Half-step Great Power Yang Xing endured profound misfortune, assigned a sect duty amid his vital seclusion phase.
Stumbling into Li Shiming's blockade of the Grotto Heaven's outer links, plus a Formation siphoning its inner Spiritual Energy, Yang Xing ultimately yielded to demonic instability.
Once the heart demon arose from the demonic instability, Yang Xing’s final fixation centered on upholding the thundercloud, preserving the Thunder Rules' hold.
With the heart demon's emergence, absent any destructive focus, it yielded to the fixation, sustaining the thundercloud through its unique method.
As a spiritual entity, the heart demon fueled the thundercloud with spirit power; whether from the fixation's pull or some mysterious cause, the Thunder Rules gained true steadiness under the heart demon.
In this span, Yang Xing, as a Half-step Great Power, had truly perished, overtaken by the heart demon.
The Grotto Heaven, destined to dissolve with Yang Xing, astonishingly endured thanks to the heart demon's shared origin support, avoiding collapse with its host.