Firmament Sword

The path ahead came to an end. The miners who had been forced to come here hadn’t worked for long before the various powers converged on this place. The veteran soldier Hong Fugui, who had started the protest, was taken under the protection of the Celestial Cauldron Sect and the Jade Balance Sect. The rest of the miners, naturally, all scattered.

Therefore, compared to the immeasurably vast Spirit Stone Vein, the amount of Spirit Stones that had been excavated wasn’t even a drop in the ocean. As a result, Xu Luo was currently only a few dozen meters below the surface.

Xu Luo focused his mind, calmed his breath, and sat down cross-legged. In his Dantian, the Tianquan and Phecda Star Souls began to throb with increasing violence, almost reaching an uncontrollable state.

The Shadow Shaking Heart Method began to circulate on its own, and the two Star Souls in his Dantian gradually settled down.

Xu Luo took a deep breath, extended his hands, and pressed them against the rock wall before him. Spirit Stones, large and small, were embedded within it.

Xu Luo unfurled his Divine Sense, condensing it into a single thread that he sent deep into the cavern wall. Immediately, a world brimming with Spiritual Qi unfolded within his Sea of Spiritual Consciousness!

The Spiritual Qi his Divine Sense perceived was like the boundless starry sky overhead—infinite, vast, and majestic!

The Tianquan and Phecda Star Souls in his Dantian abruptly erupted with an incredibly powerful energy, which surged through Xu Luo’s hands and violently poured into the cavern wall.

RUMBLE!

The entire Spirit Stone Vein gave a sudden, slight tremor.

The sensation was like a fierce tiger pouncing into a flock of sheep, causing an instant panic!

This immeasurably vast Spirit Stone Vein had existed here for countless years, to the point that it had even developed a degree of spiritual awareness!

When the energy of the Tianquan and Phecda Star Souls poured into it, the Spirit Stone Vein seemed to instinctively sense a threat...

But no matter how strong a sheep was, or how sharp its horns, it could never be a match for a tiger!

Ten thousand sheep... are no match for a single tiger!

That was the situation now. The auras of Tianquan and Phecda flowed like quicksilver, spreading from the cavern wall before Xu Luo and permeating deep into the entire Spirit Stone Vein.

Immediately after, Xu Luo felt a vast ocean of energy surging toward him, instantly filling every meridian in his body!

”Hiss!”

A powerful surge of energy flooded his meridians, nearly bursting them apart!

If it weren’t for the Shadow Shaking Heart Method circulating frantically to guide this energy into the Tianquan and Phecda Star Souls in his Dantian, Xu Luo would have undoubtedly been blown to pieces in that very instant!

As if finding Xu Luo’s meridians too narrow, the Phecda and Tianquan Star Souls both released a vast power and began to remodel them!

The Kaiyang Star Soul awakened in that same instant, coordinating with the Phecda and Tianquan Star Souls to once again widen and reconstruct Xu Luo’s meridians.

This kind of opportunity... was something any Martial Artist would dream of. But for Xu Luo right now, all he wanted to say was, ’Can’t you be a little gentler?’

The pain was unimaginable to anyone who hadn’t experienced it firsthand. Even though Xu Luo had been through countless life-and-death situations in the mysterious starry sky, he now felt that death would be a welcome release!

Normally, just being pricked by a sewing needle hurts. A prick on the finger... hurts even more. As the saying goes, the fingers are connected to the heart; the sharp, sudden pain of a needle on a fingertip is enough to make a person cry out.

And the pain Xu Luo was experiencing now was a hundred... no, a thousand times more intense!

Even a man of Xu Luo’s immense willpower found it nearly unbearable and felt the urge to cry out in agony.

But this place was too close to the surface!

Never mind making a sound—even the slightest leak of his aura would be detected!

If the Tianquan and Phecda Star Souls hadn’t been absorbing energy from the Spirit Stone Vein, it wouldn’t be so bad. At worst, he could have just fled. But as things stood, Xu Luo couldn’t even control his own body!

The Shaking Light Star Soul in his Dantian burst forth with an intense light, forming an energy shield that enveloped Xu Luo’s body and prevented even the slightest trace of his aura from escaping.

Meanwhile, the Jade Balance Star Soul continuously emitted a gentle aura, neutralizing the pain caused by the Phecda, Tianquan, and Kaiyang Star Souls as they widened and remodeled his meridians.

Xu Luo felt as if his body was being viciously torn to shreds, reassembled, then torn to shreds all over again!

Through this endless cycle, he could clearly feel the amount of energy flowing through his meridians and into his body steadily increasing. It soon doubled from the initial amount!

Then... three times... four times... ten times... twenty times!

Until finally, the rate of energy absorption was a hundred times what it had been at the start!

The three Star Souls’ reconstruction of his meridians finally ceased!

’Am I still alive?’ His mind finally had enough strength to form a thought, and that was the very first one.

During that process, he felt as if he had already died many times over.

’You guys... are so ruthless!’ Xu Luo’s spirit was utterly exhausted, and he grumbled in his mind.

A vast, boundless energy continuously poured into the Phecda and Tianquan Star Souls in his Dantian. The two Star Souls were like a pair of unfathomable, bottomless pits, absorbing everything that came their way without a moment’s rest.

Not only that, but even the three previously awakened Star Souls—Shaking Light, Kaiyang, and Jade Balance—began absorbing this energy as well. While the amount couldn’t compare to that of Tianquan and Phecda, the volume they took in was still astonishing!

As Xu Luo felt the changes in his meridians, a look of delight finally spread across his face. He felt that his agonizing torment had not been for nothing.

His meridians had become ridiculously wide!

Generally speaking, the meridians in the human body are invisible and intangible. Many ordinary people even believe they don’t exist at all!

Only Cultivators can perceive their tangible existence, but they are so minuscule that even magnified thousands of times, they would still be invisible to the naked eye.

Therefore, not even a great expert at the Sword Saint Realm would dare to claim that their meridians were exceptionally wide.

But Xu Luo’s meridians, after their reconstruction, would be clearly visible to the naked eye if magnified a thousandfold!

To make an analogy, if the meridians of a truly mighty expert at the Sword Saint Realm were a creek, then Xu Luo’s meridians were a raging, torrential river!

The difference was that massive!

Xu Luo didn’t know if there was another person in the world like him, but he could easily imagine that even the meridians of the most powerful Saint of legend might not compare to his own!

Xu Luo’s joy was indescribable. Feeling the vast energy flowing through his body and into his five Star Souls, he wondered, ’If all this energy was for me, could I break through to the Sword Saint Realm... or even a higher realm in one go?’

Thinking of his realm, Xu Luo was suddenly shocked to discover that his strength had risen again along with the widening and remodeling of his meridians!

The Ninth Heaven of Transformation Realm!

His strength... had unknowingly broken through to the Ninth Heaven of Transformation Realm!

’Is... is this your way of compensating me for the pain?’ Xu Luo’s mouth twitched as he grumbled inwardly. ’Well then, let’s do it again... get me to the Sword Saint Realm!’

In less than two hours, he had jumped from the Sixth Layer of Transformation Realm straight to the Ninth Heaven of Transformation Realm. A breakthrough speed like that was probably unheard of anywhere in the world.

Xu Luo extended his Divine Sense to probe the vast Spirit Stone Vein and was shocked to discover that in less than two hours, a full third of the entire vein had already been devoured!

And yet, the Phecda and Tianquan Star Souls in his Dantian showed no signs of stopping!

’This... At this rate, they’re going to suck the entire Spirit Stone Vein dry!’ Xu Luo’s jaw dropped. Before his breakthrough, his Divine Sense couldn’t even probe the full extent of the vein.

After his breakthrough, however, his Divine Sense could envelop the entire vein, and he could finally ’see’ just how massive it truly was!

It extended downwards from the wall in front of him for hundreds of miles!

Its deepest point was already beneath the vast ocean!

Xu Luo even sensed an extremely potent life force at the vein’s core. As his Divine Sense swept over it, his exhausted spirit was instantly revitalized.

’What is that? The core of the entire Spirit Stone Vein?’ Xu Luo wondered. At the same time, he was filled with utter admiration for the Star Souls in his Dantian.

’It’s quite funny,’ he thought. ’All those sects, big and small, are bickering and arguing themselves red in the face. They’re on the verge of a full-blown war over this vein... If they knew that the very thing they’re fighting for was about to be sucked dry in a single night... I wonder what expressions they would make?’

...

Not far from Xu Luo’s location, the Guardians from the various sects—mostly young disciples—were on watch. Right now, almost all of them were looking toward the mine pit with puzzled expressions.

”Was that just my imagination? I felt like the whole ground... trembled for a second.”

”I felt it too. And I have this strange feeling... I don’t know why, but I’m suddenly very nervous!”

”You feel it too? Same here. For a second, it felt like my heart was in a vise. I was terrified!”

”What’s going on? Is someone messing with the Spirit Stone Vein?”

”Could it be... that someone is secretly absorbing the energy from the vein?”

”Impossible! Don’t be ridiculous. The vein is just sitting there. Even if someone tried to absorb its energy, how much could they possibly take? Besides, while the vein might be a continuous line, it’s not one single, massive Spirit Stone. It’s all broken up. Who could possibly drain it all?”

The group of young disciples debated amongst themselves, but ultimately, they couldn’t reach a conclusion.

The mine pit was pitch-black and deathly silent, with no hint of movement. This put everyone’s mind at ease. They concluded that the momentary tremor was probably just an ’earth dragon turning over’—a minor quake from deep within the earth.

After all, they were near the ocean, so such things were fairly common.

These disciples from the various great sects would never have dreamed that right under their very noses, someone was about to suck the entire Spirit Stone Vein dry!