Xiang Shaoyun had heard the voice of the dominion’s will. The voice was very weak, as though it was going to be snuffed out at any moment.
“You are?” asked Xiang Shaoyun in confusion.
“I am the dominion’s guardian essence,” replied the planet. “The core of the dominion has been destroyed. Not even my essence can keep protecting it. Before I fully collapse and vanish, let me help increase your strength. Perhaps that will give more hope to you.”
“No, you need to provide strength to my master, or he will die!” said Xiang Shaoyun.
The world root essence was something anyone would dream of. After obtaining it, one would have the chance to enter the Reincarnation Realm. Very few people could resist this temptation.
“You have a much more suitable physique to accept it than your master,” said the dominion. “Even if I give him all my power, he will need some time to climb to the next realm. It’s different with you. You should be able to reach that realm faster.”
“I don’t need it. Stop wasting time and support my master with everything you have! I can grow by relying on myself!” said Xiang Shaoyun firmly. He was going to make his final gamble as well.
“Sigh. Fine, come over here. Even if you don’t want to absorb my power, this place can still accelerate your growth,” said the dominion with a sigh.
Xiang Shaoyun did not refuse its offer. He entered the core of the world, a place filled with a pure energy that resonated with the astral cosmos sea in his body. An urge to devour the energy around him rose within him, but he forcefully suppressed it.
“Even without the world root essence, I can still break through!” said Xiang Shaoyun to himself resolutely. He then shifted his gaze inside himself, looking at his final trump cards, the divine primal chaos lotus and divine discerning tree.
He had never planned to do anything to the two treasures, but the dominion was on the brink of destruction and his master was dying. If he did not take the final gamble now, both he and his master would probably die.
“Release all your power to me. I want to grow stronger!” commanded Xiang Shaoyun.
He did not have the patience to slowly negotiate with the two. He needed to break through as quickly as possible. The divine discerning tree had benefited greatly from staying in his astral cosmos sea. Due to the much slower passage of time there, it had grown into a towering tree. It had even bloomed with a new divine discerning flower. It wouldn’t take long before the flower grew into a fruit. The energy it had at its disposal was comparable to that of the divine primal chaos lotus.
The tree did not dare to disobey and immediately handed all its energy to Xiang Shaoyun. It was afraid that if it was any slower, Xiang Shaoyun would probably devour it in its entirety. In that case, it would cease to exist.
The lotus knew Xiang Shaoyun’s temper well, so it did not dare to try to negotiate either. Strand after strand of pure energy was released from the lotus, gathering with the energy released by the tree.
Circulating his energy in accordance with the Desolation mantra, Xiang Shaoyun rapidly absorbed the energy and grew his cultivation. The divine discerning tree released primal inception energy while the divine primal chaos lotus released primal chaos energy. Both energies were incomparably pure and capable of helping any cultivator’s cultivation grow massively.
However, for someone at Xiang Shaoyun’s level, further growth was extremely difficult. Fortunately, he had also absorbed the primal chaos lotus seed and a piece of divine essence to reach peak Eight Revolutions. After absorbing the energies provided by the two, he would be able to reach Nine Revolutions.
Nine translucent energy streams coiled around his body, pushing his strength to a terrifying level. During his breakthrough, he absorbed quite a lot of energy from the core. He did not do that voluntarily. Rather, it happened automatically. After entering the Nine Revolutions, his soul reached a sort of limit, as though it couldn’t grow any further no matter how he tried. That was the bottleneck to the Reincarnation Realm.
Xiang Shaoyun continued suppressing the energies provided by the lotus and the tree, slowly increasing his cultivation level. The tree was not as old as the lotus, so it had much less energy. After the two released almost 90 percent of their energies, they only managed to push Xiang Shaoyun to late Nine Revolutions.
It did not seem likely that he would be able to take another step forward. He grew anxious, using all the god-grade crystals and other treasures he had at the same time, trying to grow as much as he could.
“I don’t have enough energy! Not enough at all!” Xiang Shaoyun was getting desperate.
He raised his head and saw that his master was being attacked by two undefeatable experts at the same time and was taking a one-sided beating. It seemed like his master was going to die soon.
“Child, absorb my power,” the dominion’s voice rang out once again.
“No! There must be a way for me to break through!” refused Xiang Shaoyun as he flew away. Looking at the badly damaged dominion, he saw that the core of the world had shrunk significantly. The dominion looked to be in a terrible condition.
Xiang Shaoyun madly absorbed any energy he encountered, but he needed far more energy than he could gather. Thus, he flew to the cultivation zones of the various major organizations and harvested one divine vein after another, growing as much as he could. Alas, that was still not fast enough to his liking.
He thus transformed into his giant form and released his astral cosmos sea before pulling in all the surrounding energy, including the energy outside the dominion. He absorbed from other planets, from the sun, and from the moon, hoping to gather enough energy to smash through the final bottleneck.
However, growing one’s cultivation had always been a slow process. In fact, his current growth speed was already incredibly fast. It would be extremely hard for him to grow even faster.
Xiang Shaoyun then dove deep into the Devil Domain and absorbed all the devilish energy in its seven layers. The power in his devil pearl surged, but he still did not have enough energy.
The advance of each revolution required a massive amount of energy, and one needed even more to reach the Reincarnation Realm. One ought to know that people like Kong Pingfan and Baili Xiongshi had spent millions of years gathering energy yet were still stuck at a bottleneck. No matter how talented Xiang Shaoyun was, it seemed impossible for him to break through so rapidly.
At this time, Ge Yi’s body was blown apart yet again. His energy was waning, and he was not far from death.
“Kill!” Xiang Shaoyun threw all caution to the wind and flew outside the dominion.
