Chapter 63 - Mortal Grand-Apprentice

About three hours passed before Tian Longmeng woke up. He tried standing but a splitting headache brought him on his hands and knees. "I feel like throwing up."

"Well, I would not recommend it. You inhaled too much of the toxins and were incapacitated. I had to feed you the core so that it can neutralize the poison." Tian Longmeng turned his gaze to Yama Mengyuan who nonchalantly responded while inspecting one of the Rotting Wood Tree's roots.

He turned to the broken core shell. It was still dimly green with drops of liquid left, but apart from being a possible luxury bowl, it had no more use. "Ahh." He groaned as he grabbed his stomach. The liquid began rampaging in his stomach after noticing that he awoke.

Tian Longmeng's mouth opened to groan again but instead of a voice, a thin, green vapour escaped. He quickly closed his mouth with his hands. This was liquid that was nurtured in a spirit medicine. He could not afford to let anymore go to waste.

Tian Longmeng quickly moved into a meditative pose as he prepared to refine the liquid. Normally, this liquid would be supported with other powerful herbs and supporting medicine in order to make a really powerful Mortal Tier pill or even a lower grade Lower Tier pill.

Unfortunately, Tian Longmeng did not have that luck, so he will have to stick with this liquid alone for now. Eating more medicine was not an option either since he could not risk overloading himself and wasting the liquid.

Tian Longmeng felt his dantian heat up as he began to refine the liquid. The liquid also felt this and rampaged harder in his stomach but it did little work to shake Tian Longmeng. After all, compared to the blood tonic when he was breaking into the Bone Forging Stage, this was like a tickle.

However, he had to admit that the liquid was a little too boisterous for his liking. If it continued hitting the walls of his stomach then he would need to spend some energy to heal it. Luckily, thanks to the Organ Mending Stage, he suffered minimal damage.

Tian Longmeng activated his essence bones and strengthened his organs before flooding his stomach with essence. The liquid was caught off guard by this ambush and struggled to fight back.

Ultimately, the flood immobilized the liquid, allowing Tian Longmeng to quickly finish his refinement.

"Fu." He exhaled, finally done with the refinement and ready to commence a long awaited breakthrough. He was already at the brink of the Mortal Apprentice Realm and it would take a lot more before he reached past the Breaking Might Stage into the Astral Marrow Flowing Stage. The decision for him was obvious.

With his breath adjusted to the Ark breathing technique, he transferred all the refined essence from the liquid and pushed it into his dantian.

Following that, a tremendous amount of essence overflowed in response from his dantian to the rest of his body. Tian Longmeng was now firmly within the Mortal Grand-Apprentice Realm.

It took about an incense stick of time but to Tian Longmeng it felt like a moment.

He flex his arms, feeling the essence pump through his muscles powerfully. He sprang on his feet and jumped so enough to punch the ceiling. Tian Longmeng did not punch with full force though, otherwise the cave would have collapsed.

Landing on the ground, Tian Longmeng continued to check his body, noticing a couple things during that exercise. Firstly, this breakthrough increased his powers almost by half his original extent. Also, his essence was much more controllable.

This seemed to be the benefits of the Mortal Grand-Apprentice Realm. This placed Tian Longmeng's power somewhere on par with a Quazi-Earthen Realm cultivator without going all out. This fact alone made Tian Longmeng sound like a ridiculous monster.

"It seems like you are done breaking through. With that strength, I would recommend entering the core disciple ranks. I do not know why you decided not to though, you could have easily passed the top 100, especially with your organ mending. Well then, grab the other roots. I will be taking the bark and main roots." Yama Mengyuan hurried him along after she confirmed that he was finished.

Tian Longmeng stared at her leaving figure shocked by her words. How did she know about the body strengthening path enough to detect when he activated the Organ Mending Stage?

After fighting against and alongside her, he knew that she was very different from everyone else. Her manner of speech, albeit cheerful, was a bit more dignified than other nobles. Furthermore, no matter how hard he tried, he could not remember any noble families in Tang Fei City with the name Yama from the tablets in the library.

Everything about Yama Mengyuan seemed like a mystery but Tian Longmeng had too little information to work with so he picked up the remaining roots she left for him and followed her outside the cave.