You Scared Me, Young Man

"No!" Jing Yan was roaring in his heart.

"Break!" Jing Yan's entire being was focused on one thing: breaking through the shield.

At that moment, even if Jing Yan wanted to stop, he simply couldn't.

Once he stopped the flowing of the Arch of Heaven, his martial arts veins and vessels would probably be instantly destroyed. Even if he survived the process, he would become an ordinary person who could never step onto the path of martial arts ever again.

Of course, Jing Yan didn't even think about stopping. He was incredibly determined to break through.

Despite the pain spreading to every corner of his body, pain that was about to make him pass out.

Despite the fact that his skin was blotchy and flushed a deep crimson.

His resolution was unshakable.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Powerful Vital Qi was surging like giant ocean waves, rushing against the mountain-like shield.

Jing Yan was trying his best to stop the outrageous Vital Qi from getting out of control.

Under the continuous attack, the mountainous shield started to crumble.

Crack!

Eventually, a harsh shudder ran through Jing Yan's body.

Horrendously powerful Vital Qi suddenly pressed downward and swept in all directions.

The nearby furniture in the room, including his table, desk, and chairs, were all reduced to ashes by the Vital Qi. All that remained on the floor was a layer of fine wood powder.

Splash!

Jing Yan quickly pushed to his feet, long hair dancing in the air, eyes blazing bright red as if there were flames inside him.

A trace of blood was drying at the corner of his lips. A moment earlier, right before he broke through, Jing Yan had bitten his own lip.

"I did it! I broke through!"

"That was too close! If even the smallest thing had gone wrong, I would have exploded!" Jing Yan thought.

"The Soul Crystal..."

There's no trace of the Soul Crystal in his hand. He glanced around and found nothing.

The bed underneath and the furniture around him had all been turned into a fine powder.

"What the hell?"

"That might only have been a Low-ranking Soul Crystal, but the energy it contained was still extremely powerful. There's no way I could consume the whole thing like this, right?" Jing Yan furrowed his brows.

When he leveled from the Fourth to the Fifth Heaven, he had used the Soul Crystal once.

This time he used it to level from the Sixth to the Seventh Heaven, which was only his second use of the Soul Crystal. Yet now, it had disappeared entirely.

Although Jing Yan had never used a Soul Crystal before he received one from the Shadow Gale Wolf, he always knew that Soul Crystals had reservoirs of enormous power which should be far more than he could contain. Otherwise, the mighty warriors of the Precelestial and Enlightenment ranks wouldn't be so crazy about them.

There wasn't a single warrior in the Jing Clan that was at the Enlightenment rank. Martial arts practitioners at that rank were way above everything in the whole Lan Qu Province.

As he was thinking about this, Jing Yan finally noticed that Tian Shui, dressed in white as usual, had emerged from the Ring of the Universe and was standing not far from him.

"You scared me, young man! I almost had a heart attack earlier when I saw what you were doing," Tian Shui said in an exaggerated manner. He kept smacking his own chest as if he was trying to catch his breath.

Jing Yan's face instantly darkened.

"Seriously?" he thought. "This old guy's already dead, right? All that's left of him is that wisp of spirit. How could he be scared to death?"

"Jing Yan, you have no idea how dangerous that was for you! I thought you were about to blow up. Luckily you made it. Haha, I suppose that proves that I didn't pick the wrong guy. You are very, very determined. If it was some regular warrior, they'd be in tiny pieces right now."

"Of course, it's also because of the power of the Arch of Heaven. If you hadn't cultivated this powerful technique, even if you had veins made of iron, you would have blown up too," Tian Shui said, laughing.

Jing Yan remembered the sensations he had just experienced with crystal clarity. Even now, after he'd succeeded in the breakthrough, his martial arts veins and vessels still tingled with a burning sensation.

The dangers of breaking through weren't comprehensible to those who had never experienced them.

"The Soul Crystal's power was too overwhelming, and my rank is still too low. I absorbed too much energy at once." A little chill ran down Jing Yan's spine when he recalled what had just happened. To save time, he had tried to take in as much energy as possible, which turned out to be almost unbearable for his body.

"Yes. Soul Crystals are formed by the Yang energy Spiritual Beasts have absorbed from the sky and the earth, and that's why they are so powerful. On top of that, the Arch of Heaven is also incredibly strong. So… it's fortunate that the Arch of Heaven was powerful enough to help you survive and succeed in your breakthrough," Tian Shui said with a nod.

"You..." Jing Yan's face darkened even more. "Sir, since you knew this, how come you never told me?"

Jing Yan resisted the impulse to smack the old guy down to the ground.

He didn't know too much about the power of Soul Crystals. Besides the time when he used the Soul Crystal to level from the Fourth Heaven to the Fifth Heaven, he had never used a Soul Crystal before. Now that he had used one to break through the Seventh Heaven, Jing Yan was finally learning about their power.

But apparently, Tian Shui had known about this the whole time.

Tian Shui looked somewhat uncomfortable as Jing Yan confronted him.

"Jing Yan, what happened here... It really was my fault. But I didn't do it on purpose. I just forgot. Think about it: I've been sleeping inside the Ring of the Universe for so long, so it's difficult for me to remember all these little details. Besides, before I physically died, I was so, so, so strong. Using Soul Crystals wasn't a big deal to me. So I naturally overlooked something so trivial," Tian Shui tried to explain, embarrassed.

"Fine!" Jing Yan let out a long breath and tried to set aside his anger.

He figured Tian Shui really had forgotten. One thing he was certain of was that Tian Shui wouldn't do anything to harm him. But this one little mistake had almost gotten him killed.

"Sir, how do you think I consumed all the energy in the Soul Crystal so quickly at my rank?" Jing Yan changed the subject, unwilling to think about how close he had come to blowing himself up.

If he really had exploded, he would have been the laughingstock of Dong Lin City.

"Consumed it all?" Tian Shui rolled his eyes. "What do you think you are, an Enlightenment warrior? At your rank, what makes you think that you could consume a Soul Crystal so fast?"

The old man shook his head and continued. "Well, well. The energy in the Soul Crystal all went inside you, indeed. But most of the power hasn't been consumed. It's simply stashed away temporarily."

"Of course, the Arch of Heaven should take the credit. It sensed that your body wasn't able to handle that much energy, so it simply pressed that portion of the energy down inside your body for you so it wouldn't tear you apart," Tian Shui said very quickly.

After Tian Shui had explained it, Jing Yan understood what had happened. It all made sense now.

In fact, one Low-ranking Soul Crystal was enough for a powerful Precelestial warrior to go up a couple of levels. It would be impossible to consume an entire Soul Crystal's energy merely to rise from the Sixth Heaven to the Seventh. Even if his Vital Qi was a lot denser than other warriors at the same rank, there was no way he would require that much more energy to break through.