Difficulties

The Blood Surging realm was divided into three stages.

In the early stage, one's blood would start to change its colour from blood red to something else. In Tianlong's case, his blood started to change into silver colour.

Once he could turn his entire blood into silver, he would reach the middle stage of Blood Surging realm.

Sitting in his room, he was immersed in cultivation. His body hair and the horns on his head were all glowing with a piercing silver light. The blood veins on his body throbbed and seemed to possess life. It was a shocking sight to behold.

Finally, after a long period of cultivation, Tianlong took a deep breath and opened his eyes. He took a chunk of demonic beast flesh that was roasting over the fireplace and started eating it.

"With all the aquatic beast flesh I'm eating, my blood energy has been steadily increasing …However, it's still not enough for a breakthrough. I'll need a higher quality of blood and participate in intense combat to stimulate my potential. And here I am, spending my days working as a crazy doctor…" Tianlong sighed and shook his head.

After a moment of silence, he shifted his gaze to Han Mu who was sleeping peacefully on the table.

"His body barely has any blood energy to be of any use to me. Furthermore, I'll also need to use him for research."

Taking out a sharp knife, he tried to cut Han Mu's skin. Unfortunately, the skin was too hard for it to pass through. He had to infuse a lot of blood energy inside of it to make a significant cut. Even then it felt that he was cutting through metal instead of human skin.

"I can't work like this! I'll need a sharper weapon." Suddenly he thought of old Zhan's cleaver and its unusual sharpness.

It had been used to slay hundreds of humans and was used by him throughout his life. So even if it was not a magical treasure, it came pretty close.

After trying it out, he saw that the cleaver was perfect for cutting and slicing. He used to slice open Han Mu's chest and started taking observations. However, his actions with cleaver made him look more like a butcher than a researcher.

Han Mu whose soul he had wiped out, had already been turned into a living vegetable. This caused him to have an additional helper.

Sometimes he would possess Han Mu, sometimes old Zhan, sometimes even both of them at the same time. Compared to the first time he used possession, he felt less strain on his soul.

The soul was just like body muscles. The more one strained it, the stronger it would become after healing. Tianlong's possession exercise along with his subsequent breakthrough in the Qi condensation realm had immensely strengthened his soul. This stronger soul helped in splitting his consciousness better and for a longer time.

"The source of a body refiner's strength is their blood energy. The Blood Surging realm is to body refiners what Qi condensation realm is to Qi refiners. The latter stores their qi in their meridians while the former stores it into their blood and marrow."

Taking out a bunch of silver needles, he started to insert them into his spinal cord.

"The average person is born with 33 vertebral bones that interact and connect with each other forming the spine. By the time a person reaches adulthood, most have only 24 vertebrae because some vertebrae at the bottom end of the spine fuse together during growth and development."

The 24 needles entered the vertebrae and started to glow due to the blood energy.

Tianlong's eyes immediately became serious as he started to observe the Qi flow and its action with the bone marrows.

"Found it!" As he cross-referenced with himself, he immediately found the qi thread which connected his spine with the flower.

Looking at the different bones, he was easily able to find their location.

This time, not only was his range of research small but also had an additional helper. In only a few days, his work was complete he was able to trace 33 Qi threads that were absorbing his blood energy. Each of them was connected to his vertebral bones.

Surprisingly, each of these threads was much weaker than their Qi refining counterparts. His bloodline was resisting their pull. This was also the reason that his father hadn't discovered anything wrong with him.

"33 veins for the body, 33 veins for spiritual Qi, a total of 66 veins. …are there 33 veins that are connected to my soul too?" His mind trembled as he thought of this possibility.

To a cultivator, their soul was the most precious thing. If one lost their body, it was possible to possess another and start anew. But if their soul was wiped out, it was absolute death.

The sea of consciousness resided in the brain. It was a spiritual space where the soul resided and controlled the body. Its true nature was mystical and a very difficult concept for someone like him to understand.

With his spirit sense, he was unable to find any other traces of the qi threads.

"Maybe they aren't even there and would only manifest when I manage to reach Nascent soul realm." Sighing, he could only give up.

Over the week, he would try many other experiments on himself and the others.

In one of his many experiments, he drove a syringe near his heart and extracted a drop of heart blood. The heart blood was an elixir that was 40 times as precious as normal blood essence. Not only was it unique and very difficult to produce, but it was also vital for the functioning of the internal organs.

The only reason he had taken it out, was because he wanted to study how the flower affected his vicinity.

He looked at the group of small tied up beasts. Ignoring their roar, he grabbed one of them and injected the blood drop into its heart.

There was no immediate effect. He didn't get flustered and patiently waited.

One hour… two hours… three hours…

As time passed by, the body of the beast slowly started to lose its vitality. With every beat of his heart, its face would lose some colour and the blood would drain some of its vitality.

In just six hours, its body shrivelled up and it was completely dead. The surrounding beasts trembled in fear and let out whimpering noises.

"That… that's just a single drop of blood, yet it can kill an early rank one beast within just a few hours. If just a drop is like that, I can't even imagine what mom has been enduring for the past few years…

Tianlong was someone who was always calm and composed.

Growing up listening to his mother's devil path ideals, he was slowly turning just as cold as her. The warm front he displayed towards Qingxue was only for her.

But if there was something that could truly move his heart, it was his family.

As he saw the shrivelled up corpse, his heartbeat started to get faster.

He saw a vision of his mother slowly growing old and her body turning just like the corpse.

"No! I won't let anything happen to her!"

His experiments grew even crazier and brutal. Over the next week, he didn't leave his house and used various herbs in his possession to test their reaction.

He was able to find certain energy circulation techniques and spirit herbs that could suppress it.

However, it was just limited to suppression. No matter what he did, he couldn't cause any damage.

It was imperishable.

Even though he already knew the results, he felt helpless when they happened.

As he sat thinking about the various possibilities, his helplessness was soon replaced by calm determination.

"In life, difficulties are bound to come. One can either run away from them, live along with them or destroy them…

"But since I can't choose any of them, I'll need to make a fourth option …turn that difficulty into the solution!"

Taking out two stalks of Scattering thunder grass, he devoured them without hesitation.

Lightning element spiritual herbs were one of the rarest types of spirit herbs. Even scatter thunder grass, the most common of them would cost hundred spirit stones per stalk.

As the herb took its effect, a tremor ran through his body. All the hairs on his body stood on end as small electric sparks danced across them. Ignoring the numbness and pain, he started to refine the stalks.

Buzz!

The immemorial lightning dragon bloodline helped him in stabilizing their energy, otherwise, with his meagre cultivation, they would've fried his internal organs.

Circulating his qi in the set pattern he discovered, he directed the lightning qi towards his meridians and bone marrows. Immediately, he could feel the qi threads weaken.

He split his consciousness into three parts and possessed the body of Han Mu and old Zhan. With his increased spirit sense, he immediately invaded the 66 qi threads and made his way towards the flower vine.

As he neared it, he could feel that the flower had become stronger than before, it was growing along with his cultivation base.

But since he had found 66 roots from the vine, he could send much more of his spirit sense inside of it.

However, even with that, he wasn't able to reach the will of the flower.

His will simply couldn't contend.

However, in the end, he did not give up.

It was not because he knew he would eventually succeed but because, he simply didn't want to give up.

If there was one thing he knew, it was that lady luck always blessed those worked hard.