23 - Black blood congealed ball (2)

'So that's how it is. I can't break through this fast due to the original low potential of my body. I have to find a way to let the bottleneck repair itself or repair it actively, or else I will lose my cultivation the moment I break through or even before that.

He finally realized that something truly was wrong. These cracks meant that someone was breaking through too fast, going beyond the limit of their potential. The bottleneck and the barrier it possessed would not be able to take the constant grind of Qi if the person's potential was not high enough, making it impossible to go past the limit of your potential even if you had extremely high talent.

These cracks were not common, but they were not ridiculously rare either. People knew that if these cracks appeared, you had to let the bottleneck repair itself even if it meant losing progress in breaking through it. This meant that they had to temporarily stop cultivating to allow it to heal.

Su Tao was not surprised at all. No matter how high his talent had become due to the eyes, his potential would not be increased so easily. In fact, the fact that he had not already had the bottleneck completely break meant that his potential had at least increased by a lot which he was already happy with.

He did not get annoyed because he simply didn't think of this earlier, because the eyes had had a major effect on every single thing about him, and he didn't think that would only barely effect his potential in comparison.

On top of that, it was only the black power from his heart that increased his potential, and that had only happened two weeks ago and he did not know much about it.

As such, he stopped cultivating and decided to find if there was a way to let the black blood in his body heal the bottleneck. After all, he felt like the black blood was likely the reason he was able to break through at all, as before he had it, he was not able to make any progress whatsoever on the bottleneck.

This black blood had merged with his body and was strengthening it. He could feel that his bones, muscles, and skin had gotten much stronger, and his strength was now about three hundred twenty pounds, which was seventy more pounds of strength than the peak of the third bronze star.

But at this point, the effect of the black blood had essentially stopped and it would no longer affect him anymore.

And his body's resistance was equivalent to those at the middle tier one star silver rank, which was why Su Xue was not able to break his grip around her neck even though she was higher in rank than him.

She was the number one talent of the Su family, but she was only at the low tier in terms of strength. That paired with the fact that she had a speed type inner energy made it so that she could not break his grip even though she could slightly move his arm and bruise it.

He felt that if this black blood in his body could increase the attributes of his body, why couldn't it increase his potential as well, which was also part of the body's constitution?

As such, he directed the black blood as best he could towards where he felt the existence of the bottleneck. At first, nothing happened, but then, he felt the cracks of the bottleneck. They weren't healing or cracking further, but he could feel them clearly.

It was different to before. Previously, he could sense the cracks and that they existed, but now, he could tell exactly what the cracks looked like and how they spread out. He then tried to use the black power contained in the blood to repair them.

Within moments, he could feel the cracks getting smaller, but he noticed a problem. Not only were the cracks repairing, but the barrier to the silver rank was also repairing.

It was a very slow process, but he could tell that almost all the progress that he had made would be lost by the time the cracks were repaired. He had heard that this was the outcome for some people, but he never thought he would be one of those people.

It was at this moment that he realized potential might be more difficult to increase than just what the black blood within his body was capable of. It was strong, but it was not that strong, and it was only now that he realized that.

He continued to repair the cracks, and he was annoyed when he found that it took a full week to repair them completely, as well as the fact that his progress had gone from thirty five percent to only about three and a half percent, one tenth of what it was before.

This meant that if he continued to cultivate like this, his speed would be about a twentieth of what he thought it would be (I don't feel like doing the math but you get the point. It's not important anyway). On top of that, it would severely limit the talent and potential that he would have in the future.

This meant that he had to cultivate slowly and not allow the bottleneck to crack at all, which would take a long long time. This was the restriction of potential, of which his body had almost none. It was already lucky that he could make as much progress as he did without already shattering the bottleneck, which showed that it had at least improved from before by a drastic amount.

As such, he started to slowly cultivate. He had already been in the forest for almost a month, and yet he had no plans to go back into the city.

He found that he was able to avoid cracks in the bottleneck with a speed of one tenth of a percent per day, which was one tenth of the previous speed, but he wouldn't complain.

One thing that he had gotten out of the trial of his left eye was patience. He had incredible patience, and he wouldn't complain even if it took twenty years to reach the silver rank.

He cultivated at this speed for another four weeks. But he had only reached less than six and a half percent of progress on breaking through

He felt that his cultivation was progressing smoothly, which was good. But he felt that it was too easy. He had to restrict the amount of Qi he summoned in order to not crack the bottleneck and break his source of cultivation, but it still seemed far too easy.

There was no challenge. He felt that he couldn't truly improve at all if there was no challenge. He previously trained several hours a day until his body couldn't take any more to make progress, but now, all he had to do was sit in a tree and make sure he doesn't get attacked by a beast.

There was almost no effort required at all, and it annoyed him. He had fought every step of the way to get to where he was now, but ever since the power of his eyes merged into him and that black blood appeared from his heart, it had been too easy. Everything had come to him on a silver platter.

His body was strengthened by the black blood, his talent had increased due to his eyes and he started to use it now, and there was nothing more to do.

Even though he was not actually getting any stronger, he felt that it was too easy to make progress, so he decided that he would train his body while he summoned Qi. After all, one didn't need to put all their attention into cultivating when they did, it's just that there was usually nothing else they needed to do during that time.

He was also getting bored and wanted to stretch a bit. As such, he got down from the tree where he was cultivating and went up to another tree before punching it with every ounce of strength that he had.

That punch was devastatingly strong, but it only left a faint imprint on the bark of the tree. These trees, like the beasts in this area, were especially strong. He could not damage the trees without using the power of the black blood or his eyes. As such, he used them to train his body while the Qi floated into him freely as he trained.

The Qi could slightly strengthen the body, but it was not effective enough to make a difference, making people avoid using Qi before the silver rank as it was useless and would only place a burden on the person cultivating with it and it would be faster to train normally anyway. But Su Tao had a stronger mind even if it had been shattered and put back together due to his eyes.

His ability to process information was much stronger than others, and was at the top even among those at the silver rank. As such, he could easily keep track of both his body's movements and the Qi he summoned at the same time.

He continued to train slowly like this for a while, and another five weeks passed by without him realizing. He had reached just below ten percent of breaking through to the silver rank. He had gotten physically stronger, but not by much. He had only gained ten pounds of strength even with the black blood and the healing of his left eye.

It seemed now that the only way to make any substantial progress other than slowly cultivating was to learn how to better control the black blood that came from his heart, or to fight life or death battles with beasts to ignite his potential.

He decided that he would try to figure out the power of his heart and the black blood it brought. This power had appeared when he balanced the chaos in the dimension of his eyes when the two eye powers merged.

After they had merged, however, this black power did not stay in the dimension of his eyes. It instantly spread through his body, and the black power congealed in his heart. Then, the two marbles in the dimension of his eyes separated from each other, no longer reacting due to having absolutely no power left.

As he tried to sense the black power and the black blood that was in his heart, he felt a weird connection to it. Although it was not originally part of his body, it was merging into him just like how his eyes had.

He could feel the existence of the congealed ball of black blood and power, and it was resting in his heart, merging with it. He found this weird. That black power had settled in his heart for one and a half months, yet it had still not merged with his heart? It could replenish the power of the black blood which merged into his body, yet it had not merged completely itself?

He could feel a connection to the weird black congealed blood ball, but it didn't merge with his heart. At least, not fully. It had merged about a quarter of the way, and it would strengthen the muscles in his heart by several times everywhere that it had merged.

As he tried to control the black power in the congealed black blood ball, he felt a weird tingling sensation spread through his body. Every bit of the black blood in his body tingled seemingly anxiously. But the black blood had merged into most of his body already and had strengthened it, meaning that his whole body tingled.

He instantly felt the black blood congealed ball respond within his heart, and it was extremely weird. It was as if it was alive, responding to the call of its owner. Su Tao could feel it bond a little bit more to his heart just based on him connecting with it. It seemed that he had to actively use the black blood congealed ball itself in order to bond with it.

Of course, it wasn't that simple. He could tell that it would be hard to merge fully with the black blood congealed blood, but he tried his absolute hardest anyway. He controlled the black blood congealed ball and tried to merge it into his heart the same way the black blood merged into his body.

Slowly, the black blood started to flow around his heart, but not the congealed blood ball that was the source of all the black blood in his body. He finally realized why it had not merged fully even after such a long time.

It was because the congealed ball of black blood was almost completely solid, and only the part that merged with his heart was moving, although he didn't understand how his heart was beating just fine with a solid object in it.

He continued to try to merge the congealed blood ball into his heart, and it worked, but it took a long time. It was a painfully slow process, and Su Tao figured it would take at least a few more weeks to fully merge the blood congealed ball into his heart.

After five more weeks, the black blood congealed ball had merged into his heart ninety nine and a half percent, and it was just about to be completely merged into his heart. As the merging came closer to completion, Su Tao started to feel that something about it might change once it was fully merged with his heart.

But he did not forget to cultivate during these five weeks, and he got to just below ten percent of the way to the silver rank. He was able to cultivate and merge the black blood congealed ball as well as physically train himself all at the same time, but only because his mind was sped up quite a bit to accommodate for the reaction speed of his eyes. But he found his limit as he was only barely able to do this.

Right now, pretty much his entire heart had merged with the black blood congealed ball, and it was much stronger. But even though the blood it merged with was black, the heart was still its normal red color, but he could not see this since he could only sense the existence of the blood, not its physical appearance. The only reason he knew it was black was because he could very very very faintly see it course through his veins when he activated the black tattoo and barrier.

A few hours later, he finally felt the black blood congealed ball completely merge with his heart.

Instantly, he felt a change come from the black blood which had merged with his heart. So far, the heart had been strengthened by the black blood congealed ball, and it was able to physically beat almost five times as hard and as fast as before, but it would remain at normal strength and speed unless he was exerting his body.

But now, he felt that everything about his heart changed. It was not an instant change, and he could feel that it was going to take another couple hours at the least to completely change, but he could tell that everything about his heart was going to change, and that it would be completely different to before, although he did not know in what way or how it would affect him.

It was a weird sensation, and it could only describe it as being stabbed by millions of infinitely small needles. It was not necessarily painful, but it was penetrating and went through every cell in his heart.

He felt no changes in the effect of the black blood; it was still strengthening his body - although it had basically stopped at this point - and the black blood still was able to make that weird black barrier and tattoo.

But the power of the heart itself increased, and he felt as if the recovery speed of the black blood had also increased. This meant that if he used all the black blood in his body before, he would take about a day or maybe two to recover all of it, but now, it would only take at most a day and a half to recover.

Another thing that he felt change was that he suddenly had the feeling of his senses towards auras being better, which was weird. He went and explored in the forest a little bit and came upon a beast. He could now sense that it was at the middle tier one star silver rank based on the aura alone.

He found this extremely weird since he should not be able to sense its aura at all, let alone what its strength was. He usually found out the strength of the beasts based on how physically strong they looked, and then he would fight them to test out their strength, but now he was able to tell how strong they were based off their aura, which was extremely weird.

Of course, he would not complain about this ability since it further allowed him to be able to judge other's strength, which gave him an advantage before the fight to prepare. Of course, he could obviously not sense the aura of something like a high or peak tier one star silver rank or a two star silver rank, but that was simply because they were just too strong as his strongest trait - his strength and resistance - were only barely comparable to a middle tier one star silver rank.

One's strength would automatically increase when one entered the silver rank, and they no longer had to train their body to get it to be stronger, which was why almost no one ever trained their bodies after the bronze rank.

The silver rank was split into three ranks, and these were the stars, the ranks of the martial path. But these three ranks were split into four tiers, the low tier, middle tier, high tier, and peak tier. Each breakthrough between the tiers was a qualitative increase in strength. It was not common for those at the low tier to beat a middle tier, and it was even less common for a middle tier to beat a high tier or a high tier to beat a peak tier.

Of course, this did not regard skill, just pure strength. Someone like Su Tao was able to get around this based on the fact that his reaction speed was much stronger than his opponents, making it extremely hard for them to get a hit on him unless they were just too fast. This was why he was able to barely beat those at the top of the low tier one star silver rank even though he had not stepped into the silver rank himself.

Of those black robed people, the icy man and the one he killed were at the top of the low tier, while the fiery man, the corrosive woman, and the disruptive woman were all at the middle tier with each stronger than the last, while the black robed woman he had killed in the arena with the defensive inner energy was only barely scraping by to be a high tier. This showed just how big the difference of their strength was.

They would gain about thirty five pounds of strength in each breakthrough, and that was the same for every tier of the one star silver rank. This was why Su Tao was only barely comparable to the middle tier silver rank in terms of strength and resistance.

Of course, if he used the black blood or the green power of his right eye, his strength was much stronger than that, but at this point in time, he decided to mark those powers forbidden unless it was absolutely necessary to use them since he wanted to have a killing card.

Most of the people who had seen him fight in the arena and kill the woman with the defensive type inner energy thought that this power was a one-time-use thing, so they did not expect he would be able to replicate it. Otherwise, he would just incorporate that into the power that others estimated him to have.

At this time, he did not know, but his heart had actually started to turn black. He also felt like his body seemed to become more compatible with the black blood, and they merged further. It did not strengthen his body any more or improve it in any way, but he felt that the black blood which had previously felt somewhat foreign in his body was now more compatible with him and in harmony with his body.

As time passed, his heart turned more and more black, and it seemed to become completely and totally black by the end of the process. At this point, his heart had completely changed, but he had no clue in what way. He could not see it, but his heart was completely black now, and it was much stronger than it was before.

On top of that, he had a weird feeling as if he could sense what the inside of his body looked like, but it was nowhere near strong enough for him to actually be able to see anything, and he simply thought that it was just a weird feeling of harmony with his body.

He had no clue how his heart had changed, and how much better it had merged with his body, but he could tell that its power had risen a tiny but imperceptible bit and that it seemed to flow around his body better. Both of those effects seemed to do nothing, but he felt that things were not as they seemed anyway, so he ignored it.

Little did he know that this change in his heart would save his life many times to come.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION BELOW, PLEASE READ.

Important author's note: for the purposes of it being easier for me to keep track of time in this novel, months of time will always be equal to exactly thirty days even though it is slightly unrealistic. But the year will still be 365 days just like normal. I am doing this to keep exact track of time so there's no inconsistencies later because that is a pet peeve of mine.

Yes, this does meant that I will be keeping track of time properly unlike some other authors or some that got lost in translation. I will also be keeping track of math and proper rates for certain things, making sure that they go at the proper speed.

Please put a comment on a paragraph that has any inconsistency in it so that I can fix it and I will fix it within 24-48 hours.

Also, some things I am changing as I write, meaning that what you read earlier might not entirely line up with what is being written in these chapters. Just know that this will only be happening for the first 30 or so chapters and will not happen later.

I think this is all for now, but I might add some things to this in future chapters, so if something is not in the author's thoughts box, know that it is important to the development of the story and something that you shouldn't ignore.