Monstrous Cultivation Speed

Xue Yang started by closing his eyes, taking a deep breath through his nose, and letting it out of his mouth.

He did this a handful of times to calm his mind and body.

Once his mind and body were calm, he could start feeling the ambient energy radiating from the pool of blood beneath him.

It felt like tiny pricks and tickles all over his skin.

A frightening chill washed over him as he got more engrossed in feeling the energy.

He could feel the anger and resentment in the vast amounts of blood.

It felt like thousands of eyes were staring at him, radiating murderous intent.

If he came unprepared, he could have gotten frightened and hesitated, leading to numerous potential issues.

However, Xue Yang had a goal in mind, and a little resentment of the dead wouldn't stop him.

He would kill many more people and beasts in the future than the amount that was slaughtered to create this trial.

He might just give up if he couldn't handle something like this.

He steeled his mind and heart and continued.

He started by tuning with his body, sensing the blood flow and muscle movement as he breathed in and out.

Then, when he was ready, he began using his new cultivation technique.

He started sucking in the ambient qi that radiated from the pool through the pores of his skin.

Sucking the energy in, he controlled his technique. He guided it towards his dantian, entering the first stage of the qi gathering realm.

With this, he had officially become a cultivator.

Unlike expected, he didn't feel any different.

This was because of his unique physique.

An ordinary cultivator would feel a burst of energy as if they had ingested a bunch of caffeine.

Yet he was a vampire. Unless specific circumstances arose, he'd always be at peak energy.

"Let's ramp things up," He grinned.

Becoming a cultivator unlocked more of the potential of the Heaven Devouring Physique.

It allowed him to use a unique natural skill granted only to those who became vampires in this world.

The ability to control any and all blood. It did, however, have its limitations.

Xue Yang made sure to nerf them a bit to not make the vampires in this world too OP.

While he could freely control the blood of beasts and cultivators, he was limited only to the blood of the dead and those who were two entire cultivation realms below him.

If not for this nerf, Xue Yang could simply control the blood within anyone to instantly kill them.

With this, however, a vampire would still have to battle properly against opponents that are close in cultivation.

Blood started to rise from the pool and form a stream of blood that Xue Yang took into his mouth.

He could have simply continued to take in the ambient energy, but it would have taken him days to reach the next realm.

By taking in the blood directly, he could use his physique to refine the blood and qi held within it and make it his own.

While he wouldn't instantly leap realms, the cultivation speed was incomparable.

His cultivation started to skyrocket.

He jumped to the second level, then minutes later, the third, an hour later, the fourth and so on.

This continued until he reached the tenth level, also known as the peak.

This entire process took him a whole day.

If this had gotten out into the world, Xue Yang would be hailed as the genius above geniuses.

Each realm consisted of ten stages. The first stage was the base, and the tenth stage was the peak, which was a bit of a limbo between realms.

Reaching the tenth stage would mean that you have perfected your current cultivation realm and taken the first step into the next.

When he reached the tenth stage, Xue Yang hesitated momentarily.

What came next truly frightened him.

A heavenly tribulation would descend upon you when ascending to the next cultivation realm.

While they were mild and impossible to fail in the early stages, they would increase in difficulty exponentially.

Xue Yang was worried that he would fail in some way. 

Reading and watching something was entirely different to doing it yourself.

However, after that brief moment of hesitation, Xue Yang forgot all about it.

"I'm a fool." He scoffed at himself.

In the excitement of becoming a cultivator, he had almost forgotten about another thing that made his physique so overpowered.

It was the fact that the holder of the Heaven Devouring Physique and the vampires created through it didn't have to deal with heavenly tribulations.

Thanks to this, they could simply hop into the next realm as easily as breathing.

This was thanks to the fact that the owner of his physique and vampires were technically considered dead.

The heavenly tribulations only affected those alive under the heavens and fighting against the laws of nature.

It was a way for the world to protect itself from annihilation.

If millions of beings capable of destroying planets with a flick of a wrist existed, the world would have ceased to exist aeons ago.

Xue Yang continued ingesting the blood and circulating energy until he jumped over the hurdle three hours later.

"Haaa," Stopping himself, he exhaled sharply.

While the energy running rampant through his body wasn't something his healing factor couldn't handle, it was still painful.

He felt as if all his muscles and organs were pulverized.

Blood was flowing out of his nose, eyes, ears and mouth.

It was a ghastly sight that you might see in a horror movie, yet Xue Yang wasn't done yet.

Their body would have already exploded into a million pieces if it was anyone else.

Yet Xue Yang not only gathered the qi far faster than anyone attempting the trial possibly could.

He gathered it in a far more pure form.

He would have perished long ago without his healing and the blood continuously sating his bloodlust.

He stopped gathering the qi and instead decided to stabilise his cultivation base.

After the next few hours, he had officially reached the core formation realm.

Sensing his body, he could feel a small blood-red orb forming within his dantian.

It was still small and not entirely stable, yet the beginnings were there.

From here on, Xue Yang decided to ramp up his intake of blood and energy further.

In the first two stages, he started by also taking blood up through his nose.

Then he added his ears to the mix.

In doing so, he reached the fifth stage of core formation.

"Tsk."

"This is too slow."

Xue Yang felt energised yet exhausted.

The entire process took him another two days.

With each realm and each stage, the amount of qi needed to reach the next level increased exponentially.

Most people would take months, if not years, to have the same progress he was having.

Only those dubbed a genius would be able to cultivate faster than that.

Yet even their cultivation speed, considered monstrous to most, paled compared to what Xue Yang had just achieved.

Even though he was well aware of this, he still wanted it to be faster.

"I can't waste more time here."

Xue Yang made a promise to Li Qing and Lin Mei, and he intended to keep them at all costs.

Not only that, he also had to deal with the Yue family sooner or later.

The longer he put it off, the higher the odds of his heart demon increasing in power.

With those thoughts in mind, he decided to do something risky.