Assimilation

The Quantum Core pulsed rhythmically in Xiao Ning's dantian, its alien harmony both exhilarating and unsettling to him.

A Quantum Core…" he murmured, wiping crimson blood from his lips. "Not quite Asura Scripture's design, but better. Much better."

Although the Codex had intervened, the outcome was extraordinary, surpassing anything he had witnessed before.

"It's for the best. If it had simply been an Asura Core, I fear that releasing the suppression of the Paradox Meridians wouldn't raise my cultivation like it did in the past."

Xiao Ning's closed his eyes as he released the final layer of suppression on the Paradox Meridians. The floodgates opened, and his cultivation surged like a tsunami, tearing through the Core Formation Realm's barriers. The Quantum Core in his dantian pulsed violently, its fractured starlight surface rippling with gold and crimson. Within moments, he stood at the peak of the Core Formation Realm.

But he didn't stop there.

"Time to split the core," he thought to himself, channeling Asura Qi into the Quantum Core's alien structure.

The orb shuddered, resisting the division. Unlike traditional cultivators, who split their cores cleanly into nascent souls, Xiao Ning's Quantum Core defied convention. He forced the Asura Qi to spiral inward, prying apart the merged energies. With a deafening crack, the core split releasing an overwhelming amount of Asura qi.

Then felt it—a nascent flicker of consciousness, dark and primal, birthed from the Asura Qi.

The asure qi in his dantian begin to coalesce into a shadowy soul-form: the Asura Nascent Soul.

Finally the Asura Nascent Soul surged to life, its presence overwhelming. It thrashed against Xiao Ning's spiritual grasp, radiating primal fury. Yet he held firm, guiding his cultivation to the Nascent Soul Realm. The valley around him darkened as if eclipsed, and the Yin Qi coalesced into a storm around his body.

His aura steadily ascended to the Nascent Soul Realm.

Feeling the surge of power within him, he couldn't help but exclaim, "As expected of the Asura Scripture!"

He realized that with his newly advanced cultivation, he could now contend with those in the middle stage.

"Now, as for the original…"

He deactivated the Paradox Meridians entirely.

A blinding flash erupted from his dantian. When his vision cleared, his original Nascent Soul—a radiant golden figure—floated beside the Asura Nascent Soul. The two souls glared at each other, their opposing energies clashing like wildfire meeting ice.

Then, chaos.

The Asura Nascent Soul lunged, its claws raking at the golden soul. Xiao Ning's mind reeled as both souls destabilized, their forms flickering in and out of existence. "What in the—?!"

Xiao Ning's body convulsed, blood spraying from his lips as his meridians and body was on the verge of collapsing again.

Despite being in such a dangerous situation, But his attention snagged on something else: at the site where the Quantum Core had split, strange, flickering strand of energy lingered. It shimmered in and out of existence, neither gold nor crimson, but a prismatic haze—like a mirage woven from starlight and void.

Why didn't I notice this before?

The answer came unbidden: the strand existed in a quantum state, shifting between presence and absence. Only now, with the two nascent souls destabilizing, had its resonance become perceptible.

A reckless idea ignited in Xiao Ning's mind.

"Let's see what you are."

Acting on instinct, Xiao Ning plunged his awareness into the thread.

The world dissolved.

He found himself adrift in a void between his two nascent souls, his vision profoundly altered; he could perceive the events surrounding both nascent souls from a quantum perspective.

He realized that his current state was unusual. While he knew the Paradox Meridians would undoubtedly influence him, he hadn't fully grasped their effects until now.

Around his golden nascent soul, a halo of strange energy appeared, mirrored by a similar flickering halo surrounding his Asura nascent soul. The identical patterns between the two seemed to create this peculiar situation.

"If that's the case, then…"

Without hesitation, he grasped the thread and maneuvered it between the Asura and golden nascent souls like a sutra. The impact was immediate: the clashing energies came to a sudden halt.

[CODEX ALERT: QUANTUM FUSION INITIATED]

Xiao Ning didn't have the time to distract himself with the codex alert as the two souls suddenly began to merge, not as rivals, but as counterparts. The golden nascent soul's radiance seeped into the Asura soul's void, and the crimson flames tempered the gold's brilliance.

The void between the nascent souls rippled as the quantum thread passed through their cores. Xiao Ning's consciousness strained to comprehend the overlapping dimensions of energy—each soul now a blurred between gold and crimson, their halos merging into a single, shimmering aurora. The Codex's warning echoed in his mind, but he pressed forward, channeling every ounce of will into stabilizing the fusion.

Suddenly, the Asura Nascent Soul's primal fury and the golden soul's serene radiance began to resonate. Like celestial bodies aligning under an unseen force, their energies spiraled inward, compressing into a singularity at the heart of his dantian

A new nascent soul began to form, one that was neither purely gold nor crimson, but a breathtaking fusion of both. It pulsed with power, dwarfing the previous two in both presence and potential.

[QUANTUM FUSION COMPLETE: NASCENT SOUL RECONFIGURED]

The surrounding Yin Qi, previously whipped into a frenzy, now flowed towards the nascent soul with an almost reverent obedience.

[CODEX ALERT: QUANTUM NASCENT SOUL FORMED. RECALIBRATING…]

Information flooded his mind. The Codex, overwhelmed by this unprecedented development, struggled to categorize and analyze the newly formed soul.

His cultivation steadily rose, breaking through the early stages of the Nascent Soul Realm.

His aura gradually ascended, surpassing the middle stage and climbing higher still.

A wave of exhaustion washed over him, a consequence of pushing his body and soul to their absolute limits. Yet, a wide grin spread across his face.

Boom!

His cultivation shattered barriers once more, finally stabilizing at the late stage.

[CODEX UPDATE]

Host Designation→ Name

Soul Integrity: 40% →100%

→[The host has fully assimilated Li Fang's body and soul, transforming them into his own.]