Deep within the subterranean chambers beneath the Ghost Market, the air was thick with the scent of burning spirit incense and raw dark Qi. Xiao Feng stood guard at the heavy stone door, his short blade drawn, maintaining a vigilant watch as the silence of the underground room grew uncomfortably heavy.
At the center of the chamber, Li Chen sat cross-legged atop a slab of cold obsidian. Suspended in the air before him, the Abyssal Heart Cauldron hovered steadily, its ancient, dark crimson runes pulsing like a beating heart.
Li Chen opened his hand, retrieving the seven-hundred-year-old Nether-Grass from his spatial ring. The plant radiated an eerie, translucent violet light, leaking a frigid mist that frosted the surrounding floor.
— A fine catalyst, — Li Chen whispered.
With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the Nether-Grass straight into the cauldron.
THUD!
The furnace lid slammed shut. Li Chen raised both hands, sending two dense streams of violet-black shadow flame directly into the base of the Abyssal Heart Cauldron. The temperature inside the chamber plummeted instantly, turning every breath into a plume of white frost. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Inside the furnace, the Nether-Grass resisted the dark flames, its ancient spiritual essence thrashing against the heat. But under the relentless compression of Li Chen’s soul force and the hungry appetite of the Dark Dan, the plant melted down, converting into a droplet of pure, obsidian liquid that floated within the furnace.
— Refine! — Li Chen shouted, his scarlet-violet eyes flashing with blinding light.
He reached into his Dantian, extracting the massive amount of refined energy he had absorbed from Master Blood-Fang’s shattered Golden Core and the fallen bandits. He forced the raw energy directly into the cauldron, blending it with the liquid Nether-Grass essence.
BOOM!
A violent tremor shook the entire underground chamber. Dense, violet-red smoke spewed from the cauldron's vents as a walnut-sized pill formed at its center—the Shadow Core Pill.
CRACK!
An explosive surge of abyssal power erupted inside Li Chen’s chest. His bones popped, and his newly opened meridians expanded to twice their former size. The Dark Dan at the center of his Dantian greedily consumed the pill’s essence, spinning at a terrifying speed as it began to condense, solidify, and transform.
The dark mist coiling around Li Chen turned into a solid, impenetrable cocoon of pure shadow, sealing him inside.
Xiao Feng watched in awe from the doorway as the pressure radiating from his master climbed exponentially, shattering the boundary between Realms.
The shadow cocoon cracked open with a blinding flash of violet light.
Li Chen stepped out from the abyss, his hair flowing with dark energy, his eyes burning like twin hellfires. The aura around him was no longer that of a mere Qi or Foundation cultivator—he had officially broken through, forming a true, unblemished Shadow Core.