Chapter 439 Seeing the Essence through Phenomena
How long does it take for a typical Golden Core cultivator, from deciding to break through the Nascent Soul realm to successfully doing so, without any external hindrance?
No one has specifically counted, but most people have a common sense: searching for the ‘Innate Yin-Yang Spiritual Root’ takes five to thirty years on average; after finding the ‘Innate Yin-Yang Spiritual Root’, adjusting the fluctuations of consciousness to match spiritual power, thoroughly cultivating the ‘Spiritual Consciousness’, takes five to ten years on average; after cultivating the ‘Spiritual Consciousness’, starting to practice the ‘Spiritual Arts’ and truly breaking through the Nascent Soul realm takes about five years.
In other words, it takes at least fifteen years!
Moreover, this is still under the circumstance where the cultivator’s talent and understanding are exceptional. If one’s talent and understanding are not up to standard, the time required to break through the Nascent Soul realm will be longer, with no upper limit, until the end of one’s lifespan.
Each step of breaking through the Nascent Soul realm is challenging, especially comprehending the enigmatic ‘Spiritual Consciousness’. If one cannot comprehend the truth, they can only regretfully stop at the Golden Core stage!
Because what the so-called predecessors who have merged their Nascent Soul cannot accurately describe is what the ‘Innate Yin-Yang Spiritual Root’ really is.
Only cultivators who have personally practiced can understand the difficulty.
It is also at this time that cultivators realize that the brain is even more important than spiritual roots.
If the spiritual roots are slightly lacking, spending an extra ten or twenty years, one can still keep up with progress. But if the brain doesn’t function well, unless one stumbles upon extraordinary luck and coincidentally finds a breakthrough, don’t even think about it.
Every person who steps onto the path of cultivation is highly ambitious, believing themselves to be different from ordinary people, and believing they can overcome numerous difficulties and forge a different path.
However, when they truly start practicing, they realize they are just like everyone else. Whether they can break through the Nascent Soul realm is still a question.
As for Su Hao, if someone knew Su Hao’s method of cultivating Spiritual Consciousness, they would definitely slap the “Nascent Soul Heart Method” onto Su Hao’s face and curse him out, “Get out of the cultivation circle! What you’re doing isn’t cultivation at all!”
Regardless of whether Su Hao is cultivating or not, the ultimate result is that Su Hao has found a method to obtain ‘Spiritual Consciousness’!
A method different from the cultivation steps of other cultivators.
The methods of other cultivators: Many predecessors happen to succeed, summarize the phenomena, and cultivators repeat the phenomena, constantly trying, and finally find a method that suits themselves.
Su Hao’s method: Perceiving the essence through phenomena, designing a plan based on the essence.
The difference between the two is clear.
Su Hao adjusted his body and mind, slowly entered the ‘Activator’ rune, wrapped his whole body in white light, sat cross-legged, his consciousness sank into his body, controlling a vast amount of spiritual power, to prevent it from going out of control.
The spiritual power became restless, just like his arm, and at the same time, the characteristics of spiritual power gradually underwent subtle changes, with a small number of high-energy bonds breaking and recombining, forming a new form.
After two hours, the white light pervading the array plate gradually dissipated, eventually disappearing without a trace.
Su Hao didn’t immediately stand up, but quietly waited for the moment when his entire spiritual power calmed down!
Whether he could succeed or not would be clear in a moment.
Ten minutes later, the spiritual power all over Su Hao’s body gradually quieted down, returning to its orderly operation as usual, surging incessantly under the strong beating of his heart, flowing back and forth throughout his body.
However, there was a subtle difference, and this subtle difference, manifested in Su Hao’s perception, was like the difference between heaven and earth!
Without needing radar perception, Su Hao could perceive any movement within a radius of three kilometers. Wherever his attention was, every subtle movement was all taken into his mind and automatically manifested.
It was just like seeing things with his eyes. Wherever the focus was, it was extremely clear, and he also had a powerful ability to capture special or moving objects!
From a subtle perspective, this perception far surpassed Su Hao’s radar perception.
Radar perception focused on perceiving blood energy within a large range, while everything else remained a blank, with zero insight into inanimate objects.
Only after obtaining Spiritual Consciousness could one vaguely perceive the surrounding terrain and topography, as well as the spiritual power within cultivators’ bodies, but that was all. He couldn’t achieve even finer perception. If it weren’t for Little Light’s help, he wouldn’t even be able to distinguish other sects’ libraries!
The newly acquired spiritual power possessed powerful subtle perception capabilities, unrestricted by whether it was biological or inanimate, nothing could escape under Spiritual Consciousness. It was as if an eye overlooking the earth had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, focusing wherever it looked, leaving nothing unseen.
Su Hao didn’t need to expend mental effort to distinguish. The scenes there automatically imprinted themselves clearly into his mind, exceptionally powerful.
It was similar in principle to the ‘acquisition’ and ‘analysis’ abilities of the “Prophetic People,” but much more powerful.
When spiritual power synchronized with Su Hao’s consciousness and transformed into ‘Spiritual Consciousness,’ it could be said that the spiritual power within Su Hao’s body now extended his mental power, and the two were as one.
One could imagine it as if his consciousness had loaded a power amplifier called ‘spiritual power,’ allowing his perception ability to undergo qualitative and quantitative transformations.
However, fundamentally, Su Hao’s consciousness had not been enhanced. Compared to the enhancement of Su Hao’s consciousness by ‘Heart Intent,’ ‘Mind Intent,’ and ‘Spiritual Consciousness,’ gaining ‘spiritual power’ didn’t make Su Hao too happy.
It was like a master swordsman getting a handgun, which might not necessarily make him very happy.
His sword could already kill people, and with the gun, he could still kill people. Even if it became more convenient, it was just icing on the cake. It would be more practical to give him the ability to stimulate Sword Qi.
“Just the Spiritual Consciousness is so powerful, what if it’s combined with the core runic symbols?”
After testing the perception ability of Spiritual Consciousness, Su Hao planned to try running the core perception runic symbols at full power to see if they would receive a corresponding enhancement.
Su Hao drew a strand of spiritual power and slowly passed it through the core runic symbols within his body, activating the core runic symbol ‘Perception’.
In an instant, Su Hao’s perception suddenly expanded to eighty thousand meters away. Everything within the range of eighty thousand meters, including mountains, rivers, strange rocks, and vegetation, was all imprinted in his mind, as if a large eyeball had grown in the sky, overlooking the earth, with the focus being clear and distinct!
At the same time, numerous colorful spiritual power manifestations appeared within the sect, with clear and distinct outlines. Su Hao could even distinguish everyone by their facial features.
“This is Yashan, he’s looking at the ‘Composite Collection’ rune I uploaded, mumbling something, probably praising my skills. This is Feng Cheng, scratching his head, probably doing homework, why does he look like he’s about to cry? This is Feng Yuer, huh, writing a diary! Unfortunately, I can’t see what she’s writing. Master Feng Ling, rarely seen practicing cultivation. This is Sister Feng Yan… she’s actually sleeping with a pile of dolls, so irresponsible…”
With such ability, it could be fully called a ‘low-grade version of the Heavenly Eye,’ with nothing escaping within its range.
After concluding his testing, Su Hao immediately summarized his new perception ability: “First, there’s no fundamental improvement in consciousness;
Second, neither the quality of spiritual power nor the strength of consciousness has been enhanced, so the perception range hasn’t increased and remains at eighty thousand meters;
Third, the subtle insight of Spiritual Consciousness, after being amplified by the core runic symbols, has expanded from three thousand meters to eighty thousand meters;
Fourth, but after the amplification, the insight is inevitably diluted, the larger the range, the more blurred it becomes, like comparing one million pixels to thirty million pixels;
Fifth, the perception insight position can be adjusted, improving the clarity of the corresponding positions.”
Don’t underestimate the ability. For Su Hao, this transformation of perception was a milestone improvement.
Combined with the Blink ability, Su Hao could even swing his sword in advance and then blink to the enemy’s side, beheading the enemy in an instant!
A small improvement in perception greatly enhanced maneuverability.
After summarizing, Su Hao opened his eyes, stood up, and took a deep breath.
“Practicing ‘Spiritual Consciousness’ is really not easy. It took me nearly twenty days! And if it weren’t for my wit, I would have continued practicing for another ten days with no effect, which would have infinitely extended the time!”
After thinking for a moment, Su Hao casually sent the experimental data to Yashan for reference, and then opened the information on ‘Nascent Soul Spiritual Arts’ to review.
“Now that Spiritual Consciousness has been cultivated, let’s first try practicing the Nascent Soul Spiritual Arts and reach the Nascent Soul realm as soon as possible!”
To truly reach the Nascent Soul realm, one still needed to use spiritual power to transform the body, allowing the body to undergo essential changes.
Then, extend lifespan by five hundred and four years!
