Vine House Space...
Shi Lei sat cross-legged on the ground, holding a handful of wild Spirit Rice, placing them into his mouth one by one...
"Crunch..."
"Spit..."
"Crunch..."
"Spit..."
"Crunch..."
...
Every time he swallowed a grain of spirit rice, Shi Lei would spit out a husk. Soon, a small mound of husks piled up on the ground...
So leisurely was he that he seemed to have completely forgotten his current predicament, looking more like someone casually snacking on melon seeds!
One really couldn't entirely blame Shi Lei, for the spiritual energy within this spirit rice was simply too abundant—not a whit inferior to the misty wood-type Spiritual Energy inside the house. Coupled with the fact that this was the first time Shi Lei had ever eaten such a spiritually rich plant, he naturally found himself unable to stop. It was simply too intoxicating!
Though he was eating them raw and chewing them hard, his cultivation had now reached the Qi Condensation Level 6 Peak. His sinews, bones, internal organs, flesh, skin, and teeth had all been thoroughly refined, so consuming these spirit rice grains raw posed no problem at all.
Previously, held back by his Blue Star mindset, he had been accustomed to cooked food and couldn't quite bend his thinking around it. Besides, spirit rice was scarce, so he had delayed eating it raw. But once he actually started, things quickly spiraled out of control. It wasn't until he had devoured every single grain of spirit rice that he opened his eyes, still craving more. Glancing down at his feet, he saw that small mountain of husks and stared in astonishment at the completely bare stalks in front of him!
"I—I actually ate them that fast? Th-this is way too addictive!" Only after spitting out the final husk did Shi Lei realize he had eaten every single grain of spirit rice he had cultivated!
Fortunately, the stalks of the spirit rice could still sprout and flower again, so there was no fear of them dying out. However, if he wanted to eat spirit rice again, he would likely have to wait for quite a while.
Right now, both Shi Lei's Dantian and his entire body were bloated with surging True Qi. Having carefully finished off every last grain of spirit rice, he immediately plunged into this state, which made him extremely uncomfortable.
"Sigh, looks like eating too much isn't a good thing either!" Shi Lei patted his round little belly and smiled helplessly.
There was a reason why Shi Lei had swallowed all the spirit rice at once.
He had intended to use the dense spiritual energy within the spirit rice to make another attempt at breaking through the Qi Condensation Mid-stage bottleneck.
The reason he had been so careful with each grain earlier was to prevent the spiritual energy from dissipating and going to waste, striving to make the most of every single one so nothing was lost.
Although the spiritual energy was swelling fiercely through the meridians all over his body, he gritted his teeth and stubbornly pressed on.
As the Changchun Formula spun rapidly, sweat poured from every pore of Shi Lei's body, making him look just like a drowning victim freshly hauled from the water. Meanwhile, the True Qi inside raged ceaselessly, charging like wild horses broken free from their reins...
Within moments, he felt as though he was about to collapse from exhaustion. Fortunately, his Divine Soul now seemed much stronger than before; despite looking utterly battered, his consciousness remained exceptionally clear...
Sure enough, before long, he managed to rein in the riotous True Qi within his body, guiding the True Qi from his Dantian and all his meridians to converge into a single torrent as it relentlessly battered against that Qi Condensation Mid-stage bottleneck...
As time slowly passed, the spiritual energy and True Qi within his body gradually grew calm.
Shi Lei looked down at the still-wet sweat stains all over his body, could not help offering a wry smile, and muttered to himself,
"Sigh, it failed after all. It seems it still won't work. It looks like natural talent really is an issue, but... at least these meridians have widened quite a bit..."
...
Shi Lei lived his arduous life inside the Vine House, and in the blink of an eye, over a month slipped by...
The medicinal herbs inside the room were constantly plucked, only for new tender shoots to sprout in their place, and the spirit rice had ripened through several batches...
However, aside from the herbs, Shi Lei did not rush to devour all the spirit rice this time, choosing instead to quietly stockpile it.
Although his previous breakthrough attempt had failed, after summing up his experience, Shi Lei was no longer as anxious as before.
For he had grasped a simple truth:
Haste makes waste.
Just like the spirit rice stalks growing in the room, although they absorbed the wood-type Spiritual Energy and grew at a miraculous speed, they still could not be forced to grow taller by pulling on them—they needed time.
During this period, everything remained as usual...
The cyclical waves of wood-type Spiritual Energy inside the Vine House remained extremely sparse.
Until this particular day, when the spiritual mist manifested once more, its concentration unexpectedly returned to its initial peak!
This left Shi Lei utterly shocked. It had been quite a long time since the spiritual mist had been this dense.
He had originally assumed it was because he had absorbed the local spiritual energy during his cultivation breakthrough, which was why it had thinned out, but looking at it now, that apparently wasn't the reason.
Seeing nothing amiss inside the room, Shi Lei cautiously pressed himself against the vine wall to observe the situation outside.
What he saw outside, however, left him somewhat dumbfounded.
That Demon Python was still coiled in the center of its nest, appearing not to have shifted an inch.
Yet, in Shi Lei's field of vision, it was now reduced to a blurry silhouette. The entire serpent nest was shrouded in thick, swirling fog, the source of which seemed to stem from the Demon Python itself.
Though deeply bewildered and unable to fathom what scheme the Demon Python was up to...
Shi Lei checked the misty spiritual energy inside the room and sensed no anomalies, which finally set his mind at ease.
He had no time to worry about the Demon Python outside anyway, because the wood-type Spiritual Energy within the room had now reached an unprecedented level of concentration!
With such a superb cultivation environment and such a prime opportunity for a breakthrough, Shi Lei naturally refused to miss it!
He knew all too well the immense benefits such a high concentration of spiritual mist offered to his cultivation.
He sat cross-legged on the ground, calming his mind and concentrating his spirit, completely motionless as he guarded his Spiritual Platform and began to circulate his technique:
Changchun Formula,
Open...
As Shi Lei increased the speed and power of his internal circulation, this time, sure enough, he faintly touched the bottleneck of the Qi Condensation Mid-stage!
As time ticked away, sweat once again drenched Shi Lei from head to toe. However, because of his numerous previous attempts, the storage capacity and flow volume between his Dantian and heart meridians had expanded significantly compared to before.
This time, right from the very start, he kept the True Qi under firm control, guiding it step by step to endlessly batter against the Qi Condensation Mid-stage bottleneck within him...
He could already feel the bottleneck loosening, a realization that brought a faint trace of joy to his heart.
Yet no sooner had joy bloomed than Shi Lei's brows furrowed tightly once again.
"No, it's still a bit lacking. No, still a bit lacking. Just a little more, just a little more..." Shi Lei chanted anxiously in his mind.
He discovered that although the Qi Condensation Mid-stage bottleneck inside him had indeed loosened, it still fell short of what was needed...
"What to do? What to do? That's right!"
Anxious, a sudden thought flashed through his mind, and he remembered the spirit rice grains he had accumulated over the days.
Since the timing was so rare, Shi Lei was terrified of missing it again. Who knew where else he could ever find such a peerless opportunity for a breakthrough!
Without hesitation, Shi Lei frantically stuffed the spirit rice grains into his mouth. This time, he didn't even bother spitting out the husks one by one; he simply chewed them desperately and swallowed them hard. The process was agonizingly difficult, but he couldn't afford to care about that now—he had to race against time!
Because the spiritual mist might never be this dense again next time!
"Just give me a little more power, yes, just a bit more power, just a little more, just a tiny bit more..."
Shi Lei chewed frantically in his mouth, silently cheering himself on in his heart. He could feel the True Qi within his body rising to a brand-new height!
He carefully controlled and guided this dense, robust torrent of True Qi...
It had finally reached the edge of a breakthrough...
At last, the surge of True Qi lunged straight toward the loosened bottleneck, unstoppable and unwavering...
"Pop~"
"Boom..."
A strange sound suddenly echoed from somewhere within Shi Lei's body, and immediately afterward, wave after wave of joyous, explosive ringing reverberated through his entire being...
Qi Refinement 7th Layer!
He had finally become a Qi Refinement Late-stage Cultivator!