The ever-shifting crimson-and-gold barrier taunted Cha Ming as he pondered his dilemma. He had risked his life for his friends and even strangers, but for the first time, he might have to risk something he prized most: a bright future.

There were three possible outcomes if he chose to break through to core formation with an unstable foundation. The best-case scenario was that he succeeded but delayed his future cultivation, a small price to pay if the fate of the Song Kingdom was at stake. The worst case was him crippling his ability to cultivate by trying to advance prematurely. In between these two extremes, he could potentially damage his foundation. This wouldn't affect his strength in the long term but might require him to dissipate his cultivation and restart from scratch. Without the starting point for the Greater Five Elements cultivation technique, he was doomed to mediocre achievements in comparison, and without strength, his choices would be limited.

The small silhouette of a fox came to mind. First and foremost, he owed Huxian. Any limits on his life and power would ultimately limit Huxian. He then thought of the time where Wang Jun gave up ten years of his life to save the small fox. He still owed his friend a large favor for his sacrifice.

Then, he thought of Sun Wukong, whose remnant soul still slept in the Clear Sky Brush after protecting him from the heavenly tribulation. It was something he was ashamed to have forgotten; he only remembered it now during this rare moment of clarity.

"Even if I succeed in breaking through, I still might not be able to affect the overall situation," Cha Ming thought out loud. "Then again, Zhou Li wants me to give up. That must mean he believes I can affect his plans."

A funny thought occurred to Cha Ming. Hadn't he wanted these difficult decisions and the choices to begin with? He chuckled mentally at the thought of cowering away from the first one he was offered. If he couldn't even make this one, how would this life be any different than his previous one?

Katcha.

He felt a limit break, and power he didn't know existed surfaced and brightened the jade garment on his resplendent soul. His sudden insight had allowed him to break through to the early resplendent soul realm.

Cha Ming hesitated no longer. He immediately circulated his qi to achieve the best possible condition, despite his poor foundation. His qi pillars felt murky, and the countless bubbles that polluted them caused tiny vibrations to propagate as he forced out what little contamination he could.

Having made up his mind, he popped a mouthful of Pillar Expanding Pills, causing his pillars to grow once more. They creaked and groaned at the influx of impurities, which were swiftly diluted by the large amount of qi flushing through his system. Instead of the smooth growth he'd experienced before, the pillars grew in fits and bursts. He ignored this behavior and kept popping pills until he ran out of those at the appropriate grade. It wasn't long before his foundation reached a bottleneck and halted its growth. Any additional qi he absorbed polished the tarnished pillars and refilled his qi seas one final time before his breakthrough.

Once his qi reserves were completely replenished, he immediately proceeded to pop three Pillar Eruption Pills. His murky pillars destabilized, and a large amount of qi forced them to expand past the bottleneck. Instead of the clear sound of crashing glass, this breakthrough into peak foundation establishment sounded like metal scraping on a glass plate. His extremely turbid qi seas rushed into the already murky pillars, causing them to become opaque. Many different inconsistencies could now be found in their marvelous runic structure. They grew until his qi seas were completely depleted.

Finally, he took the last batch of Pillar Expanding Pills. One by one, they dissolved into viscous qi that dumped into the polluted cesspools that were now his qi seas. He forced the qi into his pillars, growing them little by little toward the invisible barrier in his Dantian. The pillars grew and grew before stopping just shy of the membrane.

Cha Ming frowned. "There's not enough energy to reach the limits of foundation establishment. What to do.."

It wasn't a surprising result. The pills Mo Tianshen had created were tailormade for ideal conditions. How could he possibly have expected Cha Ming to do something so reckless? After pondering for a moment, he recalled the five mid-grade energy-gathering formations he'd memorized.

Might as well try it out, Cha Ming thought.

He summoned seventy-two of the unaligned sigils Wang Bing had gifted him in Quicksilver. One by one, he painted five elemental sigils that he immediately condensed into Dao sigils. Creating seventy-two of them took him a full day. Then he took another day to paint a few of the necessary runes he required and incorporated them into the Dao sigils. After that, he used his 180 Dao sigils to summon five energy-gathering formations, one after another.

The five formations completed, he flicked out a pile of mid-grade spirit stones, which he rapidly converted to pure five-element energy and directly absorbed into his qi seas. As he expected, using five formations simultaneously was the only way to keep his qi in balance while cultivating. He mobilized the steady flow of energy to slowly grow each of his five pillars bit by bit. One day later, a loud thud ended his meditative trance. Just like that, he'd reached the peak of foundation establishment. The only way forward was to break through core formation.

Cha Ming took a deep breath and adjusted his condition. He reviewed the theory in his mind once more as he flushed out as many impurities as possible from his foundation and qi seas. While he didn't have the next step of the Greater Five Elements technique, he had casually browsed through other manuals at the Alabaster Group. Regardless of which cultivation method was being used, each one instructed the cultivator to "melt" their qi pillars. In doing so, they could combine each one into a solid core, which they would then repeatedly compress to one ninth of its original size. However, his pillars were sigil pillars—how could he possibly melt them? This would destroy their inherent runic structure, which was what granted him such potent qi in the foundation-establishment stage in the first place.

A day passed as he finished his final preparations. Much of the turbidity in his qi seas had faded. Due to the diminishing returns, Cha Ming proceeded to the first step in forming his core: assimilation. He forcibly absorbed the liquid qi in his Dantian into each of his five pillars. They struggled to take in the excess amount, but under his fierce willpower, they remained stable in the arduous process. Then he swallowed three core-formation pills, which not only provided him with great energy and resplendent force, but also slightly destabilized the firm structure of his qi pillars.

Cha Ming used this change of firmness to slightly modify the runic pillars. He increased their width to roughly double the original while slowly shrinking their length to a quarter of what they had been. He did this slowly, leaving enough time for the runes to shift. Meanwhile, the black-and-white lattice joining the pillars also adjusted. Its thickness doubled while its internal runes condensed into a more energy-efficient form.

It took a full day to fully adjust the runic structure. Cha Ming let out a sigh of relief.

The first part of my plan is a success. I did it before, so I can do it again. After checking his foundation once more, he slowly rotated the pillars, shifting them to the side while simultaneously adjusting the black-and-white lattice. It wasn't long before the five pillars were all pointed toward the center. He then started the next step—twisting his foundation.

Using the Dao sigils as his basis, he speculated that it was possible to compress his own foundation into a core in the very same way. As he shifted the pillars and brought them increasingly close together, he made sure to shift the black-and-white lattice while simultaneously thickening it. The originally cylindrical lattice now resembled five white slices of pie and a single black sphere in the center. As they shifted, they became two helixes, a large white one and a smaller black one. Cha Ming continuously shortened and thickened, shortened and thickened.

Soon, the diameter of his would-be core shrank down a quarter of the width of his Dantian, half of its original size. The originally smooth process became tiring and tedious, and every single compression caused great strain on Cha Ming's energy and soul. It wasn't long before Cha Ming realized that his foundation had run out of energy, despite his extremely energy-dense core-formation pills.

The development wasn't the least bit surprising to Cha Ming, who calmly threw out the hundred thousand high-grade spirit stones he hadn't lent to Wang Jun onto the five energy-gathering formations and slowly absorbed them. Three days passed, and slowly but surely, what was originally one half a Dantian in diameter became a quarter, then a fifth, then a tenth. After reaching a tenth, it still hadn't stabilized. This was expected, since Cha Ming's Dao sigils only occupied one tenth of their original size. Cha Ming continued. One tenth soon became a twelfth.

Suddenly, a creaking sound like metal on metal rang through his mind as the shifting runes hit a snag. He used his willpower to shove through the obstruction, and the compression continued. He hit another snag at one fifteenth, and another at one sixteenth. Cha Ming's expression turned grim as he realized what was happening: The instabilities due to the impurities in his pillars were making it difficult to shift their internal structure as he compressed. It was becoming increasingly difficult to proceed, and the process required more and more energy.

It took Cha Ming one day to go from one twelfth to one fifteenth, and one more day to go from one fifteenth to one seventeenth. It took three more days before he reached a bottleneck at one nineteenth.

Cha Ming's complexion was pale. When he had originally condensed his Dao sigils, they had snapped together smoothly like it was the only natural structure to begin with. But the runes in his Dantian were different—they were impure and difficult to shift.

Every single compression now caused great friction in the runic structure of his pseudo-core. He also realized that there was no retreating from the path he had chosen. Should he take away the pressure his resplendent force was exerting on his Dantian, it would quickly unwind, releasing the massive energy he'd absorbed into his Dantian and body. Death would be an ideal case.

Cha Ming pounded away at the spherical structure that had almost reached completion. Every blow of his resplendent force caused the pseudo-core to creak, while every surge of qi caused it to shudder. He watched as every spirit stone he possessed disappeared, one after another. Once these had vanished, he emptied out most of his liquified elemental essence. Fortunately, he only needed nine tenths of it before his core reached a saturated state.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

He continued to impact the pseudo-core with his resplendent force for an entire day. At this point, it had been almost nine days since he began his breakthrough. His mental strength was at its limits—even converting the last of his liquified elemental essence wouldn't help. It wasn't long before his blows weakened. Nine tenths, eight tenths, seven tenths.. The strikes weakened gradually until finally, he could barely use one hundredth of his original strength. Despite his exhausted state, he continued giving the pseudo-core one light tap after another. This continued for an hour until he gave it one last desperate blow.

He heard a soft click. The weak blow was the straw that broke the camel's back. Cha Ming's sigil foundation suddenly snapped into place, and the voids within were immediately filled by the sudden surge of energy that accompanied his breakthrough. The five energy-gathering formations shattered as the incoming energy overwhelmed them and directly entered his body. The energy was a gift of heaven and earth for breaking through the next level and wouldn't stop until his core was formed.

The voids in his core's runic structure rapidly filled with a gaseous qi that was completely different from the initial gaseous qi he'd condensed into liquid. Instead, it was a higher-quality core qi. In his joy, he hadn't realized that his core qi was four times more potent than the average core qi due to his sigil core. As the five-element qi was replenished, so was the peaceful creation-qi helix and the frightening destruction-qi helix. The gas remained within the black-and-white structures without causing a fuss.

Once the five-element qi, creation qi, and destruction-qi reservoirs were full, Cha Ming looked on with joy as the remaining voids on his core were filled with a grayish substance. It felt soothing and frightening at the same time, and when he probed it with his resplendent force, he detected nothing. Although he couldn't evaluate its function, his instincts told him that the gray substance stabilized the entire core and was what made it possible in the first place. In fact, it reminded him of the substance in the voids in his bones.

Gray qi filled the voids in his core little by little. Yet another day passed until finally, his core was fully saturated. At this point, Cha Ming's expression grew dark as he sensed a calamity approaching him. His core, which was now almost full, suddenly began to shake. The shaking emanated from each of the five elemental sigils that composed his Dao core. It intensified with each wisp of gray qi that entered it. As much as he wished to stop the absorption process, he couldn't. In fact, the rate of accumulation increased. Before long, it reached a peak that caused crunching and screeching throughout his body and soul. A large amount of stress had accumulated during its formation and had to be relieved.

Regrettably, Cha Ming's core had already entered the final polishing stage. While the inside of his core had a runic structure, the outside was becoming more and more like polished jade. The smooth surface contained five colors as well as black, white, and gray. The shaking increased until finally, something gave way. A heartrending snap shook him to the very core. The smooth surface of his core cracked, causing a large amount of the accumulated qi to suddenly dissipate. The cracks crossed each of the five colored surfaces.

Cha Ming waited as the remnant quakes in his core faded. Once they stabilized, he again began absorbing the energy of heaven and earth through normal cultivation. It entered the small core normally, but he sensed that one third of the qi he absorbed dissipated back into his surroundings. He sighed in relief as he concluded that he was in no danger of dying or being crippled. At worst, he could always dissipate his cultivation and start from scratch.

After completing his inspection, Cha Ming opened his eyes. His frightening core qi swept across the shifting red-and-gold barrier, which shattered instantly. He then walked forward, his powerful body and surging qi smashing any traps or enemies that stood in his way.

Not far away, many core-formation devil cultivators and corrupted guardians stood ready to receive him. Cha Ming ignored the swords, sabers, and magical techniques that flew toward him and expanded the Clear Sky Pillar to enormous proportions. His thick qi and powerful body absorbed the blows of dozens of techniques as he smashed into them with raw physical strength. The devils shrank back as his Devil-Sealing Intent ate away at their very souls.

Soon, the room was deathly quiet. Only the sound of gently settling dust and debris could be heard in the silent labyrinth. That, and a soft rumbling that grew louder and louder as Huxian's trio smashed their way toward Cha Ming's position.