Chapter 236 Breakthrough

After settling down in Qingzhou, Yang Yan did not rush to the Kunyang Gate to inquire about his father's past from Sun Tianyang. Instead, he chose to stay put, focusing on his cultivation while gathering information in the surrounding area.

The Kunyang Gate was exceptionally renowned within the borders of Qingzhou, making it quite simple to gather news about the sect.

Over the next few days, Yang Yan frequented various teahouses and restaurants, discreetly inquiring about the Kunyang Gate from others.

Regarding this dominant existence in the Qingzhou cultivation world, Yang Yan only received positive evaluations over the past few days, which simultaneously gave him a general understanding of the development of the Kunyang Gate.

The current master of the Kunyang Gate was Sun Tianyang, who was also the sworn brother of Yang Yan's biological father. He was the first master of the Kunyang Gate, meaning the sect was established entirely by his own hands.

Amidst the past events recounted by the people, Yang Yan also faintly caught wind of some news concerning his father.

It was said that before the establishment of the Kunyang Gate, although Sun Tianyang possessed some reputation in the Qingzhou cultivation world, it was far from reaching its current level. The reason he was ultimately able to sweep through all the cultivation sects in Qingzhou was precisely because of Yang Yan's father, Yang Yan.

Although Sun Tianyang was somewhat older than Yang Yan, when it came to his personal cultivation realm and influence in the cultivation world, there was still a noticeable gap compared to the former.

Yang Yan had achieved fame at a young age. Relying on his own cultivation and unique constitution and attributes, he had carved out a formidable reputation in the Jinzhou cultivation world when he was barely over twenty years old. However, his personal character was inclined toward pursuing the ultimate peak of martial arts. Although he was passionate about cultivation and constantly sought sparring partners for combat, he had very little interest in building his own faction.

This was precisely one of the reasons why he appeared rather helpless when he was later hunted down and ambushed, as he had always been a solitary figure, and his somewhat reclusive personality meant he had very few friends.

Although he had no interest in establishing any factions, Sun Tianyang, his sworn elder brother, was different.

Sun Tianyang had always been busy scheming to carve out a world of his own.

Yang Yan had always been warm-hearted, extremely straightforward in his actions, and poured his heart and soul into his sworn eldest brother. Therefore, upon hearing that Sun Tianyang wanted to form a new faction, he gave his full assistance.

Thus, under the powerful alliance of the two brothers, the factions in Qingzhou at the time were basically wiped out, and the Kunyang Gate was consequently established.

After the sect was founded, Sun Tianyang wanted Yang Yan to stay and help him develop the sect's power, but his ambition did not lie there; he was solely bent on pursuing the ultimate martial arts and the limits of immortality, and thus politely declined.

Sun Tianyang did not force the matter either. He knew his brother's stubborn personality all too well—he was as stubborn as an ox, and once he made up his mind about something, he rarely changed it for anything else.

And so the two brothers lived apart, one in Qingzhou and the other in Jinzhou. As Yang Yan settled down and started a family, especially after having a pair of children, interactions between the two became even fewer.

Yet, on the day he was hunted down by masked men, Yang Yan's very first thought was to seek help from the Kunyang Gate in Qingzhou.

At that time, he had been separated from his wife and daughter, fleeing alone to the vicinity of the Tongling Gorge with the infant Yang Yan still in swaddling clothes, only to be intercepted by ambush forces lying in wait. At the very last moment of his life, he exerted all his strength to send Yang Yan up to the mountain peak, after which Yang Yan was rescued by Zhang Tai, who happened to pass by.

However, ever since Yang Yan's incident, no news concerning him had ever come out of the Kunyang Gate.

It was precisely for this reason that Yang Yan maintained a skeptical attitude toward the matter. Previously, when he saw the blood-written letter left by his father, it mentioned that he had already used a secret technique to send a message notifying the Kunyang Gate to come to the rescue. Even if the rescue failed to arrive in time, the news of his father meeting with danger must have certainly reached the Kunyang Gate. Yet from that time until now, Yang Yan had never heard any news from the Kunyang Gate concerning the murder of his father.

Such circumstances inevitably forced him to harbor suspicions in his heart.

During these past few days of gathering information, Yang Yan spent all his remaining time on spiritual energy cultivation.

As for the cultivation of spiritual power, he temporarily put it aside. After all, there was still a long way to go before breaking through the realm of his soul power. Moreover, even with the vast and pure soul power he brought out from the Holy Spirit Tower, it was unrealistic to elevate his soul realm in a short period, because soul cultivation was far more arduous compared to spiritual energy cultivation.

What Yang Yan currently lacked was his combat capability, and in that case, primarily elevating his spiritual energy was the absolute path.

Therefore, during this period, Yang Yan had continuously absorbed the energy within the seal, and the feeling of an impending breakthrough was growing closer and closer.

Within the realm of the Spirit Communication stage, the further one progressed, the more difficult each layer's breakthrough became compared to the previous one. Of course, after each breakthrough, the increase in the spiritual energy within the body and the enhancement of one's own strength would be even stronger than before.

At present, Yang Yan was already at the peak of the fifth layer of the Spirit Communication stage.

Being merely a hair's breadth away from a breakthrough, he could feel that the turbulence of spiritual energy within his body over these past few days was even more intense than before—this was the feeling of an impending breakthrough.

Of course, a powerhouse's breakthrough in the Spirit Communication stage was not like the previous Spirit Sensing stage, merely stirring up some natural energy to form a heartstorm and create a commotion. The energy required for Yang Yan's breakthrough would certainly not be small, so early this morning, he rushed toward a mountain peak in the direction of Qingzhou.

Sitting cross-legged on a giant boulder at the mountain peak, Yang Yan closed his eyes and concentrated to adjust his physical condition to its absolute peak. Immediately afterward, he began changing hand seals, redirecting his entire body's spiritual energy to impact the next realm.

In truth, breaking through the realms of the Spirit Communication stage sounded extremely simple: it was the continuous compression of the original spiritual energy within the body, condensing the spiritual energy of a certain volume into a smaller space while gradually increasing its density, naturally packing more energy into every unit of volume.

Now, his water-attribute spiritual energy had approached perfection, and the robustness of the spiritual energy within his water-attribute spirit meridian was roughly somewhere between the fourth and fifth grades, still a long way from the perfection of the ninth grade.

As for this breakthrough involving the compression of spiritual energy, Yang Yan naturally directed it toward his wood-attribute spiritual energy.

Coincidentally, the Extinguishing Spirit Four Sword Technique of the Jade Sword Pavilion that he had previously obtained belonged to a cultivation technique inclined toward wood-attribute spiritual energy.

According to Yang Yan's estimation, if he successfully broke through this time, the grade of the spiritual energy within his wood-attribute spirit meridian should be able to reach the level of the sixth grade.

Once that happened, the wood-attribute spiritual energy would no longer be as useless as it was now, merely serving to accelerate the recovery of Yang Yan's injuries; such a degree of wood-attribute spiritual energy was virtually of no use to the current Yang Yan in actual combat.

The reason he was able to defeat a powerhouse at the peak of the Spirit Communication stage with the strength of the fifth layer of the Spirit Communication stage was largely attributed to the perfection of the spiritual energy grade within his water-attribute spirit meridian.

One must know that even among human beings, the grade of a congenital spiritual body rarely reached the sixth grade, let alone achieving the perfection of the ninth grade. It was precisely by relying on this reason that Yang Yan possessed the qualification to challenge opponents of a higher grade.

Coupled with the reason of his own constitution, possessing the extremely freakish Taiyin Qi, its might was even more formidable than the water-attribute spiritual energy in his own spirit meridian. If worst came to worst, he could mobilize his origin spiritual energy.

However, while Yang Yan possessed such means, others did not possess this kind of opportunity and talent. Therefore, unless certain Spirit Communication stage powerhouses were exceptionally formidable, they could simply not be Yang Yan's opponents. Right now, he could be said to be an invincible existence beneath the Spirit Sea stage.

With his eyes slowly closed and hand seals shifting, Yang Yan steadily controlled his mind to compress the wood-attribute spiritual energy within his Tianshu Acupoint.

Although the Tianshu Acupoint of Yang Yan was currently filled with pale green spiritual energy, the robustness of the spiritual energy there still had a huge gap compared to the water-attribute spiritual energy within his Qi Sea.

Although after reaching the Spirit Communication stage, the spiritual energy within the spirit meridian would liquefy, this only applied to ordinary cultivators.

For Yang Yan, who possessed the Taiyin True Physique and practiced the Jiuyou Taiyin Scripture, he could not be measured by ordinary standards. Although upon entering the Spirit Communication stage, the water-attribute spiritual energy in his Qi Sea completely transformed into a liquid state, for the newly opened wood-attribute spirit meridian, it was far from reaching such a degree.

Right now, the wood-attribute spiritual energy in Yang Yan's Tianshu Acupoint was still in a coexistence state between liquid and gas, resembling a kind of mist, a mixed state of gaseous and liquid spiritual energy. In reality, it could not truly be called liquid spiritual energy, because the power exerted by its spiritual energy per unit volume was far inferior to that of the water-attribute spiritual energy within Yang Yan's Qi Sea acupoint.

Therefore, what Yang Yan needed to do now was to compress the wood-attribute spiritual energy within the Tianshu Acupoint, completely transforming that semi-liquefied spiritual energy into liquid. In that case, his wood-attribute spirit meridian would step into the sixth-grade stage and would no longer be utterly useless in actual combat as it was before.

Steadily controlling the spiritual energy within the Tianshu Acupoint to squeeze and approach a certain corner, Yang Yan initially did not feel the slightest discomfort. Therefore, after compressing the spiritual energy filling the Tianshu Acupoint until it shrank by nearly half, Yang Yan began to absorb the energy within the seal.

Pristine energy continuously dissipated from the seal, and was then controlled by Yang Yan's mind to continuously gather into the Tianshu Acupoint. With this drinking-like absorption speed, the Tianshu Acupoint, which had previously emptied out a lot of space, once again became full. After undergoing self-conversion within the Tianshu Acupoint, those energies completely transformed into emerald-green wood-attribute spiritual energy.

Yang Yan's next task was to compress this wood-attribute spiritual energy, which had already been compressed once, all over again until it completely turned into a liquid state.

Without the slightest hesitation, Yang Yan once again circulated his mind and began manipulating the spiritual energy to compress it anew.

However, this compression of spiritual energy was undoubtedly much more difficult than the last time. The moment that mass of green spiritual energy was compressed by just one-third, he felt as if the Tianshu Acupoint was about to burst open, and a stifling, nauseating feeling of swelling instantly swept through his entire body.

At this moment, Yang Yan's face flushed red, the skin bulging with veins, and his expression turned extremely ferocious and terrifying due to that sensation.

Facing this situation, Yang Yan still clenched his teeth tightly, continuing to channel the energy within his body endlessly through his meridians into the Tianshu Acupoint.

Accompanied by Yang Yan's persistence, the second compression was fully completed. The spiritual energy within the Tianshu Acupoint, which originally resembled pale green smoke, now began to gradually transform into a deep green. Although their volume was reduced compared to the original, with Yang Yan's sharp perception, he could detect that the energy contained within the spiritual energy per unit volume was now more than twice as strong as before.

It was precisely this gratifying change that became the conviction supporting him to this day.

"Again."

After completing the second compression, Yang Yan did not pause for even a moment, once again manipulating his mind to compress the spiritual energy within the Tianshu Acupoint together once more.

This time, the time he consumed grew longer and longer, and the compression process was quite sluggish.

During the first compression earlier, Yang Yan took about half an hour; the second took more than an hour; and now, after the third compression started, two hours had already passed, yet the volume of spiritual energy in his body had shrunk by less than one-third.

Such a situation made Yang Yan realize the difficulty of this realm breakthrough. However, such difficulties clearly could not defeat Yang Yan; he was still gritting his teeth and persisting fiercely.

At this moment, Yang Yan's appearance was even more horrifying than before. His features were heavily distorted due to the pain, to the point that even some people extremely familiar with Yang Yan might not recognize him if they saw him looking like this right now.

His skin also rose and fell like waves due to the flow of spiritual energy within his meridians, and emerald-green light constantly flashed across the surface of his body, looking extremely bizarre and terrifying.

As time slowly drifted by, nearly three hours had passed since the third compression, and the process within his body had not even reached the halfway mark. By now, Yang Yan's overall appearance had completely changed.

His skin rolled continuously, and sweat had long since drenched his clothes completely like rainwater, with the sweat even carrying traces of faint cherry-red color.

The expression on Yang Yan's face was painful and ferocious. At a certain moment, a patch of skin above the meridians on his arm suddenly ruptured, after which fresh blood directly spurted out like a pressurized water jet, dyeing most of his body red.

At this moment, a muffled groan escaped Yang Yan's lips, and the expression on his face turned even more painful.

Even the corners of his mouth were bitten until they bled as he endured that agony.

Before he knew it, four hours had already passed. In the end, the compression process of the spiritual energy in Yang Yan's body became slower and slower, but he had never entertained the thought of giving up. It seemed that as time went on, the pain in his body had grown immune, no longer as unbearable as before.

This could be considered the one barely decent piece of good news Yang Yan had felt in such a long time.

At this point, the third compression of the spiritual energy within his body could be considered entering its final stage. Moreover, Yang Yan could clearly sense that once the spiritual energy in his body completed this compression, he should be able to successfully step into the sixth layer of the Spirit Communication stage, at which point his overall strength would undergo a qualitative enhancement once again.

Time trickled away slowly. Six hours passed, and the sky outside the window had grown pitch black. Yang Yan, who sat cross-legged like an old monk entering meditation, had never moved his body a single bit, but the painful expression on his face gradually grew calm.

Under the torture of the exact same pain for such a long time, he had developed a considerable immunity to it, and the somewhat agonizing mindset from before had now gradually subsided.

Not only that, but as the wood-attribute spiritual energy in his body grew denser and denser, its properties also came into play. The meridians in Yang Yan's body that were on the verge of bursting were slowly healing under the repair function of the wood-attribute spiritual energy.

With the healing of the meridians in his body and Yang Yan's immunity to the pain, compressing the spiritual energy in his body once more was no longer too difficult. Therefore, the current breakthrough of his realm could be considered reaching its final tail end.

At a certain moment, when Yang Yan compressed a wisp of wood-attribute spiritual energy once again, a huge suction force suddenly erupted from his Tianshu Acupoint like a vortex, and the wood-attribute spiritual energy within his body spontaneously began to compress itself. A moment later, it transformed into a cluster of emerald-green liquid the size of an egg, resembling jade.

"Success!"

Seeing this scene, Yang Yan cried out in excitement. Although the overall volume of that cluster of liquid was less than one-fifth of the entire spirit meridian, Yang Yan could sense that the vast energy contained within it was countless times more formidable than before.

Moreover, accompanied by the continuous rotation of that emerald-green energy vortex, the vast energies of heaven and earth around him also rushed toward Yang Yan's body like a thousand rivers converging into the sea.

Facing this whale-like swallowing of absorption, Yang Yan not only did not obstruct it in the slightest, but instead unlocked the seal within his body a bit further. The continuous, vast energy mixed with the natural energy of the outside world, and under this double-barreled approach, the emerald-green liquid within his Tianshu Acupoint grew more and more abundant.

"I've broken through!"

At a certain moment, feeling that the spiritual energy within his spirit meridian had completely transformed into emerald-green liquid, Yang Yan could not help but cry out in pleasant surprise. It was just that although the wood-attribute spiritual energy in the Tianshu Acupoint had now completely turned into a liquid state, it had yet to fill the entire Tianshu Acupoint. Furthermore, the ceaseless natural energy from the outside world and the vast energy leaking from the seal continued to converge into the Tianshu Acupoint.

"Fine then, today I'd like to see just how many levels you can boost me."

A trace of overbearing arrogance suddenly arose in Yang Yan's heart at this moment. He had never feared any challenge; the momentum that remained unabated after completing his breakthrough also stirred up a competitive spirit within Yang Yan. Right then, heroic ambition suddenly burst forth in his heart, and with an even more violent manner, he continued to devour the energy between heaven and earth.

Accompanied by his frantic plundering, the volume of the liquid wood-attribute spiritual energy in the Tianshu Acupoint grew larger and larger, going from one-fifth at the beginning to a quarter, then a third, and finally half. At this very moment, Yang Yan could feel that his current strength had completely stabilized at the peak of the sixth layer of the Spirit Communication stage.

Yet he was still unsatisfied with this situation. He had always been a person who either did not do things at all, or did them to the absolute best of his ability, and thus he continued to pour that vast spiritual energy endlessly into the Tianshu Acupoint.

Gradually, under Yang Yan's frantic plundering, the emerald-green spiritual energy within the Tianshu Acupoint finally reached saturation at a certain moment. At the same time, the energy between heaven and earth suddenly turned turbulent; the originally cloudless sky suddenly rolled with thunderclouds, and countless flashes of lightning scurried about the midair like silver snakes as dark clouds pressed downward, resembling the arrival of an apocalyptic world.

"The seventh layer of the Spirit Communication stage, hahahahaha!"

At this moment, Yang Yan could not suppress the pleasant surprise in his heart as he looked up and laughed heartily. This breakthrough was truly timely assistance for him, not only compressing his wood-attribute spiritual energy to elevate it by a tier, but also allowing him to surge straight into the seventh layer of the Spirit Communication stage with the help of the violent external natural energy and the sealed energy accumulated within his body.

Yang Yan felt quite pleasantly surprised and unexpected about this two-tier leap in strength. However, regarding the scene outside at this moment, he felt somewhat puzzled in his heart.

Generally speaking, a powerhouse's breakthrough in the Spirit Communication stage would indeed trigger some natural anomalies, but it was far from reaching the apocalyptic scene of the present.

Anything capable of triggering natural anomalies only occurred under special circumstances within the cultivation world.

For example, when top-tier practitioners made a breakthrough once again, but the current minor breakthrough of the Spirit Communication stage was not yet enough to reach that level. The second condition was when top-grade pills or magical treasures were born, and the third was when someone managed to create earth-shaking cultivation techniques or martial arts.

However, these three conditions seemed completely absent in the current Yang Yan. Therefore, he had no idea how he had managed to trigger the natural anomalies, and could only stare solemnly at the thundercloud in the sky, releasing his entire body's spiritual energy to the utmost at this moment.

Right at this moment, the wood-attribute spiritual energy that had just calmed down within his Tianshu Acupoint violently surged again, and his aura frantically skyrocketed once more.

"What on earth is going on? Didn't I already finish breaking through?"

At this moment, Yang Yan's heart was quite bewildered. After scanning every inch of his body with his soul power and confirming that no abnormal conditions had occurred, he gradually calmed down and finally understood the source of that sensation of another breakthrough: it was because the Jiuyou Taiyin Scripture he practiced was finally evolving once more!