CHAPTER 251: HIGH BLOOD

As soon as the reset screen appeared, Xiang Yu felt a sudden burning sensation sweep across his entire body. The feeling started as a warm tingle, but within moments it intensified into something close to molten iron. He could actually feel his blood beginning to boil and bubble beneath his skin.

The sensation grew more and more unbearable with each passing second. After just a few moments, his body simply couldn’t handle the overwhelming pressure anymore and began to rupture. His skin started tearing apart in small patches at first, the tears appearing slowly across his arms and torso. But the process quickly picked up pace, spreading faster and faster across his flesh.

Before long, the destruction had escalated to a terrifying degree. Entire limbs were being completely destroyed, dissolving into nothing before instantly regenerating back to their original state. The cycle repeated over and over again—destruction followed by regeneration, only for the destruction to begin anew.

Fortunately, Xiang Yu had anticipated something like this might happen. He had already positioned his Abyssal Void Flame protectively around his vital organs.

The violent process continued happening with increasing intensity. His bloodlines were once again trying desperately to claim the other’s territory and advance to the next level.

But after this standstill had persisted without any clear progress for what felt like an hour, something began to change. Just like before, the bloodlines started expanding inward into themselves rather than continuing their territorial battle. The concentration of bloodline essence began increasing even more dramatically, compressing and condensing into a more refined form.

As this transformation took place, the benefits of the upgraded bloodlines slowly started revealing themselves. For the phoenix bloodline, his already insane regeneration ability increased even further, reaching speeds that defied belief. His affinity with fire also increased drastically, he felt as if fire was an extension of his own body. He also received an enlightenment boost, though it wasn’t as dramatic as he had experienced before. He assumed this was because of the huge gap between divine level enlightenment and everything below it.

The dragon bloodline brought its own set of enhancements. He felt his physical body strengthening even more, his muscles and bones becoming denser and more resilient with each passing moment.

As the full effects of the bloodline upgrade finally kicked in, the visible body destruction and reconstruction gradually slowed down more and more. Eventually, it seemed to stop completely. Well, not really stopping—it just wasn’t visible on the surface anymore. But just like before, he could sense that the process continued happening internally.

Seeing that the bloodlines had finally calmed down to a manageable level, he could finally turn his attention to his other stats.

Looking at his body refining cultivation, he was pleased to see it was still increasing as rapidly as always despite having reached such high levels. It had already gained almost half of the required experience points for the next breakthrough—he just needed an extra one thousand exp to break through during the next reset.

His qi cultivation showed similar progress, already sitting at the halfway point and ready to breakthrough after the next reset as well. Still, looking at his qi cultivation numbers, he couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. The advancement was still going so slowly compared to his other attributes. Although it was starting to pick up pace and he was breaking through realms almost every two days now, Xiang Yu still felt it was frustratingly sluggish.

Gazing at his spirit root stat, he thought to himself that the situation might change soon though. His spirit root was already at the halfway point and would enter the Sacred grade after the next reset. Seeing this progress, he suddenly remembered something important—he still didn’t have a reliable way to gain experience points in spirit root after each reset.

Last time, he had been lucky. The root had upgraded at the same time as his two physiques, so it was able to gain experience points. But now, neither of his physiques was anywhere close to upgrading again.

The initial violent reaction when bloodlines were advancing could also trigger an increase in spiritual root experience, but that had just happened now. It would probably be several more days before another such event occurred. He wondered if he would have to wait that long without gaining any spirit root experience at all.

He exhaled deeply, his shoulders sagging slightly as he decided to push the matter aside for now. There was no point in worrying about problems he couldn’t immediately solve. He would think about it when the time actually came.

...

For his combat techniques, after grinding relentlessly for experience points with his newly acquired divine level enlightenment, he had finally managed to push them all the way to perfect level mastery.

Still, something troubled him as he examined the techniques. He had heard from various sources that for high grade techniques and higher, there was supposedly a higher realm of mastery that existed beyond perfect level, namely the Intent realm. Intent was said to be the true pinnacle of martial understanding, where techniques transcended mere physical execution and became extensions of one’s will.

But when he looked at his techniques after reaching perfect mastery, they didn’t show any experience bar or progression path beyond that point. Had he done something wrong in his cultivation? Was there some special requirement he needed to fulfill first? He made a mental note to inquire with the Empress about this matter later.

Moving on to examine his professions, his cooking skill had just crossed past the halfway point and would breakthrough to the Heavenly grade after the next reset. The prospect filled him with excitement at first. Xiang Yu couldn’t wait to try out heavenly grade food.

But then he suddenly paused, his earlier delight deflating like a punctured balloon. He remembered that he couldn’t even consume third grade spirit food safely with his current cultivation level. So how exactly was he supposed to eat heavenly grade food, which would be exponentially more potent?

He wondered when he would finally acquire Heavenly grade spirit root or breakthrough to the Golden Core realm to handle such foods. It felt strange to cook meals every single day while being completely unable to enjoy them.

Even his master was just a few steps away from breaking through to the Golden Core realm and would soon be able to enjoy higher grade foods. Was he really going to be the only one left behind, unable to taste his own cooking?

Moving on to examine his other professions, his appraisal skill had also advanced to the first grade. Xiang Yu didn’t pay much attention to this particular breakthrough, just like he had with the second grade advancement. He still had yet to come across anything he couldn’t successfully appraise with his previous third grade appraisal ability.

The only exception might be Li Yao, whom he doubted he could analyze even with his new first grade appraisal.

His runesmith profession had advanced into the third grade, causing a flood of new insights about third grade runes to fill his mind.

Blacksmithing had also broken through, bringing with it comprehensive blacksmithing insights that expanded his understanding dramatically. With this breakthrough, he could finally craft divine level items, at least in theory. Though considering the limited resources currently at his disposal, he probably couldn’t attempt such a thing just yet.

But this limitation didn’t disappoint him much. If he combined his upgraded blacksmithing with his upgraded runesmithing, he didn’t believe he couldn’t create something extraordinary.

Formation mastery had also upgraded, and Xiang Yu couldn’t wait to upgrade the sect’s defensive formations. And if he combined it with his runes like he had done before, wouldn’t he be practically invincible? Just thinking about it...