Xiao Yu sat cross-legged near the remnants of their campfire, the ambient light of the cavern casting a soft glow over her silver hair.
She was currently in a state of deep, absolute meditation.
Within her Dantian, the situation was remarkably similar, yet fundamentally different from her brother's. She was already at the absolute peak of the Nine-Star Dou Zhe realm, her foundation forcefully elevated by the sheer potency of her frost. Her Dantian was packed entirely full of a thick, pale-blue and silver gas—the absolute limit of gaseous Dou Qi.
Normally, a Nine-Star Dou Zhe would never dare to attempt this compression without months of preparation. They would desperately hoard specialized alchemical pills to protect their fragile meridians from tearing, or seek out high-tier external resources to force the gaseous energy to liquefy. To fail meant shattering the cyclone and being crippled.
But Xiao Yu didn't need a single Dou Qi pill. She didn't require any external alchemical catalyst or spiritual array.
The primordial, violet-gold spark hidden within her blood had passively tempered her internal pathways over the past month, making them as resilient as glacial ice. Her foundation was so flawlessly pure, so inherently superior, that this major realm hurdle—a terrifying barrier that broke the spirits of ordinary geniuses—was merely a natural stepping stone for her.
She remembered the lectures from the academy. She knew the theoretical barrier that separated a student from an expert.
'To become a Dou Shi, one must shatter the limits of the gas. You must compress the cyclone until the laws of physics break, forcing the energy to change its very state of matter.'
Xiao Yu took a deep, steadying breath. Her pink-red eyes snapped open beneath her eyelids, burning with unyielding resolve.
'Now!' With a fierce exertion of her willpower, Xiao Yu violently seized control of her massive Dou Qi cyclone. She didn't let it spin naturally; she forced it. She accelerated the vortex to a terrifying, unstable speed, aggressively compressing the pale-blue gas toward the absolute center of her Dantian.
The pain was instantaneous and breathtaking. It felt as though someone had wrapped an iron band around her internal organs and was slowly tightening it. Her meridians swelled, groaning under the intense, crushing pressure of trying to compact an entire realm's worth of energy into a single point.
Sweat beaded on her forehead, instantly freezing into tiny ice crystals.
'Compress! Tighter!' she mentally screamed, ignoring the agonizing protests of her body.
The gas in her Dantian grew darker, heavier. The intense pressure reached a critical density point. The violent spinning created a microscopic point of absolute gravity in the center of the vortex.
Then, it happened.
Drip.
It was a sound that echoed not in the physical cave, but entirely within her soul. The highly compressed, pale-blue gas finally crossed the threshold. It condensed, instantly shifting its state of matter.
A single, immaculate drop of liquid Dou Qi was born in the center of her Dantian.
As the liquid stabilized, Xiao Yu checked it with her soul perception, completely mesmerized. The drop did not look like normal liquid Dou Qi. Due to the profound mutation of her bloodline, the drop looked exactly like a flawlessly cut, solid crystal-blue sapphire. Yet, despite its solid, gem-like appearance, it flowed and rippled with absolute fluidity.
It was a beautiful, terrifying concentration of raw power.
The birth of this liquid crystal drop was the absolute hallmark of the Dou Shi realm. And as with all major realm breakthroughs in the Dou Qi Continent, the heavens demanded an acknowledgment.
BOOM!
A massive, invisible shockwave of freezing, silver Dou Qi erupted outward from Xiao Yu's body. The sheer concussive force of her major realm breakthrough blasted across the cavern. It extinguished the dying embers of the bonfire instantly, sent the heavy iron pots skidding across the stone floor, and violently pushed back the misty spray of the waterfall.
The sudden, explosive disruption of the ambient worldly energy was so severe that it pierced through Yoriichi's state of suspended animation.
A few minutes after the shockwave settled, Yoriichi felt the external disruption jarring his senses. He slowly, painstakingly pulled his consciousness out of the deep, dark void of his internal universe.
Sensing the massive spike in aura, Xiao Yu immediately realized she had lost control of her breakthrough pressure. She gasped, instinctively pulling her aura back, hastily lessening the suffocating, frosty pressure she was unintentionally projecting around her.
Yoriichi's long eyelashes fluttered, and he slowly opened his crimson eyes.
For the first few seconds, his vision was slightly blurred. As his sensory inputs reconnected with his physical body, the first thing he felt was the terrifying, heavy sloshing of energy within his own Dantian.
He looked inward, and for a rare moment, a profound wave of genuine shock washed over his stoic face.
'Nine-Star Dou Zhe...' Yoriichi realized, analyzing the monstrous, hyper-dense cyclone spinning in his core. 'The elemental synthesis... the vacuum effect of the opposing energies... it bypassed my natural absorption limits entirely. I ascended five whole stars in a matter of weeks.'
He clenched his right fist. The raw kinetic power coursing through his muscles was exponentially higher than when he had fought the Da Dou Shi assassin. He was infinitely stronger.
However, his pragmatic mind instantly recognized the danger.
'I feel my Dantian shaking,' Yoriichi noted, sensing a faint, unstable vibration at the edges of his cyclone. 'Such rapid, unnatural advancement in such a short time has left my foundation completely unsolidified. My meridians are expanded, but they are brittle. If I attempt to compress this into liquid Dou Qi now, my Dantian will undoubtedly shatter like cheap glass.'
He exhaled a long, measured breath, grounding himself. He now needed to dedicate his time entirely to stabilizing his realm, allowing his physical vessel to organically adapt to the sheer weight of a Nine-Star foundation before even thinking of attempting the Dou Shi breakthrough.
Pushing the analysis of his own cultivation aside, Yoriichi lifted his head.
His gaze moved past the scattered supplies, past the extinguished fire pit, and reached forward through the dim, misty light of the cavern.
He saw her.