The moment his Foundation Establishment aura erupted, Lou Feng's expression changed slightly.
He immediately circulated the Geng Metal Sword Art, forcing the surging spiritual energy back into his body before allowing even the slightest trace of his newly increased cultivation to leak outside.
The room gradually returned to silence.
Lou Feng sat motionless for several breaths, carefully examining his body with his divine sense.
His spiritual sea had expanded, his spiritual energy had become denser, and the foundation beneath his cultivation had become considerably more stable. The breakthrough had not merely increased the quantity of his spiritual energy, it had also allowed his body to accommodate a greater amount of it, and with the Geng Fetus Pill's intense Metal attribute spiritual energy still circulating through his meridians, he could feel traces of its medicinal power slowly being refined.
A smile appeared on his face.
Mid-stage Foundation Establishment.
He had finally reached it, but the smile quickly disappeared.
Lou Feng looked towards the closed door.
He knew exactly what would happen if the people responsible for the battalion discovered that he had broken through.
His cultivation would immediately be recorded.
Then his superiors would naturally assume that his combat ability had increased as well.
That would be troublesome.
The battlefield was already dangerous enough.
The Purple Extremity Dan Sect was continuously sending cultivators towards the front lines, and anyone who demonstrated sufficient combat strength would naturally be transferred towards areas where the fighting was more intense.
A higher cultivation realm did not necessarily mean greater safety.
Sometimes it meant the exact opposite.
The stronger one appeared, the more dangerous the missions assigned to them became.
Lou Feng had already witnessed this several times.
A cultivator who displayed extraordinary combat ability would be ordered to intercept an enemy cultivator, protect an important formation, escort wounded experts, or enter areas where ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivators would never be sent.
He had no intention of exposing himself prematurely.
His sword cultivation had already attracted enough attention.
If his cultivation suddenly increased and his combat strength was revealed at the same time, the people above would inevitably begin investigating him.
Lou Feng slowly exhaled.
"Not yet."
He needed to find the right opportunity.
For now, concealing his breakthrough was the wiser choice.
He adjusted his breathing and once again suppressed his aura until it appeared almost identical to what it had been before.
Only then did he close his eyes.
Outside, the war continued.
Neither side cared that one Foundation Establishment cultivator had quietly advanced another minor realm.
The battlefield swallowed such changes every day.
Far away from Lou Feng's temporary barracks, somewhere within another battlefield of the Eastern Region, the situation was considerably more sinister.
The battlefield had already become a graveyard.
Corpses covered the ground as far as the eye could see, bodies belonging to cultivators from both sides piled upon one another beneath the darkened sky, their blood staining the earth while the remnants of spiritual energy continued drifting through the air.
The smell was almost unbearable.
Blood, Death, Rotting flesh and beneath everything was another sensation.
Demonic Qi.
It was so dense that the surrounding air seemed to have become viscous.
At the centre of this ruined battlefield sat a single figure.
The cultivator's blood aura was extremely unstable, sometimes rising violently before suddenly falling again, as though the body itself was struggling to contain something far more powerful than it could normally endure.
Beneath him was a formation.
At first glance, it appeared relatively small.
But the moment one looked carefully, the complexity of the formation became apparent.
Countless formation lines extended outward from the cultivator, spreading across the battlefield like enormous blood-coloured roots.
They passed beneath corpses, around broken weapons and through pools of blood, connecting the entire battlefield into a single enormous formation.
The blood from the corpses slowly flowed along those lines.
It did not move like ordinary liquid.
Instead, it was drawn towards the formation as though countless invisible mouths were greedily devouring it.
The corpses surrounding the formation began changing.
Skin shrivelled.
Flesh collapsed.
Some bodies rapidly dried until only bones remained.
The blood that had once soaked the ground disappeared into the formation, leaving behind an increasingly grotesque scene.
At the centre, the cultivator suddenly raised his head.
"Jie jie jie..."
His laughter was hoarse.
Long hair covered most of his face, but the strands were no longer completely black.
They had faded into a pale white, giving him an eerie appearance beneath the dim sky.
His skin was equally pale.
Not the pallor of an ordinary injured cultivator.
It was the colour of something that had long since lost the warmth of life.
He slowly raised his left hand.
Then he extended his right arm.
Or rather, where his right arm should have been.
There was nothing there.
Only an empty sleeve.
The cultivator stared at it for several breaths before his eyes narrowed.
"Gather."
His voice was barely audible.
The formation immediately reacted.
BOOM!
A tremendous wave of Demonic Qi surged through the battlefield.
The thick black aura that had been scattered throughout the area suddenly began moving towards the formation, swirling around the cultivator before being forcibly drawn into his body.
At the same time, the blood formation beneath him erupted.
The countless formation lines became brighter as the blood essence extracted from the corpses surged towards the centre.
Demonic Qi and Blood Qi entered the cultivator simultaneously.
His body trembled.
"Ah..."
His back arched violently.
The two energies forced their way through his pores, entering his flesh before sinking deeper into his bones.
His muscles twisted.
His pale skin bulged in several places.
The Demonic Qi surged through his meridians like a poisonous river while the Blood Qi attempted to strengthen the damaged parts of his body.
But the cultivator did not stop.
He endured.
The energy penetrated deeper.
His marrow trembled.
His bones made faint cracking sounds.
Then the empty space where his right arm had once been suddenly began to distort.
A faint black outline appeared.
It started at the shoulder.
Then the upper arm gradually formed.
A forearm emerged.
Finally, five indistinct fingers appeared at the end.
The cultivator stared at it.
His breathing became heavier.
But the outline flickered.
One moment it was solid.
The next, it became transparent.
Then it almost disappeared completely.
The cultivator's expression sank.
This was not enough.
He had expected as much.
Even with the enormous amount of Blood Qi and Demonic Qi accumulated through the formation, reconstructing an arm for his particular physique was not something that could be accomplished through ordinary methods.
A normal cultivator who suffered such an injury could search for healing pills, use secret regeneration techniques, or seek the assistance of a powerful alchemist.
Some cultivators with sufficiently powerful cultivation could even reconstruct damaged limbs through their own vitality.
He could not.
His body was no longer an ordinary human body.
He was a zombie cultivator.
The Death Qi permeating his flesh had already changed the fundamental nature of his body, and ordinary medicinal power did not circulate through him in the same manner as it did through a living cultivator.
Even powerful healing pills would struggle to produce the desired result.
His remaining arm clenched.
"Not enough."
His eyes became cold.
Then he reached into his spatial treasure and took out a small container.
Something inside was moving.
The container trembled.
A faint scratching sound emerged from within.
The cultivator opened it.
A single Gu worm crawled out.
Its body was pale and grotesque, its tiny limbs continuously twisting as though it could sense the enormous amount of Blood Qi surrounding it.
The cultivator did not hesitate.
He placed the Gu worm into his mouth.
Then swallowed.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then—
BOOM!
An enormous wave of Demonic Qi erupted from his body.
The ground beneath him cracked.
The formation lines covering the battlefield trembled violently.
The surrounding corpses were pushed backwards by the sudden pressure as the cultivator's aura surged upward at an astonishing speed.
His body became bloated.
Demonic Qi flooded every inch of his physique, filling his flesh, his bones and his marrow until his body appeared to be on the verge of bursting.
His expression twisted.
The amount of energy was simply too great.
If he were an ordinary cultivator, his body would probably have already exploded.
But he was a zombie.
His body could withstand energies that would destroy an ordinary living cultivator, and even so, the pressure was still immense.
"Come!"
The cultivator roared.
The formation responded.
The Blood Qi from the surrounding corpses surged into his body once again, merging with the Demonic Qi released by the Gu worm.
The faint outline of his missing arm became increasingly solid.
Bones appeared first.
Then muscles, blood vessels and tendons.
Finally, pale skin wrapped around the newly formed limb.
The process was grotesque.
The arm was not growing naturally.
It was being reconstructed through a combination of the formation, Blood Qi, Demonic Qi and the Gu worm's strange regenerative ability.
The cultivator's body trembled violently as the newly formed arm slowly became complete.
His five fingers curled.
The moment they finally closed into a fist, the enormous aura surrounding the battlefield suddenly vanished.
Silence returned.
The cultivator looked down.
His right arm was complete.
He slowly moved it.
Once... twice.
Then he clenched his fist.
Crack!
The sound of his knuckles echoed through the battlefield.
A smile appeared on his face.
"Hahahaha!"
His laughter grew louder.
He had succeeded.
He had survived.
More importantly, he had recovered the arm he had lost.
The cultivator was none other than He Jinfeng, the Seven Star Palace's core disciple who had escaped from Lin Sheng's pursuit.
He had paid an enormous price for his survival.
His right arm had been destroyed.
His body had suffered severe damage.
His cultivation had become unstable.
The Rank 4 Thousand-Mile Talisman had allowed him to escape, but escaping did not mean that he had recovered from his injuries.
For a period of time, He Jinfeng had been little more than a crippled Golden Core seed.
But he had not accepted that fate.
He had spent almost every resource he possessed searching for a method to reconstruct his arm.
Eventually, he found the answer.
The formation could provide the Blood Qi and Demonic Qi necessary to create the framework.
The Gu worm could complete the regeneration.
Neither method was something a righteous cultivator would willingly attempt.
And to gather enough Blood Qi for the formation, he had needed an enormous number of corpses.
That was why this battlefield had become his hunting ground.
He had taken advantage of the chaos between the major powers, secretly establishing his formation within a relatively isolated section of the battlefield and waiting for the fighting to produce enough corpses.
Every additional death had become nourishment.
Every drop of blood had become part of his recovery.
He had known the risk.
If a righteous sect discovered what he was doing, they would immediately attempt to kill him.
But he had considered the price acceptable.
His life was worth more than the risk.
He Jinfeng moved his newly restored arm again.
He could feel something different.
The arm was not merely a replacement.
The Demonic Qi within it was purer.
Denser and stronger.
The Demonic Qi contained within the finger bone he carried was already terrifying, and although he had only absorbed a tiny fraction of its power, the reconstruction process had allowed traces of that aura to merge with the newly formed limb.
He could feel the difference.
His eyes became increasingly excited.
Once he completely stabilised the arm, he would need time to adapt to it.
After that, his cultivation foundation would have to be reconstructed around the new arm.
But once everything settled, the quality of his Demonic Qi would increase.
His potential would rise.
And then there was the finger.
He looked towards the spatial treasure containing the talisman-wrapped finger bone.
His expression became solemn.
That finger bone was the reason he had survived.
It was also the reason he had endured all of this.
The Demonic Qi sealed within it was beyond his current understanding.
He had once sensed it carefully.
The result had frightened even him.
It was not merely stronger than his own Demonic Qi.
It was on an entirely different level.
He even suspected that the Demonic Qi within the finger bone might surpass what his own sect master possessed.
The Seven Star Palace Sect Master was a genuine Nascent Soul demonic cultivator.
Yet He Jinfeng believed that even he might not understand the true origin of that finger.
He slowly raised his newly formed right hand.
His fingers tightened.
The pale skin creased around his knuckles.
A strange smile appeared on his face.
He had already reached the Golden Core threshold once.
His Golden Core seed was complete.
What he lacked was the final push.
Once he reached the peak of his current accumulation and fully assimilated the talisman-wrapped finger into his body, the Demonic Qi contained within it could provide the force necessary to break through the final barrier.
Golden Core.
That was his goal.
He had nearly died because of that senior.
His right arm had been destroyed.
His cultivation had almost collapsed.
He had been forced to hide within this battlefield like a starving beast.
But none of that mattered anymore.
He Jinfeng slowly stood.
The corpses around him had been drained almost completely, leaving behind a field of dried remains and broken weapons.
He glanced across the battlefield.
Then he looked at his right hand again.
His smile widened.
"That senior deserves... death."
His voice was quiet.
But the hatred contained within those two words was unmistakable.
He remembered the palm that had destroyed his arm.
He remembered the overwhelming pressure.
He remembered the feeling of death approaching.
His fingers slowly tightened.
One day, he would return everything.
But before that, he needed to become stronger.
Much stronger.