Reincarnated As God

Meng Li first begun gathering soul power. He had done so for about a month before, but during that entire time, his soul hadn't grown much. Thus, he still needed to cultivate.

For a long period of time, Meng Li sat on the mat in the middle of the small wooden room. Strangely, the soul power in the control room was a bit more abundant than the outside world, and his cultivation progressed about two times faster than previously. His soul grew at a slow pace, as he absorbed more and more soul power.

The pillar in his Dantian was steadily increasing in total radiance, though only one colour of light was increasing - the blue light. Time passed by slowly, and Meng Li hasn't moved for a long time. Despite nothing changing about him, he slowly gained a strange aura which gave people who looked at him a mysterious feeling.

After a long time, the light the pillar in his Dantian emitted reached a certain level of equilibrium, with the white and blue light shining with the same intensity. The moment this happened, a strange ripple was emitted from the pillar, which shook Meng Li from cultivation.

With a smile on his face, he looked at the majestic pillar in his Dantian. It shone with three distinct lights, white, blue, and green. Those three lights created three distinct areas in his Dantian, which had different tints. The pillar seemed like it supported the heavens, which was partially true - it was the core of his cultivation.

Meng Li could feel a sense of balance in the pillar, but it wasn't perfect - the green light was being dwarfed by the other two lights, and its' region was merely ten percent of his Dantian, with the other two colours taking the majority of the area. He still needed to strengthened his vitality, but the problem was - he didn't know how.

The one option was to try and train his body. From the time he started training with the sword, he increased his strength significantly, at least by his standards - he was still weaker than a normal a.d.u.l.t. However, this made his Vitality increase, if only by a small amount.

Thus, Meng Li started training. He wasn't aiming to have an extremely muscular body - if anything, he would prefer not to have giant muscles, and instead stay lean. Thus, he didn't constantly train, but sprinkled in sword training as well. And so, time passed.

Training his body and the sword turned out to require him being conscious at least to a certain extent - he didn't completely lose himself in training like he did with cultivation, but he still lost his sense of time. Gradually, random thoughts disappeared and Meng Li simply trained mindlessly. This didn't mean that he was simply swinging his sword around when training - this state actually allowed him to increase in proficiency much faster than normally.

The training strengthened his body too, and slowly, he became stronger. He reached the level of an average a.d.u.l.t mortal rather quickly, but it didn't stop there. His strength increased further with training, quickly surpassing the strongest people that existed on earth. If his strength were to be measured in kilograms of force, at the end of his training, a casual punch of his contained a force of about a thousand kilograms.

His abilities with the sword didn't lag behind either - Meng Li couldn't really tell what level he had reached due to a lack of a measurement system, but his skills far surpassed what Ye Jian showed when he battled with him. Meng Li also had a faint feeling that he had broken through some level, though he didn't have any evidence.

His vitality also grew significantly, and right now, it was just a notch weaker than his soul power and Qi.

Still training mindlessly, Meng Li's body constantly strengthened. His Vitality also increased, at some point reaching the balance with the other two powers. At that moment, the pillar within his Dantian released a ripple, much stronger than previously. The ripple seemed to resonate with his entire body, and Meng Li felt it extremely well. He was woken up from cultivation and startled by it.

With some confusion, Meng Li looked at the pillar within his Dantian. He tried to train his body simply because of a guess, and he didn't expect it would actually work. He asked the system in confusion.

[This is... strange.] the system replied. [Normally, there is a limit on how strong someone's body can grow. This is a species-wide restriction, so humans have a certain limit to how strong they can get. Beasts have a much higher limit innately, and you seem to have reached a level comparable to a true beast... This is unexpected, but it could be due to you breaking free of your cultivation path. I don't have an explanation.]

he asked.

[To cultivate the body, a special method is used to make the body absorb Qi and merge with it. It's different than simply strengthening the body without Qi. In your case, with such a high level of pure strength, you would be able to advance to an extremely high level with body cultivation.] the system replied.

Cultivating the body and simple training were two different things, though they could be mistaken as one and the same. Even beasts when they reached the peak of their innate strength would resort to body cultivation by using Qi.

As much as Meng Li was confused, he decided not to ponder on it too long. He returned his attention to the pillar in his Dantian.

Although the three energies have reached a point of equilibrium, he still felt that there was potential to strengthen them further. There was no telling as to how much he could strengthen his body, but he knew that Qi cultivation and soul power cultivation could be practically strengthened without limit. Thus, he wanted to try and take the energies to a limit before breaking through, starting with his vitality. He decided to try and train his body until he couldn't strengthen it further, and then reach the equilibrium with the other two energies. Only then would he break through to the Origin Core Realm.

Thus, Meng Li sank into training once again. As he didn't immediately fall into the thoughtless state this time, he had some time to appreciate his strength growing slowly, and appreciate his skill with the sword. It was practically at the level of expertise he was with painting, which was good both ways - he knew he was skilled in painting and his sword reaching that level was good, but with how skilled he was with the sword, it also put into perspective how good he was at painting.

In not much time, Meng Li once again fell into the mindless state of training. His body strengthened constantly, and seemingly would continue to do so without end. However, every good thing ended at some point - similarly, at some point in the future, Meng Li was awoken from training by the fact that he sensed he no longer grew stronger.

Despite the room having no signs of passing time, Meng Li had a faint feeling that he spent a long time training. It was probably true, given his history of cultivation. Thus, he asked the system.

[It was six years since you started secluded cultivation. Ye Jian has emerged three times to check for you, but currently, he's in seclusion as well.]

Without thinking too much about the matter, Meng Li checked the state of the pillar in his Dantian. To his surprise, his Vitality grew immensely - it was at least two times stronger than when he achieved total equilibrium. He would need to cultivate for a long time to be able to achieve balance of the three energies once again.

Without thinking too much, Meng Li once again jumped into cultivation. He begun to increased his Qi - it was much faster to do than strengthening his soul power, so he chose to cultivate it first.

He jumped into cultivating without thinking, and quickly fell unconscious.

The time passed by quickly for Meng Li, and for him, the entire time he was cultivating felt like a short nap. He was awoken by the ripple emitted from the pillar, this time much stronger than previously, probably due to the increase in strength.

The green light was the same in intensity as the white light, with the blue light being supressed by the other two. Still, all of the lights were much brighter than previously, and Meng Li could see that.

Without time to spare, Meng Li begun cultivating his soul power. He didn't even bother to ask the system how much time had passed - he was determined to break through to the Origin Core Realm during this cultivation session, and knowing that Ye Jian was waiting for him would only make him anxious. He could only hope that Ye Jian didn't waste his time and cultivated when waiting for him - there was even a chance that Ye Jian would reach the Qi Foundation Realm. After all, cultivation within the control room was much faster than normally, due to the high concentration of Qi and the fact that the Qi was ready for absorption, and didn't need to be refined, unlike the normal ambient Qi.

The small room Meng Li was in didn't change, and Meng Li didn't change either. He simply sat on the small mat in the middle, cultivating whole-heartedly.

At a certain point, he was woken up by the ripple which the pillar emanated. The three energies had once again reached a point of equilibrium.

The pillar stood in his Dantian as usual, with the three lights shining from within. They were balanced, and seemed to be at peak intensity. Meng Li had a faint feeling that he had reached the peak - he could no longer increase his power without breaking through. Thus, he started preparing.

When he was ready, Meng Li once again sat on the mat and recalled the method of breaking through in the booklet he received from his master. To break through to the Origin Core Realm, he would need to literally melt the pillar in his Dantian back into pure power. Then, he needed to refine the liquid which resulted from the melting. The refining was one of the most important things about forming the Origin Core. The more times a cultivator could refine the liquid, the better quality the Origin Core would be.

A normal cultivator would normally be able to only refine it one or two times before they either formed their Origin Core or failed. Failure was extremely dangerous - if one failed to form their Origin Core, they would at best fall back to the Qi Foundation Realm and create their first pillar, or at worst, lose all of their cultivation. If they failed spectacularly, they could even be crippled and lose the ability to cultivate at all. The breakthrough was, in short, dangerous.

More gifted cultivators would be able to refine the liquid up to ten times, and some geniuses were able to do so more times. According to the booklet, the highest amount of times someone refined their liquid was recorded at ninety nine times. It wasn't only one person either - many people were able to refine it ninety nine times, but no one was able to cross that threshold and refine it one hundred times. Well, maybe 'many' wasn't a good word to describe the amount of people who did so - less than ten people were able to do so every era, and all of them were heaven defying geniuses and inevitably reached an extremely high level of cultivation if they didn't die. One such person was Meng Li's master - he was able to refine the liquid ninety nine times. The pressure placed on Meng Li was high.

Meng Li, however, didn't worry about it. He simply didn't believe he would fail, and had confidence that with his talent, he would be able to refine it more than ninety times, at least.

When he started, the huge pillar in his Dantian began to shake. The surface started slowly melting, and the liquid started flowing down. However, not every part of the pillar turned into the concentrated liquid - some of the pillar actually evaporated - those were the impurities within his Qi, which were now melted away.

While the pillar was melting, the three different lights it emitted didn't grow dim, and instead grew stronger the less remained of the pillar. To Meng Li's surprise, once all of the pillar was melted, three points of light remained. These seemed to be the essences of the three energies, and couldn't be melted further.

When they were freed, Meng Li sensed that the essences were highly unstable, and seemed like they would dissipate if he didn't try and prevent it. Thus, Meng Li took great care to control them.

With that, Meng Li started refining the liquid which made up the pillar. The refining process was simple to understand, but hard to do. Every time he did so, the liquid would shrink, then grow once again, but every time a cycle had passed, less of the liquid remained.

Meng Li was able to refined the liquid easily the first fifty times or so, but after that, the difficulty increased considerably. Now, each cycle of refining took several minutes and created a great strain on Meng Li's soul. If he didn't need to control the three essences, Meng Li was sure that he would be able to easily go up to about seventy cycles before he encountered such difficulty, but it seemed he was unlucky.

Practically all of his soul power was floating right above his soul in his upper Dantian, but somehow, it didn't have a detrimental effect on Meng Li's consciousness. The soul power floating there was pulsating in the same rhythm as the liquid in his lower Dantian - when refining the liquid, he was refining his soul power too!

Practically the same thing was taking place in his middle Dantian. The vitality within was pulsating as well, and seemed to be growing stronger despite decreasing in amount.

Meng Li was still trying his best to refine the three powers and didn't notice the strange happening. With great difficulty, he managed to complete the cycle of refining eighty times. Now, every cycle took him about half an hour, and he felt like he was going to fail at every second. Meng Li would've given up already and formed his core, if not for the fact that he could feel his control improving quickly as well with every cycle. He noticed it, and between two cycles, he quickly glanced at his other two Dantians to find out the reason.

Dumbfounded, Meng Li found out about the strange phenomena in his other two Dantians. He didn't know the reason for them, but he could feel the obvious increase in power with every cycle, so it wasn't a bad thing at all.

With renewed enthusiasm, Meng Li continued to refine the liquid in his Dantian, now risking it to take a look at the other two Dantians as well while doing so. He managed to see the other two powers being refined too, and his guess was confirmed.

Like this, Meng Li managed to refine the three powers a total of ninety five times. He could now feel that with every cycle, the three spots of light were also growing stronger in intensity and harder to control. However, there was also a difference between them in how they behaved.

Strangely, the white spot of light, which Meng Li could feel represented his Qi, seemed attracted to the liquid within his Dantian. However, the other two spots of light seemed to want to escape his lower Dantian. Meng Li suddenly had a bold guess, and with great care, controlled the two spots of light to emerge from his lower Dantian.

His guess was confirmed when the spots of light were attracted to his other two Dantians - the green light to the middle Dantian, and the blue light to his upper Dantian.

Without hesitation, Meng Li let them enter them. Leaving the spots of light outside his body was extremely demanding on his soul, but when they entered the two Dantians, the pressure on his soul decreased quickly.

With that, Meng Li managed to refine the liquid a total of ninety nine times, and tried to refine it one last time. However, the final cycle was incomparably more difficult than the previous ones, and even after a few hours, Meng Li couldn't even sense when it would end. Without any other options, Meng Li had to go off of his instinct. He let the three spots of light enter the three powers.

To his surprise, the moment they made contact, the spots of light were absorbed and didn't require any control anymore to avoid dissipating. The three liquids also turned docile and were incomparably easier to control. Meng Li could sense his speed of refining growing incomparably quicker - he actually had a chance to finish the final cycle now!

Meng Li wanted to berate himself for not doing this sooner, but he couldn't distract himself right now. It was an incomparably important step.

The final cycle turned out to be quite easy in the end, but it was extremely time consuming. With the newfound ease of controlling the liquids, Meng Li could refine them much faster. However, it still took him more than two days in the end...

He was able to take note of the time due to the fact that he was concentrating on what he was doing - he didn't fall asleep like he did while cultivating normally or, going to sleep.

To his surprise, when the final, one hundredth cycle was complete, the liquid didn't actually grow in size again - it stayed compressed like it was normally. Meng Li was confused, but had no time to think about it, as he still had one important step before him.

He needed to actually form the core.