Star Martial Era: From Mortal to Emperor

Chapter 136 Dedicated to Seclusion and Breakthrough to the Transformation Realm

The exclusive training room on the top floor of Xingwu University is built on the cliff face behind the mountain.

It wasn't one of those small rooms partitioned off from an ordinary teaching building, but a standalone stone structure built against the mountain, with the original mountainside on three sides and only a heavy stone door on the front. The interior space wasn't large, about two zhang square, but every inch had been meticulously designed—the floor was paved with spirit-attracting jade bricks, the surface as smooth as a mirror, with faint spiritual light flowing through the dark blue patterns; the four walls were inlaid with the core array plates of a natural spirit-gathering array, the array plates were made of copper, the edges were engraved with fine runes, and they emitted a deep humming sound when infused with spiritual energy; there were three skylights in the dome, without glass, just left open, so that you could see the clouds during the day and the stars at night.

The concentration of spiritual energy here is four times that of a normal cultivation room. This is not an exaggeration; it's a real measurement. When Lin Chen first walked in, his breathing became heavy, not because the air was thin, but because the spiritual energy was so concentrated—it was like water filling his lungs, making him want to cough. It took him quite a while to adjust.

For the next two days, all five of them were busy with their own things, and no one was idle.

Chu Fan occupied a small area on the east side of the cultivation room, spread the "Twelve Array Explanations" on the ground, and turned the pages one by one, making annotations in the margins as he did so. His handwriting was small and densely packed, like ants crawling on the paper. He categorized the array materials he had obtained from the cave according to their grade and attributes: copper coins for copper coins, spirit ink for spirit ink, array flags for array flags, all neatly stacked in the corner. He improved three types of demon-trapping arrays, compressing the time it took to set up an array that originally required the time it takes to burn an incense stick to half a cup of tea. He made seven sets of portable array plates, each set packed in a leather bag with a label attached to the opening, indicating the name of the array and the scenario in which it would be used.

Su Ling'er squatted on the ground on the west side of the cultivation room, with three alchemy furnaces in front of her—one large and two small. The large one was for refining basic pills, and the small ones for refining advanced pills. She managed all three furnaces simultaneously, controlling the fire with her left hand, adding the medicine with her right, keeping an eye on the furnace temperature, and timing everything. She studied the ancient pill formulas in "An Introduction to Alchemy" over and over again. Some succeeded, some failed; if she failed, she started over; if she succeeded, she refined more batches. In two days, she refined three batches of Purifying World Pills, five batches of Strengthening Foundation Pills, and two batches of Gu-Breaking Pills. The pills were packaged in jade bottles, sealed with wax, and neatly stacked in the medicine chest, filling the once empty chest to the brim.

Leng Feng was tempering his battle blade in an open area on the back mountain. He had exchanged for high-grade forging materials—meteorite iron from outer space, demonic beast blood essence, and a small piece of Xuanbing Jade Marrow. He had learned weapon tempering techniques in the military; although not an expert, it was sufficient. He repeatedly rehearsed the entire process of fusing the amplification runes into the blade three times, ensuring that every step was flawless before he began. The tempering process lasted a full day and night, with the clanging sounds of hammering and Leng Feng's low groans echoing from the back mountain from time to time. When he returned to the training room, the surface of the blade had a layer of dark red patterns, like blood vessels or tree roots, extending from the hilt to the tip. He gripped the blade and tested it, casually swinging it; the blade's energy left a faint white mark on the wall.

Su Muyue didn't go to the cultivation room or the back mountain. She returned to her dormitory, closed the door, and focused on studying the ancestral evil-repelling formation. After the blood poison was eradicated, her Martial Emperor guardian bloodline was several times more active than before, like a dredged river, its flow abundant and smooth. She pulled out the oldest and most obscure formation scrolls from the Su family's ancient books, studying them page by page and deducing them stroke by stroke. In two days, she broke through three formation barriers that were previously inaccessible due to the blood poison's suppression, deducing a completely new composite evil-repelling formation that combined the Su family's ancestral evil-repelling formation with the ancient trapping formation that Chu Fan obtained from the cave, greatly increasing its power.

Lin Chen did nothing.

He simply sat on the meditation cushion in the meditation room, closed the door, cleared his mind of all distractions, and began to cultivate.

He hadn't used all the Star Essence Liquid he'd brought back from the secret realm. He'd left a small portion, sealed it in a jade bottle, and placed it on the stone platform beside his meditation cushion. He didn't plan to use it anymore—the remaining amount was small, and while it wasn't impossible to force a breakthrough, it was unnecessary. The cultivation method of the *Star Origin Technique* emphasized a solid foundation. Relying on external forces to reach a higher realm resulted in impure Qi and a weak foundation, leading to more bottlenecks in subsequent cultivation. He wanted to rely on his own accumulation, progressing step by step.

The Spirit Gathering Array operates day and night. Spiritual energy converges from all directions, flowing into the dantian through the meridians, where it is absorbed, transformed, and refined by the Star Martial Core. Silvery-white star power surges through the twelve meridians, each major cycle carrying away impurities and leaving behind a pure essence. The meridians are cleansed again and again, like a riverbed being polished by flowing water, becoming wider, smoother, and more resilient.

On the first day, the first fine line appeared on the barrier of the dantian.

The next day, the surface of the barrier began to peel off.

On the third, fourth, and fifth days, the rate of peeling off accelerated, and the barrier grew thinner and thinner. Lin Chen was oblivious to the passage of time. His entire focus was concentrated in his dantian, on the rapidly spinning Star Martial Core. The outside light seeped in through the skylight in the dome, brightening and dimming repeatedly, but he remained completely unaware.

Late at night on the seventh day of seclusion.

Outside the domed skylight, the moon, large and round, hung in the center, its silvery light cascading down like a waterfall onto Lin Chen. Suddenly, the spirit-gathering array's plate emitted a piercing buzz, its spiritual light surging, and the concentration of spiritual energy in the room nearly doubled in an instant. The spiritual energy from the surrounding mountains and forests seemed to be sucked away by a giant straw, rushing wildly into the array's openings, causing the leaves to rustle in the airflow.

Lin Chen sat upright on the futon with his eyes closed. The silvery-white star power around him was so dense that it was visible to the naked eye, like a thick cocoon enveloping his entire body.

The Star Martial Core spun rapidly within the dantian. It wasn't the usual steady, uniform rotation, but a near-frenzied, extreme spin, like a top being churned with all its might, emitting a sharp buzzing sound. The accumulated star power of the past seven days surged through the meridians, each meridian stretched to its limit, like a river overflowing with water, the dam groaning under the pressure, yet never collapsing.

it's time.

Lin Chen gritted his teeth and gathered all his star power into his dantian at once, turning it into an unstoppable torrent that crashed into the barrier of the imprisoned realm.

Click.

A soft sound, like ice cracking or porcelain shattering, appeared on the barrier of the dantian, stretching from top to bottom. The crack was fine, yet deep, penetrating the entire barrier.

The first impact cracked it open. But that wasn't enough.

Lin Chen didn't pause. He took a deep breath, and the second round of star power followed immediately, more intense, more fierce, and more concentrated than the first. The silver star power, like a red-hot iron cone, fiercely drove into the crack.

Cracks spread in all directions, covering the entire surface of the barrier like a spider web.

The third impact.

The star power transformed into a giant, silver-white hammer, which slammed heavily onto the already riddled barrier. A deafening roar echoed within his dantian, causing his entire body to tremble slightly. The barrier shattered completely under the hammer's impact, turning into countless tiny fragments that collapsed like a broken mirror.

The barrier in the dantian is broken.

A massive amount of spiritual energy surged into the dantian like a flood bursting its banks—not to replenish, but to infuse. This spiritual energy gathered, compressed, and condensed within the dantian, merging with the originally liquid stellar power. The Star Martial Core shuddered violently, its rotation frequency plummeting from high speed to near stillness—then it began to rotate at a completely new rhythm, more stable and substantial than before, like a refurbished engine, every component fitting together perfectly.

The liquid stellar energy began to solidify. Not freezing, but a qualitative change—from liquid to solid, from light true qi to heavy protective qi. The silvery-white protective qi swirled and coiled within the dantian, thread by thread, circle by circle, finally condensing into a fine ring of protective qi, quietly suspended around the core of the stellar martial arts, like the rings of a planet, dazzling and ever-flowing.

Early stage of the Transformation Realm.

A powerful force spread from the dantian to every part of the body, like a warm tide, washing over every inch of skin, every muscle, and every bone. The body was continuously tempered by the qi, the bones became denser, the muscles became tougher, and a faint layer of starlight membrane spontaneously appeared on the surface of the skin, as thin as a cicada's wing, yet as hard as steel—ordinary weapons could not damage it in the slightest.