Three days later.
After bathing and changing into fresh robes, Luo Chen meticulously prepared the room. He calmly sat cross-legged beside the Ice-Fire Spirit Spring. The calming incense wafted gently as the Moonlight Herb bloomed faintly in the corner, emitting a subtle fragrance. He applied Glazed Balm to his skin known to reinforce physical resilience and drank the revitalization liquid.
Only then did Luo Chen carefully take out the Foundation Establishment pill.
"Let’s begin with the orthodox Foundation Establishment pill," he murmured to himself.
Without another thought, he swallowed the pill.
In an instant, an immense wave of medicinal power burst within him.
This was no ordinary cultivation pill. It was a pill crafted specifically for breaking through to Foundation Establishment. Its principle lay in the violent medicinal force, meant to break through barriers with overwhelming might.
Success or failure would be determined by this single surge.
However, before Luo Chen could even reach the stage of using spirit energy to assault the dantian barrier, a wave of excruciating pain erupted from every limb and bone in his body.
Especially his tongue tip!
The pain there was so sharp, so piercing, that he almost bit through it, nearly losing consciousness in a moment of blind agony.
His seated posture collapsed. He crumpled to the floor, rolling uncontrollably.
His face flushed a deep crimson, veins bulging at his temples like taut cords, as if he had been boiled alive.
Sweat poured from him in heavy drops, pattering against the ground. His lips were torn, blood spilling from where he’d bitten down.
In the haze of agony, his vision blurred. It felt as though he might pass out from the pain.
No... I can’t let it end like this!
Through sheer instinct, Luo Chen activated Divine Breaker of Malevolence, the thirty-six acupuncture points once stimulated for clarity and resilience now surged to life, becoming the eye of the storm within his body.
Pain that had been chaotic, formless, now began to converge. All of it was drawn to those thirty-six points, channeling into them like rivers to a sea.
Pain! Even more painful!
Yet amidst the searing pain, Luo Chen found a sense of familiarity.
So, in the end... it's still within what I can endure!
His face twisted, but with immense willpower, Luo Chen forced himself upright.
He couldn’t afford to waste the effects of the Foundation Establishment pill!
He activated his Perfected Mastery Long Spring Art. Clinging to unyielding willpower, he used the technique to manipulate the dense spirit energy cloud within his dantian, attempting to absorb the pill’s raging medicinal strength.
As the spirit energy soaked in the essence of the Foundation Establishment pill, it expanded rapidly, swelling to a size that threatened to overwhelm his very core. And then—it began to strike.
Its massive size began to slam against the rigid boundary of the Qi-Refining Realm dantian.
Only by breaking through that invisible barrier, allowing the energy to liquefy, could he truly step into the Foundation Establishment Realm.
Under Luo Chen’s desperate control, the spirit energy cloud repeatedly struck against the boundary.
With his meticulous spirit control and strong divine soul, it should have succeeded in a single push.
But for some reason, the barrier around his dantian was as unyielding as stone—unbreakable.
Again and again!
The swirling cloud turned into a vortex, repeatedly battering the wall of his dantian.
In the end, all was in vain.
"I... failed......" A bitter smile crept across Luo Chen’s lips.
He hadn’t been crushed by the pain, nor overwhelmed by the pill’s violent surge.
And yet, he had failed because he could not break through the barrier.
He had fallen at that one critical step.
Struggling to his feet, Luo Chen collapsed back onto the bed.
Three full days... I didn’t even realize I’d spent that long trying to break through.
He felt no hunger. Long before beginning his attempt, he had already taken a supreme-grade fasting concoction, one he had refined with his own hands. With its effects coursing through his body, he wouldn't need to eat for a long time.
But what puzzled him the most and gnawed at him in the silence was—
Where exactly did it go wrong?
He could feel that the revitalization liquid within and the Glazed Balm on his skin hadn’t even begun to take effect.
Aside from the slight weariness tugging at his spirit, his body was completely unharmed.
It seemed odd.
Most cultivators who failed to establish their foundation ended up with damaged meridians at best or, at worst, suffered a drop in cultivation and needed years to recover.
But in Luo Chen’s case, there was nothing strange about his condition. In fact, it made perfect sense.
Those injuries others sustained didn’t come from the initial attempt itself. They typically occurred after breaching the dantian barrier when the vast reservoir of spirit power was released like a raging flood.
It was like a dam collapsing. The unleashed torrent swept through the body, often leaving devastation in its wake.
This was why the Foundation Establishment Realm was said to have three great hurdles.