Rebirth as a Demonic Cultivator: Starting with a Zombie Planet

Chapter 33: Liquefying Spiritual Power, the Great Path of Foundation Establishment!

An hour later, the third furnace yielded success.

Chu Xuan now held two freshly refined Foundation Building Blood Pills. Combined with the standard Foundation Building Pill looted from Ouyang Hao’s Storage Bag, he had three chances to shatter the bottleneck and reach the Foundation Establishment realm.

A single pill boosts the success rate by roughly thirty percent, he calculated, his eyes dark and focused. With three, failure isn’t an option.

His expression hardened into absolute resolve. Foundation Establishment was the first true crucible on the path of Cultivation. Eight out of ten Qi Condensation cultivators would break their teeth against this threshold and die as mortals. If Foundation Building Pills were as common as dirt, perhaps seventy or eighty percent would succeed.

But Cultivation was a zero-sum game. Resources were finite; those hungering for immortality were endless. If you ascend, I starve. It was this very ruthless arithmetic that birthed the Demonic Path.

Chu Xuan shook his head, discarding the philosophical musings. He tossed Ouyang Hao’s mangled corpse to his Yin Corpses—Dragon, Tiger, and Leopard. The flesh of an eighth-level Qi Condensation cultivator was a rare delicacy for the undead. Devouring it would push them up another level. He ordered the trio to lock down the perimeter of the Haotai Hotel.

With his guards posted, Chu Xuan sat cross-legged to center himself. Days of relentless alchemy had drained his mental reserves. Pushing for a breakthrough now would be suicidal. He needed his mind as sharp as a freshly honed blade.

Three days later, Chu Xuan’s eyes snapped open. His fatigue was gone, replaced by a thrumming, predatory vitality.

He retrieved the standard Foundation Building Pill and swallowed it dry.

Boom!

The pill dissolved, detonating in his stomach. Guided by his iron will, the medicinal energy surged through his meridians like a flash flood, tearing through his limbs and bones. With every circulation cycle, the raw energy violently converted into spiritual power.

The sheer density of a Foundation Establishment pill dwarfed anything from the Qi Condensation realm. Chu Xuan’s skin flushed deep red, his veins bulging as if his body were about to burst from the internal pressure. He gritted his teeth, forcing the raging torrent through over a dozen major cycles before slamming the newly refined spiritual power directly into his Qi Sea.

His Qi Sea was already bloated to its absolute limit. The sudden, violent influx of new energy triggered an agonizing, tearing sensation in his core.

This was the brutal mechanics of the Foundation Building Pill: cramming an impossible amount of energy into an already overflowing vessel to force the gaseous spiritual power to compress into liquid.

It was basic physics applied to Cultivation—liquefying a stable gas required crushing, unrelenting pressure. If the first wave failed, he had to keep compressing until the pill’s energy burned out. If the gas still refused to yield, he would need a second pill. It was a torturous, resource-draining grind that broke the wills and wallets of countless cultivators.

Chu Xuan sat like a statue of stone. He ruthlessly drove wave after wave of spiritual power into his core.

Failure. Failure. Failure.

Initially, the agony was blinding. But as the hours bled into days, the pain dulled into a distant, throbbing ache. He became a machine, mechanically and mercilessly compressing the energy within him.

Five days later, the crushing internal pressure abruptly vanished.

Chu Xuan inspected his inner body. His spiritual power hadn’t liquefied. The first pill had simply run dry.

His expression didn’t shift. He pinched a Foundation Building Blood Pill between two fingers, tossed it into his mouth, and immediately resumed the brutal compression.

Another five days of silent torture passed. Just like the first, the Blood Pill’s energy burned out.

Without a second of hesitation, Chu Xuan swallowed his final Foundation Building Blood Pill. There was no frustration in his eyes, only a predator’s hungry anticipation. Whether it was the invisible hand of Providence or pure instinct, he knew this was the one.

Sure enough.

The moment the second Blood Pill hit his stomach, his Qi Sea shuddered. The fierce spiritual power slammed downward like a hydraulic press. At the very bottom of his core, the gaseous energy—battered and compressed thousands of times—finally reached its breaking point.

A single, rice-sized droplet of liquid spiritual power condensed in the void.

Drip.

It hit the bottom of his Qi Sea.

That single drop was the catalyst. A chain reaction ignited.

Drip! Drip! Drip!

The dense fog of spiritual gas rapidly collapsed into liquid. Within moments, a small, shimmering puddle formed at the base of his core, holding over a dozen heavy, concentrated drops of pure power!

The suffocating pressure vanished.

Boom!

A terrifying aura erupted from Chu Xuan’s body, blasting outward like a shockwave. The concrete rooftop trembled as the invisible force swept the area clean of dust and debris. A fierce gale howled through the ruined streets within a three-thousand-foot radius of the Haotai Hotel.

Down below, Dragon, Tiger, and Leopard paused their hunt, turning their rotting faces toward the rooftop in instinctual reverence.

Chu Xuan’s eyes snapped open. A piercing, soul-shaking light flashed in his pupils.

“Foundation Establishment,” he whispered, clenching his fist. The sheer, intoxicating power coursing through his veins brought a rare, feral grin to his face.

He had crossed the threshold. Foundation Establishment cultivators could fly unassisted, riding beams of light—though most still used flying swords to conserve energy. More importantly, he had broken the mortal limit. While Qi Condensation cultivators still withered and died around a century like ordinary men, his lifespan had just doubled to two hundred years.

But the true prize was access to higher-tier spells and the ability to forge a Natal Artifact.

By fusing a weapon with his own soul and essence blood, a Natal Artifact became an extension of his own body. It would strike faster, hit harder, and respond with the fluidity of a phantom limb, far outclassing ordinary Magical Artifacts.

Better yet, a Natal Artifact was bound to his fate. As his cultivation realm grew, the weapon would evolve alongside him. It was this very synergy that allowed Foundation Establishment experts to slaughter Qi Condensation cultivators like dogs.

A Natal Artifact is the foundation of my combat power. I can’t settle for looted trash. I have to forge it myself, Chu Xuan decided.

Crafting it from scratch would be tedious, but the intimate understanding of its structure would make it infinitely deadlier in battle.

He pulled out his transcribed copy of the Blood Fiend Demon Refining Sutra and flipped to the first chapter, which detailed the demonic methods of artifact forging.

Ghost Soul Spear. Spirit-Breaking Blade. Life-Seizing Sword. Shadowless Blade.

The blueprints for vicious, blood-soaked weaponry filled the pages. Some were designed to shred the soul, others to bypass spiritual defenses and rupture internal organs. A few were designed for pure stealth, striking from the shadows like venomous vipers.

Chu Xuan weighed his options with cold pragmatism before his finger stopped on a specific diagram.

“The Fiend Soul Chain. Perfect.”

Forging it required Yin-Fiend Steel as the core, supplemented by six rare materials like Bone Bamboo and Intoxicating Vine. The final, crucial step was binding a powerful, resentment-filled living soul into the metal. After thirty-six days of continuous blood-refinement, the weapon would be born.

In combat, the chain wouldn’t just physically lash the enemy; it would whip their very soul. Simultaneously, the bound fiend soul could manifest to fight alongside him, effectively turning one weapon into two combatants.

Even better, the bound soul wasn’t permanent. As he grew stronger, he could rip out the old soul and shove a stronger, more vicious entity into the chain to multiply its power.

“Yin-Fiend Steel…” Chu Xuan muttered, looking out over the ruined, zombie-infested cityscape. “Back on the Cangxuan Continent, with those hypocritical righteous Sects breathing down my neck, gathering enough Yin-Fiend energy to forge this would be a massive headache.”

A dark, cynical smile curled his lips.

“But in this apocalyptic wasteland? It couldn’t be easier.”