Bai Yunfei’s body began to shake harder and harder, and more and more agony appeared on his face. Beads of sweat constantly fell down from his forehead. If this were to continue…this random mishmash of elemental energy alone would be enough to tear his body completely apart.
“Aaaah!”
Finally, a miserable cry rang out from Bai Yunfei’s throat. He suddenly opened his eyes. This time…he didn’t ‘voluntarily’ wake up; he was tormented awake by a bone-deep pain that came from throughout his body!
His mind was completely blank for a moment. By the time he regained his senses, he saw all the types of light before him which were merging into his body…followed by a series of nearly coma-inducing pain that came from virtually every part of his body.
“This is…elemental energy of heaven and earth!” Bai Yunfei gritted his teeth, thinking frantically, “But why is there so much of it! What’s going on…right! My choice! I need to choose!”
He knew that the most important thing right now was being calm. Bai Yunfei suppressed his agony, shut his eyes, and began to investigate the state of his body.
Chaos. It was utterly chaotic. The soulforce in his body was like an untamed stallion that had become unleashed. It was bounding everywhere without any pattern, with some of it seeming to pull in the power from the outside world into the body, and some of it strongly resisting and pushing back against that power.
“I can’t control it. I can’t control it! What should I do…what should I do?!” Bai Yunfei’s sweat continued to grow, and the worry in his heart was incomparable. He swept his left arm with his sense…then let out a surprised, “Eeee? My right arm doesn’t feel uncomfortable at all. This is…fire!”
“Fire! I can control it! This is what I want…I just want fire element. The rest of you can all beat it!” The situation in Bai Yunfei’s right arm caused him to feel surprised and delighted. Without hesitating at all, he controlled the elemental fire in his right arm, pushing it out to spread throughout his entire body, seizing the ‘territory’ which the other types of elements had taken over.
The reason why all sorts of elemental energy had flooded into his body earlier was because he had been passed out. Now that he had regained his consciousness and was voluntarily choosing fire, his body began to reject the other types of elemental energy. A short while later, Bai Yunfei was finally able to drive out the other types of elemental energy, and the rainbow of colors surrounding his body seemed to have lost their guide. The colors slowly vanished, leaving behind just a crimson color that swirled around Bai Yunfei, slowly fusing into his body.
“Whew…” He could feel the agony racking his body gradually lessen and then vanish. What replaced it was a warm, comfortable feeling. Bai Yunfei finally let out a sigh of relief, and a look of delight appeared in his eyes. It was as though he had finally escaped danger.
Soulforce circulated throughout his body. One ball of elemental fire after another merged into it. Bai Yunfei could sense a series of blazing surges of energy constantly wash through every part of his body, and with each pass, he felt as though he could sense his body grow slightly more powerful.
Slowly, after the blazing energy within his body had made several loops within it, all the blazing energy gathered at one of the apertures within his heart. Soul cultivators termed this aperture as the ‘essence aperture’; as the name suggested, it was the place used to store the elemental essence of a Soul Sprite. When advancing from the Soul Warrior level, gathering elemental essence was the final step; after the body was tempered for the first time, the body would be able to receive its first batch of elemental energy, and it would automatically gather the energy into the body, slowly circulate it, then finally form it into the ‘elemental essence-seed’ that would accompany the soul cultivator for his entire life.
Bai Yunfei could sense that all of the elemental fire within his body was slowly concentrating around his heart. A ‘hot’ feeling slowly grew stronger, as though…a seed of fire was beginning to form within his body. It constantly absorb all of the oncoming elemental fire, and it slowly grew larger, larger, larger…
More and more elemental energy appeared out of nowhere, and more and more of it flooded into his body, gathering at his heart. More and more…perhaps too more?
By the time the fireseed in his body had grown to the size of a thumb, Bai Yunfei had slowly come to the realization that something was wrong. He felt as though…he was growing ‘too hot’?
The earlier warmth had grown increasingly great, transforming into a fiery heat that then transformed once more into a scorching blaze.