"How is this possible?" exclaimed John in shock.
When he tried controlling the sphere like he would his own dantian, John was shocked to find out he could completely control it. It felt as natural as controlling his own dantian. Furthermore, his own dantian still functioned normally, showing it was not impeded by the sphere at all.
John once more focused on extracting Qi from the sphere. Just like before, Qi naturally started to flow out of the sphere and into his meridians. John guided the Qi through his body according to the diagram once more, and slowly but surely, John could feel his body strengthening slightly.
"Amazing" exclaimed John as he kept extracting Qi from the sphere and sending it towards the rest of his body. The feeling of his body growing ever stronger was intoxicating. John kept at it for quite some time before no more Qi flowed from the sphere.
"Huh? Is it empty already?" A wave of fatigue washed over John's body.
"I don't know how it happened, but this sphere is acting like another dantian of mine. It seems when it runs out of Qi, I'll feel fatigued just like I would if my own dantian ran out of Qi."
After thinking for a bit, John started to extract energy from his own dantian and guide it according to the diagram.
No matter how much Qi John guided through his meridians, there was no change in his body.
"Does it only work with Qi from the sphere?" John thought about it for a second before noticing something. When he extracted Qi from the sphere, it had a slightly different quality than the Qi he extracted from his own dantian.
Qi was the natural energy of the universe, and embodied all the laws of the universe. Depending on the cultivator's comprehension, different laws and properties were extracted from the Qi.
"The sphere must be altering the Qi in some way that I can't understand. It seems I can only cultivate this Immortal Asura Body using the sphere's Qi" thought John as he returned the Qi flowing through his body to his dantian.
Still fatigued from his empty sphere dantian, John started cultivating, focusing on drawing in the surrounding Qi towards the sphere to fill it up.
As soon as the Qi that John had drawn into his body hit the sphere, it was rejected and scattered towards his own dantian. No matter how much Qi John drew towards the sphere, all of it was rejected.
"What do I do? If I can't cultivate this dantian with Qi, then what is it good for?" said John in frustration. He had thought he had discovered an amazing treasure that would help him immensely, but it soon revealed itself to be quite troublesome instead.
John kept trying for an hour to get Qi to flow into the sphere, but was unsuccessful no matter how hard he tried.
"Forget it!" shouted John in frustration.
He stood up and paced back and forth, thinking for a solution to this newfound problem. After pacing for quite some time, John spotted the black book out of the corner of his eye. An idea crept into his mind.
"Could it be?" thought John.
He sat back down in front of the book and studied the last diagram once more. Some time later, the corpse of the large Gray-Scaled Crocodile appeared in front of John.
"I used that sinister blood to cultivate this sphere earlier."
John cut open the beast and extracted some of its blood. Using Qi from his own dantian, John guided a small portion of blood from the beast into his own body and towards the sphere.
Right as the blood approached the sphere, it was violently sucked in. John felt the wave of fatigue he felt lessened slightly.
"It worked! Blood is the key!"
He quickly drew in more blood from the crocodile and guided it through his body towards the sphere. Slowly but surely, John felt some of the fatigue wash away. After extracting quite a large portion of blood and absorbing it, John thought for a moment before walking over to the head of the crocodile.
He took out his greatsword and sliced open a deep cut right between the eyes of the beast. As soon as the cut was made, an extremely vibrant and dense blood flowed out. John quickly collected the blood.
"This should be its blood essence."
Every creature and cultivator contained two types of blood. One was the normal blood that flowed throughout the body, and one was concentrated blood essence. No matter how much normal blood was lost, as long as the living being didn't die, it would eventually recover it.
However, blood essence was different. It was the concentrated life essence of the living being, and as such was much more vibrant and potent. It was the source of blood energy in the body, and as such was very important. Restoring lost blood essence was very hard, it not almost impossible without special means.
John took the small bowl of blood essence and held it in front of him. He pressed the bowl against his chest and used his Qi to absorb and guide the blood essence into his body.
"Guh"
A small grunt escaped John's lips. As soon as John absorbed the blood essence, it felt like his body was heating up and the blood was trying to rampage through his body. This was due to the blood essence being much more potent than regular blood.
Although the blood was trying to rampage through the body, John was able to easily control it and guide it towards the sphere. When the blood essence approached the sphere, it was once more violently sucked in.
A happy expression appeared on John's face.
"That was at least several times more effective than all the blood I've absorbed from the beast so far. It seems that blood essence is the way to cultivate this technique."
John focused on absorbing the rest of the blood essence before he focused back on the sphere. Guiding it like he would his own dantian, John started to extract Qi from it. Slowly, a small amount of Qi came out of the dantian before it quickly returned to an empty state.
Fatigue once more washed over John.
"That's it? The entire beast only provided that much Qi? Who knows how much blood I would have to absorb to restore this sphere to its peak state" John exclaimed in frustration.
John took out all the remaining Body Refinement level beasts from his storage ring. There were about a dozen of them. After extracting their blood essence, John guided the blood essence towards the sphere.
"It's still only this much?"
Even after absorbing a dozen Body Refinement level beasts, John had still only slightly filled up his sphere dantian. At this pace, it would require hundreds of beasts just to reach a full state, let alone use it to continuously cultivate.
A black headless corpse appeared in front of John.
"I don't believe that a mist creation level beast won't be enough" said John as he walked over to the head of the wolf and extracted the blood essence. The wolf's blood essence was dozens of times more potent than any of the Body Refinement beasts.
John took a deep breath before he started to guide the blood essence into his body.
"Guh!" a pained grunt escaped John's mouth. Compared to the previous blood essence, the wolf's blood essence was much more potent. John struggled a bit before managing to get the blood under control, at which point he guided it towards his sphere dantian.
"Much better!" exclaimed John. Compared to the previous blood, this blood had provided much more energy to the dantian. Although the dantian was still mostly empty, John felt the fatigue wash away and energy once more return to his body. Not only that, he could even feel the sphere dantian itself grow slightly stronger.
"I suppose this is the way to cultivate this dantian. Right now, the amount and quality of Qi it provides is similar to my own. I suppose this dantian will follow the same leveling pathway as my own dantian."
Although the sphere was already solid and quite different to John's mist dantian, the quality and potency of the Qi extracted from it was similar to his own dantian. As such, John surmised that it would most likely follow the same power progression pathway.
Learning his lesson from last time, John kept the Qi stored in the sphere dantian.
"I'll keep cultivating this later once I collect more blood essence. It seems like I will need a large and steady supply of blood essence to cultivate this body cultivation technique. It also seems that the higher level the beast, the better."
"If the sphere provides Qi for the Immortal Asura Body cultivation technique, then I can use my own dantian for essence cultivation. I can cultivate both!"
With two dantians focusing on a separate cultivation pathway, John would be able to defy the norms and cultivate both essence and body.
"This is amazing!" exclaimed John, an excited look on his face. He took a few minutes to calm down.
John then put away the beast corpses and the book, before once more taking them out.
"The sphere also seems to act like a giant storage ring for the palace. I wonder if I can store my own items in there as well."
John grabbed one of the beast corpses and then thought about storing the corpse inside the palace. The corpse suddenly disappeared.
"It worked?"
John quickly sent his sense into the palace, at which point he saw the corpse lying inside of it in one of the hallways.
"It worked. This palace is massive. Now I won't have to worry about a storage ring again." A happy expression appeared on John's face as he thought about all the money he would save not having to buy any more storage rings.
He quickly took out all the items from his storage ring and transferred them inside the palace.
"I'll hold on to this ring for now though." thought John as he kept the ring on his finger.
After dealing with all his items, John looked towards the second book lying on the ground in front of him.
"Celestial Lightning Script huh? Sounds impressive."
After examining the book cover for some time, John reached out and opened the book.