Rise Of The Worm Sovereign

While Shirong was cultivating, Lin Wu decided to finally start refining his spirit sense. He first went over the method in his mind before getting ready. It was mentioned that one needed to have a calm mind and great focus to be able to successfully refine their spirit sense.

According to what Lin Wu had learned, spirit sense was nothing but tendrils of spirit qi which were made by linking the wisps of spirit qi together and binding them together with the will of the cultivator. Lin Wu didn't understand how the will would bind it, but it was mentioned in the technique that the will of the cultivator naturally imbues their spirit qi.

But this 'will' is quite dissipated and needs to be linked properly for it to control the spirit sense tendril. Lin Wu withdrew a wisp of spirit qi from his core and brought it to float outside his body. This was the very first step and took most cultivates weeks if not months to achieve.

But this was if they were in the qi refining realm and had little to no experience with spirit qi control. For Lin Wu, who had been getting a feel for the spirit qi since the start due to the system, this was extremely easy, not to mention that he was in the core condensation realm.

Usually, a cultivator would refine their spirit sense in the late to peak stage of the qi refining realm and then would keep on extending its range and adding more and more tendrils. Till the peak stage of the qi refining realm, the usual limit for most cultivators was ten meters.

Some more talented ones could even reach a hundred meters, which was what an early stage core condensation realm cultivator had. The range of spirit sense greatly varied in the core condensation realm, and some had short ranges while others had long.

It all depended on whether the cultivator spent his time in refining their spirit sense. Usually, they would stop after a certain level as it would take up their precious time for cultivation. Not to mention that refining spirit sense was actually quite difficult and would result in loss of spirit qi upon failure.

For example, if a hundred wisps of spirit qi were used to make a tendril and the hundred and the first one were being added to it; if a failure occurred all of the hundred and one wisps of spirit qi would dissipate and the cultivator would lose them.

Thus this became a cycle of refining, failure and replenishing spirit qi. Because of this, once a cultivator reached a satisfactory level, they would stop refining their spirit sense. There were many methods of refining spirit sense, and all cultivation techniques included one method in them.

Lin Wu was an exception here, such that he actually had no cultivation technique as he relied on direct absorption to get it. Most beasts used this method, while some of them had their innate cultivation methods. Even the beasts that developed their spirit sense did it instinctively, which was an advantage when compared to humans who had to manually learn.

Perhaps Lin Wu would have experienced that as well eventually, but due to him having the soul of a human and the system, this process was changed by quite a lot.

Lin Wu was now focusing on the wisp of spirit qi that was floating around his body and controlled it to move all around. This was the second step and was meant to help the cultivator get used to controlling spirit sense.

"Man, this is easy… why did it say that it was hard in the manual?" Lin Wu said, feeling a bit bored.

Thinking for a bit, he recalled the next few steps and found that all of them were something he could do automatically.

"Let's try skipping a few steps…" Lin Wu decided.

He thus went directly to the step where it said to draw out the second wisp of spirit qi. He did it, and now another wisp of it was floating around him.

"Huh, that was… nothing," Lin Wu muttered.

He then jumped to the next step, which was the tricky bit. One had to link the two wisps of spirit sense while trying to make the imbued will in them to obey him. Lin Wu brought the two wisps close together and found there to be some resistance.

"I guess I found the hard part…" He muttered.

Lin Wu increased the pressure and the two wisps of spirit qi started to come closer and closer until they were almost touching. But they were still resisting, and it was as if one was trying to bring the same poles of a magnet close to each other.

"Come onnn… link up!" Lin Wu ordered.

~Phut~

Suddenly a small explosion occurred and the two wisps of spirit qi disappeared. Lin Wu was knocked back a bit in the ring due to the force of the explosion, but was not injured at all. His body was too tough for something like this to affect him.

"Huh, I guess I'll have to try a few more times." Lin Wu realized.

He then repeated the same thing again and again till he was finally able to link the two wisps of spirit qi together. When they linked up, Lin Wu could feel a new connection with them. This was due to the imbued will in those wisps responding to him.

"Finally…" Lin Wu said as he took a breath of relief.

He took a glance at his core and felt the loss of the spirit qi to be minimal. 

"If this is all it costs, then it'll be worth it. Even if it takes me a long time, I'll do it!" Lin Wu declared to himself.

With new found determination Lin Wu began his own seclusion in refining spirit sense, all the while ignoring the hundreds of spirit qi explosion that he was causing. Shirong was busy cultivating too and did not notice this.

Meanwhile, an inaudible ~Crack~ happened inside the ring.