Chapter Ninety-Seven: The Golden Core Is Hard to Attain

The old monk’s words rang out, each one as weighty as a mountain, pounding into the hearts of both Zhou Yi and the other man and stirring their minds with every syllable.

“The six gates of the apertures: aperture, pool, cave, hall, palace, heaven,” Zhou Yi murmured under his breath, and a faint bitterness crept unconsciously into his tone.

“Right now, I have five hundred years of pure inner power, equivalent to a thousand years of ordinary inner power!”

As he spoke, Zhou Yi suddenly gave a wry laugh. “When you add it up, what is that really worth? And here I was, feeling proud of myself!”

“He was not wrong. My current strength is trash—no, even calling it trash is flattering me too much.” Zhou Yi’s feelings became complicated. He had thought that after everything he had experienced, after several metamorphoses of his strength and a transformation beyond recognition, he could no longer be considered weak.

Yet he had not expected that he was not merely weak, but so weak that he hardly counted at all.

“I thought my strength had already reached the false-core stage, and that from here on all I needed to do was cultivate my mind and look toward the golden core.” At that thought, Zhou Yi could not help but feel a pang of bitterness. “But perhaps this so-called ‘looking toward the golden core’ is not merely looking toward it—it may be the golden core itself.”

“Who can tell me why the gap between the false-core and the golden core is so enormous?”

“The six gates of the false core: three hundred and sixty-five apertures, one hundred years of power per aperture, and perfection means thirty-six thousand five hundred years of power!”

“The pool gate: one thousand years of power per aperture, and perfection means three hundred and sixty-five thousand years of power!”

“The cave gate: ten thousand years of power per cave, and perfection means three million six hundred and fifty thousand years of power!”

“The hall gate: one hundred thousand years of power per hall, and perfection means thirty-six million five hundred thousand years of power!”

“The palace gate: one million years of power per palace, and perfection means three hundred sixty-five million years of power!”

“The heaven gate: one hundred million years of power per heaven, and perfection means a terrifying thirty-six billion five hundred million years of power!”

“Among the six gates of the false core, even the weakest can attain thirty-six thousand five hundred years of power at perfection!”

“But the strongest can reach three hundred sixty-five billion years of power!”

“And I only have five hundred years of inner power right now!” As he calculated this, a vast sense of helplessness surged up in Zhou Yi’s heart. Was this really still the false-core stage?

“Is this really an immortal fantasy world? Could this all be nothing more than a dream of mine?” Zhou Yi found it hard to believe. Was this truly an immortal fantasy world? Did the martial power of such a world have to be this monstrous? And this was only the false core. Above it were golden core, nascent soul, spirit division, and so many other realms!

If even the false core was this terrifying, then just how fearsome must the later stages be?

“May I ask how one achieves the golden core?” After a period of inward roaring, Zhou Yi finally managed to calm himself somewhat. Looking at the old monk, he asked cautiously, “Does one simply need to perfect the apertures to attain the golden core, only varying in strength?”

Just like in the novels he had read in his previous life: those with a shallow foundation formed a weak golden core, while those with a profound foundation formed a great dao golden core.

If one’s foundation was strong enough, perhaps even before reaching the golden core, one could already slaughter a weak golden-core cultivator.

That was what Zhou Yi thought, and after asking, he looked expectantly at the old monk, waiting for what he hoped might be the answer he had in mind.

But that hope was doomed to fail.

Hearing the question, the old monk looked at him with a half-smile, his eyes gleaming with a strange light that made Zhou Yi feel utterly uneasy.

“You may have some misunderstanding about the golden core,” the old monk said after a long while, as if he had finally seen enough. He withdrew his peculiar gaze, shook his head, and smiled softly. “You still do not know what the golden core truly is?”

“What is the golden core?” Zhou Yi blinked a little, then looked at the old monk again.

“Do you know what kind of place we are in right now?” the old monk asked gently.

“What is it? The earth? The divine land? A mountain?” Zhou Yi was baffled. A string of answers flashed through his mind at once, but he dismissed them almost immediately. It could not be something so simple. If it were, the old monk would not have such an expression.

Zhou Yi looked at the old monk. His features seemed to spread out in amusement, his brows and eyes all conveying the same message: watch the show.

Something stirred in Zhou Yi’s heart. Looking at the old monk, he said, “Please enlighten me.”

Ah—

The old monk averted his gaze and lowered his head. Zhou Yi almost seemed to hear a disappointed sigh.

“At night, when you look up at the sky, what do you see?”

What the old monk said next stunned Zhou Yi at once. At night, looking at the sky—the night sky, stars, constellations, planets? He knew? He actually knew?

How could that be?

How could he possibly know, when there was no advanced technology, no mighty being capable of roaming the starry heavens? How could he know that beneath our feet lay a planet, just like the stars in the night sky?

“What lies beneath our feet is actually a star, just like the countless stars we see at night in the heavens,” the old monk said with his head bowed, not seeing the shock on Zhou Yi’s face, speaking to himself as though nothing were unusual.

“And do you know what the golden core means?”

“It means a planet. One star, one golden core!”

“One star, one golden core!”

His forehead aching, Zhou Yi lifted a finger and rubbed it hard. One star, one golden core—are you sure this is not a joke?

No one knew better than Zhou Yi, who had once lived in that other world, what chill those words carried.

How could that be a golden core? It was plainly a planet!

Zhou Yi began to understand why the strength gap among the stages of the false core was so vast. Many things that had puzzled him were finally becoming clear.

A golden core, without question, was—based on all the information he now possessed—a living, breathing planet. To place such a planet into one’s body, how could an ordinary physique possibly bear it without immense power?

The six gates of the false core, as it now seemed, were like a staircase, step by step advancing toward the final point where one could endure a golden core.

If that was truly the case, then there was no doubt that compared with the final golden core, a billion years of power? What was that worth?

Compared with a planet, even a billion years of power was nothing but trash.

So the six gates of the false core did not mean that once one cultivated them to perfection, one could automatically achieve the golden core. The difficulty of forming a golden core was far beyond Zhou Yi’s imagination. In fact, in his view, even after perfecting the sixth gate of the false core and possessing three hundred sixty-five billion years of power, it would still be unimaginably difficult.

After all, when measured against a planet, even three hundred sixty-five billion years of power truly amounted to very little.

“So this really is an immortal fantasy world after all, and the martial power of this world far exceeds what I had expected.” After a long silence, Zhou Yi let out a faint sigh in his heart and could not help but feel awed.

At this moment, Zhou Yi no longer had the confidence he had possessed before. As for achieving the golden core, he now had almost no confidence left at all. How could he still be as certain as he had been earlier?

It was not that he had fallen into despair of his own accord. Rather, the distance between ideal and reality was simply too great, leaving him with the bitter feeling of gazing upon something he could never reach.

Looking up at a mountain will make a horse die of exhaustion. Looking up at the golden core, one can only stare and sigh from afar.