"Sigh! I am afraid that I might have to disappoint Fellow Daoist as I was injured a while back and it is only recently that I have gotten back to my peak again," Bai Chen tried to avoid the topic by giving a random but plausible excuse.
"Ho ho," when City lord Shen heard Bai Chen's words, he gave a light laugh before saying, "Don't worry, Fellow Daoist, I don't mind listening to your old tales."
Sensing that City lord Shen was not going to let this matter go, Bai Chen decided to tell him some stories he had read on earth while adding and removing a few details to suit his narrative.
With how well these stories were written, City lord Shen was immediately hooked and even held a bit of awe for Bai Chen, thinking that he had gone through all that himself. However, hints of skepticism kept surfacing in his eyes whenever he tried to probe for more details.
Bai Chen noticed this as well but didn't care as it didn't matter whether the city lord thought his words were true or not; he was just reciting a few novels he had read while tweaking the details a bit.
Time went by, and before long, the carriage arrived outside a huge mansion, covered in intricate designs and strong formations. Workers kept moving from one spot to another, and the hustle and bustle made it truly feel like a place for a ruler to live.
After getting out of the carriage, City lord Shen called for a butler and turned toward Bai Chen, and spoke in a somewhat apologetic tone,
"I hope Fellow Daoist Feng won't mind going with the butler to your accommodations, although I personally wanted to escort you, but as the ruler of a city, I always have many matters to attend to."
"Of course not. I wouldn't dare take up too much of City Lord Shen's time," Bai Chen responded with a nod, his expression calm and unreadable.
City lord Shen chuckled when he heard that, but a glint flashed in his eyes that Bai Chen did not miss. The city lord was still testing him, trying to find his true intentions in any way possible.
Regarding this, Bai Chen felt quite helpless as what he said was true, he was only here to rest for a few days before starting his new journey.
At this moment, the butler, a dignified elderly man with sharp eyes, arrived at the scene. He first bowed toward the city lord and then turned to Bai Chen and spoke with a light bow, "Esteemed lord, your courtyard has been arranged; please follow me."
Hearing this, Bai Chen gave a slight nod to City lord Shen before following the butler into the mansion.
As they walked through the halls, Bai Chen took note of the intricate patterns on the pillars, the spiritual formations embedded into the walls, and the well-disguised guards hidden in key positions.
There was also a faint spiritual sense of City lord Shen who was constantly monitoring his every move.
'He is still wary of me,' Bai Chen silently mused, 'perhaps he has already started to investigate everything he could about my background.'
Meanwhile, City lord Shen entered his study room and sat down on his chair. After that, he called out, "Rat."
As soon as the words left his mouth, a short man suddenly came out from behind the pillar and immediately knelt down in front of him.
"I want you to investigate everything about this Xiao Feng," City lord Shen instructed the short man," but don't do it too openly and try to cover your tracks as much as possible.
"Yes, my lord," the short man said a few words before once again disappearing in the shadows of the pillar.
On the other side, Bai Chen was comfortably sitting on a futon placed in the cultivation room that was adjacent to his bedroom.
He first let out his spiritual sense to block the City lord's probing, then he finally started to circulate his spiritual energy and pull it toward the golden core spinning in the center of his dantian.
At this moment, there was not much spiritual energy left in his body, and most of it had already merged with his core, and the rest was also quickly merging together, forming a Full Core, the symbol of the Full Core Realm.
Bai Chen had been at the peak of the Golden Core Realm for quite some time, and it was only to avoid attention that he was holding his realm back.
In fact, he has been doing this from the very start of his journey, when he started his cultivation journey. Even though he could have covered the entire body cultivation realm in just two days, he held it back for almost two years.
Just to avoid alarming his parents and the grand elder too much.
Similarly, when he was at the Foundation Establishment Realm, he could have reached its peak and broken through to the Core Formation Realm in just three months.
But he held himself back and only broke through when he was fifteen, delaying his progress by five whole years.
And now, after holding himself back for another two years, he was finally ready to break through the Full Core Realm.
After Bai Chen had merged almost all of the spiritual energy in his meridians and body with the Golden Core, he stopped for a moment to steady his breath, and then he resumed once again.
Once the final strand of spiritual energy started to merge with the core, the golden core that was previously spinning slowly, suddenly trembled as though a beast was being awakened from its sleep.
When Bai Chen sensed the changes in his dantian, his expression changed. He immediately took out a concealing talisman from his storage ring and activated it without any hesitation.
At this moment, a deep, rumbling energy stirred from within, spreading through his meridians like a raging river breaking through a dam.
Bai Chen's entire body trembled; his bones creaked under the pressure as waves of spiritual energy crashed against the core, pushing it past its limits.
As the final strand of energy merged into the core, it condensed, refining itself into something purer—denser, more profound.
The once-fluid golden core solidified, turning into a resplendent, almost crystalline sphere. A suffocating force radiated outward, shaking the very air in the room.
Finally, the energy in the room started to get agitated and moved toward Bai Chen, whose body absorbed it all like a hungry beast.
Soon, all the energy in the room was absorbed by Bai Chen, and the Spiritual Qi gathering formation started to work rapidly, quickly replenishing the lost energy in the room.
This formed a cycle where natural Spiritual Qi from the surroundings was absorbed by the formation to fill the room, and then Bai Chen was absorbing all the spiritual energy in the room.
Though the process might seem fast, it was actually quite slow, with each cycle taking around two hours to be fully completed.
This was because the Spiritual Qi was slowly being assimilated into his body and soul, nourishing them constantly. Giving him a cumulative boost in combat power.
Meanwhile, City lord Shen noticed a slight disturbance in the spiritual energy.
But with Bai Chen blocking his spiritual sense, he soon connected the dots and guessed that it might be because Bai Chen was cultivating and dismissed it before resuming his work.
On the other side, Bai Chen guessed that by his current speed, it would take him around twenty-eight hours to fully step into the full core realm.
Then, he could begin preparing to break through the nascent soul realm and truly step into the realm of powerhouses.
And because he had held back at every breakthrough for so long, his control over energy had already reached unprecedented levels, allowing him to avoid alerting anyone nearby of his breakthrough.
Twenty-eight hours passed by in a flash.
"So this is the Full Core Realm." Bai Chen murmured as he felt the changes in his body.
First of all, his vitality got a lot stronger, increasing his lifespan by another thousand years while also increasing his regenerative capabilities.
His physical body was also strengthened and became twice as strong as before the breakthrough.
But the largest boost was received by his soul; it got stronger and more robust, allowing him to see the laws and functions of the world from an even higher stage, making it easier to perceive them.
The breakthrough also increased the range of his spiritual sense by almost three times while also pushing him one step closer to the Nascent Soul Realm.
That will allow him to break free from the shackles of the mortal body and get a chance to survive catastrophic disasters.
'But I should be more careful with concealment. I almost let out the fact that I broke through,' Bai Chen suddenly thought about how he had almost let the energy burst through the room before using the concealing talisman.
'If people knew that there was a Full Core Realm cultivator here, it might reach the ears of the Azure Dragon Sect, and they might notice something.' he decided to be much more careful in the future so as to not give himself away.
'Anyway, now what should I do?' Bai Chen asked himself as one thought after another kept coming to his mind.
Suddenly a smiled appeared on his face as he remembered something and decided what's he going to do next.