Tales of The Mighty Dragonair

Arthur was in a world of his own, not aware of anything that happened outside. Despite the pain and fatigue he had, he was super focused on the mission in hand.

"Just a tiny bit," he tried to push the breakthrough forward using only his sheer will.

Cleaving his soul for twelve times wasn't something he counted for, yet it wasn't ever heard in his past life. Despite reaching this far, he knew he couldn't close his eyes and rest, the breakthrough wasn't over yet.

So he tried to stay conscious while waiting impatiently for his core to finish dealing with those dots.

"Forming the nascent soul of one soul speck takes almost an hour, but now I can't even tell how much time I have," he muttered and as he waited, the effects of the combined efforts of his three aiders started to show some results.

"How could I heal this fast?" he mumbled when he noticed the status of his body. He didn't expect his body to heal this soon, especially when the damage touched his most precious soul.

Wounds of the soul always were hard to heal, taking much time and effort to accomplish that.

"Anyway it's a good news," he shook his head when he couldn't find a suitable explanation. "I need to focus entirely on that disastrous core of mine."

He turned his attention fully to the core, observing any changes occurring there.

After five hours of nothing, the core started to finally show signs of transformation. "The cores back in my days used the soul speck to transform, turning into a small soul particle like a star. What are you going to turn into?" he thought to himself while watching the core changing.

The first thing happened was for the core to have twelve projections, forming something like a twelve point star. When this happened, the core changed from three combined cores into this big star inside his mind dantian.

This took six hours to conclude. When it finished, the new soul started to link to the meridian network that was previously attached to the core.

Yet the meridians and energy got attached only to the twelve heads of this star, as for the body it kept shining from time to time.

"It's like a heart beating on its own," Arthur muttered when he noticed the end form of his nascent soul. "Can I still call it a nascent soul? Or a star soul to be more exact?"

As he was wondering about this, the new soul shook and suddenly all the spiritual energy inside his body started to go towards the star and vanished there.

"It's about to end… finally," he sighed while watching the last amount of energy entering into his star and vanishing there.

"Rumble!"

The next instant the star shook, and he felt the shaking hitting his soul. "Damn! You aren't satisfied with the damage you caused so far?" he cursed when he felt immense pain from this mere shaking.

His soul was literally amended on the surface, yet most of his wounds were still live and kicking. With this shaking, his soul regained most of the previous injuries, destroying all the hard effort of the three from before.

Just as everyone was panicking, the new soul inside his dantian shone brightly all of a sudden. The light that bathed each inch of his body and soul started to miraculously heal him at a fast rate visible to naked eye.

"Wow, it's healing me," Arthur muttered before smiling in content, "you worth all the pain I suffered so far."

Arthur didn't wait long this time, as the light only shone for five minutes and then it started to recede fast back into his dantian. His body was cleansed from all impurities and outside he exerted offensive sticky black secretion that surrounded his body like a small pool of filth.

"Ding! Again? This is ridiculous!" the system mumbled before he brought a fountain of purified water from the nearby lake and cleaned Arthur with it.

"It seems a usual step when he grows stronger," the golden dragon said.

"A very bad step indeed," Arthur opened his eyes finally while laughing, "thanks for the help. I needed a shower to be honest."

Inside his dantian, the soul started to shine in pulses like beating. With each pulse, a new form of spiritual energy was pumped into his dried up dantian and meridians, giving him more energy to move.

The new energy was dark blue in color, with strange white luster in the form of short irregular lines. Arthur never saw such a scene in the nascent soul stage. For him, this was a stage beyond immortal stage.

"We tried to help heal you," the golden dragon said in much better tone, "but your injuries reopened all of sudden and then recovered on its own. Bizarre if you want my opinion."

Arthur understood what happened while the system added, "Ding! It's not just the two of us who helped, the garden also helped a lot."

"Thanks," Arthur honestly said before adding, "how much time passed?"

"A day and half so far," the golden dragon said.

"And the war?"

"Ding! The queen is sealing many portals around. It was just as you expected, and some of these worlds were getting absorbed by the garden, but not all of them."

"Great," Arthur nodded in content before adding, "time to get the mission of the garden done."

"Won't you rest?" the golden dragon asked.

"No time for that, I need to finish this as soon as possible."

Arthur then sat on the ground for hours before his spiritual energy was restored. Then he started merging his energy again.

His breakthrough into the nascent soul base made the amount and duration of the merge increase significantly. "According to what I saw so far, this is almost triple the previous merging time and the total energy produced exceeded five folds," he muttered after multiple attempts to merge the two energies together.

The size of his pearl kept increasing faster than before, and in just two days he managed to finally double the initial size he started with.

"Ask it if this is enough or not," he muttered while taking a healing and replenishing pills. He tried to decrease the replenishing pills as much as he could, but he couldn't keep on like this without consuming some.

"Ding! It says this is enough."

"Great," Arthur laughed while standing up in great spirit, "now let it start merging with my pearl. I'm eager to see the end result."

"Ding! It also asks to connect to the soul you just produced," the system suddenly said.

"My nascent soul?" Arthur was surprised before he realized something. "The map… it's all happened because of my star map!" he finally realized how special his little map was.

"Ding! Yes, it wants to be linked to the map inside your soul. It says this will help both of them to grow with you as you grow."

"This garden is ambitious," the golden dragon laughed, "I really like it."

"Alright, what does it need?" Arthur asked.

"Ding! It speaks about another breakthrough…" the system paused before adding, "Ding! It describes something similar to a small breakthrough of yours."

Arthur exclaimed in realization, "Ah, it wants me to raise my base by one minor stage, right?"

"Ding! I think this is what it wants."

"Good," Arthur sat directly on the ground, "make it ready to act, I believe I need less than half a day to break through."

Arthur's prediction was off this time, as he completed the next upgrade in less than three hours.

"Impressive, the place here seems to help me the higher my base is," he muttered before his energy was getting denser.

"Let it start," he opened his eyes and said to his system before returning to his own cultivation world.

The next moment the pearl inside his old dantian shook. It then regained its calm before shaking up again, and again, and again.

"What are you trying to do?" he muttered while patiently watching on the side, doing nothing.

Just after a few minutes of this, he sensed the soul in his mind dantian starting to resonate with the pearl, shaking with its rhythm.

"Is this what you meant by merging with the map?" Arthur was astonished to see the pearl sending off a separate long thread, heading directly towards his brain, and resting finally inside his nascent soul.

The moment this happened, Arthur thought everything finished, yet he was mistaken.

"Another one?!" he was surprised to see another thread sprouting fast from the pearl towards his mind dantian.

This kept happening for an entire hour. After this, the space between his mind dantian and his old dantian in his belly was now covered by thick layers of threads connecting the two together.

He couldn't sense the threads well, yet he felt a great deal of energy travelling between the two. "It's not high and pure like the energy generated by the merge… this is like a weaker form of it," after some time he finally reached this conclusion.

"Now what?" he muttered, and the next thing he received as an answer was this soft feminine voice coming weakly inside his mind: "I'm done, you can open your eyes, master."