Although Miwa Masayo knew what Uchiha Yoru intended to do, his sudden leap still frightened her badly.
The tabby cat darted to the crater in only a few bounds. Braving the scorching eruptive airflow, she stretched her head over the edge and looked down.
After only one glance, she relaxed.
Now that the eruption had completely weakened, the lava inside the crater was gradually receding.
Within the wide crater, many platforms formed from solidified lava had been left behind. They overlapped layer upon layer like oyster mushrooms.
Through the distorted waves of heat and the billowing volcanic ash, Miwa Masayo saw Uchiha Yoru.
He stood upon a platform roughly halfway down the crater.
Uchiha Yoru wasn't sitting cross-legged. Instead, he stood with his legs slightly apart and his arms hanging naturally at his sides.
His posture was upright, like a green pine standing atop a mountain peak, appearing and disappearing amid the rolling gray smoke.
Seeing that her caretaker was unharmed, Miwa Masayo breathed a sigh of relief and quietly left the crater.
She took her caretaker's words extremely seriously.
Since he had told her to remain vigilant while familiarizing herself with her own abilities, Miwa Masayo would carry out his instructions without the slightest compromise.
The tabby cat thought for a moment, then turned her head and licked the base of one foreleg.
Eight unusual cat hairs caught upon her barbed tongue, each one as straight as a needle.
A cat's tongue possessed extremely sensitive touch, so she already knew their exact number while licking them.
She immediately mobilized the natural energy she had nurtured within herself for a long time and infused it into the eight special hairs one by one.
Under Uchiha Yoru's guidance, Miwa Masayo had also begun accumulating natural energy inside her body.
Moreover, that natural energy was divided into two types.
The vast majority consisted of natural energy flowing through her meridians, gathered bit by bit through her daily absorption from nature.
With enough natural energy stored inside her body, she no longer needed to draw it temporarily from the environment during battle.
Naturally, the efficiency of using it increased enormously.
In fact, only the three Great Sages of the Three Great Sage Regions and the Sage of Six Paths possessed this ability.
Apart from those four Great Sages, neither Fukasaku and Shima of Mount Myōboku, nor the three sages Tagitsuhime, Ichikishimahime, and Tagorihime of Ryūchi Cave, nor Sage Nekosuke of the Cat Castle could accomplish it.
Natural energy possessed an extremely strong affinity with chakra.
Once natural energy accumulated to a certain degree, it would cross into the cells and combine with chakra to form senjutsu chakra.
If someone hadn't cultivated senjutsu and couldn't control senjutsu chakra, this extraordinarily active supernatural power would transform any cells it contacted into a particular substance, such as stone.
For a life-form possessing chakra, natural energy was far more dangerous than any deadly poison.
Following Uchiha Yoru's method of isolating the meridians, Miwa Masayo had completed the internal storage of natural energy in advance.
This placed her far beyond the overwhelming majority of sages.
Moreover, Uchiha Yoru had given her another hint.
Through her Howling at the Moon cultivation, she refined the stored natural energy and extracted natural energy that was completely under her control.
She then stored it within the convergence core of her meridians, located roughly between the tabby cat's chest and abdomen.
The amount of natural energy there wasn't large, but it possessed astonishingly wondrous effects.
For example, the Sage Art Miwa Masayo was currently using.
Sage Art: Hair Clone Technique.
The eight highly elastic, needle-straight cat hairs were filled with natural energy.
They suddenly sprang from Miwa Masayo's tongue and began swelling and transforming in midair.
By the time they landed, they had become eight identical tabby cats.
Unlike the Clone Technique or Shadow Clone Technique, the Hair Clone Technique produced no chakra fluctuations.
Yet like the Shadow Clone Technique, the clones possessed genuine physical bodies and could use all of Miwa Masayo's ninjutsu and senjutsu.
The Hair Clone Technique not only allowed the clones to act independently, but also enabled them to communicate with the original body at any time and receive her consciousness, allowing her to handle unexpected situations immediately.
This Sage Art had few weaknesses.
Their physical strength was considerably lower, and their resistance to impacts was insufficient.
But for guarding and surveillance, they were absolutely adequate.
After ordering the eight cat clones to head in eight directions and guard the island's perimeter, Miwa Masayo found a depression.
A large amount of lava had accumulated there.
Because there was so much of it, it still hadn't solidified.
The tabby cat clawed aside the hardened black crust, exposing the crimson lava beneath.
The moment she saw lava at close range and felt its scorching radiation, her instinctive reaction was to spring high into the air.
She instantly landed more than ten meters away.
After landing, Miwa Masayo needed a full thirty seconds to calm down.
She finally understood the problem her caretaker had mentioned.
As a sage who controlled fire-spirit natural energy, her body had long since stopped fearing flames.
Now she could freely manipulate pure-white fire, using it not only as an extension of her claws, but also as protection for her body.
After all, pure-white flames reached temperatures above 2,700 degrees.
How could Sage Miwa Masayo, who could touch and use such temperatures without difficulty, possibly be harmed by mere nine-hundred-degree lava?
That was naturally impossible.
Yet she had still instinctively avoided the lava.
This proved that a severe discrepancy had formed between her bodily instincts and her physical abilities.
It truly was a problem.
And problems had to be solved.
Miwa Masayo returned to the depression, clawed open the thin rock crust once more, and was again frightened into leaping away.
She repeated this again and again, gradually wearing away the fear of lava that should no longer exist.
Finally, when Miwa Masayo opened the rock crust again, she controlled her body's instinctive reaction and remained where she was without jumping.
The tabby cat's body trembled, but she smiled happily.
She had finally subdued her own instincts.
The instincts of life were engraved into its genes, forming the most fundamental abilities that protected its continuation.
Some instincts were sustaining mechanisms meant to guarantee basic survival, such as the ability to breathe, swallow, and suckle from birth.
Other instincts were protective, meant to minimize the possibility of fatal injury.
Examples included a cat's jumping reaction toward long green objects and a human's instinctive defensive response toward something resembling a snake.
Without the operation and protection of instinct, a life-form's chances of survival would fall drastically.
However, protective instincts were calibrated to the level of most ordinary life-forms.
When a life-form itself underwent a fundamental elevation, those instincts would instead become shackles restraining its evolution.
Miwa Masayo was facing precisely this situation.
Uchiha Yoru's advice was to break those shackles and modify the thresholds of her life instincts through repeated attempts.
After working hard for an entire day and night, Miwa Masayo could finally remain calm when she clawed open the rock crust and suddenly faced the lava beneath.
After satisfactorily resolving this problem, the tabby cat hesitated before the lava for a long time.
Finally, she went one step further and extended a paw into it.
But the instant her paw entered, the tabby cat involuntarily released a miserable "meow."
At the same time, she twisted and flipped, relying entirely upon her body's strength to fling herself several meters away.
"Haha, another instinct I need to overcome, meow..."
Miwa Masayo stood up and looked at her paw with a bitter smile.
The paw she had just inserted into the magma hadn't suffered any damage whatsoever.
Even the soft fur hadn't been ignited by the lava.
She understood that her body had completely adapted to fire.
Within a very broad temperature range, she had become immune to damage from flames.
Even her fur, the part most easily ignited, was no exception.
This was the result of natural energy being stored inside her body for a long time.
Through continuous contact with natural energy, her body had gradually adapted and undergone sage transformation.
The other Great Sages came into contact with senjutsu chakra and relied upon extremely long periods of time to slowly transform their bodies, eventually producing sage transformation.
As sage transformation continued, more unusual characteristics would appear, such as prolonged lifespans, a slower rhythm of life, and increased affinity with the natural environment.
All of these required immense stretches of time.
A sage would naturally adapt to and become accustomed to every change, even developing an extended sense of time unique to long-lived species.
Miwa Masayo's path was completely different.
After solving the problem of storing natural energy, she used her Howling at the Moon cultivation to actively make her body adapt to natural energy, obtaining the evolution of sage transformation ahead of time.
Her body's sage transformation progressed far too quickly.
In only one year, she completed what took other sages a century.
As a result, the speed at which her consciousness adapted couldn't keep pace with her body's transformation.
The restraint the mind imposed upon the body genuinely existed.
Under these circumstances, it would affect her body's continued evolution and become a burden.
Of course, this burden was currently extremely slight.
Perhaps only after three or four years would it begin manifesting in various ways and become noticeable to Miwa Masayo.
Coincidentally, after completing the Three Calamities, Uchiha Yoru missed the little cat and immediately used the Summoning Technique to bring Miwa Masayo before him.
At the time, he was in the period immediately after the tribulation when his senses were at their sharpest.
Therefore, he keenly noticed Miwa Masayo's problem and discovered the nearly imperceptible burden caused by her consciousness.
That was why he had advised her before entering the crater.
Miwa Masayo took a deep breath, returned to the depression, and inserted her paw into the lava once more, continuing her training to overcome instinct.
...
While the Cat Sage exerted herself with all her strength, Uchiha Yoru had long since become immersed in the changes occurring within his body.
During the first day, he did nothing.
There was nothing he needed to do.
His body resembled a greedy Taotie, ferociously devouring every trace of natural energy in the surrounding environment.
It even caused the volcano's decline to accelerate noticeably.
Uchiha Yoru had never imagined that his body could contain such an enormous amount of natural energy.
Moreover, such a vast quantity of natural energy could gather and harmonize within his meridians, rapidly transforming into natural energy that he could accept.
The process of absorption and transformation continued throughout the entire day.
By evening, Uchiha Yoru felt the pain of his meridians tearing.
He even experienced the illusion that his body had begun swelling.
Yet his body's devouring of natural energy still didn't stop.
This made him somewhat panicked, but his intuition gave him no warning whatsoever.
Uchiha Yoru could only comfort himself.
"There won't be a problem. The instincts of life won't seek their own destruction. Only intelligent life-forms do that."
"There won't be a problem..."
After nightfall, the pain began intensifying.
The omnipresent tearing sensation drained Uchiha Yoru's physical strength until he could no longer remain standing and was forced to sit down.
The pain made it impossible for him to sit cross-legged.
He could only lie weakly upon the rock.
The heat from the stone beneath his back entered his body, making him feel slightly better.
But the intense pain continued.
It arrived in wave after wave, with every wave clearly stronger than the one before.
Moreover, the force was converging toward the core of his body.
Natural energy was gathering within the dantian that existed between illusion and reality, squeezing inward with all its might.
After realizing this, inspiration flashed through Uchiha Yoru's mind.
He stopped enduring bitterly and instead sank his consciousness into the Purple Mansion world, then descended farther downward.
Following the mysterious connection formed when the dantian had once risen and opened the Purple Mansion, Uchiha Yoru's consciousness fell into the dantian.
At this moment, the dantian no longer resembled the small pool of clear water it once had.
It was completely filled with five-colored liquefied natural energy.
Because red fire-spirit natural energy occupied the greatest proportion, the fusion of the five colors caused the dantian as a whole to appear reddish gold.
It was extremely beautiful.
Precisely because the five colors of radiance coexisted, Uchiha Yoru could detect the horrifying pressure waves through their differing vibrations.
But as he continued observing, Uchiha Yoru couldn't help muttering.
"Why is it so chaotic?"
"It's striking randomly here and there without any focus or order."
"Although I don't know what the objective is, no matter what it intends to accomplish, such disorder won't work."
Remembering that this was his own dantian, Uchiha Yoru couldn't help saying, "I wonder whether I can make it orderly. This is my dantian, so I should be able to control it, right?"
Suddenly, the chaotic pressure waves moving like Brownian motion disappeared.
Then they erupted simultaneously, producing countless resonances and interference patterns.
It actually worked!
Uchiha Yoru was overjoyed.
He immediately began directing the generation of the pressure waves, continuously adjusting their positions and judging the results through the interference patterns.
By this point, he had already guessed what was about to happen within the dantian.
However, he didn't know which type of vibration could produce the greatest pressure.
He could only keep experimenting according to the forms of the interference patterns.
What suddenly occurred to Uchiha Yoru was pressure.
All the efforts his body had made could only be intended to achieve one possible goal—to create a high-pressure region within the dantian.
But he had no idea how high that pressure needed to be.
He could only continue experimenting and see what limit he could reach.
According to Uchiha Yoru's understanding, the more orderly the interference patterns became, the more precise the distribution of pressure waves would be, and the higher the central pressure they would produce.
As the number of attempts increased, he discovered that the more circular the interference patterns became, the stronger their central compression effect grew.
Yet it was precisely these increasingly beautiful circular interference rings that reminded him of the ignition method of a certain type of mushroom.
The implosion method seemed to be the strongest technique for increasing pressure at the center.
His thoughts moved like lightning.
Without needing further consideration, spherical pressure-wave impacts formed within the dantian.
Previously, Uchiha Yoru had used natural energy to vibrate the dantian from the outside, creating the bell chimes that suppressed the heart-forms.
Now his body followed his intention and drew natural energy into the dantian.
It first struck outward toward the surroundings, generating echoes, then followed those returning waves to impact the center together.
On the very first attempt, an exquisitely flawless spherical interference wave appeared.
Its surface was covered in hexagonal wave structures, generating inward layer after layer.
Every spherical interference layer was smaller than the one before it, but the hexagonal waveforms covering them remained exactly the same size.
This caused the shrinking spherical surfaces to display a beautiful pattern.
Uchiha Yoru initially thought that a three-dimensional structure composed entirely of hexagonal faces would ultimately form.
But he immediately realized that hexagons alone couldn't form a closed three-dimensional structure.
While he was still puzzled, something had already appeared at the center of the converging interference waves.
Naturally, it wasn't the smallest hexagonal interference pattern.
It was a point he couldn't understand.
The point emitted light.
The radiance wasn't intense, yet it transmitted an incomprehensibly vast amount of information.
Uchiha Yoru felt that the point of light was a conduit.
Through this conduit, a vast source of information was transmitting a portion of itself to him.
But he couldn't comprehend its specific meaning.
The instant the point of light appeared, the overlapping interference waves were suddenly drawn into it.
An incomparably tiny bead appeared without warning.
Even while watching with his complete concentration, Uchiha Yoru didn't see the process by which it formed.
It simply appeared abruptly, as though no process had existed at all.
With the bead as the center, liquefied natural energy gathered madly.
The bead also began rapidly growing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
As its volume increased, its brilliant golden color became increasingly distinct, making Uchiha Yoru feel dizzy.
This wasn't because his eyesight was insufficient.
At this moment, "seeing" was merely a habitual description.
His only sense here was spiritual perception.
Even Uchiha Yoru's dizziness wasn't caused by the bead's golden light being too intense.
Rather, his own soul was screaming frantically.
"Golden Core!"
Gold represented something firm, unyielding, eternal, and indestructible.
Core represented something complete, radiant, pure, and without deficiency.
Originally, the Golden Core was merely used to describe a cultivator's spiritual realm after reaching the stage known as the perfectly illuminated nature of the true spirit.
But within the immortal cultivation system, the Golden Core genuinely existed.
It used the laws of the Heavenly Dao contained within a cultivation method as its core, gathered the cultivator's three treasures of essence, energy, and spirit as its foundation, and condensed them into a seed of the Great Dao.
The Golden Core truly existed, yet it wasn't material.
Like the dantian, it existed between illusion and reality, becoming the bridge connecting a cultivator to the Great Dao.
The instant the Golden Core condensed, Uchiha Yoru felt as though he had gained another eye and could see the other side of the world.
There were all kinds of worldly laws, densely packed together and mutually entangled and connected.
They resembled an enormous net that, though sparse, allowed nothing to escape, encompassing all things within it.
Including Uchiha Yoru himself.
He understood with absolute clarity that although he didn't know how many laws the world possessed, every single one was connected to him either closely or faintly.
There wasn't a single exception.
One law possessed the closest connection to him.
Its characteristics matched the nature of the information transmitted by the point of light that had appeared before the Golden Core.
Clearly, this law was the core rule of his Golden Core.
But he didn't know what it was.
That wasn't important.
What mattered was that this Golden Core truly was a Golden Core!
Uchiha Yoru was overwhelmed with ecstasy and repeatedly recited inwardly:
Once a Golden Core enters my stomach, my fate is mine, not Heaven's.
Uchiha Yoru knew that the original line of the poem didn't mention a Golden Core.
But he felt that it had to be said this way because only then would it fit his circumstances.
He wasn't Perfected Ziyang.
He was Uchiha Yoru!
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