Demon Sword Maiden

CHAPTER 14 – ESSENCE OF LUNAR BLOSSOM

Lily flew her mount south eastwards towards the ancient Nara region located seven hundred miles to the southwest of Heian-kyo.

Sitting on her summon, Lily estimated that she would have to fly for a day and a night to reach Nara.

Maintaining her vigilance, Lily sent her consciousness into the mirror space and started comprehending the new level of Lunar Blossom.

Lily’s basic spirit power training was the Lunar Blossom technique. It might be a basic technique but it was by no means simple. Some secret techniques were far less efficient than Lunar Blossom and others would reach a limit at a certain realm, and if you wanted to change techniques at that point it would be impossible to start from scratch.

Many techniques couldn’t reach the throne realm let alone the big dipper realm.

The Lunar Blossom’s did not have much content below the throne realm, it was nothing but the simplest of instructions and yet those instructions were still on the point and practical. Only when one reached the throne realm did the true form of the Lunar Blossom begin.

Now, Lily had to discover how to break through to the throne realm.

If Lily reached the throne realm, with her Tsukuyomi swordsmanship, celestial maiden physique, lunar true intent, charm intent, purple lunar force, domain and other heaven defying secrets1, even if she couldn’t reach the realm of top powerhouses like Fujiwara no Ayaka or Minamoto no Yoritomo, she would at least have the power to fight against average big dipper powerhouse like Ueotsune Tane.

If she broke through before she entered to rescue Ayaka, she would have that much greater of a chance.

Within the mirror space, Lily sat on the stone floor staring at the bottom part of the stele, where the secret text detailing the breakthrough to the Lunar Blossom Throne realm was. As for the upper parts of the stele that detailed the higher realm training methods, she could only see blurry text, it was not that her eyesight was bad, but a kind of restriction. Perhaps the stele thought it useless for her to see this text in her current realm.

From permanence to throne, the most important thing to do was to condense the Throne Palace, a very complicated procedure.

Those who practiced the Lunar Blossom were all female. The permanence spirits of these female adepts were all based on their bodies and consciousness and had different shapes. Amongst them, the best shape was the moon shape and for those who practiced the Lunar Blossom, having the twelve moon phase shaped permanence spirit was considered perfection. This sort of permanence spirit was rare even amongst the celestial battle maidens themselves.

As for the purple lunar force, Lily was unable to find any detail amongst the part of the stele she could read.

“I have the twelve moon phase permanence spirit!” Lily was overjoyed, it seems that she was very suited to the practice of the Lunar Blossom, no wonder her speed of improvement was fast. Thankfully she had received a highly suitable training method from the mirror at the beginning, if she had received a lower level method and found out she could no longer improve at this point, she would really have to cry.

She calmed herself down and continued to read.

According to the stele, for those who practiced Lunar Blossom, if an adept had either of the two conditions, then the difficulty to breakthrough to the throne realm would be incomparably difficult. One was the possession of a twelve moon phase permanence spirit, and the other was to have a physique naturally compatible with the Lunar Blossom, an adept with an incomparably vast reservoir of spirit power2.

The twelve moon phase permanence spirit was most suitable for practicing the Lunar Blossom, but it was also the most difficult to breakthrough.

And the greater your spirit power reservoir is, the more difficult it is to breakthrough!

The Lunar Blossom was an incredible method of spirit refinement. Lily had followed the Lunar Blossom instructions and established an extremely solid foundation.

Those who practiced the Lunar Blossom would have a much larger reservoir of spirit power than those who practiced low level methods! Whether the outcome would be five times, ten times, hundred times, or thousand times greater, that would depend upon the person.

As for Lily, her spirit reservoir was a thousand times greater than an average permanence expert.

This was because she was naturally compatible with Lunar Blossom, add in all the other factors such as her physique and she had obtained the best results for a Lunar Blossom adept, but the world was fair. The advantages of having an enormous spirit reservoir was great, at the same time, however, the difficulty of breaking through was a hundred, a thousand times more difficult.

Though Lily’s talent and comprehension was above the average adept, the difficulty of her breakthroughs was far more difficult!

Lily let out a long breath…

“It looks like it will be extremely difficult for me to break through to the throne realm…”

For an ordinary adept, the throne realm was a wall between the truly strong and the ordinary, it was originally a difficult hurdle, and for Lily this difficulty had been raised a thousand times…

No matter how talented one was, it was possible to never break through to the throne realm because the difficulty was just that ridiculous.

“I must work hard! There’s no time to hesitate! Even if I have to gamble my life, I’ll still try!” Taking a deep breath, Lily continued to read.

Condense the throne palace, succeed and you were a throne expert, fail and not only would you waste a large amount of energy, you would also suffer some backlash. Though there would not be too much danger, you would be weakened for several years, only after recovering could you attempt to condense the throne palace again.

“Fortunately it isn’t too dangerous and the weakening is limited, but I can’t wait several years…”

Condensing the throne palace was a very strange and bizarre process. This was the first time Lily had come to know about this, but apparently the process was split into two paths.

There were overall, only a few throne realm experts and no one would randomly talk about this, it was also impossible to find throne realm breakthrough secrets in books.

The first path: Path of High Heavens

Separate the permanence spirit from the spirit jade, and move your soul from the spirit jade to the permanence spirit. From then on, the permanence spirit can move by itself, this type of permanence spirit was called the transience spirit or spirit of high heavens. This transience spirit will reside above the spirit palace, and with the soul as the core, it would control everything from the spirit palace to the body.

As for the remaining spirit jade, it would absorb a great portion of the spirit sea, forming a purer, more powerful, more advanced form of the spirit jade, the throne palace!

Only after completing these two steps would one step into the throne realm.

The second path: Path of Hell

The process was in fact, not too different from the path of high heavens. The only difference was that the permanence spirit would sink deep into the spirit sea after merging with the soul. In the deep dark void, it would form the spirit of hell and just like the path of high heavens, the remaining spirit jade would absorb a large portion of the spirit sea to form the throne palace.

The two roads had no difference in strength despite the two different directions, it could be said that this choice was between two different long term paths3.

Choose the realm of the high heavens, and form a way of heaven to become an Amatsukami. Or aim at the realm of yomi, become a Kunitsukami and form a way of the demon, one of eldritch, ghost or fiend.

……

The path of the Amatsukami only had one way. As for the path of the Kunitsukami, that one had multiple paths.

The stele only mentioned the path of the Kunitsukami and did not elaborate, for there was no doubt that the Lunar Blossom was a training method originating from the lunar moon high up, it was a path of the Amatsukami walking the way of the high heavens.

As for exactly how to separate the permanence spirit from the spirit jade, how to form the throne palace, these were all explained in detail on the stele, very complicated and mysterious methods.

Lily read through the instructions and descriptions.

When one condensed the spirit power and spirit jade within the spirit sea to form into the throne palace, one would have to bear the turbulent energy of the spirit sea. The process of forming the throne palace was an extremely delicate process, and the greater the spirit sea, the more difficult it was to control.

As for the moon shaped permanence spirit, it was the most stable and powerful of all permanence spirits amongst Lunar Blossom adepts, therefore it was also the hardest of permanence spirits to separate from the spirit jade.

“Nn?”

Suddenly, Lily noticed that at the end of instructions there was also an accompanying secret method.

“Endless Spirit Circulation? Everlasting Ceremony?”

Why endless spirit circulation, everlasting ceremony?

According to the stele, only those with the celestial maiden physique could use this secret method to assist in their breakthroughs to the throne realm.

Once this method was used, the breakthrough would proceed in a completely different way.

The resulting condensed throne palace would be different from the common throne palace, but it would be extremely powerful and would have the ability to change.

This secret method would make it so that the person would not have to personally control the spirit sea, instead have the peak-stage permanence realmed spirit sea absorb a large amount… no, a gigantic amount of anima to reach a new level of energy purity within the spirit sea. Once the energy was purified to the limit and spiritualized, condensation could happen at any point, all that was needed was an opportunity.

The condensation process was a spontaneous process of the spirit sea, no control was necessary so there was no difficulty, but only adepts with a massive spirit sea could trigger this phenomenon.

As for the opportunity, every person was different so it was completely unpredictable. Once this method was used, the first step would be to accumulate a huge amount of spirit power first, after that, you could only hope for the best, it was also possible that the opportunity would never appear.

Spirit power of this purity would be restricted by the limits of the permanence realm. If one did not breakthrough, then one would not be able to exert much more power than one had at the peak of permanence, the purified spirit power would also increase the burden on the spirit palace and there would be many other side effects…

As for the greatest benefit, once such a huge and pure spirit sea was condensed into a throne palace, the resulting palace would be overwhelmingly powerful.

But if one did not encounter an opportunity, then that person would probably be unable to break through by normal means.

If the opportunity was never encountered, then one could only waste their life and talent away, there would never be a breakthrough in their life. Even if one emptied their spirit sea of spirit power, it would be useless, for the purity and essence of the spirit sea would remain, plus breakthrough required the spirit sea to have enough spirit power.

The throne palace was an important foundation for immortals, the more solid the foundation, the more powerful one was and the greater the future achievements.

It was just like the foundation of a tower, the taller the tower was, the more sturdy and stronger the base required.

Not all throne realm experts could reach the big dipper realm or the legendary celestial realm.

The foundations of the throne realm determined how much further you could travel on the Path of High Heavens! Of course, this limit was only a possibility, how much further one could walk relied upon one’s practice, opportunity, fate…

Robinxen: I forgot how completely broken her build was because she only fights people stronger than her. Yuki: Hey Lily, you fit both of these conditions don’t you? Robinxen: Watch Lily choose both. I joke.