254: Chapter 254 Terrifying Cultivation Speed ​​(Part Two)

Lin Wan was even faster.

The fourth Small Heavenly Cycle took only thirty-one seconds, the fifth twenty-eight seconds, and the sixth twenty-four seconds.

The speed was still rising, showing no signs of slowing down at all.

Tao Zhe stopped recording them one by one, letting Tianheng record automatically while he stared fixedly at the curve representing the total amount of Spiritual Qi in the Dantian.

That curve was climbing upward at an unreasonable slope.

For the S-rank Su Mingyuan, filling his Dantian had taken nearly fourteen hours, running one hundred and sixteen Small Heavenly Cycles.

Chen Rong's current speed for a single Small Heavenly Cycle had already stabilized within thirty seconds, and the amount of Spiritual Qi poured into the Dantian each circuit was more than four times that of the S-rank.

Tianheng updated the estimated values based on real-time data.

Chen Rong's estimated Dantian filling time: one hour and forty minutes.

Lin Wan: one hour and thirty-two minutes.

Tao Zhe took a screenshot of these numbers and sent them to Su Mingyuan.

Su Mingyuan was handling official business in the Command Center when his phone lit up, and he lowered his head to take a look.

After finishing, he turned his phone face down on the desk, leaned back against his chair, and stared at the ceiling for two seconds.

One and a half to two hours, from zero to a First-Order Martial Artist.

Su Mingyuan had taken fourteen hours.

City Lord en own, the record holder for the past century since the founding of Cang City, had taken two months.

Ordinary Martial Artists took three years.

He did not look at his phone again and continued processing documents.

Some things did not need to be watched; the results would come on their own.

In the corridor of the Cultivation room, Zhang Dabiao had not left.

He leaned against the wall, the tea in his enamel mug growing cold and being refilled repeatedly, his eyes constantly fixed on the tablet in Tao Zhe's hand.

It wasn't curiosity; it was disbelief.

A Small Heavenly Cycle every two minutes—he could understand that, given high talent.

One every thirty seconds—he could understand that too. SSS-rank was two grades higher than S, so being several times faster was normal.

But when the words "Estimated Breakthrough to the first order in one hour and forty minutes" popped up on Tao Zhe's screen, the water in his mug almost spilled out.

"Over an hour? Did Tianheng make a mistake?"

Tao Zhe shook his head. "How could Tianheng have a problem?"

Zhang Dabiao fell silent for a long while.

He set his mug on the windowsill, walked over to the door of Chen Rong's Cultivation room, and glanced inside through the gap in the door.

Chen Rong was sitting cross-legged on a futon, and the red line on his back had already disappeared.

The Meridians had completely adapted to the scouring of Spiritual Qi, and there was no longer any congestion reaction.

His entire body was shrouded in a thin layer of white mist, which was the mist condensed from the Spiritual Qi on the surface of his skin being too dense.

The white mist slowly rotated around his body, resembling a transparent cocoon.

Zhang Dabiao had never seen this phenomenon when he Cultivated himself.

He walked over to Lin Wan's door again and took a look.

The mist on Lin Wan's body was even denser than Chen Rong's, and the color was whiter, making it almost impossible to see the outline of the person inside.

It was like a breathing cloud.

Zhang Dabiao retreated to the corridor and leaned against the wall.

"Tao Zhe."

"Mhm."

"Did white mist ever emanate from my body when I Cultivated?"

"No." Tao Zhe did not even raise his head. "The white mist is formed when the absorption speed of Spiritual Qi exceeds the operation speed of the Meridians, and the overflowing part condenses on the body surface. To put it simply—their speed of consuming Spiritual Qi is too fast, and the Meridians cannot digest it in time, so the excess piles up on the skin's surface."

"Then why are the Meridians unable to digest it in time while the Dantian is still growing?"

"Because although the Meridians cannot fully digest it in time, their operation speed is also rising along with it." Tao Zhe pushed up his glasses. "The self-adaptive ability of SSS-rank Meridians far exceeds that of S-rank. After the Spiritual Qi rushes in, the Meridians do not passively endure it, but actively expand and actively adjust their operating rhythm. It is like a river; as the water becomes larger and larger, the riverbed itself becomes wider and wider."

Zhang Dabiao understood, but he would rather not have understood.

Using the exact same Cultivation Technique, what he ran out of was a mountain trail, while what they ran out of was a highway.

The gap lay not in effort, but in foundation.

He picked up his mug and took another gulp of cold tea, saying nothing more.

One hour and twenty-nine minutes.

A muffled sound came from Lin Wan's Cultivation room.

It was not the sound of an impact, but one emanating from deep within the body—like an egg shattering inside, or a spring compressed to its absolute limit suddenly springing open.

On Tao Zhe's tablet, the curve of Lin Wan's Dantian Spiritual Qi plummeted sharply at its highest point, then immediately rebounded and stabilized at a new height.

Spiritual Qi was compressed, condensed, and released.

There was a Breakthrough.

The door did not open, but Tao Zhe could smell the scent.

The stench of grayish-black mucus seeped out from the crack in the door, more than twice as dense as the smell of the S-rank marrow-cleansing process, choking him into taking two steps back and covering his nose with his sleeve.

Without a word, Zhang Dabiao rushed forward and pushed open the windows at both ends of the corridor. Only when the draft rushed in could people barely manage to stay there.

Eight minutes later, a sound came from Chen Rong's side as well.

The same muffled sound, the same stench, and the same grayish-black mucus oozed out along the crack in the door—the amount was larger, the color deeper, and the odor more pungent.

Zhang Dabiao stood in the middle of the two Cultivation rooms; it stank on the left and stank on the right, and the smell was everywhere regardless of the wind direction. His face was wrinkled into a ball like a dried walnut.

"Good grief," he muttered. "Was I this smelly when I made my Breakthrough?"

"Yes," Tao Zhe said, pinching his nose. "But not this smelly. The larger the amount, the more Impurities were discharged, and the more Impurities there were, the greater the extent of bodily enhancement."

"In other words, the smellier, the more powerful?"

"You can understand it that way."

Zhang Dabiao took a deep breath—and instantly regretted it, retching slightly from the reek.

Tao Zhe made a phone call to Su Mingyuan.

"Group Leader Su, both of them have broken through. Lin Wan took one hour and twenty-nine minutes, and Chen Rong took one hour and thirty-seven minutes."

"What about the marrow-cleansing condition?"

"The amount is nearly twice that of the S-rank. The smell is so strong that Zhang Dabiao almost threw up."

Su Mingyuan fell silent on the other end of the phone for a second, as if holding back laughter.

"Bring them to the medical station after they take a shower for a full set of medical examinations. I'll wait over there."

"Understood."

Half an hour later, at the medical station.

Chen Rong and Lin Wan walked in one after another.

Both of their hair was still wet, and they had changed into clean military T-shirts and camouflage trousers.

Chen Rong's changes were visible to the naked eye.

When walking, his steps were lighter than before, his feet making almost no sound upon touching the ground, as if his rubber-soled shoes were stepping on cotton when walking on the concrete floor.

He stood at the door for a second, swept his gaze across the room, and then walked straight to the chair beside the medical examination equipment and sat down.

His movements were clean and crisp, without hesitation or superfluous actions.

Su Mingyuan noticed that when Old Song handed over the medical examination form, his hand shook slightly, and the form slipped out from between his fingers.

Chen Rong reached out and caught it.

It wasn't that he went to catch it after seeing it fall; the moment the medical examination form left the hand, he moved.

The speed was very fast, but the movement was very small—just a flick of his wrist, and two fingers pinched the corner of the form.

Chen Rong froze for a moment, lowered his head to look at his own hand, as if he wasn't quite sure how that action just now had been completed.