Chapter 385: Ascending to the Divine Realm

After sending Yi Fan and the others into the Refinement Realm, Ye Feng slowly stepped into the third realm. In fact, Zhenzhu and the others were also in this third realm, but Ye Feng had used a spatial barrier to separate them from himself, preventing them from seeing him and him from seeing them. Only in this way could he focus entirely on his cultivation.

Ye Feng used his mental power to examine his physical condition and discovered that the small grass in his sea of consciousness had grown significantly. Although it was still in its juvenile stage, it now appeared much healthier than before, suggesting that its previous state was due to malnutrition.

However, for Ye Feng, the small grass controlled by his mental power hadn’t changed much, likely due to limitations in his strength.

Ye Feng found a patch of grass to sit on and took out the several divine essences from his ring. The white one was left by a divine-tier warrior who died during his battle against the Heavenly Sword Sage. The three yellow ones belonged to a true god-level warrior who fought against the Heavenly Sword Sage, and the other two to two true god-level warriors he had slain himself.

Ye Feng decided to study these divine essences first, as ordinary cultivators only reached the divine realm after forming a divine essence within their bodies. But Ye Feng couldn’t do this—his cultivation method was different from ordinary people’s, preventing him from forming a divine essence.

He slowly extended his mental power toward the divine essences, circling around them repeatedly, but found nothing. It was as if they were sealed jars, with his mental power unable to penetrate at all.

After probing all four divine essences, Ye Feng finally gave up, as the results were the same.

“What’s so strange about these things?” Ye Feng frowned slightly. “Not even mental power can penetrate them…”

“Why do the rumors say that as long as the divine essence remains intact, one isn’t considered defeated?” Ye Feng was filled with confusion.

With these doubts, Ye Feng returned to the Void Realm and found the Feather Emperor.

“Feather Emperor, why can divine essences block mental probing?” Ye Feng asked.

The Feather Emperor glanced up at Ye Feng before putting down the book in his hands. “It doesn’t hurt to tell you now. You’re already at the half-divine realm and could break through at any moment.”

“A divine essence is not something formed by the condensation of vital energy, but rather by the soul. Therefore, it resides in a person’s brain, not in the dantian,” Yu Huang explained slowly. “Since it is formed by the soul over time, it is extremely resilient.”
“The reason there are sayings like ‘the divine essence never perishes’ and ‘the divine rank never falls’ is that when a powerful being of a divine rank dies, their divine essence automatically absorbs their soul. All that’s needed is to place the divine essence into another body; once it adapts to that body, it will release the soul and take control of it.”
“In other words, this so-called divine essence is actually a self-formed ‘small dark room’ created by the soul to protect itself?” Ye Feng asked with a smile. “Then, does the soul inside the divine essence have consciousness?”
“Only the most powerful beings in the divine realm can retain their consciousness. Those who are not strong enough lose their consciousness completely, their souls falling into a state of chaos. They can only regain consciousness once the divine essence finds a suitable host.”
“So, in those divine essences I obtained, are there still living souls sleeping inside?” Ye Feng immediately understood.
“That’s a vivid description—indeed, that’s exactly how it is!” Yu Huang nodded cheerfully.
“What should I do to destroy these souls?” Ye Feng asked further.
Yu Huang helplessly spread his hands. “There are methods, but you’ll have to figure them out yourself!”
After leaving the virtual realm, Ye Feng didn’t blame Yu Huang for knowing the answer but not telling him. He sat back down in his original position, holding several divine essences in his hands, lost in thought.
“How exactly should I do this?” Ye Feng frowned. Hours passed, yet he still hadn’t come up with a solution.
He simply lay down on the grass, squinting at the sun above. Before long, he suddenly sat up. “How could I forget this… Since the black crystals in my body can absorb and transform various energies, they should also be able to absorb and transform soul energy!”
Ye Feng acted on his thought. A stream of black energy spread from the black crystals and slowly seeped into the white divine essence in his palm.
The black energy infiltrated the divine essence, seizing the powerful soul energy. Even the souls sleeping inside the divine essences were silently broken down by the black energy and taken back into the black crystals.

The consumption of a divine essence is an extremely slow process. It took the black energy a full three days to devour that white divine essence completely. Inside the dantian, the black crystal finally showed some changes—its three small horns became soft again, but this time they did not merge with other crystals in the dantian instead fusing together to form a slightly larger tentacle. That tentacle seemed to penetrate through spatial distances, with its other end suddenly appearing in Ye Feng’s mental sea. “This tentacle broke through the spatial limits of the dantian and entered my mental sea?” Ye Feng was filled with surprise. A powerful surge of spiritual energy was rapidly sent out from that tentacle. In just a few breaths, Ye Feng felt his mental sea becoming much denser. As time passed, after a day and night of continuous output, the tentacle finally retracted. Ye Feng scanned it with his mental power and found that his mental sea had almost doubled in size. He also noticed that some new information had appeared in his memories. After organizing it, he realized these additional pieces of information came from that previous god-tier powerhouse. The latter had left only a small amount of useful information, while everything else had been erased. “It seems it can still grow further,” Ye Feng thought excitedly. He could clearly sense that his mental sea was far from reaching its limit. Taking out another yellow divine essence, Ye Feng sent the black energy to consume it once more. This time, the process was even slower—it took over three months to devour just one divine essence. The soul inside that divine essence struggled for nearly an hour before being completely consumed by the black energy. Sending spiritual energy into his mental sea took about a month, during which time his mental sea expanded several times over. Ye Feng even felt that his mental strength had increased several times as well. However, to his disappointment, despite absorbing a true god-level divine essence along with fragments of a true god-level powerhouse’s soul, he still hadn’t managed to form his own divine essence. Nevertheless, the many things that the true god-level being knew piqued Ye Feng’s interest. This time, he didn’t delete that being’s memories but stored them separately for future reference. After dealing with these matters, Ye Feng took out another yellow divine essence and continued absorbing it. It took him over eight months to completely devour the other two yellow divine essences. Aside from his mental sea being nearly thirty times larger than before, there were no other significant changes.

However, through the memories of two powerful beings from the Fiend Realm, he had essentially learned most of the secrets of that realm, as well as some things about the Ink Whale that were unknown to outsiders.
“Having absorbed so many divine essences, aside from my sea of consciousness expanding, I still haven’t reached the divine realm,” Ye Feng felt somewhat frustrated.
He sat quietly on the grass, muttering to himself, “Is it better for me to find an opponent to train with, or continue in seclusion?”
“This third realm no longer poses a challenge to me; finding an opponent to practice with is just a waste of time.” Ye Feng realized this as well. “By the way, that cultivation technique recommended by the《Wu Dian》as the first choice last time could be given a try now. Since it was ranked first, even if its benefits aren’t at the highest level, they’ll definitely be good.”
Ye Feng decided to trust the《Wu Dian》’s recommendation.
He opened《Swallowing Heaven and Devouring Earth》, flipped to the first page, and immersed himself in it.
“It turns out to be a technique designed to be used in conjunction with the black crystal in my dantian.” Ye Feng slowly closed the secret book. “The person who created this technique is truly a genius among geniuses!”
He closed his eyes, urging the black crystal to release a trace of energy, which he directed toward his sea of consciousness. This was a forbidden method for cultivating mental power mentioned in《Swallowing Heaven and Devouring Earth》—using black energy to create a focal point in the sea of consciousness.
When the black energy reached the edge of the sea of consciousness, it was blocked and unable to enter.
Learning from what he had seen earlier, Ye Feng actively activated the small horn on the black crystal, forming a tentacle identical to the previous one. He wrapped the trace of black energy around the tip of the tentacle and sent it toward his sea of consciousness.
With the help of the tentacle, the black energy finally entered the sea of consciousness, but it also caused turmoil within it.
Ye Feng slowly controlled the black energy to form a small dot and guided the mental power in his sea of consciousness to swirl around it. He planned to use this method to create a vortex in his sea of consciousness that could independently enhance his mental power.
As time passed, Ye Feng struggled greatly to control the speed of the mental power’s rotation.
Suddenly, a sound of something breaking came through, and then the flow of mental power in his sea of consciousness began to become more uniform.

“It worked!” Ye Feng felt a surge of joy. At the same time, a similar sound came from his body as well, “My physical strength has reached that of a lower-grade divine artifact! I’ve reached the divine realm…”