As the breakthrough completed and wind-aspected natural energy merged into his meridians, Uchiha Yoru's stomach grew even stronger in its power of digestion. The strange metal was broken down faster, and both his natural energy and chakra began to surge sharply.
But the rate of growth was completely out of control.
This was the worst possible outcome.
Yoru understood at once that he had to suppress the rate at which his qi was increasing. He absolutely could not allow qi alone to dominate, or both his body and mind would be dragged down with it.
So he sealed his pores with all his strength, cutting off the inflow of natural energy. At the same time, he used natural energy to suppress his body's cells, turning them into reservoirs that could hold more chakra.
Most importantly—
He had to reduce the digestive power of his stomach and stop it from refining the strange metal, cutting off the source of the growth at its root.
During this process, Uchiha Yoru let go of all thought.
His body naturally assumed the posture of the Hunyuan Stance, then shifted through all kinds of movements along with the flow of qi, each one emerging naturally on its own.
The disturbance in the outside natural energy had long since ended.
This was only a stage breakthrough within the Foundation Establishment realm. It was nowhere near the same scale as the turmoil caused by completing the Hundred-Day Foundation and formally entering Foundation Establishment.
The effects of Zhálei gradually faded, and Miwa Masayo returned to normal.
She immediately used flame-jumping to return to Uchiha Yoru's side.
But by then, Yoru's Hunyuan Stance had already entered a state of natural communion. All traces of his aura were withdrawn, every channel between inside and outside was sealed, and his entire being had merged into heaven and earth.
This was a great opportunity.
The ninja world had revealed to him faint traces of its deepest laws, and even the patterns of the universe's operation were laid bare.
But in Miwa Masayo's eyes, Uchiha Yoru had simply fallen into a strange silence.
And as that silence continued, the calico cat's panic grew.
She first sat down. Then she circled him over and over. Finally she jumped onto his shoulder and cried "meow meow" loudly into his ear.
When she still got no response, she became truly frantic. She clawed at his hair, even stretched out her tongue to lick his cheek, desperate to wake him.
Only then did Miwa Masayo suddenly realize—
She had already grown used to life with Uchiha Yoru.
She could no longer imagine what her future cat life would even look like without her contractor.
Fortunately, Uchiha Yoru was not in danger.
He had entered a wondrous spiritual state.
In the language of cultivators—
This was called enlightenment.
To Uchiha Yoru, qi included both the natural energy circulating through his meridians and the chakra within his body's cells.
But the condition of those two was different.
As the strange metal was digested, natural energy was strongly stimulated. The newly accepted wind attribute became restless, and the fire attribute was dragged into that restlessness as well, while the earth attribute had to keep suppressing both of them.
And even while suppressing them, it still had to allow the wind attribute to keep growing, so that the three could form a tripod balance as quickly as possible. Otherwise, if wind-aspected natural energy were overly suppressed, it might never recover.
Chakra was another matter altogether.
The digested metal released a huge amount of chakra.
Its quantity wasn't especially terrifying—
But the quality of that chakra far exceeded Uchiha Yoru's understanding.
If the chakra released from the strange metal was steel, then the chakra Yoru had tempered again and again was nothing more than steam.
There was no comparison at all.
Faced with such a gap, his own chakra had no room to resist. His body's cells could only be flooded with the new chakra, which then took over and fused with what had been there before.
If Uchiha Yoru's foundation had not been the immortal path, and if his natural energy had not been strong enough after Foundation Establishment, the chakra from the strange metal might well have invaded his meridians.
And if that happened—
The foreign chakra would touch his natural energy, and the two would automatically combine into senjutsu chakra.
At that point, Uchiha Yoru would be finished.
His path would be destroyed.
He would be forced back onto the traditional Sage path of the ninja world.
His combat power would skyrocket—
But the road to immortality would nearly be severed.
The native immortal path of the ninja world was indeed extremely powerful in battle.
The Sage of Six Paths, relying on senjutsu, had defeated his mother despite being at a lower level.
Senju Hashirama, relying on senjutsu, had suppressed Uchiha Madara.
Uzumaki Naruto, relying on senjutsu, had forcibly fought against the Rinnegan.
But so what?
Uchiha Yoru looked down on it entirely.
Ōtsutsuki Hagoromo and Ōtsutsuki Hamura had originally been long-lived beings, yet after cultivating this kind of senjutsu, neither even made it to a thousand years before both died.
Hiding the soul away in the Pure Land was still death.
It could never compare to the ease of true long life.
Gamamaru was old beyond words.
The White Snake Sage seemed weary to the bone.
Only the Slug Sage remained unclear, and no one knew what her true state was.
In any case—
There was something deeply wrong with that path.
In Uchiha Yoru's mind, it was trash.
An immortal path that could not grant immortality—
What kind of garbage was that?
But balance was terribly difficult.
Especially when essence, qi, and spirit were already in the middle of a breakthrough, and external interference caused qi to grow twice as fast.
In that situation, Uchiha Yoru simply could not balance it by himself.
Fortunately—
He entered enlightenment.
Within enlightenment, his soul aligned with heaven and earth, and heaven and earth accepted his body, turning it into part of nature itself.
The human body was only a small piece of nature.
Compared to the vast world of great natural existence, it was nothing.
The differences between Uchiha Yoru's bodily evolution, the growth of chakra and natural energy, and the development of his spirit were enormous.
But once placed within heaven and earth, those so-called differences became insignificant.
So small as to be almost laughable.
Within the great balance of nature, that disparity was erased soundlessly.
Essence, qi, and spirit reached balance.
His digestive power came under control.
With internal and external natural forces brought into harmony, the strange metal—acting as a growth element—was successfully integrated into Uchiha Yoru's life system.
As his body completed that new life system, it gradually developed a separation from heaven and earth, little by little becoming independent once more.
At the same time, his soul was gently pushed back out from the world itself.
At that point, the danger of this breakthrough was completely resolved.
And the opportunity of enlightenment also came to a full end.
Uchiha Yoru had turned misfortune into blessing.
His progress in Foundation Establishment advanced by a tremendous step.
Driven by the brand-new chakra, his physical strength directly doubled, and his spirit also experienced huge growth.
Within his inner world, a new heart-form had already been born and was undergoing its final shaping.
As for what form this heart-form—belonging to the lungs and the wind system—would ultimately take, that remained unknown.
But the greatest gain was still what he had seen during enlightenment:
The deepest laws.
The workings of the universe itself.
Though he could not understand them, and could not remember them clearly, a faint impression had been left in the deepest part of his spirit.
And that alone was a priceless treasure, enough to sustain a lifetime of use.
A lifetime that, for Uchiha Yoru, might well become endless.
Even right now, he had already gained enormously.
During enlightenment, with the help of heaven and earth, Uchiha Yoru had proved that the cultivation system from his previous life was unworkable.
The natural energy that truly existed in the ninja world did not even line up with the most basic Five Elements rules of that cultivation system. Naturally, all the higher levels of law built on top of it were also riddled with errors.
And the higher he pushed the deduction, the larger those errors became, until the existence of the Nascent Soul stage could not even be derived.
The path of cultivation from his past life simply did not work in the ninja world.
Even the superficial similarities only extended as far as the Golden Core stage. Beyond that, there was nothing left to borrow from.
This deduction made Uchiha Yoru understand something with painful clarity:
That he had begun with fire was a stroke of unimaginable luck.
If he had started with any other attribute, he would never have been able to establish the threefold balance of wind, fire, and earth.
Whether it was the conflict between water and fire, or the violent agitation between wind and lightning, neither could produce the most basic stability.
Without that stability, Uchiha Yoru would never have had the chance to merge with heaven and earth.
And in that case—
Today's breakthrough would only have had two possible endings.
Either natural energy and chakra would fuse, his unique immortal path would come to an end, and he would become an ordinary native Sage of the ninja world—
Or natural energy would run completely wild,
And today would become the end of his life.
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