The moment the embryo moved, Luo Chen knew that his opportunity to form a Nascent Soul had arrived. For one fleeting moment, his consciousness seemed to merge with heaven and earth so completely that no boundary remained between them. Yet that very realization stirred his thoughts and broke the stillness. The Golden Core within his sea of qi fell silent, and the wondrous state slipped away as quickly as it had come.

Even so, Luo Chen did not let the loss trouble him. He had already reached the required realm, and now that he had entered that state once, he was certain he could do so again. Rather than fixating on the opportunity that had slipped away, he settled his mind and went over what he had just experienced.

The fundamental requirement for forming a Nascent Soul was the process of uniting the Three Treasures. Once they merged within the Golden Core, the core would transform into a Nascent Embryo and begin resonating with heaven and earth. As long as that harmony remained unbroken, the embryo could be nurtured until it matured into a true soul. This was why the process was often described as "shattering the core to give birth to a soul."

Yet the analogy ran deeper than that. The Nascent Embryo was born from the cultivator's union with heaven and earth and conceived through...