Sitting cross-legged, eyes closed, Dante laid his left hand on what remained of the black meteorite.
The stone seemed dead, cracked through, yet a faint vibration still in his palm.
He drew a deep breath, slowing his pulse until he could feel each beat distinctly.
Then his ethereal body slipped free, peeling away from his flesh like a second skin.
A brutal vertigo pulled him under. When his awareness returned, he was still seated in meditation — but no longer in the physical world.
A black realm, empty, with no walls nor ceiling.
Beneath him stretched a surface of dark liquid, endless, rippling like a sea with no horizon.
Each undulation gave him the sense of floating above a bottomless chasm.
Then the sounds began : groans, laughter, screams of anguish.
The voices rose from the black liquid itself, as though thousands of souls were drowned within it.
Dante clenched his fists.
— "This isn't even a realm, but a memory. This stone has took too many lives."
He opened his spiritual channels and began the absorption.
The technique was exact : he contracted the muscles of his diaphragm, guiding his breath in four cycles — inhale, retain, exhale, suspend.
Each cycle created an inner pressure that forced his spiritual energy to circulate along precise meridians.
Unlike the common, cheap methods of meditation — where energy seeped haphazardly into the dantian — Dante controlled every flow, wrestled with the impure currents, guiding the corruption straight to his core.
But the process was slow, excruciating. The screams he drew in weren't mere sound — they were shards of pain, rage, despair.
Each one clawed to infect him. His ethereal body convulsed, as if his veins were filling with acid.
He could feel the raw black energy flooding into him, carrying its crises and torments.
This was not a force to be crushed. It had to be understood. He had learned to sense which fragments could be transformed.
— "Hold steady… if you scatter, you'll shatter into nothing but a vessel with a broken nexus."
Then a monstrous wave of energy erupted from the meteorite, crashing into him like a torrent.
The seal on his forehead — a red symbol etched into his spiritual flesh — blazed like a live coal. The pain was unbearable.
— "Nghh… as searing as hellfire…" he gasped, trembling.
His focus wavered. The current wanted to drown him, split him apart from within.
And then — he felt a hand against his back.
A gentle energy flowed into him, steady, balancing, not foreign but supportive, stabilizing his channels.
— "Ginny… She's holding me up. Then I have no right to fall."
He steadied his breath, firmed his posture. His channels stretched, painfully, like pipes forced to hold impossible pressure.
Suddenly the realm shifted.
The darkness fractured, swept away by a blaze of white light.
The black surface cleared into a still, mirrorlike expanse of water, then the screams vanished. Silence — pure, crystalline silence — took hold.
His ethereal body anchored itself back into flesh. His eyes flew open.
The hand at his back was real — Ginny, gasping, keeping steady pressure of energy.
Dante's aura spilled out in dark, heavy coils. But he no longer trembled.
He shut his eyes again, resuming meditation— this time to integrate.
Where novices let energy clump chaotically, Dante followed his own method : the Nine Purges.
Jin's technique is a rare fusion of deep pranic meditation with an instinctive grasp of Manipura (personal power) and pranayama (spiritual breath).
He doesn't simply purge corruption.
He reads it, accepts it, transforms it — without erasing it.
Where others use brutal methods to seal or exorcise the corruption — methods that often cripple or kill — he integrates the darkness.
He acknowledges its pain, its roots, its true nature — that is what sets him apart.
While others burn themselves out fighting their own power, he moves in symbiosis with his dark energy.
It demands superhuman control, an intimate knowledge of one's fears and desires, and above all — near divine emotional mastery.
The Nine Purges themselves were simple :
First, expel the impure with a whistling breath, clearing the meridians.
Second, open the eight extraordinary vessels, forcing them into resonance with the dantian.
Finally, let the energy circulate in a perfect loop — no leaks, no stagnation.
He felt each particle of black energy smooth itself under the pressure of his will.
No residue, no chaotic crystallization — only harmonic assimilation.
Three words surfaced in his mind, clear and commanding :
Gather. Unify. Purify.
When the long cycle ended, he opened his eyes again.
A shiver ran through him. His strength was immense now, as though his muscles and bones had been reforged with new density.
The corruption was no longer poison — he had mastered it.
He gave a bitter smile.
— "I've clawed my way back to my level."
But his gaze hardened. No… not just a return.
By breaking through directly into the stage of Harmonization— Illumination Path.
He had crossed a threshold that few Awakened of this age could even dream of. He now stood stronger than most of them.
And it wasn't thanks to sudden enlightenment, nor some miraculous artifact.
It was the fruit of years of relentless effort, of obsessively honing every detail, every method, every breath.
And yet… his hand rose to his brow. The seal still burned, oppressive.
— "Some things remain beyond my reach. This seal… it chains me. If I push too far… I'll unleash reprisals I don't yet understand."
Certain powers remained forbidden. The seal deliberately shackled his strength, setting limits.
And he knew that breaking them meant risking punishments he could not yet fathom.