As for the 'Immortal Cultivation Pathway—'
-
'Qi Refinement - First Order' was all about absorbing the 'Natural Energy of Heaven & Earth' into the body, then collecting it as a gas in the dantian. To complete this realm to 'perfection', one needed to refine the incoming energy and prevent the 'impurities' from entering the dantian.
This was difficult, especially if something had already entered the dantian!
The dantian should only contain 'natural energy', 'unimprinted spiritual energy', and 'elemental energy' of the same type as your spirit roots.
A/n: 'unimprinted' means that it shouldn't be affected by anything, like emotions, environment, or will.
This was a huge problem for Petra!
Try to imagine a beach, now turn that beach into a cloud in the sky. Each grain of sand is a different color. One color represented natural energy, one represented spiritual energy, and one represented her dark-element elemental energy.
This was the ideal, but the problem came with the 'Mystic Energy & Mental Energy' that circulated throughout her body. It was only natural that this also found its way to the beach, adding unnecessary 'green grains'.
To make matters worse, the darkness element tended to be a bit 'sticky', often containing extra forms of deviant and derived energies, contaminating everything, and becoming chaotic.
Therefore, add hundreds of confetti colored particles to the beach!
Now you see the problem…
The pursuit of perfection was normal, but so was human impatience. It was almost unheard of for a person to completely purify their dantian during the first realm of cultivation, so this often formed the limit of a cultivator's future. One small dot created one small crack, and one small crack grew into one small weakness.
This also included people like Elena and the other Heroes, who, even with their talent, none of them could completely perfect the Qi Refinement Stage.
To completely perfect the Qi Refinement Stage, one had to be a legendary existence that could shake the whole world, like the First Hero, the Beast Kings, Plant Saints, and the Dragon of Destruction!
But with that said, there were some oddities in this era's 'batch of heroes'…
But that was a story for later!
-
Overall, the purity of one's Qi Refinement Stage was hit or miss, especially for someone like Petra. She had long passed this stage, so how did Petra, who refused imperfections on a maddening level when it came to her own strength, solve the problem?
Well—
Petra created a poison that targeted everything she didn't need! She made it in small quantities, but it was extremely effective. That poison was called the 'OBLIVION PLAGUE!!!', which was basically a dark-element-based poison that abused that previously mentioned 'stickiness' to absorb everything and grow, until it destroyed itself following the 'cure'.
Author: "…"
She then proceeded to poison herself with it…
Author: "…"
After the allotted 'purification' period, her Qi Refinement Realm reached a near-perfect purity, and she advanced to the second level, Foundation Establishment!
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The 'Foundation Establishment – Second Order' was all about condensing the energy accumulated inside the body during the Qi Refinement Stage and turning it into a liquid sea within the dantian.
This was the condition needed to advance through the Second Realm!
If the conversion happened early, meaning their Qi began to liquefy before completing the Qi Refinement Realm, one would automatically advance, whether they intended to or not…
After advancing to Foundation Establishment, one still absorbed energy, but impurities became much harder to expel, especially after being condensed into a liquid.
(Try to imagine picking out thousands of eggshells from a big bowl)
A 'perfect' Foundation Establishment was even more difficult. This realm formed a sea of energy inside the body, and its size represented the building blocks for the future golden core, or the 'foundation' in Foundation Establishment...
To advance, the liquid sea needed to be condensed into a solid core. This meant a cultivator could spend unlimited time expanding their inner sea before forming their Golden Core. Unfortunately, the larger the sea, the harder it was to condense.
If you unknowingly expanded beyond your limit, reaching the third order was impossible. It was just as bad to overperform in this stage as it was to underperform!
Fortunately, with Petra's speed and talent, this didn't matter.
All that mattered was achieving the 'maximum' size her 'body could hold'. Her bloodline was unique, so even she didn't know how far her own limits could take her down this path. Also, she didn't believe in overreaching. Petra simply kept absorbing and refining energy, she did this all throughout the Second Calamity, even continuing up till today…
She had unlimited Supreme Grade Spirit Stones, a self-made poison for perfect purification, and an absurd amount of dark-element elemental energy from the Dark Stone Mine.
Petra just went crazy with it…
She had no idea that the size of her Foundation Establishment Sea would terrify even Elena, because she didn't actually know how big it was. She had lost sight of its borders at some point. Cough-cough-cough! It should have been technically impossible to reach such a scale, but between her resources, her constitution that prevented her from exploding, and her absurd cultivation speed, Petra had created a miracle that should not exist under normal circumstances. That was the only good thing about her strange ability to attract trouble…
If this world had special phenomena for breakthroughs, you could imagine the golden bridges and divine mountains spreading across the entire planet when Petra advanced.
That would have been annoying…
'Good thing this wasn't that kind of planet!'
* * *
Petra began forming her Golden Core…
The energy was already there, contained within her dantian, and it was just a matter of condensing it, or at least, that was what Petra thought. She had been ready for a long time! So, using the same method she used to traverse her Sea of Consciousness—
Woosh! Petra's consciousness sank into her dantian, and in the next moment, she was immersed in a world unlike anything she had ever experienced before. She stood on an infinite black plane, a boundless expanse that stretched endlessly in every direction. Beneath the black plane roared a sea of mana, an ocean so massive that even Petra, with all her talent, felt momentarily stunned by its scale.
It had been a while since she came here!
It wasn't particularly violent, no, but instead, its sheer mass had begun to create a powerful momentum that felt like it would crush her for simply approaching.
It seemed that she was finally reaching her limit…
There was no sky, no horizon, only a vast black void above her head, a quiet nothingness pressing seamlessly against the edges of her dantian from within.
Her inner sea swayed below, the weight of it alone was enough to crush a normal cultivator.
Petra exhaled.
Then—
Her mind sharpened!
Her thoughts turned, and she began the condensation process.
Ripples spread across the black plane, responding instantly to her magnified will. The endless ocean beneath her stirred, and threads of energy rose upwards like glowing tendrils, converging towards a single point before—
- The temperature shifted
- The pressure increased
- Her inner world trembled!
It was starting—
The formation of her Golden Core!
-
Petra thought for a moment, before raising her hands and envisioning a sphere forming in the center of her dantian. This overlapped with the hands of her projection, mimicking the pose, and formed a sort of 'anchor' that began to spin like a vortex. Her spiritual energy rippled out, permeating the massive sea, following her will, and calling the sea upwards as if the entire ocean had suddenly forgotten the concept of gravity.
Hooong!
The nearby 'water' dragged itself towards the point between her palms, in sluggish, heavy streams, shaking the void with its movements. It worked… but the process left much to be desired.
No, to be precise, it was far too slow—
Especially for the impatient Petra!
Imagine standing in a vast forest and watching only a few vines lazily inch toward you…
That was what Petra felt right now!
She was very frustrated!
She didn't have a teacher, no, she didn't even have a reference, so she had no idea how much energy a Golden Core was supposed to contain, what the correct method of condensation was, or what effects it would have in the long run. In her mind, she assumed she simply had to press everything together until it formed a tiny golf-ball-sized sphere of solid energy in her hands.
And she wasn't wrong, but…
Mm—Petra logic, you know…
Her little eyes looked out across the endless inner sea. How long would this take? she asked herself. She definitely didn't have time for this!
Boom!
Petra pushed her mind 'harder', trying to force the energy to gather more quickly. She didn't know that a normal cultivator would spend days condensing a Golden Core… and a true expert, like Arthur, Dorthy, or Kilemin, might take weeks, even months, and—
In Elena's case, 'she had taken two full years', but she knew a place on the Cross Continent that allowed her to condense this time down to two weeks, giving Petra another misconception about a certain big-breasted big sister's cultivation speed!
In the end, Petra was just impatient...
She pushed harder and harder, and more and more energy started to surge towards her at an accelerating speed! Woosh! Soon, something began to shake… but Petra had no idea what it was, so she simply ignored it and continued.
All of her focus went into compressing the forming core as quickly as possible, and as more and more energy approached, the sphere in her hands slowly increased in size.
What began as a 'golf ball' soon swelled to the size of a 'soccer ball'. Petra frowned and squeezed her hands together, trying to force the sphere smaller and smaller.
Boom!
She felt an immense resistance.
She pushed harder!
Hooong—!! Boom!
There was another rumble from an unknown place. Petra's tongue stuck out, and her focus became even more intense.
Woosh!
Her 'everything' condensed down to a single point! The struggle continued, she pressed down, the core pushed out, and the two forces clashed again and again. It became a battle of Wills, but even Petra didn't understand who she was competing with!
At this point, Petra had even forgotten to control the incoming waves of energy. Those 'streams' had long since become towering tides, racing towards her with a terrifying speed.
Petra didn't even notice them because the stupid core kept getting bigger and bigger!
Every second that passed, it became more difficult to maintain!
Petra's eyes began to stir with something unknown!
But… such a phenomenon was impossible! She was currently a 'consciousness projection', but the stirring in her eyes became more intense as the struggle continued. It wasn't Petra's soul, it wasn't the King's Hand or some secret ability, no, it was something far further, a distant gaze that peered directly through her thoughts.
Hooooong—! Rumbel! The shaking intensified even further, becoming a violent vibration!
Then—
Boooooooooooooooom! When the massive waves finally crashed over her small figure, and were absorbed into the forming core, Petra trembled violently. Her focus had reached a level where no external shock, no matter how powerful, could shake her, yet these ripples reached her soul.
The waves did nothing but feed the growing core, enlarging it, empowering it!
Petra refused to scream, and her gaze was unyielding.
She didn't even blink.
Time passed, and the difficulty increased again, only this time, it had reached a level far beyond…
In her mind, Petra was actually shocked, which she shouldn't have been, finally realizing that she was losing ground by the second.
Was it impossible?
Cold sweat ran down her forehead.
She gritted her teeth and focused further.
At the same time, the stirring in her eyes had risen into a silent storm, carrying a boundless momentum, and unbeknownst to her, the pure darkness element in her dantian had begun to move independently from the rest of the tides. Instead of rushing recklessly towards the core, no, towards her, it shifted and curled into strange shapes, almost dancing in an unfathomable rhythm.
It approached, slow, restrained, following the unseen will that stretched from Petra's consciousness, not Petra's consciousness itself. It was something else, something 'higher!'
Hoooooooong!
The shaking became even more violent.
—!
Something strained, audibly, and pain pierced Petra's mind. If she were to look at her physical body, she would see small cracks stretching across her skin, blooming out from her dantian like a spiderweb. She looked like a doll ready to shatter at any moment.
These cracks did not bleed red, they leaked black blood formed from pure darkness.
Automatically, black stitches sewed these injuries shut, and her constitution quickly healed them. It was completely unconscious, an act done by her body without her permission, but—
Petra didn't have time to notice.
She didn't have time to think. It took everything she had just to keep the Golden Core the 'correct size'.
She was being suicidally stupid, not even aware of her condition!
Petra's mind began to stretch, and her consciousness began to flicker. She was reaching the limit that she wouldn't normally touch. The small pendant Petra normally kept near her body began to shake violently. It had been placed by her bedside, functioning as a suppressor to restrict her mental energy.
Petra wasn't intentionally using her mental energy, but the pendant reacted instinctively. Her body clearly understood the risk she was taking, and yet—
The silly little girl had yet to realize it herself…
No, that wasn't right, she realized it, but she was becoming confused. She could feel a strange lightness blooming inside her head, but she didn't know what it represented.
The feeling grew stronger, and as it did, the difficulty of keeping the core compressed finally began to ease, allowing her to slowly push it back.
This feeling—
She hadn't felt this for a long time…
When was it…?
It was back then, when she created…
She created…
She…
Petra: "!!!"
"No!"
Petra's mind reignited!
This was death!?
She was dying!?
How was that possible!
NO—! How dare you!
HOW DARE YOU!! BOOOOOOM!!
Petra gritted her teeth!
Even her projection trembled. An unspeakable pain began to spread through her entire sense of self, running through her veins like molten needles. She could feel it, but the pain only served to reawaken old, sealed memories she had long since suppressed.
Images flickered past her mind—
Memories before she met Levy…
- No! Deeper—! Before she attended college!
- Deeper—! Memories from her childhood on Earth!
- No—! Back when she was just a small, lonely child...
—! Her mind flickered with the image of a girl, herself. There, in the darkness, alone, and crouched over an aged, dilapidated book, reading. She shielded it, like her life depended on it, blocking the unavoidable fall of the 'acid rain', completely entranced, unaware…
BOOOOOOM!! Her vision sharpened unnaturally, eyes turning red, roaring, as if something in the unseen world was reaching towards her, providing an even greater force, a momentum!
And with one final push!
With every remaining ounce of strength!
All the remaining substance of her inner sea was forcefully absorbed in an instant!
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! With a sharp cry, she pushed everything into the flickering core! Tearing the horizon, moving the heavens and earth. An unseen power within her body surged out, allowing her to compress the core even smaller than it should have been, even with her unmatched talent!
Swoosh!
The pure darkness element that permeated her entire dantian was also dragged in, stripped from the surrounding space, and forced to incorporate itself into the shell of the Golden Core.
Her eyes wept black blood, not her body, no, her projection. It was impossible, but—
Her mind was already pushed beyond exhaustion.
She had no time to think!
Her consciousness flickered like a candle in the wind.
But this last push was enough!
Tock! There was a pop—
And something happened!
Afterwards, Petra's consciousness fell to its knees. She didn't need to breathe here… but her projection gasped anyway, panting heavily as exhaustion washed over her everything. Her hands, holding herself up, leaked black blood from every pore.
In her trembling hand, she held a small golden core, no, a black core, a unique creation that only she, and she alone, would ever possess.
- Persistence
It was pitch black, and only the size of a fingernail, and engraved in impossibly black ink was a rune.
It was heavy and dense, releasing a strange vibration. Petra could feel it resonating through her body, subtle but constant, like a second heartbeat.
She let out a long, shaky sigh, then collapsed backwards onto the empty floor of the interior space of her dantian, where the core was released and slowly floated up to take its throne.
Her consciousness dissolved—
And her mind returned to her physical body…
* * *
When she opened her eyes, she was overwhelmed by a sudden, intense pain that pierced through her entire body. Her small face scrunched into a grimace as she spasmed on the blood-stained bed.