Sen briefly wondered, Is the universe trying to get killed? Then, he had other things to worry about. That amount of any kind of qi, let alone heavenly qi, was enough to obliterate the obscuring formation if Sen didn’t contain it. Unfortunately, there was really only way to contain it in a hurry. Bracing himself, Sen started drawing the heavenly qi into himself. He let it fill what little space there was left in his dantian. When the pressure there built to first uncomfortable and then painful levels, he started directing it out into his channels. Those were soon bursting with heavenly qi as well. He let the qi saturate his muscles, tendons, organs, bones, and even let it slip into his bone marrow. It suffused his blood. Sen was a little surprised by how greedily his body soaked up that heavenly qi, but it was a brief blessing that took so of the pressure off of his dantian and channels.
Even so, he couldn’t help but be a little bit uncertain about giving his body all of that qi. He could feel things changing, shifting, not in any monuntal way, but still changing in ways he was struggling to understand or even keep track of. So of it was obvious enough. Heavenly qi was, by its very nature, a beneficent force. So, it helped reinforce his body. He felt his muscles grow so dense that resembled bone more than flesh, and his tendons and ligants felt like they were transford into steel cords. His bones, so recently improved by the advancent in the Five-Fold Body Transformation were not changed, so much as perfected into sothing that might rival diamonds for strength. His organs underwent similar transformations, becoming models of efficiency. He felt like he drawing more benefit from every breath. Every heartbeat drove his blood through his veins and arteries like a raging river after torrential rain. And his blood, he wasn’t even certain if he could rightly call it blood anymore. It was still liquid. He knew that much, but he strongly suspected that the next ti he suffered an injury, what ca out would no longer look like human blood. He just didn’t know what it would look like. He could also tell that his blood was providing his body with more of sothing.
Yet, for all that his body was changing, it was a secondary concern that he’d pushed mostly to the back of his head. Sen needed to deal with the problem in front of him. That problem was the waves of heavenly qi still crashing down on him. For a mont, he was startled that it was still happening. Then, he realized, it had only actually been a couple of seconds. It seed his brain had benefitted from so of the recent changes, as well. Not that it helped him manage all of the extra qi that was swiftly building up in his dantian and channels again. He could feel the heavenly qi compressing all of that liquid qi as it tried to make room for itself. Sen desperately tried to force the heavenly qi to the outer edges of his dantian, but he might as well have tried to hold back the ocean. He needed sowhere else to put so of this qi. His mind raced. Did he have any kind of storage that might hold heavenly qi?
A mont of inspiration struck, and he shook the mostly expended beast cores from his storage ring. As soon as they were exposed, he started shoving the heavenly qi at them. A few of them simply cracked or shattered, sending the qi right back at him like tiny lances made of heavenly will. It hurt when that qi fell on him again. Yet, the plan was working. The cores soaked up the heavenly qi, but they were soon bursting with energy. What else could he do with that qi? He supposed he could just drive into the ground. It’d probably make this spot a semi-sacred clearing for the foreseeable future, but that might not be so bad. Of course, he wasn’t sure he could control it well enough to keep the formations intact. There had to be another option. He knew he was missing sothing, sothing obvious, so perfectly natural place that the qi could go.
Then, Lifen stumbled out of the tent, looking around wildly, barely even conscious. Lo ifeng shot out of her tent a mont later, looking much more awake if no less frantic. Sen heart soared as the obvious beca apparent to him. There was sowhere else that qi could go. Two perfectly suitable recipients were right there. Sen stood and raced over to them. They both flinched back as he stopped in front of them. He didn’t have ti to explain everything. He didn’t really have ti to explain anything. If he didn’t offload so of that qi imdiately, his core was going to start forming. He took one precious second to look them each in the eyes.
“Trust ,” he said.
Then, he slapped an open palm against each of their stomachs, right over their navels. Then, he poured heavenly qi into them. He had one brief mont of worry that he might be breaking so kind of celestial rule. Yet, as the qi poured out of him and into them, finally letting so of the pressure off of him, he glanced upward. No divine spears fell from on high. No lightning crashed into him. No divine wind ca to strip him of his flesh or soul. It wasn’t exactly permission, but Sen took it as the heavens turning a blind eye. Sen looked at Lifen’s and Lo ifeng’s faces and realized sothing. They weren’t doing anything. Their eyes were huge and almost blank. Lo ifeng’s lips were pressed into a hard line, almost like she was in pain, while Lifen’s lips were parted in a kind of surprised O shape. Neither of them was doing the one thing they should have both known to do.
“Cultivate!” Sen shouted at them.
Sen did feel a bit of sympathy for them. He’d caught them as off-guard as all of that heavenly qi had caught him off-guard. Still, if they didn’t do sothing with it, it was kind of pointless. Lifen blinked at him a few tis. Then, her eyes got that abstracted look that all cultivators get when they’re concentrating on their cultivation, and she got to work. Lo ifeng flinched a little at his shout before realization hit.
“Oh, right!” she said before she also started cultivating.
For perhaps five beautiful seconds, Sen thought it was going to work. Then, he started getting resistance. First, it was Lifen, who looked like she was verging on physical agony. Then, Lo ifeng started grimacing. A part of Sen wanted to just keep pushing the qi into them, but better sense won out. Heavenly qi might be beneficent, but it wasn’t harmless. Too much would damage both won if he overloaded them with it. Reluctantly, Sen withdrew his hands. Both won seed to relax as they were able to stabilize the new qi inside of them, rather than trying to manage a steady influx of more qi. Oh, how Sen envied them. The pressure had already started building inside him again, threatening to set off core formation.
He wondered if he was simply fighting a losing battle against forces much bigger than him. After all, the heavens could just keep raining qi down on him until he started core formation. He’d recognized that sotis you had no choice but to bend before forces greater than yourself, however bad he’d been at actually doing it. Sen just wished that he knew if this was one of those tis. He revisited the idea of simply pushing the excess qi into the ground, but part of him rebelled against that kind of waste. It was one thing to store the qi for so later use, or even to share it with Lifen and Lo ifeng. It was sothing else to just throw it away like that. That might actually trigger an angry response from the heavens.
No, he was going to have to do sothing with that qi. If he couldn’t offload it, and he didn’t want to let it trigger core formation, what else could he do? A mad idea ca to him. He could compress environntal qi. Could he do the sa with heavenly qi? He decided that there was no harm in trying. If he failed, he’d be no worse off than he was. Sen dropped back into a sitting position and focused inward. He reached into his dantian with a precision that no physical hand could ever have managed, he seized a big portion of that heavenly qi and squeezed. It fought him, but so had the environntal qi. He ignored the pushback from the qi and squeezed harder. He bent every ounce of willpower, focused every bit of his discipline, every iota of sheer stubborn determination in him, and he squeezed.
A second passed, and then two, with Sen and the qi locked in a stalemate. Then, the qi gave a little, then a little more. Sen dug deep and found a few extra shreds of willpower hiding sowhere and squeezed again. The qi snapped into a different shape. It didn’t beco liquid like the environntal qi. Instead, it snapped into a familiar ribbon shape. The instant that Sen released his grip on it. The new ribbon shot to the outer edges of his dantian. The ribbon of strange qi and the ribbon of heavenly qi seed to regard each other warily for a mont before they spun around one another forming a kind of double helix that floated in a circle around the edge of his dantian. Sen wasn’t quite certain what to make of that, and he didn’t have ti to study it. The excess heavenly qi in his body was suddenly drawn into the empty space between the ribbons, and that seed to do what Sen could not. It condensed that heavenly qi into a liquid. Sen heaved a sigh of relief as the ever-mounting pressure ticked slowly down. That relief was, however, short-lived as the divine liquid qi started dripping down onto the environntal liquid qi that Sen had so painstakingly gathered.
A deep, terrible shudder ran through Sen as the liquid heavenly qi kickstarted the very process Sen had been trying so hard to avoid. Accepting that his advancent was happening no matter what, Sen took what redial actions he could to minimize the damage. He withdrew so extra formation flags from his storage ring and put together a containnt formation. It would only blunt the evidence of his advancent, but it was the best he could do on short notice. If he’d had a day to plan it out, he might have contained all the evidence, but Sen worked with what he had. Next, he withdrew the stone vial that Auntie Caihong had given him. Sen regarded that vial for a mont before he removed the top and upended the vial. A pill the color of night dropped into his hand. He could feel the different qi types in it, but shadow most of all. He wondered if she would have made the sa pill for him now, but that was a useless, distracting thought. Bracing himself, Sen put the pill in his mouth and swallowed it.
Sen had tried everything he could to prevent himself from going into core formation short of literally throwing away all of that heavenly qi. It wasn’t always true, but sotis, when faced with the inevitable, all one could do was bend. As the pill reached his stomach, Sen took a deep breath. Nothing left but the work, he thought. Then, a whole new explosion of qi raced through his body and crashed down into his dantian.
User Comments
0 comments from readers