Chương 48: Spiritual Sea Forging

Jianyi was shaking, cold sweat on his brow, and a strong desire to vomit. He was happy. His discomfort was the result of pushing himself to the maximum pain he could endure while widening his lower dantian. More was not possible—at least right now. And he could see it. The Celestial Core Card in all its glory, hovering in his lower dantian. Celestial Core Card Unique Affinity – Core Card Converts cultivator's qi into any affinity. Evolves. Pearlescent white, shimmering in all the colors of Wuxing.

It was his chance to become a powerful cultivator and defeat the demons that had killed his father, who were threatening to win the Celestial Confrontation, and had apparently pursued him in his dreams for as long as he could remember. He was still awestruck by its core ability to convert qi into any affinity. Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water—he would be able to cast cards of all these affinities. In recent weeks, when thinking about the card, he had been fascinated by a single word, though: Evolves.

While the ability to cast more than two affinities was unheard of and promised untold power, it was still within his abilities to imagine what that could look like. But 'evolves' could mean anything. And now he could look at it whenever he wanted. He grinned; then quickly stopped and stumbled into the bathroom to throw up. Maybe he had pushed a bit too hard. But he had learned his lesson on the Veil of Immutable Will. Stopping too early would never again be the reason for his failure.

After he had cleaned up, he was tempted to get to the next step and open his middle dantian, but he realized that it would be too much. Since returning to public life in the sect, he had pushed very hard to catch up with everything. He still had six days until the duel with Lu Shan, and he had decided that he would prioritize opening his dantians over the fight with the slightly unhinged boy. That didn't mean that he stopped training with the spear, not at all.

But if he had the choice between being slightly weakened from the ordeal he put himself through and waiting even one more day to be able to use his cards, he knew what was more important to him right now. And who knew, maybe he could get it all done before the duel anyway. He fell into a dreamless sleep.

He entered the training ground for his first spear training session with group Lapis under the leadership of Ruolan since his return from his closed-door period. Waiting with the other disciples for their tutors to appear, he enjoyed the early morning sun and thought about how the exercises he had practiced over the last two weeks would help him in these sessions.

The answer was probably not so much in the short term as he had heard that the group was still exclusively going through the individual forms, but it should help tremendously once they started sparring. Elder Fang led the inner disciples who trained group Jade and Lapis onto the training field. The elder's glance fell on Jianyi, and he deviated from his course to group Jade, Ruolan, and the second disciple following him like little ducklings. The elder stopped in front of him, looking at him dispassionately.

"Disciple. I am not your teacher, therefore it is not up to me to decide how and where you spend your time. However, given that you have apparently decided that your time is best spent away from the training we offer here, I have decided that you are better placed in group Amber. I suggest you make haste, as you will be late for their class on the middle peak." With that, the elder turned away and marched towards group Jade, leaving an open-mouthed Jianyi with a grinning Ruolan.

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"Your comeuppance for your never-ending disrespect. Now leave my course, or I will teach you one more lesson!" Jianyi did not know what to say or how to react. Whether to shout, or cry, or laugh. This was something that he just hadn't expected and, therefore, was mentally unprepared. That having to take time to defend against demons would hurt his opportunities in the sect felt… unreal. Should he protest? Explain? Ruolan looked at him expectantly. There was a simple answer. Dignity.

He would not let this injustice make him lose his dignity. He bowed slightly and walked off the training field. The disciples in group Lapis murmured behind him—some certainly happy to see him go after having spent time running many laps around the field. What now? Should he run over to the middle peak and participate in group Amber? Could he learn something there? His gut feeling was, no, the moment he would recover his health fully, he would be far beyond the disciples that had been allocated to the lowest group.

Was that just his pride talking? There were still inner disciples there, offering tutoring. What was the alternative? Minghao. But the retainer had already basically stopped everything to intensely train with him over the last two weeks; that was not sustainable, he suspected. He took a deep breath and remembered how he had arrived at the sect just a few months ago. He had been so grateful to have any kind of tutoring; why was he now so hurt by getting trained by some of the best in the Fivefold Spear Sect?

Hurt by the injustice and hurt pride. The former was something to fight—in time—the latter was not his way. Pride should not get in the way of getting better, of learning how to kill demons. He had borne the loss of face from the defeat by Lu Shan, by the treatment of Ruolan, now this. It didn't matter. He started to run towards the middle peak.

Slowly, very slowly, Jianyi rose from the darkness of unconsciousness. His eyes fluttered open, and he found himself in his cultivation chamber, lying in his own vomit, eyes crusted with dried tears, and specks of blood on his robe from where he had bit is tongue in pain. Spiritual Sea Forging. His dantians had not been forged in fire, but in pain. A lot of it. But it was done. He smiled. His will had helped him endure. Probably more than was healthy. Likely more than the technique he had used had suggested.

Definitely more than Elder Sun would have approved. But it was done. He sat up, took a deep breath, and looked into his spirit world. There they sat, his dantians. The upper sat behind his forehead, the middle one at the center of his chest, and the familiar lower dantian below his navel. All had robust, silvery-gleaming walls and were connected to the pathways spread through his body like veins via multiple exits. Opening the middle and upper dantian had been surprisingly easy.

Not comparable to the precision needed to open the meridian gates. However, expanding them had been almost unbearably painful. To go through them again and again and push the walls out until they did not have any give left had taken everything out of him. But it was done. This was the culmination of almost four months of work. First, opening the gates, with a painful setback, but managing to open all twelve of his meridians. More than what he should have been able to do.

Finding and using a technique that had long since been out of fashion. Now, the opening of the dantians. He trusted Elder Sun that this manual approach would pay off in the long-term—but it certainly had been painful. Over the last week, he had spent every free minute—and most of the nights—working on it. His greatest accomplishment as a cultivator yet. It felt all right to take a moment to be proud.

Then he remembered that he would have to fight Lu Shan the day after next for their second duel, and he remembered how far ahead many of his fellow disciples were. He looked inside again, and this time he noticed that there was another change. Instead of a few motes of qi entering his gates here and there, there was now a continuous stream. Not that it filled his pathways, not even remotely, but it was a meaningful difference to what it had been before.

Following the qi from one of his gates, he arrived at his lower dantian, and there, proudly hovered his Celestial Core Card, its internal shimmer supported by the increased amount of qi entering his dantian. He thought he felt a slight vibration from it. Then he was certain. It intensified. Bone shaking. With a thrum that blew his spiritual being into particles, he was thrown into blackness, and then, a blink of an eye later, he found himself above a forest. No, deep inside a silver mine. Over an endless steppe.

Over a raging river. Amongst a lava-fueled inferno. The environment changed, flowed, in an endless cycle. But one thing was constant. The Celestial Core Card, as large as a five-storied pagoda, painted everything in its silvery light. It vibrated. But not physically. No, it felt like… excitement? Jianyi did not know what to make of it. Was it sentient? He couldn't tell, but he could tell that there was a connection. A deep connection between him and the card. What would it do?

Unknowable—but he was pretty sure that that was not normal. Not how others interacted with their core card. The feeling of excitement increased, the card got brighter and brighter. And, with a final pulse, he was blown apart again, only to find himself back in the lower dantian. He was too tired to explore what any of this meant at that moment. Instead, he cleaned up his room and himself and went to bed.

Something was wrong as he woke up. What was it? Something in his room? No. His body. What was wrong? Nothing felt out of place. He hadn't pulled any muscles overnight. The problem seemed to be… There was no problem. That's what was different. His lungs—for the first time in weeks, he could breathe unencumbered. He jumped out of bed, dressed, and ran towards the kitchen. Minghao was there, brewing tea.

"Good…"

"I am healed!" Jianyi interrupted his teacher with a wide grin. Minghao squinted at him.

"Healed? How?"

"Yesterday I finished opening my dantians, and when I woke up, my lungs didn't hurt anymore!"

"Ahh, that makes sense. First of all, congratulations. That truly is a great milestone. And, yes, you now get to experience what an increased qi density in your body does. As you progress through the realms, you will notice that your body gets stronger, more resilient, and also heals faster. In this case, it was an old wound that was on the mend anyway, so it worked overnight. But don't expect that to be the case with every wound from now on," Minghao said, chuckling. Jianyi grinned.

Now, he felt like a true cultivator.