Shen Tian’s last memory was the cold of the hut and the weight of exhaustion pressing on his eyelids. Now he found himself elsewhere, in a space of pure spirit. The pact with Xue Huang must have had something to do with it. Or perhaps his soul, recently strengthened by the advances of the previous night, had found the path on its own.
When consciousness returned to his mind, he found himself floating in absolute gloom, suspended over a nothingness that swallowed every echo. The atmospheric pressure pressed on the psyche with the force of a mountain range upon exhausted shoulders.
A thick gray mist covered everything.
He tilted his head and searched for some point of reference, finding cold vapor stretching in every direction.
’Ancestor Xue?’ he called through thought transmission, modulating his will toward the corner of his mind where the Blood Empress resided.
Silence answered him. The Blood Empress kept her peace, holding back her usual lazy response and mocking laugh for once. Shen Tian frowned. The core of the Sea of Consciousness was a forbidden territory for her; the pact confined her to the edges of his mind, guarding the sanctuary of his soul until he granted explicit permission. Perhaps she simply observed from outside, waiting for him to come out.
Frowning, Shen Tian attempted to invoke the refuge of his vision through the usual mental command.
[Access Denied: Primordial Origin Zone.]
[WARNING: User’s projection is located in the Core of the Sea of Consciousness.]
The notification bounced against the nothingness like a stone thrown into a dry abyss, its blue holographic glow flickering out.
The ground beneath his invisible feet trembled. The gray mist began to spin in a slow, majestic whirlwind, opening to the sides to reveal the true architecture of the place. Before Shen Tian’s eyes rose colossal basalt columns hundreds of meters tall, carved with grotesque details: statues of asura warriors with demonic faces, claws crossed over their chests, and eye sockets from which a white, spectral light poured.
The columns flanked a monumental corridor that led to an immaculate black stone platform, smooth as the mirror of a frozen lake.
Shen Tian contemplated the structure, his composure holding firm before the awe. He had lived one hundred and thirty-five years in his previous timeline, studying the ancient texts of multiple sectors, and he recognized the nature of this space instantly: he was in the unexplored depths of his own Sea of Consciousness, the primary spiritual plane where the foundation of his soul resided.
With cautious steps that fell silent on the stone, Shen Tian advanced through the basalt corridor to the exact center of the platform. The spectral light emanating from the eye sockets of the demonic statues concentrated there, converging on a single focal point.
He crossed his legs, closed his spiritual eyes, and began to execute the routes of the Mud Lotus Art.
At first, he expected the mental pressure of the place to devour the small spark of energy he had accumulated in his lower Dantian during the previous nights. A different outcome awaited him. As soon as the compressed Qi of his active second meridian began to circulate, the eyes of the asura statues flickered violently.
The beams of white spectral light penetrated the Sea of Consciousness like rivers of pure milk, feeding directly into the core of his soul. The energy flowed straight to the primal substance of the Dao, nourishing the very root of his life through channels deeper than flesh and skin pores.
CRACK!
A dull crack echoed in the depths of his spiritual ears. The third meridian of his body opened abruptly. Then the fourth. And finally, after one last push, the fifth. The purification unfolded as smooth expansion, gentler than any abrasion from past sessions; the flow was so dense and controlled that the spiritual channels widened like wet silk.
The vision of the Sea of Consciousness began to blur rapidly.
The sound of the morning wind slipping through the cracks of the wooden hut brought Shen Tian back to physical reality. He opened his eyes in the gloom. The sun was barely rising over the summits of Clear Wind Peak, projecting a golden light through the dust of the room.
A mechanical voice resonated directly in his mind:
[!Attention! Primordial energy assimilation process completed.]
[You have overcome the stagnation of the Second Level of Qi Condensation.]
[You have reached Level 3 of Qi Condensation.]
[You have reached Level 4 of Qi Condensation.]
[You have reached Level 5 of Qi Condensation.]
[New Status: Qi Condensation — Level 5.]
[Current balance: 850 Suppression Points.]
Shen Tian raised his hands, looking at them in the darkness.
He felt the blood flow with a vigor that his fifteen-year-old body was tasting for the first time. Five principal meridians pumped a current of dense, transparent, cold Qi that filled his chest with a crushing force.
Three levels in a single session.
Shen Tian clenched his fists. He remembered the one hundred and thirty-five years of his past life: entire decades spent in cold caves trying to beg for a thread of energy, humiliations suffered at the hands of mediocre disciples who called him a cripple, months of accumulated pain trying to purify defective meridians that resisted every attempt. The contrast between that hell of stagnation and the overwhelming speed of his current progress struck his chest with the force of a hammer.
He bowed his head. A single tear, bitter and charged with the weight of more than a century of misery, ran down his cheek and fell onto the frayed blankets of the bed. A silent catharsis; the definitive burial of the victim he once was.
"Well, well... It seems the brat is crying from emotion at having become a slightly bigger cockroach."
Xue Huang’s astral figure condensed beside him, floating a few centimeters above the floor with her crimson tunics billowing slightly. Arms crossed, the Blood Empress contemplated him with a mocking, amused smile on her lips, while her golden eyes observed the young man’s hands with meticulous attention.
Her golden eyes settled on the blue interface still floating before Shen Tian.
"Level 5," she read with a whistle. "Impressive for one night. But don’t get used to it, brat. That is only the beginning."
Shen Tian wiped his cheek with the back of his sleeve, recovering the coldness on his face in a fraction of a second.
"Ancestor," he said through thought transmission, ignoring the mockery. "What were the demonic statues in my mental space? When I tried to use the Primordial Origin Zone, I was dragged to the Core of my Sea of Consciousness."
Xue Huang stopped floating and planted her transparent feet on the floorboards, narrowing her eyes.
"You saw the columns of the Core?" she murmured, her mocking tone fading for an instant. "Fascinating... The Sea of Consciousness of a common cultivator amounts to a puddle of mud where their small soul floats. In those who possess an altered causality or a blood destiny, the mental space reflects the architecture of the temple their soul will build in the future. It is the ceiling of your Dao."
The woman raised a hand and snapped her fingers with elegance.
"See for yourself."
Xue Huang extended a hand toward him. A thread of crimson energy connected her astral figure to Shen Tian’s chest.
"The pact allows me to guide you in the spiritual plane, even when you are awake. Stay open to my touch."
The hut vanished.
Shen Tian’s perception was dragged once more into the astral plane by the Empress’s force. They reappeared on the black stone platform, surrounded by the ocean of gray mist.
"Forge the Qi like molten metal, imbecile," Xue Huang ordered, positioning herself right behind him and placing her astral hand on the center of Shen Tian’s back. "Qi carries the manifestation of your intention upon matter. Doubt turns the energy to mud. Iron in the mind turns the energy into a blade that cuts the mountain."
Shen Tian closed his spiritual eyes, feeling the direct guidance of the ancestor’s mind.
Xue Huang manipulated the speed of his breathing, forcing him to compress the intention of his memories—the rage, the coldness, and the pragmatic calculation—directly into the channels of his meridians. Shen Tian experienced a sudden illumination. The circulation diagrams of the Mud Lotus Art, which he already mastered thanks to the System, revealed themselves under a new light, as if a veil had lifted before his eyes.
The energy within his Sea of Consciousness began to spin furiously.
CRACK!
The sixth meridian yielded.
CRACK! CRACK!
The seventh and eighth dilated, flooding with dense Qi.
The System emitted a pulse of blue light.
[You have reached Level 6 of Qi Condensation.]
[You have reached Level 7 of Qi Condensation.]
[You have reached Level 8 of Qi Condensation.]
The spectral light of the basalt columns exploded with a blinding intensity. Shen Tian pressed onward, using Xue Huang’s guidance to push the energy toward the conventional limit of the Qi Condensation stage. The ninth meridian opened with a dry whistle.
[You have reached Level 9 of Qi Condensation.]
And finally, a hidden tenth channel—the meridian of Great Perfection—lit up in his chest like a vein of pure gold.
The System emitted a pulse of blue light.
[!Milestone reached! You have opened the Tenth Hidden Meridian — Meridian of Great Perfection.]
[New Status: Qi Condensation — Level 10 (Extreme Compression).]
[Reward: +500 Suppression Points.]
[Function unlocked: Causality Perception (Level 1). Allows the host to detect weak causality threads in their immediate environment, revealing hidden connections between people and events. Range: 10 meters.]
[Current balance: 1350 Suppression Points.]
"Level 10," Xue Huang murmured. For the first time since he had known her, the Blood Empress remained silent for several seconds, observing the tenth statue with an unsettling intensity. "You have broken the conventional limit of the nine meridians and reached extreme compression in your first serious session. That defies every rule I know. Even my guidance should have stopped short of this result. What kind of soul do you inhabit, Shen Tian?"
Her golden eyes settled on the new notification.
"Causality Perception?" she read with a whistle. "Your tool is more useful than I thought. That will allow you to see connections that even the elders of the sects can only sense in whispers. Use it well."
Shen Tian activated Causality Perception. For an instant, he saw tenuous threads of grayish light connecting the people in the hut with future and past events. Most of them flickered weakly, faint and tenuous. But one of them, a thread emerging from his own chest, shone with an unsettling intensity. Its destination stretched beyond his sight. He would find out.
Eight levels in a single night.