Chapter 10: Upon a Cavern we stumble

  Recently the density of the qi and the prevalence of the aspects has been increasing more and more. Samson had been walking there in the darkness for what he assumed was a few days now. It was quite difficult to tell time because of the complete absence of light in these halls so he wasn’t the most confident in his assessment of time. When he got tired he would sit, when he got thirsty he drank from his gourd, and when he got hungry he ate from his thermos. He hasn’t been using Inexorable Stride on the off chance he walked into a wall, but it also meant that the distance he covered was drastically lowered compared to what he could potentially cover if he had used the skill.

  The presence of the qi he was tugging on had been steadily increasing so far, but now it was growing far faster in abundance. It reached a point where it was like a palpable pressure pressing all around him. Over the past few days Sam had developed a habit of walking with his arms outstretched to either side of him so he could maintain contact with the walls. He didn’t want to accidentally miss any possible turns he could have made. So far, it had just been the straight hallway and nothing else. However, now, accompanying the sudden abundance of qi, relatively speaking, Sam could no longer feel either wall. Based on the sound his footsteps made, and the fact that it felt like the walls fell away from him, Sam had entered a cavern of some kind. It could also be a very large room but he doubted it. The air felt humid and the qi almost felt tangible.

  He back tracked to where he felt the hallway open up then he followed one side so he could get a sense of the size of the place. His intuition was right, it was a cavern of some sort because the walls no longer felt like cobbled stone and he felt over a few stalagmites. Carefully navigating his way around to make sure he didn’t lose his way and his orientation, he made his way to his approximation of the center of the cavern. Even though the air was humid, luckily the floor where he was standing wasn’t wet in any way. Sam saw the opportunity before him, he needed to finish fully forming his core and the abundance of the death-aspected version of the Radiant Soul Cherry qi was just what he needed. He could feel his core almost reaching out to the qi around him, they felt like puzzle pieces that belonged together and created a beautiful whole. Not wasting any more time, Sam sat down and began his process of cultivating.

  The moment he did, it was as though flood gates were opened as he momentarily lost control of the qi he was absorbing. His unfinished core was like a drain on the ambient qi and formed the opening for a vortex of energy crashing upon him. Immediately he knew he could not let this go one; he wasn’t sure what would happen if he just let go of the control but he was certain that it wouldn’t be anything good whatsoever. Using every ounce of willpower he could muster, Sam wrestled control back over the qi pouring into him and pushed against it until it was being absorbed at a more reasonable rate, a rate that didn’t make him feel like he would burst like a balloon. Little by little Sam could sense his core growing more substantial. Compared to when it had first formed, it used to feel like just a shell whereas now that shell was a vessel that was slowly filling up. As the qi entered his core, it felt like it was condensing and becoming a part of the very material that made up the cultivation core. While this was happening Sam sensed that he could push the qi harder as it condensed. The whole process felt like when you tapped a container you were filling with cement to make sure that there weren’t any air bubbles in your construction. He wanted to help refine his core in a similar process with the qi he was absorbing but he was uncertain about whether he could both control the flow of the qi coming in while helping along the process of condensation. Because he wasn’t sure if he would run into a place like this again and he didn’t know if he would be able to undo the condensation of the qi once it fully formed his core, Sam decided to try.

  His mind was under a lot of stress, almost like it was being split in two as he juggled his focus between preventing the qi from flooding in too quickly and helping the process of forming his core not have any defects. He felt a migraine come on from all the effort he was putting in. He didn’t realize this at the moment but the floor where he was sitting was beginning to be drenched in his own sweat. There was still so much excess energy that it felt like a waste to simply let the rest dissipate, so he added a third task. Pulling from his memory the sensation of qi improving his body when he ate from his thermos, he tried to make the qi flow in a similar way. For a while this was all he did, refining his core and refining his body with the overwhelming amount of qi in the chamber. He had stopped trying to control the flow of qi and was instead splitting it equally between both processes of refinement. The migraine was getting worse, like a hot knife stabbed into the part of his head behind his eyes, and the amount of qi copying the refinement process of his thermos was so great that what was normally just a tingling slightly ticklish sensation now felt like thousands of red hot needles being inserted all over his body. There was no sense of time at this point, Sam didn’t even have the free bandwidth in his mind to regret his decisions; all he was focused on now was making it through to the end. There came a time when his core felt full and ready to fully form, but since he had already gone this far he kept trying to push qi in. He wasn’t taking any chances with this foundation. It was like trying to shove more water into a bottle that was already full. The thing is though, the qi making up his core still felt liquid in that sense, unlike the sensation he got from the outer shell of his cultivation core which was solid. Because of this, he knew that the qi within could further condense and solidify in a way.

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  For a moment he switched his focus, and stopped refining his body. Now he was singularly lasered in on solidifying the liquid qi within his core. Sam realized that the outer shell of his core was still fundamentally his as it was a part of him, so he leveraged control over the shell of his core by having it shrink and thereby compressing all that it contained. He pulled upon the imagery of a hydraulic press and when that wasn’t enough he thought of the depths of the ocean, and when that visual also remained insufficient he started thinking of the immense pressures that led to the formation of diamonds. He imagined the pressures that lay within the very hearts of stars which turned lighter elements into heavier ones by forcing the atoms together. The more qi he pulled into forming his core, the more he thought of it as gaining mass, turning into a singularity that sought all within and without it to become homogenous in unity. The qi inside him was rippling, he could feel the viscosity of the qi increase by the moment. What once felt like water, changed into syrup, then something thicker and thicker until it reached a climax and everything was still for the briefest of moments. His cultivation core was finally complete, it felt like he just completed a monumental task. Relief was evident and plastered all over Sam’s face. For the first time in a while he was able to accomplish the task he set his mind to without losing consciousness. It was as soon as this thought had occurred to him that he felt the final steps of forming his core settle down completely immediately followed by a massive burst of energy emanating from his core as he once again passed out.

  With a groan Sam rose again to wakefulness. At least this time it didn’t seem like he was out for hours given that the area around him was still a little damp from his sweat. In his vision was a notification from the system.

  [Cultivation core seed fully formed]

  The system notification about the cultivation still didn’t have any explanation but he could already feel the difference between his old core and what he had now. The pressure from the qi in the cavern was significantly lessened now. In fact he almost couldn’t feel it. He realized it was because his core was forming an aura with his own qi now pushing against the weight of the environmental qi. Although he now completed forming his core, or at the very least it felt like he accomplished the first step in that process, he didn’t think that the purpose of this place behind the pink door was what he just did. He decided to take a break, go over how he felt to make sure he hadn’t hurt himself, maybe eat a little, then he would keep investigating the purpose of this place.

  He activated his thermos, and when he did he could tell that his reserves of qi had substantially increased even though he still didn’t have a visual quantifier of it on his status page. He was proud of his success with the core, it was very gratifying to be able to do things he had only ever read about and thought of as fiction in the past. This time instead of making it produce more chocolate rice he allowed it to make whatever it wanted. He had a new core, he figured he could try out a new meal. Another reason for using the thermos now, aside from the fact that he was taking a break and using it as a reward for his exploits, was that he wanted to test out if anything had changed about how it affects his body. After all, it was his first time attempting to imitate the effects of the thermos in refining his body and he had done with an incredible excess of resources in the process. He remembered in its description mentioning that the thermos could only improve his body so much each tier and so he wanted to know how much progress his attempts at imitation was able to bring.