We took our time walking through Cheng Lian city and planned on going straight back to the sect. I had asked Jia if she wanted to go see her father first, but she shook her head and said it was more important we report to the sect about our mission.
We were a few blocks from the teleportation formation when we were stopped by a group of cultivators. We had been getting looks as we walked around the city, but no one had approached us so far.
“Ah, if it isn’t miss Lian. How do you do this fine day?” The man at the center of the group said. He was fair skinned and had an arguably handsome face. He held a fan in one hand and wore elegant robes that marked him as some kind of noble.
Jia got a sour look on her face, but her inner lady took over. She bowed slightly before speaking.
“Ah, young master Yao, to what do I owe this pleasure?” She said calmly, no emotions on her face. The young man smiled, glancing at me before speaking.
“Miss Lian, you know I have long fancied your company, come, you should join me and my entourage as we visit the locales of our fine city here.” He said.
Jia subconsciously stepped in front of me before speaking again.
“I’m sorry young master Yao, my friend and I are on our way back to our sect after a long mission. We don’t have time to dally within the city.” She said before she walked past their group and continued on toward the teleportation formation. I waved at the group and smiled as I passed, wanting to be nice, but as I passed, the young man turned around and quickly stepped in front of Jia again.
“Oh come now, miss Jia. Surely you have time to spend with me. We’re old friends after all!” He said, a wide smile on his face. Jia’s face soured and her lady side couldn’t hold her real feelings back anymore.
“I don’t remember having a friend like you, young master Yao. Come on Astra, let’s go.” She said, nearly snarling. The young man stepped back from her before looking to me.
“And what’s so good about this commoner wench that you would deny me?! I’m the young master of the Yao family, and a member of a sect on the western continent. You’d do well to be respectful to me. I’m a core disciple under elder Fao of the righteous fury sect.” He said. I ignored him this time as I passed by him and Jia and I continued on our way.
“You’re courting death, you commoner scum!” He said before releasing his core formation realm cultivation and trying to sneak attack me from behind.
With an explosion of ice, Jia appeared behind me and sliced down at the young man, tearing his fan, imbued with some kind of colorful green and pale yellow qi, in half.
The young man, not expecting the sudden attack, backed away and looked down at his broken fan.
“You’d do well to remember whose family owns this city. Astra and I are both high level members of the blooming violet sect and we will not be looked down upon.” Jia said, righteous fury blooming on her face.
The young man seemed to think better of trying to fight us and turned to walk away with his entourage.
“You’ll regret doing this come the inter-continental sect competition!” he called out as his group walked away and disappeared around a corner.
There was that mention of the inter-continental sect competition again. What was that about?
We were getting more looks from the people in the area but we ignored them and continued on to the teleportation formation. We had finally returned to the sect and I breathed in the familiar air as we stepped off the platform. We showed out sect tokens and received bows in response from the disciples watching the formation. We first went to the mission hall, handing the letter from the Zhou family patriarch over. The elder managing the mission hall came over and we explained our whole story to him.
He adjusted our rewards for the mission and thanked us for a job well done. We bowed to him and then made our way back to our respective peaks. We didn’t need any cultivation resources thanks to the abundant amount of spirit coral in our storage rings so we decided we both wanted to cultivate and speak to our masters. I made my way up to myriad petal peak, once again reveling in the amazing cultivation location it was. The abundance of all the qi types reminded me that the outside world wasn’t conducive to my cultivation method. I had cultivated some during the mission, but it was all inefficient compared to just cultivating on myriad petal peak.
I had just returned to my room and was preparing to begin cultivation when I heard a knock on my door. I walked over, curious as to who it may be, but when I opened the door I was surprised to see the sect leader standing there.
“Master!” I said happily as I invited him inside my home. I made some tea for us both and sat down with my own cup after giving him his own.
“I heard from the guards that you had returned to the peak, you have been gone for quite some time. This isn’t unusual, but as your newly minted master, I would be remiss If I didn’t ask you about your adventure and offer you some advice.” He said. I smiled and, over the next hour, told him about everything that had happened since leaving the sect months ago. He nodded along with my story, but was stoic for most of it.
“I see. You certainly had a fair amount of trials and tribulations during your journey. I’m glad Zi Fu and Jia have cautioned you against keeping the demonic ring awakened. I will reprimand you for believing in the words of an unknown cultivator that was sealed within a formation. Letting out Azoreth, while it did eventually save you all, could have had disastrous consequences. I’m hoping that in the future, you will be more careful in who you put your trust in.” He said.
I deserved the chiding and promised I’d work on not being so trusting in the future. The sect leader nodded and got up from his chair.
“I’m glad you seemed to have a fulfilling adventure, do you have any questions before I leave you to your cultivation?” He asked.
I thought for a moment and then remembered I was stuck in my cultivation on the dao of metal and I didn’t know what the intercontinental sect competition was. I asked the sect leader about both subjects and he got a contemplative expression on his face.
“Firstly, the inter-continental sect competition is a tournament that will take place next year. It’s a competition between the core disciples of the various sects on the east and western continents. It usually involves lots of fights. Of course, if you want to compete, you’re more than welcome to join the competition as my personal disciple.”
I thought about that and decided it would probably end up being fun!
“Alright, that makes sense, I’d like to participate in the competition!” I told him. He smiled.
“Good, you should probably work hard to reach the core formation realm before that time. As for your other question, I have not gained any attainments in the dao of metal so I can’t speak directly to what you should think about to be acknowledged as you put it.” He said.
I frowned. there’d be no easy way out from the hard work of thinking about the daos myself it seemed.
I bid the sect master farewell and took out a few pieces of spirit coral from my spirit ring. Over the week we were trapped in Azortia our group gathered all of the additional spirit coral we could and that resulted in thousands of spirit coral. I gave most of them to the Captain and his crew because they helped gather them, but the rest I kept for myself which amounted to a little over a thousand spirit coral.
I looked at the small bud in my hand and inspected it. I pushed my qi to my eyes to look at it more closely, but it just seemed like a normal flower bud if you looked past the obvious glow it was exuding.
I popped the spirit coral into my mouth and swallowed it. It went down easily despite its size which made me think there was some trickery afoot, but when nothing bad happened I breathed a sigh of relief. On the contrary, once the bud reached my stomach I felt a strange warm sensation suffuse throughout my body. I had never ingested a spirit pill used for cultivation before but I assumed that the feeling would be similar.
I focused on cultivating while the warm sensation was still flowing through me. Combined with my normal cultivation speed, I could tell that the spirit coral had a slight, but noticeable effect on my cultivation. My qi felt more solid as I cultivated and I thought that it felt easier to absorb qi from the environment. After some time the warm feeling disappeared and I tried cultivating for a while without the assistance of the spirit coral. My cultivation speed was the same as before, but my qi seemed to be less solid.
I popped another spirit coral into my mouth and resumed cultivating. Within a month I had cultivated to the peak of the foundation establishment realm. Thanks to the assistance of the spirit coral, it only took me another four months of cultivation to break through to the core formation realm.
The day it happened I was cultivating like normal within my house on Myriad Petal Peak. I felt like my cultivation was slowing down even further today. The qi in my dantian coiled up upon itself, moving like a viscous liquid. It writhed upon itself and continued compressing until finally the qi solidified into a tiny pearl. The iridescent pearl shone brightly within my mind’s eye and I could feel the qi in my surroundings being sucked into the pearl, solidifying and stabilizing it.
It was the size of a small marble at this point, but I knew from talking to Zi Fu that eventually the pearl would become as large as my dantian. Once it was as large as my dantian, I would use my soul to break the core and become a nascent soul realm cultivator. For now though, all of the qi I cultivated would be stored in my dantian, I could then feed that qi to the pearl to force it to grow, this was the process of cultivating in the core formation realm.
Just like my dantian, once the core grew large enough, I could begin storing qi within it to increase its size. I didn’t know when that would be, but I was excited to take this next step on my journey of cultivation.
I consolidated my cultivation at the core formation stage, which master told me was an important step. Once I had finished consolidating, I went down from Myriad Petal Peak to find Jia in Flowing Petal Peak. I asked for directions and found her in her new home. She lived in a much larger house than we had shared before, one of the perks of being a core disciple, I supposed. I knocked on the door and waited for a while. Eventually a pristine and prim looking Jia emerged from the home and smiled at me.
“Hi Astra, what’s up?” She asked. I smiled back at her before unleashing my core formation realm aura. She was taken aback slightly but smiled before stepping forward and hugging me tightly.
“That’s amazing! Congratulations! I’ve only barely made it to the low stage myself. Your cultivation speed astounds me as always.” she said.
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“I came as soon as I consolidated my cultivation to see if you wanted to spar? I’m eager to test out my new strength!” I asked her
She seemed to think for a moment before nodding her head.
“That should work, It’s been a while since I had a proper spar.”
We walked to the sparring grounds and a small crowd started forming.
“Look, it’s lady Lian and Astra! From the outer sect competition!” the onlookers said before running off to presumably grab more spectators.
Jia and I stood across from each other on the small raised platform and both brought out our swords. Neither of us would go for a killing blow, of course, but we were going to fight seriously.
One of the other core formation cultivators for the peak agreed to referee our spar and on his signal we both unleashed our auras and burst into motion.
Jia made the first move, appearing to my left in an explosion of ice qi that hampered my movements. She struck out with her sword and I blocked with my sword of fire and water and sword of earth and wind. The frosty qi coalesced on the sword dissipated when it contacted mine and the combined effects of my two swords warded off the worst of the icy qi in the area. We traded a flurry of blows between us, both having improved our swordsmanship during our time training with Zi Fu and sparring with each other.
This was a dance we had done before, but this time, Jia didn’t need to hold herself back to my level. She teleported to my blind spot and I rolled forward out of danger. I faced Jia and used soft steps on the halcyonic sea to step next to her and strike out in response. She easily deflected my blow and we both stepped back from each other.
I nodded to her and she nodded back and we both used our body cultivation to augment our physical abilities. The crowd gasped as we traded blow after blow and even used our techniques. Jia could have used her core formation realm technique on me, but we weren’t fighting to the death so there was no reason to. And my core formation technique, I knew intuitively, wouldn’t be much help against Jia. I sent out a halcyonic abyssal cutter and Jia parried it with a slash of her sword. She was going to be a tough opponent to fight.
Jia launched ice spikes at me and I dodged out of the way. This gave Jia the opportunity to appear right in my trajectory and slice out at me, I didn’t block it as efficiently as I could have which Jia immediately took advantage of.
She stepped up the pressure of her swings, weaving in bouts of tiny ice spikes that pricked my skin and hampered my movements. Combined with the continuously dropping temperature in the arena, it made me just slow enough that when I went to block Jia’s next slash, she deftly twirled her sword and launched my left sword out of my hand. She put her blade to my neck and the arbiter called the match.
I dissipated both of my swords and sighed, but hugged Jia and smiled.
“That was a great fight! It really helped me see where I’m at when fighting” I told her. Jia shook her head.
“I didn’t even hold back against you, you’ve truly improved by leaps and bounds in these short few months we’ve been apart. You’re going to be a menace at the inter-continental sect competition.” Jia responded.
I smiled and we went back to Jia’s house and talked about cultivation for the rest of the night. Though I eventually went back to my own house on Myriad Petal Peak. I went to sleep, and was awoken early in the morning by a knock on my door. I put on my clothes, and blearily walked to the door and opened it. I found the sect leader standing at my door and, although I was surprised to see him, I invited him in and made tea again before sitting down across from him in my sitting room.
“Good morning, master, to what do I owe the pleasure of this sudden visit?” I asked him.
He nodded and pulled out a small ornate box that he placed on the table between us.
“I heard that you advanced to the core formation realm yesterday. As a congratulation present from me, I’d like to give you this.” He said and he beckoned me to open the box.
Within the box was a finely crafted arm guard made of sleek metal. Inlaid into the arm guard were small jewels that I felt qi emanating from. There were six of the jewels, one for each of the elements. I looked up to the sect leader and he motioned for me to put on the arm guard.
I slipped the new armor on my left arm and immediately felt the six types of qi in the area being drawn toward me.
The arm guard would easily bring a slight increase to my cultivation speed which was incredible for someone like me with affinity with all of the elements.
“Thank you master! Did you get this made specifically for me?” I asked him. His face went through a complex emotion I couldn’t decipher before he shook his head.
“No, this item used to belong to my previous disciple. Your elder disciple Tang Wei left the sect after the last inter-continental sect competition. He used this arm guard for many years, but left it when he left the sect saying he had no need for treasures from a declining sect.” The sect leader said. He looked decidedly morose as he talked and I felt bad for asking and bringing up these bad emotions.
I got up and walked over to the sect leader and hugged him while he sat on the couch. I heard him cough and he got up after some time and walked to the door.
“Either way, this arm guard belongs to you now, I hope you will put it to good use during your cultivation.” the sect leader said before departing from the house without letting me say anything else. He must have been severely affected by Tang Wei leaving.
I thought about not using the arm guard, but thinking about it more, it would be a shame for it to go to waste, I would just have to make the sect leader proud in Tang Wei’s stead.
I went back to cultivation, but when I started cultivating, text popped up in my vision.
“SUGGESTION: The user should focus on improving their body cultivation before improving their spirit cultivation any further. Reaching the bone training realm in body cultivation will be sufficient to support the user’s spirit cultivation up to the nascent soul realm.”
Text didn’t often come by and give advice unprompted so I agreed to focus on body cultivation, but not before I spread the word through the sect leader about this fact so it could be spread to all of the cultivators who had started on this path.
From there, over the next half a year I spent all of my time cultivating my body. The spirit coral wasn’t helpful when it came to body cultivation so I was forced to cultivate without any assistance from the natural treasure.
I found that my attainments in the daos helped when cultivating my body and I endeavored to spend more time pondering the dao while I cultivated my body. Unfortunately I didn’t make any headway on the daos I already had acknowledgments in, but I did make a breakthrough in the daos of metal and fire.
I was cultivating in the iron training pavilion on myriad petal peak and pondering on what I was missing about the dao of metal.
Metal was so widely used in construction, blacksmithing, and other facets of life. But how does it contribute to life? That’s how I was interpreting the rest of the daos, but maybe I was thinking about it wrong?
I thought about what life would be like without metals. Weaponry never would have advanced to the point it’s at today. We wouldn’t have swords, nor would we be able to build larger buildings and have more people living in cities together allowing the populations to boom. Wood supported natural life and the natural order of things while metal supports the unnatural, it can be used to support life or take lives in an unnatural way!
As soon as I had finished the thought, a chime resounded around me and I knew I had been acknowledged by the dao of metal. I called out Shimmer and lo and behold she now had an additional tail coming to a total of five!
I preened her and told her how cute she was before going back to my cultivation. Considering how long it took me pondering on the dao of metal, the dao of fire was much simpler. Fire could keep you warm and alive through the darkness of the night, but the same blaze that warms the hearth can burn the house down. Thinking on these concepts was all it took to gain acknowledgment from the dao of fire. I checked Shimmer and she now had six small tails adorning her rump!
From then on, whenever I went anywhere people were always giving me weird looks. I mean, weirder looks than normal. I didn’t put much thought into it and chalked it up to everyone being weird.
I spent my days rotating between the different elements for body cultivation. According to Text, it was better to be balanced in my cultivation between the elements as opposed to just rushing to get one all the way up to the bone training stage and then working on the others.
Like this, the days leading up to the inter-continental sect competition flew by and luckily, two weeks before we were set to leave for the competition I finished bringing my body training for each element up to the bone training stage. I decided to go celebrate with Jia. When I approached her though, she was giving me that strange look that everyone else had been giving me in the recent months.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
She pointed at me… no not at me, but slightly above me.
“Astra, what’s that weird symbol floating in the air behind you?” She asked me.
I turned around and looked up but saw nothing. I turned back around to Jia, wanting to chide her for teasing me, but she was still staring off into the space above and behind me. I frowned, but Jia helped me alleviate my confusion by creating a large mirror-like ice wall in front of me. I looked at my reflection and strangely enough there was a strange symbol floating in the air behind me. I again turned around and looked up, but saw nothing. I returned to my reflection and frowned. The symbol was a six pointed star comprised of two triangles that would sometimes rotate around a shared axis in different rotational planes.
I looked around but no one was coming forward with an explanation. I turned side to side and watched as it stayed perfectly at a point in space above me and behind me. It followed me whenever I went, as if it was a part of my body. I decided no one was going to give me a satisfactory answer about what it was so I went to Myriad Petal peak to find the sect leader.
I found him in his courtyard, cultivating, and politely waited for him to reach a stopping point. He opened his eyes and when he saw me, I saw his eyes open slightly. He quickly got up and walked over to me, moving around me and inspecting the strange symbol.
“This is fascinating. It’s my first time seeing an elemental locus in person. I’ve only read about it in books.” He said. My eyes opened wide at his mention of an elemental locus.
“You know what this is, Master?” I asked him. He nodded.
“This is an elemental locus. It’s a special attainment in the dao. When someone with a four-branch or higher spirit root attains acknowledgment, as you put it, by all of their respective elemental daos, they are given a token that indicates to everyone that accomplishment.” He said.
“Why is it only for four-branch or higher spirit roots?” I asked.
“No one knows. But even those who have been acknowledged by all of their elemental daos haven’t been given an elemental locus. Yours is a six pointed star where each point represents one of the elements you’ve been acknowledged in. Additionally each point is connected with a line to those elements they have affinity with. You’re very fortunate to have been able to receive your acknowledgments.” He said.
“What benefits does the locus give?” I asked. The sect leader shook his head.
“That is something that I do not know. Some say it improves your efficiency in using the elements, others say it does nothing and only serves as a badge of honor.” He said. I frowned. I had run out of questions about the locus and decided I would just ask Text.
I thanked him and walked back to my home. I didn’t have a mirror in my house, which is most of the reason I never noticed the locus before.
“Text, what benefits does an elemental locus give me?” I asked.
“ANSWER: Just as there were no techniques in the inheritance suitable for a myriad-branch spirit root cultivator, there is no information regarding the locus for a myriad-branch spirit root cultivator. There is information for four-branch, and five-branch spirit root cultivators. According to ‘Investigations of dao attainments in weaker cultivators’ four-branch spirit root cultivators will see their efficiency in wielding the elements of their locus increase several-fold. Five-branch spirit root cultivators will see their cultivation speed in their elements increase several-fold. There is unfortunately no information in the book about the myriad-branch spirit root however.” Text answered.
I frowned. I guess I would just have to wait and see what benefits, if any, this weird thing above my head would give me.
I spent the remainder of the time training with Jia who had also finished her preparations for the competition. She had stayed at the lowest stage of the core formation realm after I told her about what Text had said and trained to the viscera training realm in both water and wind qi.
We trained and sparred every day until the day we were to leave the sect. Each day, more disciples would come and watch us spar, though some came up to me to ask about the locus. I explained to them what it was and they were downtrodden when I explained it was only for cultivators with four-branch spirit roots or more. After weeks of sparring it was finally time to go.
We traveled with the sect leader and the peak elder’s from each peak. It took us a month of travel to get to the location of the inter-continental sect competition. North of Wongye city, on the western continent was Zisan city, the city of competition.