I had underestimated the effort required to carve my entire body. After the first day ended and I had barely just finished my left palm, I realized it was going to take a while.

Releasing the hold I had on my flesh, my skin and muscles regrew, giving me a more human form once more. I had to carefully hold back my regenerative powers or all my hard work could disappear in a flash of fire.

Since it was going to take so long to finish, I decided I might as well use that time for something. I carved another Formation around the first one, a much simpler, though a much larger one. It simply created a barrier and a siphon, directing all nearby Qi inside. It was slow and inefficient, but I had time on my side, so that helped.

As days passed, Base Qi density slowly increased inside the cave while I diligently carved my body. More and more I was starting to feel like some kind of ornament, with all the fancy grooves and channels dug into my obsidian bones. If anyone saw me, they might even think I was already a decorated corpse after a funeral.

I looked incredibly funny, all things considered. Or scary, depending on your state of mind.

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[Phew… It’s done!] I threw away the blade shard and examined my work. I had gone over it so many times already, I knew every millimeter of my skeleton by memory. Even if my mind wasn’t as amazing as it was, it would be impossible to forget after so many repetitions. I dared to say it was perfect. The ink already settled into the carved channels and the only thing left was to trigger the technique and let it do its thing.

I regrew my flesh, filled the empty spots of the Formation with Spirit Stones, and prepared the Qi Pills, before taking a seat in the middle of the room. Tiny waited at the opening of the cave, his form completely filling the entrance, standing silent guard as always.

I took a moment to enter the right state of mind and then lifted my hands. Two small balls of Qi formed at the tips of my fingers, one on each hand. I stared at them for a moment, their brilliant dazzling light.

[No turning back now…]

I pressed the right orb into the middle of my chest and the left one into the ground. I felt the carvings on my skeleton suddenly spring to life and the Formation on the ground similarly exploded into action at the same time. Various effects began to overlap as an incredible pressure descended on my body, while at the same time, my Dantian was spurred to action, pushing outward and trying to blow my body apart from the inside. The two forces met in the middle, inside my bones, and I could feel them slowly changing, merging with the Celestial Metal, as my capacity for energy began to expand.

I gritted my teeth and grinned. The process was supposedly a painful one, at least according to my predecessor, but I would at most give it an 8/10 score. The guy clearly never experienced real pain, which could literally go off the chart!

Something else was a bit concerning though. The Qi inside my Dantian was getting used up at quite a rapid pace. I quickly took a fistful of Qi Pills and threw them in my mouth. As soon as I swallowed, I felt energy refill my rapidly draining core, but that only lasted for a short while. Soon it was back to emptying fast.

I took another five pills and threw them in my mouth, and then ate them one after another, as one would munch on grapes. The energy drain slowed down to a crawl, and the transformation began speeding up.

Ethereal chains formed out of pure energy and bound my body, merging metal and bone in a bloody ritual. Sometimes energies misaligned, whether it was my mistake or not I didn’t know, but the resulting spike of Qi pierced through my flesh, spraying out blood. It wasn’t too bad though. The damage was minimal, the wound often not much wider than a pencil. The burst of Qi was extremely concentrated and powerful, but nothing I couldn’t take. I just let it happen as long as it didn’t endanger my life.

Such things continued to happen while I ate my Qi Pills, growing more nervous as the pile in front of me became smaller. I already swallowed the last one when finally the last pulse of pressure pressed down on me, and then stopped. I also felt a final push come from my Dantian, and then it was over.

My body felt incredibly light, if somewhat painful from all the wounds. Five seconds, and a full-body Fire Mending later, I was back in business.

It seemed I was overprepared. I was out of pills, but the Qi around me was still incredibly dense in case I had to absorb it, and I also had my Dantian still more than half full.

I exhaled a breath I didn’t know I was holding, and scooted back, leaning against the wall. [And that’s that, I guess. Phew, that was intense.]

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I closed my eyes and began to meditate. Soon, Qi began to swirl around me and get sucked into my body. A torrent of energy formed, getting compressed and stored into my fresh new bones. It felt marvelous. While before I felt the core of my power inside my chest, after the transformation I felt it from every corner of my body. I could instantly imbue a body part directly from the bone inside, saving precious milliseconds in a fight. It felt awesome.

Retracting some flesh from my hand, I examined my new skeleton up close. My bones returned to their original shape, though the carved designs still remained. The lines and swirls were still there, together with the tiny specks of starlight.

I examined one of those specks up close and figured it should contain just about 1 point of Qi. And I had thousands of them all over my body.

Before the transformation, I would say, I had close to 5000 points worth of Qi, but after, I reckoned, my capacity more than doubled. I wasn’t completely sure how large it was, since I had yet to fully recharge.

I kept my excitement contained and continued absorbing Qi around me until I felt satisfied. And as I found out, that took a long time.

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It was the middle of the next day when I finally felt full. The Qi I had gathered over a month was completely gone and I was close to creating a new void zone. That was quite impressive.

My calculations put my new capacity to a whopping twelve thousand points of Qi! That was 2.5x from what I had before. It was also about two-thirds of what I used for the transformation. Wow. Incredible advancement.

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A week. That’s how long, I calculated, it would take me to fully regenerate my Qi out there in the wild if I wasn’t actively doing it. And that was by having a constant supply of energy. In reality, I would drain an area in mere minutes. And that was becoming a problem.

I was beginning to realize the world was much harsher than I previously thought. There really wasn’t a good place outside a Sect to Cultivate. I could barely make a single cycle per day if I did my best to move and actively pull Qi towards me. That was at least ten times slower than Cultivating in a Sect where the energy, while not too dense, at least didn’t run out in a few breaths. I never realized how thin the Qi in the world actually was. I finally understood why people tried desperately to remain in the Sect even if they were forced to stake their lives for it. Being a Rogue Cultivator sucked for growth. Thank fuck I had a different way to get my Soul Essence.

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I gave the cave one last look and stepped out into the open air. My body was rigidly locked in space as I looked around, taking in the bursting greenery of spring. The day was nice and warm, and the smell of blooming flowers filled the air.

I took a moment to enjoy the view and then released a powerful wave of Qi that spread far and wide. I waited, but no echo came back. I was searching for dense objects such as creatures with high-quality Qi. Those that were weak couldn’t bounce the signal back as it just passed through them. Maybe they felt some discomfort from the wave, but that wasn’t my problem.

Suddenly I felt a ping and my head jerked to the side from where the signal came. Immediately after I felt a presence scan my area and settle on my body. The corners of my mouth rose, revealing my sharp teeth and a smile.

[Three to go…] I murmured and blasted off towards the source of the disturbance. Whatever was there didn’t bother hiding, and I had never felt better in my life, so why not see what creature I could fight?

The air exploded around me as I soon came to a sudden stop above a massive sinkhole in the ground. It was about a hundred meters across and devoid of any plant life, revealing grayish-brown stone underneath the surface.

The hole was deep and dark, but I could see a wriggling mass of flesh at the bottom, and with the sun just rising in the sky, a few stray rays of light glistened off the surface of small silver scales.

I flew closer to the ground when suddenly a shadow spiraled its way from the depths and I dodged to the side. A giant fanged mouth snapped shut just meters away from me, revealing a colossal viper hundreds of meters long. Its tail moved side to side in the sky, with thousands of smaller snakes wrapped around it and wriggling like a disgusting mass of earthworms, slithering across each other.

Another king of the beasts. I felt slightly disgusted looking at it, with all those wriggling snakes giving the big one a truly terrifying appearance. I had no doubt some people would have nightmares just from seeing its form.

The massive snake flicked its tongue in my direction and I could feel its hunger as it tasted the air. Its body suddenly shook and vibrated at a rapid pace, and the thousands of smaller snakes fell from the sky into the giant pit in the ground.

I looked at them fall into the darkness, but soon they returned after reaching the surface and began spreading outward from the hole. The sight alone made my body shiver.

Disgusting.

I turned back my gaze to the big snek. Only a moment later I realized it was not exactly what I thought it was.

The beast’s sinuous body undulated with sleek, scaled coils, shimmering in the light with an iridescent sheen. Each scale gleamed with a metallic luster, shifting subtly between hues of deep emerald and misty gray as it caught the light. Its powerful muscles rippled beneath the surface, propelling it through the sky with effortless grace. A row of razor-sharp black spines adorned its back, glinting menacingly in the sunlight like pieces of polished obsidian. And finally, its eyes, gleaming orbs of molten gold and black, fixated on me with an intense, piercing gaze, exuding the Aura of an ancient predator and primal authority.

[Wait… Holy shit is that… Is that a Wyrm?!]

I had nothing to confirm or deny my guess, but the creature didn’t care either way. It flicked its tail, and in the next instant it was upon me, its mouth opened wide and showing a thousand smaller, razor-sharp teeth. I could just watch in awe, as darkness closed in around me.