“…Come…” After what felt like days of searching and animalistic growls, the skeleton's voice refreshed my ears with its creepy feminine whisper.

“I finally found you.” My voice was raspy from not using it for so long.

“…Enter…” The skeleton's voice called to me.

I felt my pores open as soon as I entered the violet pool cave. Compared to the ambient violet mist in The Pit, the violet mist here was near its condensation point and filled with Qi.

A true haven for cultivation.

I slipped my clothes off in anticipation of the blackened sweat I would soon be shedding and entered the pool in nothing but a piece of under cloth and holding onto the two spirit stones. As my feet tingled in the violet water, my mind cleared like a fresh sea breeze.

Whew.

“Better than a hot tub,” I commented with a smile as the violet waters healed my battle scars. I was lazily swimming about in the pool when the skeleton's voice resounded.

“…Cultivate…Resonate…” It was rare for the voice to say two words in tandem. Perhaps, it was getting stronger? Were skeletons able to cultivate, too?

My mind unintentionally pictured a maniacal laughing skeleton as it raised the undead around it.

"Maybe I'll set that thought aside," I told myself.

I sat cross-legged in the violet pool, and my eyes drew shut as I focused on breathing. Suddenly, the spirit stones in my hands were crushed.

The Qi from the violet pool and spirit stones swirled inside me as they funnelled into the space holding my violet dirt particles. With a gleeful pulse, the violet dirt particles rapidly multiplied, filling my inner space with others.

I think Grandma Sylvie's books called this inner space a Dantian? That sounded like as fine a name as any for it.

Qi continued to collect within my Dantian, and with hardly any effort, I felt the barrier between me and the Third Qi Condensation stage shatter.

But I wasn’t done yet.

The energies within me were still plentiful, and I forged on as my cultivation base rapidly consolidated into more violet dirt particles.

10%... 20%... 50%... 90%...

The violet dirt particles continued to multiply, and for the first time, I could feel the difference between them and the first one I had formed as I broke through to the first stage of Qi Condensation. It felt like that one was special in a way that the others weren't. It wasn't simply a dirt particle. It felt more like a shrunken core of the earth.

My violet earth core.

My violet earth core pulsed alongside my heartbeat, spurring my cultivation to keep climbing.

“…Breathrough…” Even the skeleton's voice spurred me on as my cultivation base knocked on the doorstep of the Fourth Qi Condensation Stage.

“Break through!” I told myself.

The first knock resulted in a fierce rebound as the energies battling against the barrier couldn’t break through. The second knock was much of the same, with little effect.

Pulse.

Suddenly, the violet earth core within me glowed. It was like the raging energies gained a second wind as they rushed at the barrier, carving a scar that threatened to penetrate through.

My heart lit ablaze as I shouted out.

“Break!”

The fourth knock made me cough up blood as the energies within me rammed into the barrier, smashing through and soaring me into the fourth stage. The energies faded with a weakening strength as the ripples in the violet pool stilled and the violet earth core dimmed.

Cough, cough!

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Blackened blood stained my teeth as it left my body. Even the blackened sweat seemed like sludge as it covered my body in filth.

Thankfully, the violet pool was an expert cleaner. I fell back into the violet waters with a splash and watched as it attacked the blackened impurities with an unholy vengeance. The violet water dissipated the filth and left the refreshing scent of the natural dirt behind.

"That fourth stage was more difficult than all the previous stages combined," I muttered, remembering a detail from one of Grandma Sylvie's xianxia books.

There were usually four tiers in a single cultivation realm: low, middle, high and peak. For instance, after crossing into the fourth stage of Qi Condensation, I went from a low-tier Qi Condensation cultivator to a middle-tier Qi Condensation cultivator. If I crossed into the seventh stage, I would be a high tier, and if I reached the point right before the next realm, I would be considered a peak tier.

A passion lit in my heart as I thought about reaching the highest stage possible, but I hurriedly cooled my passion.

"Best not to get ahead of myself," I told myself and closed my eyes to sense the changes I felt across my body.

The violet dirt particles multiplied as my cultivation increased. Before, they were collectively the size of a small mound, nearly watermelon sized. But now, the violet earth particle had multiplied so much that it was the size of a fridge.

“How is that possible?” I wondered. I couldn’t possibly have something the size of a fridge within me, even if I was a bit on the chubby side. But no matter how I tried to rationalize it, I instinctively knew that the particle was fridge-sized now. Was I too hungry to think straight?

“Cultivation nonsense,” I muttered, moving on to the most important thing.

My hips twisted as I looked over my body with fervent eyes. My arms… my legs… my waist… my stomach.

“AGGHHHH!!!” I screamed in rage.

“I’M STILL FAT.” My rage grew by the moment as my hopes and dreams were dashed by reality. Despite a large amount of impurities coming out from somewhere, my body remained in its chubby state.

I threw a tantrum. I know, not my finest moment, but after days of bloodthirsty beasts trying to eat me, the emotions built up into an explosive temper.

The violet waters spewed up as my fists hit the water and banged against the ground, creating cracks in the violet pool. In my rage, I didn’t notice how the violet water seeped into the cracks, disappearing from the surface levels.

Huff, huff, huff.

It was too late when my rage subsided, and my thoughts cleared enough to realize what I had done.

The violet water had disappeared.

“Shit. No, no, no! What have I done?” I shouted. “NOOOO!!!”

“…Remain calm…” The skeleton's voice reminded me.

“NO! YOU REMAIN CALM!” I shouted at the source of the voice, rattling the dangling bones along the skeleton’s ribs. Suddenly, the skeleton’s head twisted to face me, and I let out a yelp of surprise. It momentarily remained steady before falling off and landing on its lap.

“NO! MRS. SKELETON!” I raced to the skeleton to put its head back on, but the spinal bone connecting the head to the body had already snapped.

“…remain calm…place it…lap…” I did as the skeleton's voice told me to and set the head on the skeleton’s lap. With a concerned look, I sat on my knees and stared at the decapitated skeleton.

“I’m sorry…” I spoke aloud. Could the skeleton even hear me? I didn’t hear an answer for the longest time.

“…cultivate…pulse alongside…” Much to my delight, the skeleton's voice returned, and I nearly went headfirst into cultivation until I realized a problem.

“But, there’s no point. I just broke through stages. And I won’t be able to reach the next stage without the violet water. Maybe if I got enough spirit stones—”

“…idiot…consolidate…earthen pulse…sword…” The skeleton's voice spoke a lot more now. I chose to ignore the first part and focused on the rest. Consolidating what I had was likely a good idea, but how?

“Oh, I’ll figure it out somehow,” I reassured myself. But I was less confident in the rest. I had a sword which was fine. I could swing it around or something like that.

“Earthen pulse… earthen pulse… like what my violet earth core does?” In response, my violet earth core let out a gleeful pulse.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

I closed my eyes and sank into meditation. I felt how the ambient violet mist funnelled into me, slowly solidifying the violet dirt particles inside my Dantian. It could do it slowly, on its own, as long as I remained steady and unmoving in meditation. I could leave that be for now.

Pulse. I needed to focus on the pulsing.

I looked deeper within myself to find my original violet earth core. It was the source of the gleeful pulsing that echoed in my body, surrounded by Thousands of its duplicated brethren. My hands dug into the fridge-sized mound of violet earth particles, and I felt it as the entire mound vibrated around me.

Pulse. Pulse. Pulse.

I gradually got used to the vibrations entering my body, but the pulses from the violet earth core always left me feeling slow and sluggish. But my instincts told me I was on to something; I just needed to find it.

However, the violet earth core was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. I grasped it in my hands in one second, and I would feel it pulse elsewhere the next.

“Get back here!” I muttered.

Little did I know, the ground beneath me shuffled with a faint ripple of vibration.

*****

Snarl!

A horned bramble dog sniffed at the shrivelled corpses that lined the area. It had followed whatever creature was killing off its brethren, feasting on the broken bones and shrivelled flesh.

Scars lined its body from the numerous battles it had endured fighting off other bramble demons. All that fighting, just for the sake of eating prey that had hardly any nutrients left in its bones.

Sniff, sniff.

The horned bramble dog caught the scent of prey as it sniffed the faintly violet ground. The rich blood that soaked and turned the ground violet urged the instincts in the horned bramble dog.

The horned bramble dog let reddened drool slip from its mouth at the richness of Qi in the blood. As the drool fell and scorched the ground dry of its faint violet colour, it took off in a run.

Tonight, the horned bramble dog would feast on the most delectable prey it had ever tasted.