With various pills to her right, miscellaneous resources to her left, a series of formations underneath and the temperament to enter seclusion for cultivation, Elizabeth prompted her ascension to the Spirit Realm. Beginning, of course, rising from the Mage King Stage to the Mage Saint Stage. It’s easy to forget because she’s fought and even won against several adversaries in the Spirit Realm, but Elizabeth still wasn’t even at the peak of the Mortal Realm.
To make this ascension, complete it in one fell swoop as she originally intended, Elizabeth didn’t touch any of the resources Ygdris allotted to her; aside from benefiting from the formations. Within her body, she had amassed a terrifying potential and now she was erupting with the full force of it all at once.
Normally, Martial Practitioners or Mages would slowly traverse the Saint Stage with as much care and caution as possible. That stage involved opening the body’s acupoints and synchronizing the meridians; the most sensitive and fragile organs a cultivator possessed. However, Elizabeth was very much the antithesis to normal cultivators. Aside from her experience in the Mortal Stage wherein she stabilized and trained through three substages — the Beginning, Late, and Peak substages — she had directly skipped over entire stages with each breakthrough in her cultivation thus far. Going straight to the peak of the Soldier Stage from the Mortal Stage, then to the peak of the Warrior and King Stages at later times; now would be no different.
With her profound understanding of Acupoint and cultivator anatomy, there was no need to be so wishy-washy and under the constant nurture of her fragmented grandmist and completely excavated potential, there wasn’t a need to worry about accidents. Brimming with confidence and erupting with the power and energy she had suppressed to keep herself in the King Stage, lights started appearing on the pores of Elizabeth’s skin.
Slowly, these lights increased in intensity, growing from a dim glow to sun piercing rays as she opened her Acupoints. Standing just a couple feet away from Elizabeth, Yrre and Sun were squinting as they were assaulted by the lights shooting out of Elizabeth’s body. One light became two, two became four, and so on until dozens of lights turned Elizabeth into a human disco ball. If one counted, she only started slowing down as she approached 81 lights, however, as she was slowing down, the heavy-dense aura of fragmented grandmist surged to excavated her potential having now reached the Saint Stage.
As the energy stored away in Elizabeth’s Dantian was converted to fragmented grandmist and integrated into her acupoints, the demonic crimson-eyed white-haired lass turned her attention to her meridians. First tackling her meridians with her own personal strength, she slowly activated eight meridians before connecting them all along the entirety of her body. At this point, she could be considered to have reached the peak of the Saint Stage; reaching the Spirit Realm was possible. However, she was far from reaching perfection; nevermind transcending it. If she broke through to the Spirit Realm right then and there, she might not even make it to the Core Formation Stage in the future.
Elizabeth stayed like this for over an hour. Though she was aggressively tackling the Saint Stage even she couldn’t rush things, lest her foundation grow unstable and she need to correct it in the future. Over the course of this hour, three of her meridians had seamlessly integrated within her body. Her 81 “basic” acupoints had all been thoroughly nourished with fragmented grandmist and she was working her way up to opening the last 27.
According to cultivation theory, the human body had several thousand acupoints, but it was generally thought to be impossible to open more than 81 while in the Saint Stage. Even practitioners of the Extreme Path of Perfection struggled to open more than 90 and 99 was a natural limit for humans. Fortunately, Elizabeth wasn’t a “mere” human, she was part Divine Beast, Goddess, Ancient Fiend and even Chaos, and in the Godking’s Book of Ice and Fire, it was stated that some of the most peerless existences could open up to 108 acupoints during the Saint Stage; though Godking Gabriella herself only opened 105 when she was a junior, untold millions of years ago.
In any case, Elizabeth’s goal was absolute perfection. Time continued to pass and Elizabeth’s already frightening Saint Stage cultivation continued to grow more profound. After connecting the 8 Earthly Meridians, she awakened and connected the next four Heavenly Meridians; simultaneously excavating her 99th Acupoint upon completion.
Suddenly, an insurmountable moat in the form of the last 8 Meridians and 9 Acupoints made their existence known before Elizabeth. Now it seemed impossible to continue further digging out potential, as her acupoint and meridians were like black holes that endlessly devoured her fragmented grandmist energy.
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Time passed at a snail's pace and after a whole twelve hours passed, Elizabeth was still in the middle of her breakthrough. In this time she had only opened three more acupoints and mildly awakened the last eight meridians. Growing concerned as her reserves of energy were being expended much faster than she anticipated, a part of Elizabeth unconsciously released the true depth of her killing intent and even Sun and Yrre who were minding their own business a couple of feet away were startled awake.
‘Those fucking Irelians…’ Elizabeth cursed internally. If she weren’t forced to use up a significant amount of the True Qi she had stolen in the effort to escape from the Irelian’s pursuit, she was confident that she would have completed this breakthrough as she had all the others; perfectly. Now, she wasn’t sure if she would even have enough to make it to the Spirit Realm in the heaven-defying fashion she would have previously.
Hatefully, after the hours passed and Elizabeth’s confidence continued to waver, she decided to play it safe. Her right hand flickered and a pile of pills appeared. ‘Yin Cleansing Pills, Blue Streak Fire Pills, Icedew Pills…’ Without hesitation, Elizabeth ate all these pills and to combat the terribly bitter taste, several of her spiritual dishes are used as supplements. It didn’t end there as she also withdrew Saint Stage Monster Cores from her spatial ring and went all out with her Seamless Magic Connection.
All these additional resources couldn’t be converted into seamless Magic that belonged to Elizabeth instantaneously, so there would inevitably be minor flaws in the awakening, connecting, and synchronization of her acupoints and meridians. But Elizabeth resolved to fix these flaws with the nurturing properties of her Chaos Requiem Skill in the future through constant exposure to grandmist energy. Right now, it was imperative that she at the very least completely awaken all of her potential as it would be a terrible waste of energy having to stop and resume this breakthrough event at a later point in time.
A day passed after Elizabeth opened 102 acupoints and mildly awoke her 8 Divine Meridians and now she had 105 acupoints opened and all 20 of her body’s Meridians were completely awakened. Try as she might, even with additional resources, she was cutting it close as her stockpiled Grandmist energy was running thin.
Twenty more hours passed and Elizabeth’s face was growing pale, she had ran through dozens of Saint Stage Monster Cores and several pill bottles worth of pills, yet she had reached the final stretch. 107 Acupoints were opened and her 8 Divine Meridians were only a few shifts away from being perfectly integrated with the rest of her body’s meridian system. Even if she stopped now, she could confidently say that she was better than junior Godkings! But this wasn’t completely perfection; she wasn’t satisfied.
Even Lisa, who was usually quiet, approved of her usually “idiotic” host’s obsession with perfection. As an Incarnation of the Ancient Godslayer Fiend bloodline, she understood the absurdity of what Elizabeth was trying to accomplish and for a time, she believed Elizabeth to be insane for even attempting it. Opening 108 Acupoints and possessing a set of 20 Divine Meridians as a Saint Stage Mortal Realm practitioner was the benchmark of entities set out to become the highest of gods.
Now, seeing Elizabeth so close yet so far from reaching that auspicious state, she put aside her usual temperament and even galvanized a bit of her source essence…
“Huh?” Yrre was the first to notice as she flicked her head to stare at Elizabeth, worried over the sudden influx of death energy. Sun didn’t so much notice as much as nearly collapse under the pressure of Lisa’s source essence being unleashed unto the world, making him feel like a death god had appeared in the room. Looking over at Elizabeth’s body, a ghastly black gas of tangible death energy had manifested and though it wasn’t aimed at anyone, everyone in the room understood that even the slightest application of this death energy could kill them in their current states.
Of course, as this horrifying black gas came from Lisa as a supplement to ensure that Elizabeth got through the Saint Stage’s final hurdle, it did little more than ominously revolve around Elizabeth; waiting endlessly to be absorbed and converted to grandmist. Lisa, having offered this up, snorted as she watched Elizabeth thanklessly take in her source essence. She hovered back over to the Stargazer Lily within Elizabeth’s Soul that represented her Affinity for Death and sat down to recoup her strength. She might have only offered up a mere 1% of her source essence, but that left her visibly shaken. Her skin even paler than Elizabeth’s, her form turning just a shade less real; like that of a phantom.
Elizabeth didn’t have the luxury to say a word of thanks as she was struggling to even sit upright. Her mind was beyond exhausted, even after taking several resting pills, and her energy overdrawn. If she dropped her guard for even a second, she feared she might even fall asleep. Thus for another three or so hours, time lost all meaning and Elizabeth felt confused as to if it was even possible for the legendary 108 Acupoints and 20 Divine Meridians to even be present on a Mortal body.
She trudged onward with many more resources finding their place in her belly as her conversion of energy to grandmist approached negligible levels, when suddenly…
Shing! The straw that broke the camel's back feel and a horrifying pressure descended within Elizabeth’s room. Yrre was only left standing because of her connection to Elizabeth through the Law Linking Chain, while Sun could barely even kneel. A golden radiance short forth from Elizabeth's body and her body sat immortalized like a star in the sky.
Her Saint Stage cultivation had been completed and perfected, and in the next moment… Thud… She fell; lost in deep hibernation…