Thankfully, he didn’t say such things out loud. That sort of declaration always led to something bad happening. Even so, the objects within his Dantian continued to interact. The Blue Icesilver joined the other group of objects, shifting energy back and forth between each other. The resonance between them seeming to deepen. Now that he was recovered, the Heavenly Materials took this opportunity to stop holding back.

Is it finally time?

In the center, the Seed of Life was whirling, spinning in place like a top. The other five objects were orbiting rapidly around it, each of them following a different arc at high speed, yet none of them ever collided. This was only a slight change from before, what actually caught his attention was the behavior of the rest of his Dantian.

The Life Nebula technique, or so he called it, had long ago changed a sea of liquid Qi droplets into its current state: a cloud of large Qi drops. Those droplets of Qi were spaced almost equally apart, drifting around the Seed of Life in the center. The droplets near the center moving faster than those further out, slowly swirling and spreading out into a pattern reminiscent of a Nebula. When they drifted to the edge of his Dantian’s space, they spilled into his body and provided him with power. His actual control over the nebula in his Dantian was very limited, at best he could slightly speed it up. It was a far cry from the explosive strength that other Qi Cultivation Techniques talked about. On the other hand, it was extremely stable. Since the Life Nebula formed, he’d never been able to actually drain all of the energy from his Dantian.

During Ebb and Flow training, he could only forcibly drain away all of the Qi near the edges of the Life Nebula. There was still a huge portion of energy near the center, he just couldn’t really access it. Then he’d seal himself up and starve it from input. A cultivator drew in energy from the heavens and earth, using various methods to push it into their Dantian. From there it was refined into their own personal energy and stored for their later use. The many techniques for this were extremely varied, and the Life Nebula was extremely strange. It replaced his normal aura with one that showed a crushing dominance, one that drew in such extreme amounts of energy that only the Seed of Life, with the help of other Heavenly Materials, could refine it. These extremely refined droplets of energy felt… heavy. Such that he couldn’t manipulate them on his own. He could only receive them as they drifted out of his Dantian. The method he’d developed to absorb them faster was to manipulate the borders of his Dantian.

The area inside most Dantians was shaped something like a sphere. Sage had altered his own to more of an elliptical shape, a sort of oblong sphere: an ellipsoid. To drain out most of his energy he then rotated it around, forcing the narrowed walls to catch more of the heavy energy droplets. It was an inelegant solution at best, but the only thing he could think of to gather energy for the large bursts he needed to train his Qi Channels and Qi Pores.

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Now, there had been a complete turnaround. The ‘heavy’ droplets of Qi were no longer swirling outwards. They were rapidly being drawn towards the center. Their smooth arcing orbits were sharply changing, each of them spiraling rapidly towards the many colored glowing star that was the grouping of Heavenly Materials. The usual slow drifting now looked more like a rapid migration. Almost like water swirling down a drain, forming a huge vortex with the equally spaced motes of energy.

This should be rank advancement, right? It’s starting without me!

He could only theorize that the Seed of Life was acting of its own volition. It made some sense, after all, it was a Wood natured Heavenly Material, and plants had their own initiative. They couldn’t really be considered to have minds, but they could still act. Stretching out towards the sun, climbing up walls, digging their roots through obstructions and reacting to the weather. The other alternative was that something had tampered with the Heavenly Materials or his body, and that idea was terrifying. If he let himself wander down that path of thought he might not be able to trust anything else again. Who knows how much energy he might spend. The only Heavenly Material he had any control over was the Blue Icesilver, the others were out of his grasp. If they were secretly being controlled by someone or something else, what could he do about it? If there was a sleeping dragon, better not to wake it. With only suspicion and no evidence, there was no reason to waste any time on it.

The exact path for advancing to rank 5, all the ranks in fact, were specific to one’s Qi Cultivation Technique. The richness and detail of that path was even used as a gauge on the value of Qi Cultivation Techniques. Even if a Qi Cultivation Technique was extremely powerful, if it did not have a clear and defined path to climb through the ranks of cultivation it would be less valuable than one that did. Who would want to have to learn a whole new Qi Cultivation Technique for every rank they advanced? They would have to study and practice, modify their internal structures and slowly adapt to a whole new system.

Many rogue cultivators were forced to use whatever they could get their hands on, but even they prioritized ‘full’ cultivation techniques. It was usually considered a ‘full’ cultivation technique if it could advance a cultivator completely through rank 1 to 5. That was far from the end of cultivation, but after reaching rank 5 things changed drastically. A cultivator usually relied upon their own comprehension to reach further. That was the main reason there were so few rank 6 cultivators. Sage surmised that there were cultivation techniques that could smoothly progress a cultivator to rank 6, but they were reserved for only the highest powers. Why would a ruler spread a method that would allow their subjects to equal them?

Unfortunately, Sage didn’t have any knowledge about the Qi Cultivation Technique he was using. It was all working on its own, driven by the Seed of Life. There was no telling how far it would take him, and his only understanding came from studying it after the fact. He wasn’t the one building this house, just the one living in it. So, he could only watch and learn as it was constructed, trying to learn its secrets by watching it being built.

That said, while he had no idea about the specifics of his advancement to rank 5, the general concept between most cultivation techniques were quite similar and he saw signs of them here. To reach rank 4, a cultivator used their breath, essence, and mind to create a solid foundation within their Dantian. The three referred to the physical body, Qi, and Spirit. They acted together to build a foundation within the Sea of Qi. Rank 5 was known as Core Formation. The Dantian was the crucible, the Qi was the material, and the Foundation was something like a mold or form. To reach rank 5 there were a few steps. First, force all of the Sea of Qi into the foundations. Second, the creation of the core itself. Third, fuse the soul into the core. The exact details and process of each step varied, but the basics were quite similar.