Kai took a deep breath and wiped the sweat from his brow. His breathing was shallow, his stomach felt sick. He leaned forward on the dais in his soul space, his hands supporting his weight as he leaned against them from his seated position.
“Ridiculous,” he spat onto the floor. “I had no idea a soul could even get tired.”
“You made it to nine segments.” Relay offered some encouragement.
“I went linearly from six to nine,” Kai took a deep breath. “Had I been trying to push I would have had to alternate back and forth four times. Then kept that up through fifteen segments.” Kai fell back and looked up at the ceiling. “It’s impossible.”
Kai thought The God’s Eye Art was a cultivation method that focused on spiritual awareness so he could become more perceptive; he expected it to be a perception-improving technique. And while it was that, the method's goal was to teach the cultivator the Eye Of God skill. According to the author, the Eye of God skill could alter reality according to the quality of the cultivator’s visualization.
All the perception improvements that came with the modifiers were necessary to create a ripple that pushed a visualization from abstract dimensions of awareness into concrete dimensions; to make them real.
“This is probably why they suggested first condensing your energy before trying it.”
Kai shook his head. He didn’t see how compressing the energy would make it easier to do; if anything, he thought it would make it harder.
A tap came from the screen where his audio feed was playing. Once they could access motion perception listening became simple, but it was uneventful. There was little sound wherever his body was, with only an occasional tap to remind him he was still listening.
“We don’t understand enough about spiritual energy to know what happens when you further refine it, but indications are it results in improved control and power.”
“Fine, fine,” Kai sat up. “I’ll try anything at this point.” He stretched and then assumed the blooming lotus posture. “Who knows maybe we’ll get lucky?”
He didn’t get lucky. He was exhausted; forcing his energy to his will was much more challenging. To concentrate on refining his eye core he decided to undo his motion modifier, leaving only his spiritual energy awareness active.
Kai pushed his energy into his eye core, compressing it down to the center, then rotating it once there. Compared to quickly cycling through symmetric circuits it was a breeze. He continued pulling energy and compressing it into his core, layer after layer, pushed down, compressed, and rotated. He lost track of the time, simply existing to compress energy into his core. It seemed right, and nothing he could see gave him any reason to be concerned.
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The first indication Ai had, that something was wrong, was the gathering collection of darker clouds forming about their air sloop. The clouds above them seem to be following them, tracking their position.
“Is that what I think it is?” Bao asked as she looked up. Song's head tilted back to take in the dark clouds. Song swallowed then stood up, and took her meditative posture. Closing her eyes she sought calm. The building storm above was put from her mind, she focused on her heart core and began cycling her divine energy.
Her energy responded lethargically; she was exhausted. She managed a complete cycle before falling into her foresight. The storms gathered above, electricity cackling. A bolt of pure destructive force cracked down targeting the cabin. The air sloop’s cabin caught on fire, and splinters flew from the impact site. She raised he hands and signed to Bao.
“Tribulation! It’s a heavenly tribulation!” Bao yelled over the wind.
Ai cursed again and scanned the horizon for a suitable location. There was no island to be seen. Her eyes fell on a dot in the sky far off above them.
"We'll never make it," A quick analysis of their speed, distance, and a glance up to the building storm was enough to convince Ai any attempt at landing their sloop would be disastrous.
“Bai,” Ai stepped up to the deck. “Get the casket, we will send it on ahead.” She reached down to her belt, to the storage pouch, and pulled out a battered sketchbook. With practiced motions, she flipped open her leather book and found a sketch of a king sparrow. The drawing was simple, but elegant with bold ink lines.
She closed her eyes and cycled her energy pulling it into her outstretched hand - it formed a black pen, which she caught. She quickly completed the king sparrow, closing the few lines previously left undone. Completed, the bird began to move on the page, tilting its head this way and that as if curious about where it was.
I have a mission for you; fly this box to the island just there, Ai sent mental instructions to her animated construct. Find shelter if possible. We’ll catch up soon.
The king sparrow nodded and lept from the page, growing in size until it dwarfed all the cultivators. Bai dropped the casket on the deck, nervously looking at the dark clouds circling above. The sparrow was parchment white, outlined in bold black lines, and rendered as a three-dimensional construct. It looked at the casket, cawed once, and grabbed it in one talon before lifting it into the air, and speeding off for the island.
Ai didn’t bother to watch it go, retreating to the helm to pursue her summon.
“Full speed,” she called back to Yunfei before looking up. The king sparrow was a high-speed flier, it had already closed half the distance to the island. The dark clouds pursued the king sparrow, like an evil specter, easily keeping up with the high-speed flyer.
“You ever hear of a corpse advancing their cultivation? Maybe our soulforger isn’t as dead as he appears,” Bao grumbled.
Yunfei, swallowed at that, before sending a strong stream of air out behind them, pushing them in pursuit.
Cultivation breakthroughs were a big deal. A cultivator would plan them out in detail, keeping the time and place a secret, only allowing a trusted few to the event to defend the temporarily weakened cultivator, once the trial has passed. Having one spontaneously was incredibly dangerous and oftentimes fatal.
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“We’ll hang back and observe, but our mission requires we deliver his body, so prepare to defend if needed,” Ai called out commands to her team.
Bao smiled, excitement building. “Finally. Something to fight!”
Song sat down and gripped the rail. She was spent and unable to cycle her divine energy a moment longer.
The captain tracked the king sparrow with her eyes, watching as it neared the island.
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With no physical sensations, with nothing besides awareness of his spiritual energy, Kai couldn’t explain the rising tension he felt as he continued to refine and compress his spiritual energy. As the process drew out, doubts began to enter his mind.
I destroyed my body with the limited amount of energy I cultivated before. Can my body even handle more potent energy? In a grim thought, he imagined his eye-core exploding from being unable to contain the energy. He could see his skull decimated his head reduced to a bloody stump.
Not helpful. He struggled against his wild imagination, trying to force himself to remain calm, to concentrate, and disregard his fears and anxiety. How does this even work? Is my core physically present in my body? That didn’t seem right based on the fact that even with the damage to his body his meridians were never damaged. If it was true that his meridians and cores were not physically present in his body, then no matter the energy level, he could overload them and it wouldn’t cause him damage. But his body was destroyed by his energy. Something didn’t make sense.
His mind was turning over these thoughts as he continued to cycle more and more energy into his core. It was getting harder and harder to compress the energy down into the center of the core, with each new volume of energy he needed progressively more time to compress it.
He was compressing again when he noticed a shift. The energy began cycling faster and faster, taking on a qualitative change in texture, becoming more solid, and thicker like syrup, instead of water. As his core transformed it began moving faster and faster. Thicker, denser energy, looked more solid and moved faster - defying Kai’s expectation.
When the last of the energy in his core transformed, he felt a pulse shake his spiritual body. A golden wave of energy emerged from his core and spread through every meridian before returning. It was so quick, Kai nearly missed it. Upon return, his eye core shined brighter and rotated so quickly that it looked almost solid.
What’s this? Kai’s spiritual awareness expanded further; he could see a large glowing talon wrapping around his spiritual body, and beyond that, the glowing body of a large bird in flight.
Kai shifted his awareness back to his soul space.
“We have a problem,” he opened his eyes. The feed from his spiritual energy modifier was displayed on the screen.
“Yeah, I can see that,” the fox stood alert, his ears pressed back.
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The king sparrow darted to the left, glancing up toward the black clouds. “Cheep!” the bird looked frantically for a sheltered location. The forest sprawled out below him, a canopy of trees so thick he couldn’t see the ground. In the distance, he saw a clearing on a hill. He desperately banked and aimed for that location.
Crack! A white bolt of lightning pierced the sky, a lance of energy descending from the strange dark clouds above. The king sparrow tried to dodge, but the lighting was too fast. It pierced its wing and traveled through its body. Its wing was paralyzed; it tumbled from the sky toward the forest below.
The sky rumbled, dark clouds forming a ring pushing other clouds away. With barely a moment to spare the king sparrow righted itself and pushed towards the clearing, it barreled through the treeline, snapping branches off as he tried to slow for a landing.
Boom! Another bolt slashed through the sky, driving into the king sparrow. This one was thicker and more powerful. The bird hobbled three steps, leaving the casket on the hill, before falling over and vanishing into black ink lines that momentarily floated before zipping off towards the horizon.
In the clouds above, another dark ring appeared pushing the former ring of clouds out further. Thunder could be seen churning as the dark clouds continued to condense.
Boom! Another bolt crashed down on Kai’s undefended casket. The smooth black enamel wood peeled, smoked, and splinted as the destructive power descended on it. Fragments of the casket exploded outwards, leaving Kai’s body exposed to the churning sky.
Again a circle of black clouds pushed out, three rings of black clouds visible in the sky above. It was an unmistakable sign that someone was undergoing a heavenly tribulation. Beasts in the forest looked up, turning in Kai’s direction.
The storm continued to gather, dark clouds forming, and the day grew dark. Thunder continued to roll, flashes of lightning jumping from one cloud to another lighting up the sky.
A massive tiger prowled the underbrush, its dark fur sparkled with glimpses of light. From her position, she observed the clearing. She let out a thunderous roar, before stepping to the edge. Across from her, a basilisk smiled greedily at the casket.
The tiger jumped forward into the clearing and roared again; a warning. The basilisk was green, with bright green scaled here and there giving it a patchwork-like appearance.
With a resounding boom, another lightning bolt crashed down, sending more of the casket to splinters, piercing Kai’s silk-wrapped corpse. The final bolt was stronger than all the ones that preceded it, pushing the ring of dark clouds like an explosion from the force.
The tiger looked at the sky, noticed the black clouds dispersing, and pounced on the hill. Her paw came down next to the casket. One claw of the massive beast's paw was larger than the casket. She looked at the basilisk one more time before roaring a final time, then lowered her head and flipped the casket into her mouth, swallowing it like it were a pill.
The basilisk snorted and grunted in displeasure but didn’t approach, instead retreating into the woods.
The tiger settled down on the hill to refine the spiritual energy.