My seclusion lasted longer than I had planned.

Over the course of several lives, I earned a total of 48,000 credits and spent 25,350. A small amount was needed to hide my affinity each go-round, but I had been able to permanently upgrade all my affinity for the five basic elements (fire, wood, water, earth, metal) to low eight-stars, create a Rank 2 mental bookshelf, and learn how to expand my storage space.

The last one was where a new problem arose.

To expand my storage space on my own, I would need to have the seed of a spatial spirit fire in my soul. A soul could only house a single fire seed, though. I could discard the Cold Mountain Fire seed, but that wasn’t going to happen unless necessary. The option I chose to pursue was to buy an expansion to my storage space large enough that I could put my current seed in there when I absorbed a new one.

First, though, I needed to pay the associated costs. I needed 1,000 cubic centimeters of space to store the seed. The cost for that was another 29,760 credits.

So, I lived life after life as I practiced my skills in solitude. My alchemy advanced far beyond what I had expected.

I had practically unlimited access to Rank 1 herbs. At first, I was careful about using anything other than peonies, but no one ever confronted me about it. There was always a servant to keep everything stocked. The herbs had a natural shelf life, so they commonly had to be thrown out for being too old. I just accelerated that process.

Additionally, others did take things from the supplies, though I didn’t know who. I strictly adhered to Rudy’s ‘stay out of sight’ policy, so I never saw who was coming and going from the place, but I didn’t care anyway. The fact that others were using the herbs had helped cover over my own uses.

I performed all kinds of experiments on various herbs. I began to get a sense of what kinds of pills I could make from them just by their energies. I would make a pill and then use my pill analysis ability, which I had upgraded for 1,000 credits, to see what I had made. I wasn’t paying attention to recipes. I was focused on understanding the medicinal energy and how the combinations of different energies would affect the body.

Six lifetimes passed this way. Over 500 years. I didn’t completely feel the passage of time. With each reset, my memories were compartmentalized. Every day in seclusion was nearly the exact same, and after returning to the start, if I didn’t focus on the details, it felt like a life of eighty years took only a few days. So, while I may have started to get antsy about being cooped up for so long near the end of a cycle, being reborn completely refreshed my mental reserves and I was ready to keep going.

My qi control skills advanced significantly. Increases in my soul strength allowed me to see energy so clearly that I could now easily find even the toxins hidden within medicinal energy.

At the end of my seclusion, I could create any of the numerous Rank 1 pills I now knew about as Perfect pills with 100% efficacy.

Regarding alchemy, there was only a single blemish that kept me from being completely satisfied. I could never figure out how to use the spirit fire correctly. I tried many times, but it always ended in complete failure. I would need to find a teacher to guide me on its use.

I had everything I wanted except the expanded storage. I had 22,830 credits. This death should finally bring me enough. After it, I would end my seclusion and return to the world.

----------------------------------------

My first life after beginning my seclusion came to an unexpected end. I was sleeping, and the next day I woke up in my tiny house in the training area. I was, needless to say, confused. I had died, but I had no clue how. Slowly, I began to piece everything together. The date of my death was a few days after Rudy arrived with his group. I didn’t know what happened, but I had a good guess it was related to him.

At this point, I had a choice to make. Should I do anything different?

I didn’t like the idea of dying, and I still didn’t want to seek my death. This last life, I had lived to over ninety years old. During the last decades, my cultivation had slowed to a crawl. I knew I must have made mistakes early in the Martial Master realm that limited my potential final advancement. If I’m being truthful with myself, I should have restarted there and worked towards building a stronger foundation.

However, I didn’t want to seek my death. I focused on my alchemy and made progress there instead.

My death solved my dilemma. I could now start over and learn where I went wrong before.

Finally, after considering my situation, I decided to do nothing different at the end. I would go to sleep and wake up in a new life. This wasn’t suicide. It was just a time limit. At least, that’s what I told myself.

The next life passed. I made it further through Martial Master, but still got stuck before reaching the peak. I should have gone to find a teacher. I could have tried finding help. It would have been a good idea to end my seclusion right then. But my alchemy had started advancing in unexpected ways.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

I decided to stick it out and try to make progress on my own. In my third life, I finally reached Martial Master 10, but that was where I got stuck. Even after several more lives, I was never able to form that final meridian. For four lifetimes I reached Martial Master 10, but I couldn’t take the final step.

Finally, in the seventh life of my secluded cultivation, I was able to complete all twelve meridians and reach Martial Master Peak.

The advancement assured me I would have credits to spare after my death, so this life would be the last of my seclusion. I wanted to take advantage of it and finally understand why I kept dying in my sleep.

I had a pretty good idea of who was to blame, but I had never once actually woken. I just suddenly died in my sleep and restarted.

----------------------------------------

I knew which night I always died. When it was time, I did not go to sleep. I exited the alchemy building and huddled in a far corner of the courtyard. My death was always sudden, so I was pretty sure something drastic happened to the building. Maybe I should have gotten further away, but I wanted to see what had killed me so many times. If I left the courtyard, that wouldn’t have been possible.

Deep into the night, I began to hear screams. They were muffled, fuzzy things. Distance, walls, and possibly something else blocked the sounds, but they were clearly discernable as screams.

Not long after the screaming started, the alchemy building where I had spent so many years suddenly exploded. It didn’t catch fire and start to burn. It didn’t go up in a blaze of flames. It was as if the entire building was built on a bedrock of C4.

Shrapnel blasted in every direction. Huddled in a distant corner, I was safe from most of the blast. Some bits of wood and debris still hit me, but with a Martial Master Peak cultivation, it wasn’t a threat.

I looked around the courtyard. It was a hell of burning wood and plants, but I didn’t see any people. No corpses. Had I just been forgotten while everyone else was evacuated, or was everyone else completely destroyed in the blast?

I wanted to understand what was happening.

I should say here that my cultivation technique was having a clear influence on me. As my soul grew, I was able to begin feeling my own impulses separate from those of the technique more clearly. I could feel I wanted to be a mix of afraid, angry, and aggressive. The technique continued to pull me towards a neutral mindset. I was still afraid, but the edge was taken off. The strongest feeling I could muster was curiosity.

I went to leave the courtyard to explore and see what was happening. I tried to open the large red wooden doors that sealed me in, but they didn’t want to move. They couldn’t stop a Martial Master Peak, though. I didn’t have any qi skills that could help me, but I could use brute force. With a forceful shove, the doors opened so quickly they nearly shattered.

Outside was strange. Before, I had heard screaming, but all that was left was quiescence. I could only hear the remains of the fires crackling in the courtyard I had just left.

I started walking in the direction I believed the screams had come from. The building complex was made up of several courtyards all separated off by large imposing walls. Walking through the streets at night was unnerving. The only light available was that of fires reflected down by the clouds overhead.

As I walked, I began to feel a little cold. It had been a long time since I noticed much change in temperature. I had been locked away in the alchemy building where every day felt the same. The cobblestones under my feet began to crackle as I walked. I looked down to see tiny ice shards embedded in them.

After I turned a corner, I saw several large bluish lumps. They had been bodies. Somehow, they had been flash-frozen and covered in a thick layer of ice. I couldn’t do anything for them. I wanted to see how it happened.

I began hearing the sounds of fighting. I knew I would find what I was looking for there, so I ran forward.

The walls opened into a large garden. Plants and trees had been torn up and scattered everywhere. A thick layer of frost covered most of the ground.

In the middle of the garden, two people fought. One was wearing the robes of the Su Clan while the other was wearing robes very similar to those of the Twin Mountains Sect.

Each time a punch or kick connected I felt a blast of energy push me backwards. When I looked at the place through qi vision, I was met with a haze of chaotic lines of different qi spreading in every direction. As they fought, the two men were releasing qi at an astounding rate.

I didn’t know much about fighting with qi, but my street fighting knowledge was decent. I could tell that the man in sect robes was trying to disengage, but the clan member wasn’t allowing it. Finally, the man from the Su clan made a fatal mistake. He overextended and allowed the sect warrior time to back away.

After that, I witnessed what must have happened to the two people I had seen earlier. Ice began to gather around the feet of the man from the clan. After that, his movement was hampered. The more he slowed, the faster ice gathered. When he could no longer move, the sect fighter relaxed. He appeared to slump in exhaustion.

I wanted to know who attacked the clan. I began walking toward him. I was walking to my death, but in the moment, I didn’t think about that. My curiosity drove me on.

As I walked, I tried to understand the reasons for my actions. I could feel that the cultivation technique was not affecting my curiosity. I had that naturally. What it was doing was reducing my aggression and increasing my positive feelings for this person. I was being urged to be friendly with him. At this point, I had the fortitude of soul power to resist the urges, but I didn’t. I allowed it to happen.

The man had noticed me long ago but didn’t seem to consider me a threat. With the qi he was blasting out earlier, he had to be a Martial Grandmaster, so that was understandable. He let me approach.

When I got close enough to see his face, I was surprised.

“TianLei?” I asked in confusion. This was the man I met when I was entering the sect. The one I had also seen with Rudy so long ago.

“Lei?” the man asked, bursting into laughter. “Does this look like lightning to you? I will give you a gift. I will let you experience the power of TianBing.”

‘TianBing’ didn’t even have to approach me. Ice slowly began forming all around me.

Ice coated my legs. I was trapped and couldn’t move. The ice covered my chest. It was nearly impossible to pull in a breath. Ice encased my head. I couldn’t breathe.

When suffocated, a normal human can maybe remain conscious for a minute or two. Cultivators are made of sterner stuff. I remained in that state, completely conscious but unable to move or breathe for over ten minutes before I succumbed.

When I finally perished, I only felt that I never wanted to see ‘TianBing’ again.

You have died. Calculating…

You died as a Martial Master Peak. 20,000 credits awarded.

Total Credits: 42,830