Li Yu spent the next two days back in quiet consolidation. His mind was replaying the battle in the forest, the terrifying power of the Foundation Establishment expert and the even more terrifying power of Khaos. The experience had not left him with the thrill of victory but with a cold hard clarity. He was a frog at the bottom of a well and he had just been shown a glimpse of the vast star-filled sky.
On the third day, he gathered his three friends in the main hall of the pagoda. The air was heavy with an unspoken tension. They had seen the state he had returned in and they knew the story of a "mysterious expert" was a thin veil for a truth they could not yet comprehend.
"The world outside the sect is more dangerous than we imagined," Li Yu began, his voice calm and steady but with a new hard edge. "I was lucky to survive. The gap between the Qi Condensation Realm and the Foundation Establishment Realm… it is not a gap it is a chasm. My strength, even with Crimson, was nothing before that expert. We were ants."
He looked at them, his gaze serious. "I cannot rely on luck or mysterious experts to save me next time. I need to become stronger. Truly stronger. For the next few months I will be entering a new intensive training regimen. I will be pushing my limits in a way I never have before."
"Junior Steward, whatever you need we are here," Brother Kai said, his voice a low, steady rumble of support.
"I know," Li Yu said with a small grateful smile. "And I will need your help. While I am in seclusion I need the three of you to manage the lake for me and if at all possible for me not to be disturbed."
"Understood," Hu Jian and Lin Tao said in unison.
"There is one more thing," Li Yu said. He focused his will and a small shimmering portal opened beside him. A wave of potent and noble energy washed over the room. From the portal a slender ten-foot-long serpent emerged, its midnight-blue scales shimmering with a starlight luster. Lirael, the Deep-Sea Naga, floated in the air. Her molten gold eyes regarding the three men with a calm ancient curiosity.
The three of them froze, their eyes wide with a mixture of shock and disbelief. The aura of the creature before them was a Rank 5 Tyrant Beast.
"This… this is Lirael," Li Yu said simply. "She is a new companion." They had known earlier that he acquired an egg back in the city when they went for the auction. They did not think that the egg would become such a powerful creature.
"She will assist you in guarding the valley while I am in seclusion," Li Yu continued. "Her senses are far sharper than any formation."
Lirael gave a silent psychic acknowledgement and coiled gracefully in the air beside Li Yu, her presence a silent powerful promise of protection.
With his outer world secured, Li Yu finally turned his attention to his inner one. That night he sat in his sealed cultivation chamber. He took a deep breath and sank his consciousness into the Koi's Sanctuary.
The private lake-sized dimension was a haven of life. Li Yu's attention was on the small obsidian ledge where a fist-sized black crab rested.
'Khaos,' he projected, his will a pillar of absolute, unshakeable resolve. 'I am ready.'
The ancient consciousness stirred. A wave of amusement washed over Li Yu. 'Ready? Little host, you do not know the meaning of the word. You have tasted a single drop of the ocean and now you think you can command the tides. Very well. Let your lesson in true despair begin.'
Li Yu's spiritual avatar, his conscious form within the sanctuary, stood in the center of the misty courtyard. He drew his own power, the vast, deep sea of his Ninth Stage Qi Condensation foundation and circulated it. His body was thrumming with a strength that could shatter mountains.
He watched as Khaos, in its miniature form slowly raised one of its tiny crystalline pincers. It did not release a beam of void energy. It simply… exerted its will through spiritual pressure.
It was not the spiritual pressure of a cultivator. It was the pressure of reality itself being bent, of the very laws of space and energy being rewritten. It was the feeling of a mountain not made of rock and earth but of pure existence being placed upon his soul.
Li Yu's Ninth Stage aura which had felt so powerful moments before was instantly, completely and utterly crushed. His spiritual avatar was forced to its knees, the crimson-gold mist of the sanctuary swirling around him in a chaotic vortex. The pressure was not on his body but on his Qi Core, on his very soul. He felt as if he were being ground into dust on a cosmic level.
"This," Khaos's voice echoed, devoid of its earlier amusement. It was now a cold and dispassionate lecture, "is the difference between realms. You manipulate the Qi of the world. A Foundation Establishment expert begins to command the Qi. This is the pressure of a First Stage Foundation Establishment cultivator. It is the weakest I can manifest. And it is enough to annihilate you."
Mind you not everyone's first stage foundation powers were the same. Khaos had an ancient bloodline and was much stronger than those on the same level.
Li Yu gritted his teeth, his spiritual form trembling on the verge of collapse. He roared in his mind and poured every ounce of his will into resisting. He activated the principles of the «Tidal Aegis Art», not on his physical body but on his very soul, trying to create a spiritual vortex to disperse the crushing pressure.
It was like trying to stop a tsunami with a paper fan.
"Your techniques are crude," Khaos stated. "You have great power, but you wield it like a club. You do not understand its essence." Most of everything came to Khaos naturally, it was all inherited in his bloodline and as he grew stronger, more and more knowledge would be unlocked to him. Though he was young, he knew much. "You think your Qi is heavy? Let me show you what true weight is."
The pressure intensified. Li Yu felt his consciousness begin to fracture, his vision dissolving into a sea of white noise. He was about to be extinguished.
But then a new feeling was introduced. It was a single fine thread of Khaos's own energy, a wisp of its void-aspected power, that seeped into Li Yu's own Qi. It was not an attack. It was a lesson.
He felt it instantly. His own True Qi, which he had thought was so pure and dense was a cloudy, chaotic mess compared to this. Khaos's energy was a state of perfect order in the midst of chaos. It was heavy not because of its volume but because of its perfect, flawless density.
In that moment of clarity Li Yu understood. The path to the Foundation Establishment Realm was not just about accumulating more Qi. It was about refining it, about purifying it, about condensing it to a state of near-perfect order.
He focused his will, not on resisting the pressure but on emulating that single thread of perfect energy. He took his own vast sea of Qi and began to compress it further, to purify it, to force it to mimic that state of absolute density.
The pain was excruciating but it was a pain with a purpose. He was not just enduring; he was learning.
The pressure from Khaos did not relent. It was a merciless, unforgiving teacher. For what felt like an eternity, Li Yu was trapped in that state of absolute suppression, his entire being focused on that single desperate task of refinement.
Finally, after what could have been hours or days, Khaos withdrew its pressure.
Li Yu's spiritual avatar collapsed on the ground, a translucent flickering image on the verge of dissipating completely. He was more exhausted than he had ever been in his life. But he was alive. And he had learned.
He could feel a change in his own Qi. It was still at the Ninth Stage but it was different. It was denser, heavier and a fraction purer than it had been before. He had taken the first, infinitesimal step on the path to a higher realm.
"That is enough for your first lesson," Khaos's voice echoed, a note of something that might have been grudging respect in its ancient, arrogant tone. "When you are ready for your next lesson in despair, I will be waiting."
Li Yu withdrew his consciousness from the sanctuary, his physical body slumping against the wall of his cultivation chamber and his robes soaked with a cold sweat. He was trembling, exhausted and his soul ached with a weariness that went beyond the physical.
But as he looked out at the dark valley that was his home, a slow determined smile touched his lips. The path forward was one of pain and despair but it was a path he would walk. He would be forged in the crucible of his own spirit, tempered by the power of a calamity. And he would emerge not as a fish, not as a serpent but as a true unshakeable leviathan.