The tour of the Boreal Frost Empire was a period of profound and welcome tranquility for Li Yu. The end of the civil war had washed a wave of weary relief over the entire northern region. The grim, military tension of Frostgate City had been replaced by the bustling, optimistic energy of reconstruction and renewed commerce.
The roads, once fraught with the danger of blockades and skirmishes, were now open and safe, filled with a steady stream of merchants and travelers eager to reconnect with the outside world.
Li Yu and Cyra traveled in their simple but luxurious carriage, a small, unassuming island of peace moving through the vast, snow-dusted landscapes. They were just two of a thousand other travelers, a quiet scholar and his elegant companion, their true, terrifying power hidden beneath a placid surface.
Li Yu relished the anonymity. He spent his days observing the new sights, sampling the local cultures, and adding to the diversity of his sanctuary, a quiet tourist in a world he was secretly beginning to influence.
His nights, however, were dedicated to cultivation.
On one such night, they were camped in a secluded, snow-filled valley, the only sounds the soft crackle of their small campfire and the gentle sigh of the wind through the tall, frost-covered pines. The twin moons of this northern sky cast a brilliant, silvery light over the pristine landscape, a scene of profound, silent beauty. Cyra sat in a meditative posture on one side of the fire, her own powerful aura as calm and placid as a frozen lake.
Li Yu sat opposite her, his consciousness having already sunk deep into the abyss-black ocean of his spiritual core. He had been in this state for hours, his nascent soul, the crimson-gold leviathan, swimming in slow, majestic circles in the star-dusted depths. He was not actively cultivating, not pushing for a breakthrough. He was simply… absorbing.
His journey through the world had been a feast for his Koi Martial Spirit. Every new species he collected, from the Stone-Skinned Gudgeon of Stonehaven to the Fire-Gut Salamanders of the whiskey town, from the Silver-Gill Frost Trout to the Wind-Rider Wyverns of Sky-Arch City, had added a new thread to the tapestry of his inner world.
The effect was twofold. The sheer quantity of life in his Koi's Sanctuary was now immense, providing him with a vast, ever-growing reservoir of pure life-force. But more importantly, the diversity was staggering. Each species possessed its own unique elemental or conceptual energy signature.
For months, these signatures had existed as faint, separate streams within the greater ocean of his abyss-black Qi. He could feel the faint, fiery warmth of the salamanders, the sharp, airy quality of the wyverns, the solid, grounding essence of the stone-skinned fish, even the subtle, corrosive nature of the various demonic beasts he had absorbed in the past.
They were a thousand different rivers, all flowing into the same great sea, but they had remained distinct, separate currents within the greater whole. They did not interfere with his cultivation, but they did not actively contribute to it either. They were simply… there.
Tonight, however, something was different.
As he sank deeper into his meditation, he felt a strange stirring in the depths of his spiritual sea. It was not a violent or sudden event, but a slow, inexorable awakening. One by one, the thousand different, faint Qi signatures began to glow.
A fiery red thread of energy began to pulse with a new vitality. A silvery-white thread of wind energy began to hum. An earthy ochre thread of terrestrial power began to vibrate with a deep, resonant thrum.
It was as if a thousand sleeping fish had all awoken at once.
His two most prominent, unique energies—the deep, heavy void-aspected Qi he had gained from Khaos's feedback loop, and the pure, green life-force that he obtained from the source beneath the sect—remained aloof, two great sovereigns watching from the shores of his inner ocean. But the thousand lesser rivers, the myriad streams of elemental and conceptual power he had gathered on his long journey, were now beginning to move.
They did not move chaotically. They moved with a purpose. Drawn by an unseen, instinctual force, the separate threads of energy began to flow from the far corners of his vast spiritual sea, all converging towards a single point in its very center.
Li Yu watched, his consciousness a silent, fascinated observer. He vaguely thought of his cultivation technique, could this be some kind of evolution caused by it? It was an addition or evolution of his foundational cultivation art, the «Myriad Rivers Returning to the Sea Art». He had always thought its purpose was simply to allow him to absorb the energy from aquatic bloodlined beasts. He had been wrong. Its true purpose was not just to contain, but to also unify.
The process began. As the first two streams of energy met in the center of his inner ocean—the fiery red of the salamanders and the earthy ochre of the stone-skinned fish—they clashed. Fire and earth, two conflicting concepts, warred for a brief, violent moment.
But his spiritual sea was not a simple container. It was his core, his domain. And in its depths, his nascent soul, the crimson-gold leviathan, stirred. It did not act directly, but its very presence, its absolute, primordial authority over this inner world, exerted a profound, stabilizing pressure. It was the calm, unshakeable will of a god in its own kingdom, and before that will, the chaotic, warring energies were forced into a state of submission.
Under this profound, stabilizing pressure, the two conflicting energies were not just pacified; they were ground down, their fundamental essences stripped bare and then forcibly, yet perfectly, fused together. The result was a new, single thread of energy that was not red or brown, but a deep, shimmering orange, an energy that held both the fiery heat of magma and the solid weight of cooling rock.
And then, the other rivers arrived.
For four long, profound hours, Li Yu's inner world was a crucible of creation. The silvery wind energy of the wyverns, the sharp, metallic energy of the Iron-Shelled Mountain Crabs, the subtle, venomous energy of the Razor-Tusk Marsh Boars, the pure, cold energy of the Frost Trout—hundreds of different elemental and conceptual energies all flowed into the central vortex. They clashed, they resisted, they fought for dominance. But under the silent, absolute authority of his nascent soul, all of them were systematically broken down, purified, and fused into the ever-growing, central mass of new energy.
It was a process of unimaginable complexity, a form of internal alchemy that was rewriting the very nature of his power.
Finally, the last of the myriad streams was absorbed. The chaotic vortex in the center of his spiritual sea began to slow, to stabilize, its roiling energies calming until it was a single, perfect, and utterly new form of Qi.
Li Yu examined it, his consciousness filled with a sense of profound, creative awe. It was not one color, but all colors at once. It was a shimmering, opalescent energy, a liquid rainbow that seemed to hold every concept, every element, within its harmonious, unified whole.
He could feel the heat of fire, the coolness of water, the solidity of earth, the sharpness of wind, the vitality of life, and the venom of death, all existing in a state of perfect, paradoxical balance. He felt that he had just created a new form of spiritual energy, he didn't know what it was but it was powerful, it needed a name.
He would call it… Koi Qi. A tribute to the martial spirit that had started it all, the humble fish that had given him the power to swallow the seas.
With the fusion complete, his inner world underwent a final, profound transformation. The vast, abyss-black ocean that was his spiritual core, once a sea of star-dusted darkness, was now a breathtaking vista of shimmering, opalescent light. It was still as deep and profound as the abyss, but now it was an abyss filled with a living, breathing rainbow of color.
He felt the change in himself instantly. It was not a breakthrough in his cultivation level; it was a qualitative leap in his very existence. He felt… stronger. More complete. He estimated that his raw power, his ability to exert force upon the world, had increased by at least thirty percent. But the change was deeper than that. He felt more in tune with the world around him, as if a veil had been lifted from his senses. The flow of Qi through his own body was smoother, faster, more efficient than ever before.
He pulled his consciousness back to his physical body, opening his eyes to the cold, clear night of the northern wilderness. He took a deep, experimental breath. And he felt the world rush in.
Before, when he cultivated, his body had acted as a filter, naturally drawing in the water-aspected spiritual energy that he was most attuned to. The other elemental energies in the environment—the earth, the wind, the fire—were mostly ignored, their absorption rate slow and inefficient. But now…
Now, there was no filter. His body, now filled with the all-encompassing Koi Qi, was a perfect, universal conduit. He felt the cold, pure ice energy from the frozen ground seep into him. He felt the sharp, clean wind energy from the mountain peaks flow into his meridians.
He felt the deep, stable earth energy from the bedrock rise up to meet him. He was absorbing everything, all at once, with a terrifying, flawless efficiency. His cultivation speed had not just increased; it had increased by an order of magnitude when drawing in energy from the environment.
In the quiet of the snowy valley, a slow, wide, and utterly triumphant smile spread across Li Yu's face. He had somehow unlocked another secret of his cultivation art. He had not just learned to swallow the rivers; he had learned how to become the ocean itself.