CHAPTER 42 — Absorbing the Essence Blood
_
When Ren truly began the process of absorbing the Phoenix's essence, he finally understood the terrifying meaning of excess.
It was as if a broad, ancient riverbed, accustomed to the predictable rhythm of seasonal rains, had suddenly been connected to the infinite, crushing volume of a primary ocean. Energy did not merely pour into him; it surged with a relentless, tidal weight that threatened to hollow out his very existence before it could begin to build him back up.
The energy flood did not arrive with the dramatic roar of a storm. It arrived with the absolute, silent weight of an ocean collapsing into a well.
The moment Ren's Second Path—the Path of Accord—touched the essence blood, the droplet ceased to be a liquid and became a torrent of celestial fire. In almost every other cultivation system known to the Great Boundary, a meridian was treated like a pipe, a conduit meant to carry a specific, manageable volume of Qi. If that volume was exceeded, the pipe simply burst, and the cultivator was left as a shattered husk. But Aetherion's Second Path was different. It didn't treat meridians like rigid pipes; it treated them like natural riverbeds.
Yet, even a riverbed has its physical limits when the source of the water is endless and the current is moving with the speed of a falling star.
Ren's body buckled under the initial impact. Inside him, the Phoenix energy surged with a turbulent, muddy violence, tearing through his pathways with the force of a mountain-born flash flood. It was white-hot, ancient, and utterly indifferent to his mortality. Within mere seconds, the boundary of the Initial Inner Realm was swept away like a sandcastle before a rising tide.
Intermediate Inner Realm.
The breakthrough happened so fast that Ren didn't even have time to register the sudden shift in his perception. His cells were being saturated at a molecular level, his marrow vibrating with a frequency so high it threatened to shake his teeth from his gums and his eyes from their sockets. A single heartbeat later, the reinforced wall to the Peak Inner Realm crumbled into dust.
His cultivation was screaming upward, an uncontrolled rocket fueled by the undiluted blood of a Level Nine Phoenix.
Ren tasted iron—the sharp, metallic tang of his own blood.
His vision fractured into a dozen overlapping afterimages as the internal pressure crushed inward, forcing his physical organs to lag behind the terrifying speed of his cultivation. For the first time in his life, his body—the vessel he had tempered so far could not keep up with the power it held.
Ren's eyes flew open, glowing with a terrifying, obsidian light that cast long, dancing shadows against the stone walls. He felt the warning of the Phoenix Lady echoing in the back of his mind, cold and clear: "No greed. Or it will tear you apart."
He tried to slow the intake, to pull back the spiritual reins of his soul, but the energy was too dense, too eager to be housed. It was like trying to stop a waterfall with his bare hands. His meridians began to spiderweb with glowing fractures, the pressure of the unrefined Phoenix energy becoming so immense that his very skin started to weep a fine, red mist of vaporized blood.
""Accord!" Ren screamed internally, his mind a fortress of focus amidst the agony. "I do not resist the flood—I widen the banks!"
He reached into the deepest, most forbidden layers of the Aetherion knowledge, focusing his entire being not on the power itself, but on the vessel that contained it. His Axiom—the inner energy storage at the center of his being—began to expand. It was a brutal, agonizing process of spiritual surgery. The space inside him was being forced open, pushed beyond its natural dimensions by the sheer, violent accumulation of fresh, volatile energy.
The threshold of the Core Realm loomed before him, vast and golden
He could feel it—the seductive beckoning of a higher plane, the promise of a solid foundation and the end of this torment. But Ren's mind remained sharp despite the white-hot agony. He knew that if he crossed into the Core Realm now, having skipped years of necessary refinement in a matter of minutes, he would be building a palace on top of a shifting swamp. His foundation would be hollow, his power a beautiful lie that would collapse the moment a true expert challenged it.
"Not... yet," Ren rasped, his voice a guttural scrape against the silence.
With a feat of willpower that defied his rank, Ren slammed a psychic barrier down on his breakthrough. He suppressed the level-up with the weight of a mountain. Instead of letting the energy push him into the next Realm, he redirected the flood.
He sent the Phoenix energy deep into his bones. He sent the black Phoenix Flame into his nerves and his sinews.
He used the 'Mercury Baptism' he had received in the altar as a template, using the Phoenix energy to forge a new kind of physical durability. Every microscopic fracture in his meridians was filled with liquid fire and then sealed forever. Every bone in his body was tempered and compressed until it possessed the density and resilience of a high-grade artifact.
When the refinement was finally complete, Ren realized with a shock that his Inner Realm Axiom now held more raw energy than a Peak Core Realm cultivator's entire reservoir. This was the genius and the curse of the Second Path: it traded the speed of ascent for absolute, crushing density.
Finally, the pressure became too great for even his reinforced frame to contain. The Axiom could not hold a single drop more.
Ren released the suppression.
"Crack."
The sound echoed not in the physical room, but in the very fabric of his soul.
In an ordinary cultivator, the transition to the Core Realm involved condensing a shapeless 'seed' of energy into a solid, singular sphere. But Ren's path had never been ordinary. His seed had already been mangled and remade during his Mortal Realm cultivation, and then plated in the mercury of the ruins.
As the energy crystallized, Ren's core did not become a simple pearl.
It manifested as a multi-layered, kaleidoscopic engine of spiritual power. It spun with a complex, interlocking geometry, and from its heart, the dark Phoenix Flame rose like a jagged, obsidian crown. It was beautiful and terrifying—a core that possessed the gravitational weight of a planet and the searing heat of a star.
The Axiom stabilized around it, no longer a container—but an extension of the core itself.
The Axiom stabilized around it, no longer a mere container—but a living extension of the core itself. In the Core Realm, a cultivator's strength was no longer measured by the quantity of their Qi—but by the complexity and authority of the core that commanded it.
He checked the essence blood.
Despite the massive leap he had just taken, the droplet was only sixty percent depleted. The sheer volume of energy it contained was enough to turn a commoner into a Sovereign. But Ren was no commoner, and his path was a glutton for essence. The amount of energy he required to advance was ten times that of a standard path; what would have made another man a God only made Ren a Master.
He settled back into the grueling rhythm of the work.
Slowly. Carefully.
He didn't know how much time passed in that lightless, silent chamber. Hours blurred into days; days may have turned into weeks. He spent every waking second condensing his new core, layering the Phoenix essence into its structure until it felt like a solid, immovable fact of the universe.
When the last of the essence blood finally vanished, absorbed entirely into his system, Ren opened his eyes.
He didn't feel like he was floating. He felt like he was the center of gravity for the entire room.
He had reached the Peak of the Core Realm. The boundary to the Anchor Realm—the stage where a cultivator fixes their soul to the world—was right in front of him. He could have stepped over it with a single, deep breath.
Instead, he stopped. He pulled the energy back, coiling it tightly around his multi-layered core. He would not anchor himself until he understood the new world he was seeing.
Ren turned his head, his movements fluid and predatory.
The fox was watching him. It had finished its own portion of the blood essence long ago. At first glance, it looked almost ordinary, save for the fact that its black fur now held a haunting, blood-red tint that seemed to shift like embers in the light.
But Ren could feel the difference through their bond. The fox's presence was no longer a shadow; it was a needle. Sharp, precise, and impossibly cold. Its power was unreadable, a deep well of predatory intent that Ren knew would be a match for any Core Realm expert—and perhaps even those beyond.
Ren reached out and patted the fox's head. Its fur felt like silk over tempered steel.
"We're ready," Ren said.
He stood up, his body feeling strange—lighter, yet infinitely more powerful. He pulled the wooden box from his storage ring, looking at it for a long moment. There was no vibration. No heat. The Phoenix was silent, tucked away in her wooden tomb, waiting for the cycle to turn.
He stowed the box back in the ring, ensuring it was buried beneath his other supplies.
The hall felt different now. The ancient stones no longer felt like a prison or a test. They felt like a starting line.
Ren adjusted the Abyssal Anchor on his belt, looked at the silent fox, and turned toward the exit.
He had entered the Sunless Canyons as a boy running from the shadows of Sovereigns.
He was leaving as a variable they had never accounted for.
Chapter End