The path to the cultivation caves wound like a serpent along the mountain's edge, bordered by jade lanterns and stone lion statues whose eyes flickered with faint spirit light. The air grew colder the higher they climbed, thick with spiritual pressure. When Yan Shen arrived at the entrance to his designated chamber, the escort disciple gave him a brief nod before retreating silently.
As he passed by rows of stone doors carved into the cliffside, he took note of something strange, most of the caves were unoccupied. No talismans hung from their seals. No spiritual fluctuations leaked through their stone walls. Only a handful pulsed with faint Qi, the mark of active cultivation. And one more thing. There were no women among them. In his entire ascent, Yan Shen hadn't passed a single female disciple heading toward these caves. It was only now, as he looked back, that he understood: the caves were for men. The women were given open courtyards, gardened terraces closer to the Inner Halls, with less raw Qi but more spiritual attunement to Yin-based techniques. The sect wasn't segregated officially… but divided all the same, by tradition, cultivation type, and unspoken rule.
He returned his focus forward. This was where he belonged now.
The stone door opened at his touch, glowing softly with embedded runes. Inside, he stepped into stillness. The air inside the cave was different. Immediately, he felt it - like stepping into a dense fog, only this fog pulsed with life. Spiritual energy drifted through the air like invisible mist, heavy, potent, and rich. He inhaled once. His chest filled with warmth. "Three times denser than the Qi outside."
His gaze swept across the space: a smooth meditation platform at the center, etched with formation lines; the ceiling above bore a glowing Qi-gathering array, drawing energy from the mountain itself. On a stone table sat a cloth pouch and a polished wooden box. He opened the pouch: ten low-grade spirit stones, raw and humming faintly. In the box, nestled within black silk, lay three Qi Condensing Pills, their surface pale green with faint golden veins like frost on leaves.
He didn't touch them yet. Instead, he stood in silence, letting the quiet settle over him. He meditated for a full day, adjusting to the room's Qi density, feeling how easily it poured into his pores, how readily it soaked into his bones. His breath slowed, each inhalation deeper than the last. By the morning of the second day, his mind was still, his body humming with readiness.
He sat cross-legged. Held the first Qi Condensing Pill between his fingers. "Let's see what this body can really do."
He placed the pill on his tongue.
It dissolved instantly, not with bitterness, but with a strange, airy coolness, like biting into cloud frost. Then the storm began.
A violent, surging tide of energy erupted in his core. His dantian seized, then expanded under the pressure. His meridians, though tougher than any purely human disciple's, burned with the strain of conduction. He felt the power as a wild, living thing, a horse that had to be broken. For many hours, his consciousness was a narrow point of focus in the center of the storm, applying pressure, directing flow, sealing minor leaks in his spiritual pathways. Sweat evaporated from his skin in visible steam, carrying away the volatile, unusable dregs of the pill's power. The air around him grew warm, then hot, shimmering with wasted energy.
It was work. Hard, honest, effective work. When the storm finally subsided into a manageable river, a deep fatigue settled into his marrow. He had advanced. The river of Qi within him flowed with more force, more volume. He had reached the Middle Stage of the Qi Gathering Realm. It was an excellent result, the kind that would earn a nod of approval from an elder. A sixty or seventy percent efficiency rate, quite good for a human, a testament to strong constitution.
He spent the next day and a half consolidating, solidifying the gains, turning the rushing river into a deep, steady flow. He was stronger. He was where he should be. The process had been exactly as described in the introductory manuals: struggle, integration, mastery.
On the fourth morning, he regarded the second pill.
It sat in its silk nest, identical to the first in every outward respect. He picked it up. The same weight, the same faint herbal scent. He consumed it.
The coolness touched his tongue. The energy bloomed in his dantian.
Then, everything changed.
The initial surge was the same magnitude, the same raw potential. But the moment it manifested, his body's response diverged completely. There was no storm. There was no flood.
It was a key turning in a lock.
His half-Viltramite physiology, now primed and mapped by the first refinement, engaged not as a barrier or a channel, but as a perfect refinery. The energy did not rage against his meridians; it was welcomed by them. The pathways, still warm from the previous exercise, did not merely conduct...they recognized.
He observed the reaction from within, from that still, central point of consciousness.
This is nothing like the first time.
The thought arrived cleanly, without urgency. It was a statement of fact.
There was no pain. No sense of blockage or strain. Where the first pill had been a wild horse to be broken, this was a trained stallion returning to its stable. His muscles accepted the swelling power and stabilized, integrating it seamlessly. His organs hummed in a harmony that felt innate, not imposed. The wild Qi that had required days to break and saddle now moved like a disciplined army, each unit falling instantly into its assigned position.
Every sliver finds a place. Every drop is consumed.
His mind, freed from the labor of crisis management, made connections. The memory arose, clear and absurd in the midst of the silent, profound transformation: the single bite of spirit-beast jerky days ago that had sat in his stomach like a stone of sustenance, the ten grains of rice in a poor village that had felt like a full meal.
This body does not waste food. It would not waste energy.
The realization was a quiet click. It was a sealed system. A closed loop of perfect utility. For others, cultivation was a process of bargaining with loss, of squeezing efficiency from a reluctant nature. His body did not bargain. It acquired.
He felt his cells drinking the Qi the way parched earth drinks a directed rain, completely, without runoff. The process that had taken days of conscious struggle now unfolded as an autonomic function, swift and silent. The heat that had shimmered wastefully around him during the first pill's integration was absent. The air in the cave remained cool, stable. All the energy remained inside, compounding.
In a matter of an hour, the pill's entire potential was digested. The advancement that had been earned before was now claimed. The Middle Stage, freshly reached, was now filled to its absolute, glittering brim. His foundation didn't just solidify; it became diamond-hard, expansive. The peak of the Qi Gathering Realm was no longer a distant horizon; it was the next logical step on a cleared path, visible from where he stood.
He opened his eyes. The cave was dark, the light-shaft showing the deep blue of pre-dawn. No time had passed, and yet all the time he needed had been spent. His Qi was no longer a river. It was a placid, large lake, its surface mirror-still, its depths immeasurable. The power was absolute, total, and utterly under his dominion because it was him, more perfectly than ever before.
The consequence was now a physical law within him. The first pill had proven he could cultivate well. The second pill proved he operated on a different set of principles altogether.
On the seventh morning, he stepped outside his cave for the first time.
He was dressed in the robes provided by Elder Mai, slate-gray with silver cloud trim, simple but tailored to mark his ambiguous standing. His identity was already starting to draw attention. Not yet Inner Disciple… but something more than Outer.
The mountain was quiet at this hour.
Bamboo groves whispered in the wind. Spirit birds called softly from the trees. The halls of the sect stretched around him like a city of stone and mist.
Other disciples passed at a distance, but none approached. Some looked. A few nodded. One or two whispered.
But he was left alone.
And that suited him fine.
He walked slowly, absorbing the stillness.
Every step was a test of his strength, his control, his new reality.
"This place... this whole world... I'm going to carve my place in it."
And somewhere in the distance, beyond the courtyards and sacred halls, Lanlan was training too.
He would be ready when they meet.