"Seeing how that Martial Way was made to perfectly match your Triple Qi, I believe it was probably created after you reported the attributes of your Sensed Qi... Judging by your age and the average time this happens within the Xiao Clan, it should be roughly a few months before you left your clan to get here. When your ancestor, Xiao Lan, heard about your situation, he must have probably chosen to create a Martial Way that could integrate all three kinds of Qi, one similar to his own..."
"Normally speaking, that should have been a one-way ticket to becoming the Clan's top priority. Unfortunately, I appeared soon afterwards. Xiao Lan must have gone nuts, so much so that he actually sent you here as fast as he could, and only handed you the Martial Way that he purposefully had yet to fully complete for me to work on." Cheng Hao shook his head and smiled bitterly, "I guess I can't say I do not understand his decision... He must have realized that, aside for him, the only other person who would be able to guide you in your cultivation of Triple Qi would be me, and that I'd do a much better job at it than him. Oh, and he also wanted to find me. Seeing how he did not dart here himself, he must have been unable to for some reason."
"Thus, he got two birds with one stone, and sent you here in his place, hoping I would teach you better than he ever would. Otherwise he wouldn't have sent you, his own descendant, so far away in such a hurry. He also wouldn't have hid a Martial Way, no matter how incomplete, in your consciousness: let alone you, I doubt many in this plane of existence would have been able to get that thing out. Logically speaking, he simply should not have gone through with it. If he had somehow known however that I, as one of the very few people who'd be able to actually get it out, was where you'd be going to, everything would fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle..."
That little stalker must somehow know that I am here and very much alive; as expected, I guess? I wonder when exactly, during the two hundred or so years that we got to spend together, I first started taking his strange god-level stalking skills for granted...
Cheng Hao smiled at the thought of the young voice exclaiming, 'See boss? I knew you'd be here...'
The golden-eyed child sighed with feeling and fell silent.
Xiao Wu had already adjusted to the 'egocentric' Cheng Hao that liked to 'joke around telling tales of a mysterious past of his', so she didn't mind him. She ignored most of his mumbling, and instead kept observing the hovering Martial Way… HER Martial Way!
The treasure in and of itself was actually made up of three separate objects. One was a gargantuan white oak, emitting fluctuations of pale light. Another was a fierce, serpentine black-scaled dragon coiling around the tree's branches. Lastly, the final scene consisted in an imposing violet orb that hovered in a fictitious sky, much like a purple moon would...
It went without saying that there was a meaning to those three entities.
For starters, the first was clearly a physical manifestation of the third of the Xiao Qi that focused on an immoveable and impenetrable defense– the White Tree Qi!
The second depicted the fierce and overbearing Black Dragon Qi, an attribute that focused on head-on collisions and overpowering one's opponent through absolute strength!
And finally, the third, the violet orb, was the last of the Xiao Clan's Three Qi; the Purple Moon Qi, whose devious and uncanny abilities could completely turn the tides of a battle!
The more the young girl looked at the small scene, the deeper her understanding of her Purple Moon, Black Dragon And White Tree Sensed Qi seemed to grow...
It was truly an object as miraculous as the legends told! Plus it was tailor-made for her? By her revered ancestor, Xiao Lan himself??? She felt like screaming over and over, but eventually managed to repress that urge.
After a while, Cheng Hao's voice snapped her out of her daydreaming. "Goldy, are the preparations ready?" The boy turned towards a spot in one corner of the room, close to the window. Although the golden snake hadn't been in sight for a while, he actually had not stop working for a second and had instead been inscribing a complicated formation on the floor of the small hut.
"Goldy? Your grandfather's a Goldy…" The snake grumbled.
"Well, I'll be damned!" Cheng Hao widened his eyes, "I am the adoptive brother of the Divine Kings, adoptive son of the Primordial Emperors! According to that line of thought, my grandparents are really none other… than the Heavens and the Earth themselves! Never really gave you enough credit, my friend! Cursing at the very land you walk upon, aren't you afraid it'll strike back at you?"
"..."
Yes, yes… But then shouldn't you be calling me uncle? Why is it that this stuff applies only when it's convenient, UH???
The fuming snake could only put his fury aside when he noticed he had completed setting up the formation. "Ah," he sighed while wiping off some non-existent sweat. After all, snakes did not sweat. The poor attention-grabber was only seeking for sympathy after pouring in so much effort for so long.
"Alright you two, start prepping, the formation is finished! It is called the Impure Moonlight Gathering formation. It will aid you in gathering the lower quality Qi in your body and it will help a bit by preventing your body from refining it into purer Qi. It should activate when the moon is at its highest, which it will be in about a few moments"
Cheng Hao nodded and turned towards Xiao Wu, repeating once more "Remember. Sense the Qi, gather the Qi in your body and absorb it, form the Qi Sea and condense the Pseudo-Core!"
"Uhn," Xiao Wu nodded back. Then, she spoke herself, "Moving water will be difficult to freeze as long as it has momentum and moves. Make it into still water; turn the river into a sea. Freeze the water; put a stop to the momentum of QI and Spiritual Energy, condense the Sea into the Pseudo-Core!"
The two kids looked at each other and smiled: they were ready!
Suddenly, the symbols making up the formation lit up. Cheng Hao and Xiao Wu both commanded their Martial Way to over above their palms and then proceeded to sit cross-legged into the glowing formation...
Xiao Wu closed her eyes and entered the meditative state, a special state where the mind and the consciousness would temporarily swap places. She was not able to feel her body any longer, even her five senses had been almost completely shut off. She was mostly unable to see, hear, feel, smell or taste anything at all. On the other hand, she could instead clearly 'see', 'hear', 'feel', 'smell' and 'taste' the Qi Strands surrounding her. A huge amount of information flooded her mind as countless strands of Qi slowly began to approach. They were all different from each other, but the sheer number of strands made it so finding a sufficient amount of Qi strands of one's Sensed Qi would take hours, days, even.
In her training sessions back at the Clan, even Xiao Wu would need at least a few hours, maybe half a day to find the right Qi strands. Even then, they might be of higher quality than the Inferior stage Qi she needed. That was also why, in lower planes of existence such as the one Xiao Wu and Cheng Hao currently in, the peak of Martial Cultivation was the Reverend stage. This was because the quality of the necessary Qi was too low. That and the lack of sufficient overall Spiritual Energy made it nigh impossible for experts to go any higher. However, thanks to the Formation inlaid on the ground and the Martial Way, searching for the right Qi strands this time around would not be a problem.
In fact, the arrangement and amount of these Qi strands were not normal. The presence of 'impure', low quality Qi Strands of the Inferior stage vastly outnumbered that of any other kind. Such a situation would not be that rare in most cases, as Inferior Qi was usually a lot more abundant than any other. However, under the pull of the formation, that ratio had been amplified many times over! Amongst thousands of Qi strands, Xiao Wu failed to notice any more than ten Basic Qi Strands. And even then, those Basic Qi strands had been immediately dismissed as soon as they had come into contact with the light emitted by the glowing formation.
She could not help but exclaim in her mind,
What a miraculous formation!
And she had all the rights to be so shocked. Even the sacred grounds created by experts of her Xiao Clan could not compare to this single formation, which had been inscribed on the floor of a small, stone hut in just a few hours! Although it might simply be because those experts might consider formations regarding the lower stages of the Mortal Realm as below them, but she was sure no other formation she had tried with her position as the Xiao Clan's Young Mistress could possibly measure up to this one!
Had she known that the one that had thought up the principles and created that one formation was actually the child meditating just a few feet away, who knows how would she have reacted?
The quality of the Qi strands had been taken care of by the formation. As for the Qi strands she sought for, they were also naturally attracted to the Martial Way in her hands and had flown over by themselves. Essentially, the 'Seeking' part of the breakthrough had already been accomplished without her needing to even move a finger!
Now she would only have to 'gather and absorb' the Qi strands, and she would officially join the ranks of cultivators! In the past, she had already gathered and absorbed a few strands by herself, but they had been far from sufficient. Had she not met Cheng Hao, she would have probably needed at least a whole week of nonstop meditation to gather the amount she needed. This was also because the fact she had a Triple Qi directly influenced her initial cultivation speed when first Sensing the Qi, so she'd have to make three times the efforts of a normal person. In exchange however, the amount of Qi at her disposal would naturally be three times that of a normal person, effectively balancing that out. It would essentially only prove to be a hassle when breaking through, but would otherwise not impede her progress too much.
With this formation working its wonders however, in just a few breaths worth of time her reserve of Qi strands (now they were more like balls of wool than just strands) had already doubled! In the time it would take to drink a cup of tea, Xiao Wu had finished the gathering process, at a speed tens, hundreds of times faster than she would have expected! In her ecstasy of gathering so many strands at once, she was about to gather some more when Goldy's voice reached her ears as the stream of Qi was suddenly interrupted.
"Don't! Stupid Hao may be an unparalleled cunt, but he is no idiot! Don't you remember what he said about purer and denser Qi being harder to condense? Only after condensing the Pseudo-Core will you be allowed to absorb purer Qi. Once you reach the target amount of Qi, you must immediately stop absorbing, else it will start to merge together and become denser and denser! I will aid you with the absorbing part but, as for the forming of the Qi Sea and Pseudo-Core, Stupid Hao told me that I must leave you alone, for it will help you in future breakthroughs!"
Having said that, the golden snake's form appeared on the shoulder of her own consciousness and, seeing some slight disturbances and trembling in her state of mind, he immediately added, "Worried abut Stupid Hao, aren't you? Well, there's no need for you worry about him, so you can relax. In the last six months, he has not been sitting still and doing nothing. He has already calculated every single one of his moves in many different scenarios, up to Ageless Realm. Even the chance of somebody like you appearing had already crossed his mind. Me helping him would just slow him down. He therefore begged me to aid you instead." A glint of warmth appeared for a split second in the snake's eyes before disappearing immediately.
Xiao Wu's consciousness grew still again and, together with the golden dragon, she began to absorb all the gathered Qi. Then, she wrapped each strand individually with a small amount of Spiritual Energy and used it to direct it towards her consciousness. Just like that, streams of energy moved towards her sea of consciousness. Suddenly, as the energy suddenly sped up and began to rotate like a vortex, the girl realized that she had made a mistake!
No! These streams are not good, they are too fast! If it were forming the Qi River they would be fine... however I must form a sea, not a river!
Unfortunately, she could not do anything, as she could not stop the energy hurrying towards her consciousness. At the very last moment, a mighty golden energy smashed straight into the Qi strands, pushing them back towards the mass of Qi strands she had gathered earlier!
"No good. Try again" the golden dragon's voice reached her. At this, Xiao Wu understood: Goldy would aid her whenever she failed, but she would have to push through the hurdles herself. She won't have to fear failure and could instead fail as much as she wished, but whether she succeeded or kept failing was up to her! She correctly guessed that was also part of Cheng Hao's instructions in order to aid her growth.
'Brother... Could you actually... Be a genius?'
'And not only that. I will make you into one too!'
If he wants me to be a genius, then I'll definitely succeed with my own power, and show him that choosing to put his faith in me was not wrong!
She might borrow power to avoid failing but she would succeed with her own skill!
"Not fast enough."
"Woah, that was way too fast! Slow down, girl!"
"Too little…"
"TOO MUCH! Definitely too much!"
"Good, you are getting the hang of it! This would have counted as a pass in my book, but for the sake of it and Cheng Hao being an ass, let's try a few more rounds!"
After a few more attempts, the girl had finally succeeded in forming a small pond inside her consciousness! Slowly, she began filling it up. Connecting the mess of Qi strands to the pond were three streams.
A purple, wavy and near gaseous stream, just like a dreamy cloud, gently flowing into the pond without so much as a sound. A black stream, sometimes as weak as a trickle of water, and other times as overbearingly powerful as a waterfall. A sturdy and constant white stream, akin to a millenary river that had been flowing nonstop and without any change for thousands of years. The three different streams then combined into the still pond that was partly purple, partly black and partly white. After two long hours, the Qi Sea made up of impure Inferior Qi was finally completely formed. A large lake of half-liquid, half-gaseous Qi strands and Spiritual Energy had taken form in the girl's consciousness!
"Good job!" the snake praised. "Now for the easy part; the Pseudo-Core!"
"E-easy part?" Xiao Wu staggered: many cultivators couldn't proceed further into cultivation exactly because they couldn't condense the Core, let alone her who was still without cultivation! How could it be the 'easy' part?
Seeing the confusion on the girl's face, Goldy laughed. "Remember, that you are not alone in this. You hold the only object capable of creating a Pseudo-Core. What that Cheng Hao had described earlier would have been impossible to accomplish if you had not had that Martial Way in your hands... even if you had created the Pseudo-Core, it would have immediately collapsed because of the instability of impure Qi. However, were we to put a certain 'something' in the middle to hold everything together, what would happen then? Watch out however, because it will be a painful process..."
In the blink of an eye, Xiao Wu understood. Without needing Goldy to say another word, she absorbed her Martial Way into her consciousness, letting it enter the Qi Sea until it got into its very center... As she did that, her mind trembled, as if it couldn't hold the Martial Way within for much longer! Still, she held on! The moment the Martial way finally appeared in the center of the Qi Sea, a powerful gravitational pull made the vast amount of liquified Qi collapse onto the treasure! The Sea shrank in size until it became a transparent pellet not much bigger than a soccer ball. It was see-through, meaning one could still see the tree, dragon and the moon at the center of the pellet. At that moment, Xiao Wu suddenly was forcefully ejected from her meditating state and her body began glowing white, purple and black.
Suddenly the scenery inside the newly formed Pseudo-Core lit up!
The White-Black-Purple glow intensified, and then suddenly shot upwards!
The massive pillar of energy shot in the sky, as the crazy amount of energy made Xiao Wu spit out black blood: it was blood full of the impurities in her bloodstream! She was shocked: usually, the purification of the blood, followed by the purification of the bone marrow and finally that of the meridians, was a process that would only begin much later, at the Advanced stage! And yet, with the appearance of the Pseudo-Core in her sea of consciousness, she now actually exhibited traits of the Advanced stage after having just entered the Inferior stage!
Of course, she knew what that pillar of light was: it was a manifestation of the power of her newly acquired Qi. Usually it would be just one's body that glowed dimply, while a ray of light would shoot upwards when one's talent was excellent. However, she had never heard of such a grand manifestation! The records of her Clan affirmed that the highest a beam could go was roughly ten thousand feet, before the laws of the world would interfere and prevent it from going any higher. Her pillar did not seem to have exhausted its power, and yet why could it not go any higher but could only slightly expand in thickness? Was this because she had already reached the allowed limit?
"Woah! That was ten thousand feet right there! Xu Ling reached nine thousand feet himself. Indeed, you are that Xiao Lan's descendant! However, even that boy barely touched the limit, your pillar is many times thicker than his was..." Goldy looked at Xiao Wu as if he were looking at a monster, "Not bad at all! It's been quite a few million years since I last saw a ten-thousand-foot beam of such potency. With this, even that Cheng Hao might be stumped in defeat!"
The pillar of energy still shone intensely: it would continue doing so for a slightly longer while, but since it was the world's laws that powered it, Xiao Wu wouldn't feel any tiredness from having to support it. Instead, she even felt invigorated! This was an effect of the breakthrough and the abundance of residue Spiritual Energy in her body, which had yet to dissipate. After hearing Goldy's words however, she beamed: according to him, she had vastly surpassed the Evil Saint Xu Ling and even bested her ancestor, the renowned Xiao Lan!
"Remember that your Martial Way is acting as a stabilizer for the Pseudo-Core, so do not remove it unless instructed. If you do, unless you put it back quickly, the Core will collapse after a few breaths. No big deal, as Cheng Hao will know what to do then, but you will temporarily lose your Pseudo-Advanced stage power. Don't worry, there's countless more ways to use those treasures even without removing it from your consciousness, I'm sure Cheng Hao will explain later. The benefits definitely outnumber the drawbacks. And finally, remember that while in the future you will be able to actually fight Advanced stage with a cultivation of the Inferior stage, right now both your true cultivation and the Pseudo-Advanced cultivation from the Pseudo Core are unstable, so don't force either too much for a few hours at least! In fact, seeing that Cheng Hao isn't done yet, use this time to stabilize your cultivation!"
Xiao Wu nodded and immediately fell back into a trance. As soon as she did so however... BOOM! The sound of an explosion startled both the golden dragon and the purple-haired girl. Goldy and Xiao Wu's consciousnesses both went back into their original bodies.
When he saw what had just happened, Goldy gaped so much he dislocated his jaw.
When Xiao Wu saw the situation outside, she also couldn't help but shudder and her emerald eyes had widened so much they had grown to the size of two tennis balls.
Barely finding the strength to talk, the small girl asked with a trembling voice "This... What is THIS?"