In a cultivation room in the Crimson Palace.
A young boy with an apathetic face, sharp nose, sword-like eyebrows, black hair that reaches till his shoulder, and crimson eyes, was sitting on the ground.
This is Kevin.
Kevin was sitting cross-legged focusing on gathering the energy in the atmosphere into his body and then moving this energy and focusing it into two points, his lower dantian and his heart.
This is a delicate process as a short mistake will lead all this energy to explode in his heart, which will have one result only which will be his death.
After spending a year doing nothing except collecting energy and moving it in its specific pathway to its two destinations, he finally found his opportunity to break through so immediately grasped as to not miss the timing.
Suddenly during his breakthrough, while his two cores were in the process of solidifying, he heard the usual sound of a system notification in his head.
[Host is breaking through to Core Formation Realm]
[…]
[...Chaos…...]
Suddenly I got a headache as dozens of messages from the system appeared before me in an instant which almost broke my concentration during my breakthrough. They probably disappeared as curtesy from the System, maybe.
As I regained my focus again on the two cores forming on my body. The core in my lower dantian started to take an illusory shape as half the energy that I have collected the past year started to take the shape of a large core, the more energy I push into the core the bigger it got, and as it reached its limits, I started to compress the core and purify the energy inside so in the future my energy would be purer and heavier than it was in Body Strengthening Realm.
As my focus was on my lower dantian, that didn't mean that I neglected the core in my heart since I had to time the formation of the two cores at the same time lest I fail and the cores go KABOOM.
I just have to split my consciousness to multitask.
As I was nearing the end of my breakthrough, suddenly I felt something foreign enter my body straight to my heart or more specifically to the illusory core that is forming inside my heart, as I was about to lose concentration at the end of the process to check, I remembered the system reward one year ago that is supposed to be unsealed during my breakthrough. So I reinforced my mind and continued focusing on my breakthrough.
When both my cores finished forming, I stayed in the same position meditating to stabilize the energy in my body.
After that I decided to check what went into my heart, as soon as I looked inside the core in my heart, I saw a small Vial that is filled with something heavy and dark, since I got curious I sent a strand of energy to the core to interact with it and check the small Vial.
The moment my small strand of energy touched the core in my heart, I felt as if a small explosion had occurred in my Mind and Body at the same time.
I felt as if someone came and broke every single bone in my body and then repaired them and kept repeating this process over and over again, I kept feeling this feeling for a day and a half.
As what was really happening the moment Kevin touched the Vial, the Vial exploded, and instead of destroying Kevin's body or Heart, the special material the Vial was made of merged with the false core in his Heart as it strengthened his core and made it breakthrough from early stage to the middle then late to the peak of False Core, and with last remaining energy it pushed the core to the stage of solid core early stage, as it strengthened his core and made it a unique core as it's color changed to have a dark color around it, while the core in his lower dantian toke the usual color which is colorless.
As the core took a few seconds to be strengthened and to be broken from the normal cultivation norm, a few small amount of tiny threads of what was sealed in the Vial managed to break past the core and wreak havoc in his body.
Those tone strands of energy started destroying Kevin's body from inside to the outside and started to fuse with his bloodline, because it was a small amount of energy it didn't strengthen Kevin's body greatly only by a small amount, and it also modified his body slightly but it will not make any differences now.
But still having his body destroyed and constructed all over wasn't a very pleasant experience, as his bones hurt the most since they were strengthened to their maximum limits for the moment.
As the energy moved throughout his body, it strangely didn't go up to his brain as if guided by something or the energy has its instinct to not kill the host.
As Kevin experienced a mind-numbing pain, His consciousness got sent to a mysterious place which is filled with only darkness and nothing else, he felt that this mysterious place atmosphere was filled with ancientness and sacredness, something that exceeded the atmosphere around the dragon pool, No even comparing them was like comparing between an ant and an Emperor.
While he was feeling the atmosphere here and was trying to decipher where he was, Kevin suddenly sensed a gaze directed at him from behind.
When he turned around to look behind him, he only saw one thing, he saw huge crimson reptile eyes looking at him, and by huge he is talking about the size of a single galaxy in the Universe or maybe a bit bigger he didn't know and he couldn't think as his gaze met this thing's gaze, Kevin felt his brain stopped functioning for a moment that felt like an eternity, and when he blinked, he found his consciousness back into his body.
"Haaaaa, Wha….Cough.....Cough…." When Kevin was about to shout from the terror he felt in there he coughed blood from his mouth to add to the blood that had fallen from the pores of his body.
'What the hell happened System' Asked Kevin with anger and a tinge of fear in his voice.
[What happened Host?] asked the System in its usual robotic tone.
'Fuck'
'Then what did you put into my body'
[Why don't you first clean yourself and stabilize your condition, then check the system notifications?]
'Clean what?'
"Huh," a small audible sound came out of Kevin's mouth when he checked his condition and found that his body can be described in one word, A mess.