When training was over, and I had removed the gear, we walked into the house and into the dining room.
The training had taken the rest of the day and it was time for dinner.
Yuki already had dinner made, so no extra work was needed besides sitting at the table and waiting for the food to be served. When it was I started eating without a moment to waste.
This caused Yuki and Raina to stare at me for a moment, so I asked, "Is there something wrong?"
Raina looked concerned after I said that and asked in response, "Don't you normally pray before a meal?"
When she asked that, I was reminded of what had happened with my system earlier and felt my twitch in response, so I gave a huff and went back to eating.
This appeared to make her more concerned, but I did not care and soon finished my food. After that, I charged up into my room and went to do something I had wanted to do since I found out about it yesterday.
Sitting on my bed, I looked inside my body at my meridian structure. Before I could focus on any specific part of the structure, the glowing around my four cores caught my attention and diverted my focus.
This was not a bad thing, so I let it happen and soon exited my focused state while pulling out a blank book and running over to the library/office.
There, I sat down at the desk and pulled over my Qi-gathering technique, opening it to the first page. I then start rewriting my technique to include all the tail meridians by first confirming that all of them exist and, if not, the way to create a complete meridian structure for the tail.
I also made sure to include a brief overview of how meridians do not necessarily exist on the physical plane but rather on the spiritual plane and act as a medium for us to manipulate and interact with spiritual energy. This also explains that when you see someone's meridians glowing, that is because you are bringing them from a purely spiritual state to one of a simi-physical in-between state, which allows them to be more effective in there energy transfer.
After that, I made a small modification to the meridian expansion process that helped to reduce the pain and also included correction and proper implementation of the tail meridians I mentioned earlier.
With that done I then corrected the rest of the technique to include a fourth core. This part was not that bad, as I was able to infer its cultivation method based on the other three cores.
When I finished writing this modified technique, I re-read the whole thing, marking each mistake I made as well as some more ideas I had for improvement before throwing the book on a metal plate on the floor.
I then pulled out a new book and started writing the next iteration of the technique as thunder clapped in the sky and lighting struck down on the library.
I had already anticipated something like this, so I installed a lighting rod system that led to a metal spike in the ceiling that hovered above a metal disk on the floor that the book was now sitting on.
I wanted to make it so that the lightning would not be able to hit anything in the building at all, but everyone who was helping me design the building said that the lighting tribulation did not like to be blocked and would make it far worse if I did that. So, I made this as a compromise.
This meant that as I was writing the third iteration of the technique, I got to see and hear lighting striking in front of me.
By the time I finished writing and re-reading the new iteration, the lightning tribulation had ended the book was left intact.
Chucking the new book on the metal disk so as to knock off the old one, I start writing another iteration using the insights I gathered from the previous book.
This went on until the morning, where I was now holding the ninth iteration that had just finished making it through the lightning tribulation.
With all the modifications made to this new iteration of the technique, I wanted to go back and start this technique all over again. I even started to consider whether the body tempering technique I made was the strongest it could be.
However, when I checked the technique again, I could not find a way to improve it any more. So now, I sat down on the metal disk and re-read the new iteration of the technique before starting its cultivation again.
When following the steps from the beginning of the book, I looked over all the meridians in my tail, but because of my physique and race as a Kitsune, I had no issues with them.
After that, I went through the meridian expansion process again, even though it would not actually create any more meridians. What it did was straighten out and make the pathways and meridians more efficient.
This did take a lot of the Qi needed for my breakthrough, but it did not take that much from the buildup of Qi I had around my cores.
From there, I moved on to the next stage and pulled in more Qi to make up for that deficiency.
After ten minutes, the deficiency was covered, and I was unable to store any more Qi.
It was then that I started the breakthrough, trying to open and awaken all of my cores at once. This was fairly difficult as I needed to split my focus into three different places, or at least that was the case for the first iteration of the technique.
The ninth iteration got around this by breaking a hole into each of the cores in succession, starting from the tail core and up to the brain core. As these holes were opened, you would need to focus on preventing any Qi from entering them and thus preventing the cores from awakening.
Compared to before, this was something that was far easier to do. In fact, as I was thinking about this, I had already finished opening the holes and simply needed to let the Qi flow in. However, since I wanted to awaken as fast as possible, I covered each of my cores with those holes.
As I finished placing the last of the holes in the cores, the walls preventing Qi from flowing in cracked and disintegrated into dust.
This was only supposed to happen once Qi entered the cores and caused them to expand, and thus, this left me stunned for a moment.
While I was stunned, my control of my Qi slipped, and it rushed into my core. Unlike what I was expecting, my core did not expand by a small margin but instead expanded by over three times the size it should have. This then led to my meridians pushing more Qi into my cores and expanding them farther.
Soon, I was sitting with four cores, each around the size of someone at the third or fourth level of the Qi-gathering realm, depending on the technique the person was using.
There was even one technique that would give someone this size of core at the second level, but never the first! And this was only because of a small modification I made because I wanted to breakthrough faster.
I was about to start questioning why my trait did not point this out when I realized that this was not a mistake with my technique but an improvement. So, I went back to the desk and wrote out a tenth iteration that included this small improvement.
As the tribulation fell, Raina walked into the room with a plate of breakfast and asked, "Are you alright? You did not look that happy after dinner last night. Yuki is even thinking that it is because of the food she made."
Hearing what Raina said, I realized that the way I acted last night was wrong, and I should probably apologize later. Regardless, I need to respond to Raina, so I say, "It wasn't that. I am just still a little mad about what Elinaria did."
This seemed to catch Raina's attention as she asked, "Oh? What did she do?"
Now that I have the opportunity, I started explaining everything that I did yesterday. This included the different ores that I found and the techs that I had unlocked, especially because she asked what all the techs were and how they worked, as well as what happened with the special era unlock.
As I explained what happened with the era unlock, I found myself on Raina's lap, and she started brushing my tail and hair again.
This helped me to calm down and relax, dissipating all the anger that I still had over this, as well as something else I could feel lurking in the background.
Regardless, I was still liquid Kitsune under Mom's brushing and attention.