Soon I noticed a problem. The qi I was sending into the lung meridian was getting blocked. I sent my senses into the meridian and noticed my meridian was blocked up with hundreds of fragments of pills. I knew there would be a consequence of taking pills like they were candy, LI KAI!!!
I calmed myself. One mustn't get angry during cultivation. The fragments only made it harder, not impossible. In fact, this was the best time to have such blockages as they would mostly be cleared by opening the meridians, rather than later when the constant flow of qi would pack the pill fragments into hard, stubborn plaques. I decided to carefully control the incoming qi to excise and expel the pill fragments along with any other debris until my meridian was squeaky clean before trying to open it. This wouldn't be possible to do after the meridian was open. This wasted quite a bit of qi, but it was worth it.
Once the lung meridian was clean, I resumed normal cultivation and the meridian opened with ease. I felt my whole body rejoice as the qi completed a cycle in the newly opened meridian. Each breath felt invigorating as my new qi began saturating my body. I completed a few more cycles to ensure the meridian was stable then ended my cultivation to check my stats.
NAME: ZOEY SEEKER
AGE: 13
LIFE-FORCE: 192
LEVEL: QI-GATHERING (EARLY - 1/14 MERIDIANS)
TECHNIQUE: YIN-YANG 5-ELEMENTS QI GATHERING (SUPREME GRADE)
HP: 10000/10000
QI: 10/10
STR: 50 (100)
AGI: 50 (100)
CON: 50 (100)
CHA: 78 (156)
LUK: 48 (96)
I had gained 10 in each stat, the largest increase I've ever gotten at once. Such a quick and powerful boost! I looked at the sky to see how much time had passed. It was still dark, and the moons didn't seem to have moved much. I really wish I had a clock. Out of purely fanciful thinking, I asked, system, what time is it?
0:57
I got a response! I completely forgot that Nathan had built an AI into the system and it could help me more than just displaying stats. I really should utilize that more in the future. I had begun cultivating after midnight. It had only been a few minutes. Wasn't it supposed to take at least an entire day of serious cultivation before one would break through to the first level? If not, an entire week or more? What kind of genius was I then? I sensed something amiss, even the geniuses of this world didn't cultivate so fast. Supreme-grade talent was high, but not unheard of.
I decided to set such matters aside, and instead revel in my gains. My HP had increased dramatically. The average mortal could now hardly touch me even if I gave my neck to them. I was pleased with my increased durability. I remembered how several years ago my flesh was like paper to most opponents. I could only dominate through skill, not toughness. No longer, I was now tough as well as cute! Sheesh calm down Zoey. After all these years I still had some of Zoey's original rough personality traits.
My qi had increased to 10. I had precious few techniques that used qi so I did not know if this was large or small. I gave it a pass and looked at my cultivation level. 14 meridians? Weren't there only normally 9? Even if a cultivator managed to open more, it was only one or two. I started to get a feeling there was an information gap in this world. Just how many cultivators weren't reaching their full potential because they stopped at 9 and then began tempering their bodies? Once a person tempered their meridians, there would be no chance to go back and open more.
Lastly, there was life-force. I presumed this was how much longer I had to live, assuming no accidents and assuming I didn't do anything that consumed life-force like my forbidden technique. The common knowledge was that every major realm doubled your remaining life-force down to a minimum value based on the level. Old cultivators weren't completely out of luck. Even if they were on their deathbed and became a qi-gatherer, they'd gain another 10 years.
Since I was just a young girl my gain in life-force was tremendous. It was for this reason that sects valued the young. If it were safe to cultivate earlier than 14, they would be snatching babies out of the cradle to train them. I did the math, and my original life-force would've been 110 when I was born. Given that most people only lived until 80-90 in this world, I presumed that accumulated unhealthy living could reduce life-force as well. That was true for mortals anyway. Part of the reason immortals were termed as such is that we became nigh-invulnerable to common ailments and diseases. Even if I chose to stop cultivating at this moment and live a decadent and sedentary life, I would live out the entirety of the 192 years in my life-force.
Well, the night was still young, and meditation counted as sleep, right? I ignored the image of Li Kai appearing in my head insisting that sleep was a vital part of training. He was such a mother hen sometimes. I began cultivating again but felt it was inefficient. If the other cultivators heard this they'd murder me in my sleep. I had cultivated a minor realm in a handful of minutes and I wanted more speed! How ungrateful was I?
It wasn't that I wanted more speed. I just felt that my technique was inefficient. It was as if it had more untapped potential. I focused on the qi cycling through my mainline meridians and slowly pulling qi in through my pores. That was inefficient. It was the beginning of a vortex, but it wasn't a true one. I began tampering with the flow, this was dangerous, but I couldn't help but sate my curiosity. I carefully mapped a path through all of the meridians in my body, not just the handful my technique used, minor and branch meridians included. I formed a rotating spiral with the center point on my spiritual roots, with many branch vortices funneling into it. I finally enacted my crazy plan and began cycling my qi rapidly through the new path. The qi in the environment was pulled to me crazily like I was the center of a cyclone. Massive amounts of qi were pushed through my spiritual roots and towards my lung meridian which I was still using for testing purposes. It worked and I was still in one piece!
*DING* NEW TECHNIQUE DETECTED
YIN-YANG 5-ELEMENTS QI GATHERING TECHNIQUE (SUPREME GRADE) UPGRADED TO HEAVENLY QI DEVOURING TECHNIQUE (DIVINE GRADE)
I could upgrade techniques like this?! It was dangerous, sure, but I had smoothly upgraded a supreme-grade technique to a divine-grade technique! Was this the power of a divine-grade talent?
Settling down, I focused on my next cultivation target, the heart meridian. The lung meridian was already as stable as possible. Just as before, I scooped out the pill remnants with the qi before opening the meridian itself. Black sweat was accumulating on my skin that smelled just as foul as when I took the purification pills. At least this time it wasn't coming out of my orifices. I'd bathe later, and have my maid Juniper dispose of my pajamas and the pillow I was sitting on. Juniper was fun to tease and play pranks on, she always made the most colorful expressions. This time it was like hammering a nail by dropping a ten-ton rod on it. The meridian was blown open! My heart actually skipped a beat from the influx of qi.
More power flowed through me as the qi saturated my body once again. This feeling was addictive. I no longer paid attention to the time and opened meridian after meridian. First clearing out debris, then opening them, and lastly stabilizing them. Each meridian gave me an increase of 10 in strength, agility, constitution, and qi. Charisma and luck only increased by 10 when crossing a minor realm such as early to mid.
Each meridian became successively harder to open as expected, but I was still way faster than my peers. Soon I was crossing the 9 meridian mark that separated average cultivators from geniuses, and I could still sense 5 more major meridians waiting to be opened. I didn't make them wait long. I soon had all 14 major meridians open and began to crazily fill them with qi as one would do before breaking through to foundation-establishment. This doubled the qi in my body but did not increase any other stats.
After my meridians were filled, I noticed that my minor and branch meridians also seemed to desire to be opened. I had never heard of someone opening a minor meridian before. Sure, we used them, but only as necessary, our techniques would burn open the appropriate paths. But this, this was different, this would contribute to my actual cultivation base. I decided to test it and quickly opened up a minor meridian connected to my lung meridian. For my efforts, I was rewarded with an increase of 1 to my qi, strength, agility, and constitution. This didn't seem like much, but there were hundreds of minor meridians to open. I decided to end my cultivation for now. It was crazy enough that I had cultivated to the peak of qi-gathering in a single night. Wait was it a single night?
I opened my eyes and took a peak at the sky. Hints of the daylight were on the horizon and the stars were no longer visible. So one night exactly then. To be sure, system, how long had it been since I started cultivating? [It has been 7 hours and 3 minutes since you began cultivating. Would you like me to display this on your system page?] a cold, metallic voice responded. Ugh, was it going to make suggestions every time I asked if for something? No, instead just display the date and time of day. [Acknowledged]
If anyone heard of me cultivating to the peak of qi-gathering in a single night they wouldn't just call me a genius. They may call me a monster, a beast, or even a maniac.