"If you were to abandon your current plans, how quickly do you think you could reach Core Formation?"
It was not what Rina wanted to hear when she was called to the Elder Council in the third year of the new century--an urgent missive called her to court to kneel before the remaining elders of the Callista branch and determine how she was to contribute to the greater cause of rebuilding in the aftermath.
Seventy Five Percent
It was a number of terrifying scope, one she did her best to avoid thinking about. The Legions had been nearly decapitated, and already were coming deployment requests to invite the elders of the Clan's subordinates to help fill in the numbers until more cultivators could successfully break through into the third Great Realm.
She didn't think things were that desperate yet. But she could do her best to answer the question presented to her at that time.
"It's hard to say" Rina shook her head. "I could probably break through to Foundation Establishment within twenty years as I am now--I'm not especially concerned about failing the breakthrough regardless." Her notes and calculations on the fundaments of her Path were
extensive, filling virtually every free moment she could spare.
"But Core Formation? It's hard to say. The auguries and my calculations say that I should manifest the Blood of Gold in truth upon my breakthrough--I would certainly be as strong as one in the Great Circle should be--but breaking through after that… It's hard to say--it could be a hundred years, it could be two hundred, it could even be more--the situation is too chaotic to predict that far in the future."
Hektor Callista spat off to the side. "Damn" He mumbled--acting commander of Aikaterine's Legion, he had seen it change hands just long enough for its green commander to be cut down by the Fifth Sea's Nascent Soul. "No miracles that way, huh?"
Rina blushed. "It's not like we
planned for things to go like that."
"It's alright" Megaera Callista counseled. "We're in the middle of determining what our overall posture should be in the coming days. Hektor will begin making his preparations to begin breaking through once the situation stabilizes on the Scorpion Road, we were hoping you would be in a position to take his place as he began seclusion."
"That's…" The very
idea of being acting commander of a Legion. "I couldn't accept that, even if I were to commence my own breakthrough tomorrow." She reflected on her experiences. "My experience has been in small unit tactics and deployment--I could certainly do my best to make up for it, but…"
"You're better off than most" Helen Callista--mistress of the household's trade concerns. "You put plenty of effort into mastering your projects--if we were to begin training you in command now as you began your breakthrough…"
"No, it's not worth pushing for the early approach" Hektor interrupts, waving his hand to dismiss the statement. "Certainly, we should get her started off in remedial command studies in preparation for taking greater responsibilities, but it wouldn't be enough to be better than some of our other options by then." Helen and Megaera nod after a moment He turns his attention then back to Rina.
"And if you were to continue on your current path?" He asked.
"... If I'm fast? It could be between forty and fifty years" Rina says after a moment to gather her thoughts. "If I'm slow, it could be as many as eighty."
A susurrus of whispering filled the council hall, the witnesses of the meeting chattering about that.
"Thirteenth Heavenstage Qi Condensation" Hektor concluded, almost chewing the words over, testing the flavor of them. "It's been a
long time since one of our Clan reached that point."
"Over six thousand years." Rina supplied, soft laughter fills the room. Megaera smiles. "That's just to
reach the thirteenth Heavenstage. To find someone who was successful at breaking through? No records whatsoever."
"Logistics will be tricky though." Helen flips over her clipboard, sifting through sheafs of paper as she goes. "Single-Pillar Foundation Establishment is said to be intensely greedy for Qi, to the point of a single one demanding the budget of seven geniuses--but the power is not to be dismissed either. Combined with your awakened Blood of Gold, you should be capable of challenging Early Core Formation."
Rina blinked at that--she had
heard the rumors--studied the Clan's fragmented records once her ambition started turning from being a wistful daydream into something that might really happen. "How does that work, honored Elders?" She asks. "Having faced a Core Formation Expert--I… Don't understand how that kind of power could be challenged by simply an aberrant Pillar?"
"We're getting a bit into Foundation Establishment lore here." Hektor answered, leaning back and scratching the stubble at his chin. "You're close enough though that there's not really any reason to hide it."
He taps his foot against the floor, as the great sand diagram set between Rina's supplicant position and the elder council began to glow.
"You understand that the fundamentals of Qi Condensation are about accumulating enough of the ambient power of the world into an internal sea." He began, Rina nodding to show she was following along, sitting up at greater attention as the wisdom of her seniors was about to be dispensed. "One reaches the Great Circle of that realm by reaching the human body's ability to hold power within themselves." He reached for a long pointed, and struck the sands, a great puff of force leading the diagram to scatter in the air.
"Boom, Heavenly Tribulation. The Qi Sea is disrupted, made chaotic, and charged with power. If you can successfully endure what's going on and don't lose your head--you can take advantage of that destabilization to rearrange some of that charged power into a solid form, that'll hold together even under pressure." The cloud of sand slowly began to pull together, manifesting as a great tower within the greater diagram. "This marks someone successfully achieving Foundation Establishment--you've converted a portion of your Qi Sea into a solid structure. It draws power from your greater Sea, which requires a greater draw still to prevent its exhaustion. Cumulatively? Your sea's capacity increases because you're able to concentrate
more of it into a smaller area, and those solidified Pillars are much more effective when converted into power."
He pauses there, and looks to Rina. "Now, what do you notice about this?
She squints, leaning forward as she looks at it. The sand diagram was the same as it was, the pillar was new but that seemed to obvious, it stood, sand still spilling off it. "It's leaking, isn't it?"
"Right!" Hektor nods, and taps the diagram in several more places, pillar after pillar rising in a great ring. "That's the orthodox path of Foundation Establishment there, create your first pillar using Heavenly Tribulation as a catalyst, and use that pillar to create more pillars, arranging them so they don't conflict and instead cooperate. When you have seven arranged correctly, they can be used to support a Core--but we'll leave that aside for now. To summarize? More pillars means you can hold more power, can think faster, and last longer at whatever it is you do. It also raises how much power is in your Qi Sea
in total without causing you to burst."
He waves his hand, and the whole mass falls back to the surface. "Now, the
Unorthodox path." He gestures, the sand rising up into a globe. "The Qi Sea is at its maximum size at the Ninth Heavenstage, which means anything extra
overflows." He turns his hand, and the sand shifts, 'zooming out' to show the previous sphere as a small organ in a generic human diagram. Colored blue sand spills from the central organ and starts mixing with the body. "Qi on its own tries to clean things up as it goes along--first it spills from your Source into your flesh and blood, pushing out everything from residual injuries, congenital damage, and training screwups." The entire body was now tinted with blue.
"Body reaches saturation, and you've reached the first Keystone--a body with all of the little human defects cleaned up. But you're still pulling more power in, so the body needs to put all that somewhere else. It looks around, and notices your Meridians and Source are still untouched. So it starts shoving power into those now instead of just settling with lining the insides, and Qi does what it does and starts cleaning up the place. This usually takes far too long for anyone to make real headway towards." He smirks towards Rina. "Well, at least for anyone who doesn't bump into a Spirit Severing ancestor."
Rina shrinks back a bit, but Hektor chuckles in good humor to set her at ease. "No, it's good for you and it's good for us…" The diagram has a tracery of a typical meridian system colored in red throughout the diagram, slowly spreading out. "At any rate, Qi gets stored in your circulatory system, eventually realizes that the heart is almost as good a storage spot as your Source is, and gets set up in there. In the end when it steps away and is satisfied? Your entire blood and Qi circulatory system have been lined up and cleaned out from anything that would obstruct the flow, and your heart's pumping keeps it and your Qi clean. But people are
still pouring more Qi inside? So what's a body going to do?"
He gestures, and a yellow line runs from the Source, up to the Heart, and stopping at the head, before spreading out inside it.
"It dumps it in the one organ left that hasn't been played with--the spine, and the brain."
"The physical analog to the Soul" Rina nods, starting to get back into it. "That's Soul Purification then?"
"Yep" Hektor pops that out. "Your soul's a tiny thing until you start working on it in Nascent Soul--the Core shatters and the Nascent Soul physically moves up, remodels the brain while assimilating the gossamer of your initial soul. Still, while this helps out in terms of thought, reflexes, and resistance to exotic techniques? The impact on a Cultivator's abilities here are pretty small until you reach the modern height--where you just handed a perfect seat of power for a Nascent Soul over to it."
He taps the brain a time or two on the diagram then, and the inside slowly begins turning violet.
"More importantly, a stronger and cleaner soul equates to a tighter link between your consciousness and your power. This is the final channel through which further Qi starts acting on--entering your thoughts to reorganize and sort
those out. And again, cleaning the place up. This takes forever again because people have
far too many thoughts on the whole. Eventually though, your thoughts are elegantly reorganized, granted some small power in and of themselves--and the body and soul finally reach complete saturation. This is the Unorthodox Path of Qi Condensation."
Rina always did like these big lectures. "So then, the Olympian Keystones collectively ensure the cultivator is a perfect engine for Cultivation?" She frowns at that--it almost seemed a bit petty.
"To a point, yes--outsiders refer to the Four Keystones as achieving
Xiantian status--a pre-natal state where one is completely free from the impurities and corruptions of the outside world. It's a little bit nonsense because babies still are connected to the mother who
isn't free from these impurities--but whatever." Hektor twisted his hand, and the diagram shifted once more to the Qi Sea.
"So, with that in mind, we're going into speculation territory--we've got no records of Single Pillar that we can rely on aside from 'It's a thing' and 'It makes incredibly powerful cultivators'. But we can speculate based on what we
do know." He slammed the pointer down once, twice--a total of five times.
"First things first? It's not just
one tribulation you go through. Each Keystone introduces a new element to the table. Thunder standing in for Metal, Fire, Water, Earth, and Wood. These attack intermittently and at random, to discourage someone from gaining resistance to any one field." Rina winced at that. "Yeah, that's about what I thought too--but you're not looking
scared, are you?"
"I think…" Rina began. I'd be more likely to fail my breakthrough if I let the idea of being attacked by the full force of nature discourage me from trying."
"Good girl" Hektor grinned. "So, we're getting into speculative territory here, but presuming you keep your presence of mind throughout that, you've got a Qi Sea that's been churned to a froth, that's going so fast and is scattered all over the place. You could make a PIllar we normally do--and that'd probably be just fine."
He shows an example of a Pillar forming in the mess, the Sea stabilizing over time, and then steadily showing the process off as it was before.
"But, there's also an opportunity here." He returns it to the churning sandstorm. "With your entire Qi Sea scattered, you can create a single pillar that encapsulates the
entirety of your power."
Hektor's pointer spiraled, and the frothing mess steadily began to coalesce into a single Pillar of tremendous size, monopolizing the entirety of the sand.
But it pauses at completion, and he turns to Rina. "Now, with everything you've learned here, what happens next?"
Rina closed her eyes, and thought on it a moment.
He… Turned the entire Qi Sea into a single Pillar.
No, wait, he encapsulated the Qi Sea in one pillar.
Her eyes opened. "It's about pressure, isn't it?"
"That's our guess" Hektor smirks. "And what's the problem with pressure?"
"... It forces its way out." Rina frowns. Hektor restarted the simulation, and the pillar began to
burst with glowing simulacra of escaping Qi.
"Got it in one." He explains. "Our best bet is that's the reason why Single Pillar is supposed to dominate its peers. You've gone and put your entire Qi Sea under intense pressure, which means when you employ it--it bursts out with incredible force, comparable to that emitted by a Core."
"But in exchange, the leakage is equally horrifying." Rina agrees. "You'd…"
"Need a flawless body to contain it, perfectly clear Qi circulation to cycle it, a soul clear minded enough to react to sudden changes, and a guiding philosophy without flaws to let you cope with this for hundreds of years, no?" The diagram fell back, and Hektor sits back. Chatter in the background about the revelations and speculations that had come in this meeting.
"Rina Callista, do you really think you can achieve that?" Megaera finally chimed in at the end of the lecture.
"I think we can't afford for me not to try" Rina nods. "It's the only path I can see to reach the point of matching Core Formation within a hundred years."
"If you survive" Helen cautions. "
If. I cannot stress enough, but there are no reports of
anyone enduring a Five Elements Tribulation since ancient times. The Blood Masking Pill you were assigned so long ago only puts you on the level of everyone else--and they have had no better luck than we."
Rina tried to smile at that. "Most people haven't successfully killed a Core Formation at Qi Condensation either… I don't know about any further unorthodox realms--but as long as I don't suffer any great misfortune in the next hundred years, I have full confidence of reaching this."
"At which point, the concern becomes your lifespan." Hektor points out. "Rina, you don't
have a hundred years to risk on that."
"I… May have found a lead on something suitable for Qi Condensation" Rina admitted. "If things do drag on a little…"
"Hmm, good enough" Megaera nodded. "With that being said and done, and with you committed to remaining on your current path--and know that we
do dearly wish to see your success in the matter…" She clapped her hands, and a servant emerged from the back of the room, depositing a box on the ground before Rina. "You will not be permitted to take this with you, understand." Megaera cautioned, but gestured for Rina to open the box.
"But know that upon your breakthrough--whether you continue this plan or accept what you have already gained--the Callista Branch will not see your efforts at Pleuron go unrecognized."
The latches snapped open, and Rina opened the box, gazing upon a great crystal decanter, filled with bubbling, liquid bronze.
"Celestial Bronze is difficult to create." Helen explained as the awestruck Rina lifted it with some small effort. "It is the precursor substance to the Blood of Bronze, introduced into our Clan in ancient times. Introduced to a mortal, it steadily galvanizes their blood as they Cultivate, eventually manifesting the true Blood of Bronze sometime within the third Heavenstage or so."
"Generally? We only get enough to make anything useful out of it when an Elder dies" Hektor added in. "Lady Aikaterine dictated in her will that enough be set aside for your own use from her own remains--as a celebration gift for your breakthrough to Foundation Establishment."
Rina blanched at that. "So this is…"
"It's not Blood Path if that's what you're worried about." Megaera sniffed dismissively. "It's said that Spirit Severing imbued with the blood can simply summon forth great rivers of the metal with some small exertion. We're well past that time--what we get is only from the wills of our fallen Core Formation experts, as we distill their marrow and extract it from their bones. It is by far the most suitable material for our Clan--most of any stocks are remanded to the Grand Council, who dole it out as gifts for newly raised Core Formation Elders."
Rina set the decanter back in the case--which was closed with a snap, and taken back by the servant.
"Lady Aikaterine had absolute faith in your ability to rise to the challenges of our current age." Megaera concluded. "Faith enough to reserve one of the greatest treasures born from sacrifice to you."
"Do whatever it is you've got to do." Hektor joined in. "We've got your back--and so does the rest of the Callista Branch."
Rina sniffed, and felt her eyes beginning to water. "I'm… Honored." She pulled her glasses off to dry her eyes.
"Sorry. I'm just a bit… Overwhelmed, you know?" She hiccupped. "I'll be fine in a bit, just…"
"It's alright" Helen smiled for the first time in this meeting. "Anyone who would deny family the right to be overwhelmed once in a while doesn't doesn't deserve the title."
Rina didn't respond.
She was far too busy dealing with her feelings after all.
