7 Spiritual UZI

I sat there cultivating for hours. With the increased proficiency of my spatial abilities, and the constantly running analysis on it, I managed to keep the first spatial tear for more than an hour, and by then my comprehension reached the level that I could open a slightly smaller one with an indefinite duration. It would be pouring spiritual energy into my surroundings constantly until I'd decide to stabilise the space. So I kept absorbing the spiritual energy pouring in. I also didn't have to worry about the formation stopping, since to keep it going it would only need spiritual energy - and there was no lack of that inside of it. I managed to form several drops of spiritual qi, which essentially formed a puddle inside my constantly expanding dantian. If I drove my consciousness inside it, I could already sense a subspace larger than my body, meant for storing spiritual energy.

My absorption of spiritual energy sped up so much, that all the spiritual energy flowing out of the spacial tear directly got absorbed by me, so I adjusted my absorption rate to leak just enough that it could keep the formation powered, and scanned around for more spirit veins. My 'Spatial Detection' could already reach an area 2000 kilometers away, and scan an area with a radius of 5 kms at once, with this I needed only a little time to find some nearby sects and their spirit veins. I closed the portal to my True Fate Sect's spirit mine, and teleported a bunch of medium grade spirit stones from all over the mines I discovered. As I threw them into the spirit gathering formation's yang positions, previously occupied by the low grade spirit stones, a much denser mist started swirling around me.

So I continued my cultivation with this newfound source of energy, periodically refreshing the depleted spirit stones with new ones snatched from the mines. I managed to reach the second stage of Spirit Hardening - Spiritual Lake. There was a small lake of spiritual qi in my dantian, that wasn't expanding outwards much, but deepening quickly. I was currently trying to form a sea large enough that it would completely fill up my dantian, that also stopped expanding.

I did a quick analysis of my current cultivation and realised I screwed up, big time. I should have done this analysis much sooner. It wasn't anything life threatening, just annoying since I wasted a lot of time and energy by using the cultivation method that I previously came up with. Since it was a super perfected method, it congealed my qi in a much higher concentration than I needed it to be. If anybody else would have such concentrated qi, they would be unparalleled in their cultivation stage, and possibly even a few stages above, due to the amount of power they could bring forth. But for me this was an enormous waste, since I didn't need that much qi in the first place, my other abilities made me more than capable of fighting opponents of higher stages, probably even higher realms. What I needed the most was to reach these higher realms faster, so I actually needed the lowest possible density with the highest possible rate of absorption.

I quickly revised my meditation method, so that my qi would be far less saturated. But at this moment it felt like my Dantian would explode. The previously concentrated qi inside it started to expand at an alarming rate, filling up my dantian in an instant, and not showing any sign of stopping. I quickly resumed my meditation, starting to compress the overflowing qi into fine solid particles, reaching the Intermediate Spirit Hardening realm - Spiritual Powder stage. But even as I managed to congeal all my qi into a fine powder, it was still overflowing, trying to break my dantian apart.

This shouldn't have come as a surprise, but the amount of spiritual energy I previously absorbed would have been enough for hundreds of ordinary cultivators to reach the next realm, and I was stuck at the beginner stages of my current realm with it. Of course it would burst forth as a horrifying amount of energy. I continued my meditation, while driving my analysis of spatial powers as hard as I could, to get rid of some of the excess energy. I quickly reached the fifth stage of the Spirit Hardening realm, Spirit Crystallization. All the spiritual sand in my dantian compressed even more, forming crystals. However even these crystals quickly filled up my dantian, threatening it with breaking apart and exploding. Luckily Eve's superprocessing functions drained away most of the excess energy, keeping me alive for the moment, but I didn't know if I could keep my dantian intact for much longer, so I continued on with trying to break through to the next stage: the Spiritual Artifact stage.

This would be achieved if I could further compress the crystals along with my dantian to the shape of an artifact. I could then use this Spiritual Artifact as an offensive weapon, defensive tool, or cultivation helper. Ordinary spiritual artifacts could perform only one of these roles seamlessly and would be way less efficient at all other, but that didn't matter to me. Mine was bound to be something special, with all this energy poured into it. I kept on compressing my dantian along with the spiritual crystals in it, until I managed to bring it down to the size and shape I wanted. Thus I created the world's first 'Spiritual UZI'.

I actually created a pair of these, since if I could dual wield them, then why shouldn't I. They would shoot highly concentrated spiritual energy as bullets, that could penetrate all kinds of spiritual armor or defensive artifacts. They could also fire a burst of spiritual qi, forming a barrier around me, for defensive purposes. And I also included the spirit gathering properties of the spiritual treasures I previously studied, thus making it a pair of truly all-purpose spiritual artifact. If I died, I bet they would fetch sky-high prices at auctions.