50 Rapid Advancement

After her few days break Yun began to cultivate in earnest again. She had thus far only used three quarters of the first God Stone, but she knew as well that each successive level of cultivation would require more energy to advance through. In addition to that, she had also made a minor level change, which meant she would require a qualitative change in the energy as well.

Yun decided to continue with her previous course of training, spending eight hours cultivating, six hours on Solar Thunder Sutra, and two hours on her three current techniques. This schedule seemed to work out very well for her, as she was making strides in all three areas. She had nearly advanced to the second layer of the second image in Solar Thunder Sutra, and was just a tiny amount away from being able to master the first flow, but it was much more complex to learn than the previous ones.

After finishing the first page completely she found that each page contained a different aspect of the elements, and each page would only reveal its aspect to the cultivator at the very end of the page. The images each had three layers, with an underlying concept beneath each layer.

The first page's image, the aspect of Life, contained the concepts of Heat, Static Arc, and Shock. It provided the Fire Elemental circulation route as well as the Lightning Elemental circulation route, and the Dragon Aura battle skill. All of these elemental concepts were contributing factors to life. Heat, which is necessary for life, static arc, which is an essential skill of the body to pass information for life, and shock, which can bring life to the dead.

Finally she had moved past the first image and discovered what the second held, and the image within was nowhere near what she expected.

*A great forest fire blots out the sun with ash, lightning strikes the ground and winding river in multiple places, causing shattered earth and vaporized water to fly into the sky. The entire bowl-shaped valley was covered in trees and flame, and the sun could not even show through the dense soot clouds that extended for dozens of miles above.*

This image paralyzed Yun with shock the first time she saw it, but after recovering she began to attempt to understand the first flow. Unfortunately, this first flow felt like a brick wall, like she was not ready to understand it. After spending an entire week with no progress at all in this concept she finally gave it up and converted the six hour block into training for her techniques, while the two hour block was converted to an additional pre-sleep cultivation time.

Day after day passed, and soon the next month ended and she ran the first God Stone out of energy. The moment it became fully drained was startling to Yun, as the stone lost its structural integrity and imploded with a loud pop, turning into a small puff of smoke before dissipating into the void. After recovering her composure she began to use the second stone.

Two more months passed uneventfully, though she could feel herself growing closer to the initial level of mastery for two of her techniques. Specifically she felt like she was nearing a threshold in understanding the Golden Fluttering Spear and the Brazen Moon Flame. She was now six months into her closed door cultivation and could nearly use them at will.

Finally, three months into the second God Stone, namely four months since her previous breakthrough, she felt like she was nearing the threshold for the next layer of Neidan Forging. Less than a week later she managed to reach the bottleneck and began to layer the energy down onto her Neidan again, breaking through to the fourth rank of Neidan Forging without much effort.

Another month later she broke her second God Stone, reaching her eighth month in cultivation, and she also broke through to the initial stages of mastery in the Golden Fluttering Spear and Brazen Moon Flame skills, and was nearing what felt like a level of energy control that might permit her to succeed at the Argent Flame Spear as well.

Finally setting aside the two skills she had achieved proficiency in she picked up two of the three remaining ones. First was Undaunted Crescent Moon Slash, which was a lightning elemental attack that created a dense field of lightning that was so cohesive that it looked like a crescent moon flying through the air, traveling forward with no rotation at all, but a minor amount of control from the user allowed it to slightly arc the travel path.

Second she picked up the Chromatic Aurora Steps, another lightning elemental skill, that permitted the user to achieve incredible speeds through special footwork and elemental energy.

She continued her pace of cultivation through the end of the year, reaching the fifth rank of Neidan Forging just before she drained all the excess energy from her cultivation chamber, and two days before her tenth birthday.

Finally, all three stones used up, Yun prepared herself for the end of her training. She was fairly confident she only needed a few more days to achieve some measure of skill in the Chromatic Aurora Steps, so she contemplated staying the rest of the week. After thinking about it for a few hours she decided to end her seclusion in favor of spending time with Zhu Cai and seeing what Elder Lei had for her.

Yun calmly cleaned up all of her materials and used her Dragon Aura to heat the area up and vaporize anything her body left behind, such as sweat and hair, in the room before opening the door slowly and walking out to her own area. The first thing she did was not to greet Zhu Cai, who was expectedly in the forge hammering away at some object she was working on, but to go to her own room, relax for a few minutes, then take a nice hot bath to clean her body of all the sweat and grime from her intense practices in the sealed chamber.

Yun was relaxing in the tub quite nicely, and she was so relaxed she didn't even realize she'd fallen asleep. Next thing she knew she woke up to Zhu Cai staring down at her from above with her hands on her hips, like a grumpy parent of a naughty child.