The Long Lonely Work

After everything was prepared for her cultivation Elder Lei showed Yun to the special chamber again before instructing her in how to operate the array formation. Elder Lei told Yun to stay inside until she had consumed half of her awarded God Stones. Not knowing how long that would take, he had made sure to have her store a great deal of food and water.

Finally entering her cultivation chamber with her spear in hand and her new robe and sash on, Yun first took out all of the techniques she had acquired from the library and laid them out along the ledge in the room. The room was roughly a hemisphere, with a deeply inlaid ledge along the walls, creating a space to set things, study things, and a small futon space to rest.

Finally feeling ready, Yun closed the main chamber door and sealed it from the inside. The only means of communicating with her would be to knock on the door from the outside, but only elders were capable of knocking hard enough to be heard through the thick stone door that sealed the space.

Isolated from everything else, Yun sighed and took out the first of her six 1-Star God Stones, activating the array. After a few moments she noticed a distinct change in the room as the energy quickly began to permeate the space, and within two hours she had already turned off the array for the first time. The room was so full of energy that it was pushing the breathable air apart, making it hard to breathe properly.

Deciding that she would first raise her cultivation base to the Small Success stage of Neidan Forging, Yun sat down in the center of the room and focused on absorbing the immense energies around her, condensing them down into another thick layer on her Neidan Seed. She spent eight hours every day in this state, absorbing and condensing energy in preparation for layering it onto her Neidan.

She decided that in these ideal circumstances she would make a perfect breakthrough by condensing energy to the limit of her ability before she layered any of it onto her seed, giving her the thickest possible layer at her level. Other than the eight hours each day she focused on energy condensation, she spent another six perceiving her Solar Thunder Sutra, and another two hours studying one of the six skills she had brought from the library.

Time drove on like this day by day, and Yun continued to firm her cultivation through all these avenues. Her energy density was reaching a peak, and her understanding of the concepts and skills contained in her cultivation techniques and skills also slowly sublimated.

Soon enough she had passed two months in this isolated cultivation chamber, but she felt that she had barely even consumed half of her first God Stone's energy. At this rate she would take at least a year to reach Elder Lei's stipulated exit criteria. Each time she felt like she was getting stiff she would pick up her spear and practice spear techniques, including a few of the ones she had taken from the library.

Golden Fluttering Spear was the primary skill she studied, and was a non-elemental spear technique that could be combined with a number of other skills. This technique focused on fast and precise spear stabs and slashes and created numerous spear shadows around the actual strike which were also capable of inflicting injury. This technique's power was drawn out of one's Spear Intent, which was the intangible force of will that projected out from an expert in Spear Fighting. Each weapon had something similar, such as Sword Intent and Saber Intent, which was a sort of energy that could be used to attack an opponent with a slice or suppress them with a field.

The second skill she was currently practicing was the Argent Flame Spear technique. This was a peculiar technique that she was struggling to reach the bare minimum level of elemental control for. The goal of this technique was to create one or more autonomous elemental spears out of Fire Elemental energies through condensing the energy until it was a physical form instead of an energy field. The density and control of energy placed a heavy burden on the user's comprehension level towards Fire Laws, as well as their comprehension of energy control.

Finally, the third skill she was currently studying was the Brazen Moon Flame. This was a technique to attach an elemental aura to a weapon or body part, much like the Volvaka Fire Eaters did. This technique, contrary to its name, was actually based on Lightning Elemental energies, which were condensed so heavily onto the weapon that they would cause tiny sparks so hot that they caused everything but oxygen to begin to evacuate the area around the aura, and the oxygen failed to escape only because it was ignited. This leads to the misleading nature of the skill, which presented itself as a pale blue fire around the weapon, but when struck by it one would be shocked heavily and become numb if directly contacted.

Week by week she cultivated these three battle skills, growing in her energy control and elemental laws, as well as her inherited spear technique. She practiced her Solar Thunder Sutra's skills as well, learning better control of the two concepts she had already learned while she progressed to the next stage of her technique. Finally, after three months, she reached her limit of energy condensation and began to focus entirely on laying that energy on top of her Neidan.

Three days later she had succeeded, creating an extremely thick third layer of her Neidan Forging, and breaking through to Small Success. In celebration she spent two days relaxing in the high energy environment, not focusing on any particular skills and instead just doing whatever was enjoyable at the moment for her.