Grey Mist Pressure Chamber

The Grey Mist Pressure Chamber.

Within the centre of Fragment Peak, this mountain that was eternally surrounded by a thick grey mist which nobody aside from the Immortal Ancestor could travel through, there was a cultivation chamber. This was the very same chamber that the Immortal Ancestor brought Yaan into, where there were 250 Origin Soul Realm cultivators tied to large stone pillars at the back of the hall. Naturally, they were all unconscious and firmly sealed, otherwise this would be a very distracting place to cultivate.

In the centre of the chamber, there was a formation. Right now, Yaan was sitting on this formation with his eyes closed, sweating heavily and trying to keep his breath steady. As he sat there, a whirlwind of grey mist descended slowly from the ceiling above, gradually travelling into and through his body, before entering the formation below and circling back around.

The Immortal Ancestor watched calmly to the side.

'So difficult!' Yaan thought to himself in shock.

The Grey Mist Pressure Chamber was a secret cultivation chamber built into Fragment Peak. This chamber made use of the grey mist that hung around the mountain year-round.

From what Yaan understood, the mountain itself, as well as the grey mist, were natural phenomena. The chamber built upon this natural cultivation mecca channelled the grey mist into this room, and was most likely built by the Immortal Ancestor himself.

This entire chamber had the sole purpose of assisting with body tempering…

The Immortal Ancestor refused to explain to Yaan why he had this place built, when neither he nor anyone else in the Fragment Sect cultivated the body. It really seemed like he had built this chamber specifically for Yaan's use, but this only left Yaan with more questions.

However, at this moment, he was not thinking about these things. Enduring the spiralling grey mist was taking up Yaan's full attention, he had no luxury to care about anything else right now.

As the grey mist flowed through him slowly, seemingly not even interacting with his flesh as it travelled downwards, Yaan felt an immense strain placed upon every single cell throughout his body. It was a strange feeling, as if every single muscle in his body was simultaneously engaged, whilst holding up the heaviest weight that he could only barely manage to lift. This feeling was not limited only to Yaan's muscles, but also affected his tendons, bones and organs equally. Even his blood flow was placed under strain, causing it to rise in pressure substantially as it struggled to continue flowing.

This was all under the continual assistance of the golden elixir within Yaan's body, which constantly released a stream of golden power into his body, replenishing his energy, recovering his exhaustion and countering the strain brought on by the downwards flowing grey mist. Still, the stream of golden power was not all-powerful, whilst the grey mist seemed able to match whatever sort of state Yaan was in.

As his strength was sapped and declined, the grey mist did not exert more pressure than he could handle, but continually pushed his body to the limit of what it could withstand. The force exerted never surpassed his limit, but it never dropped lower than the absolute maximum that he could handle either.

Yaan didn't know if this strange occurrence was a feature of the grey mist itself, or an effect created by the formation within the cultivation chamber. He tried asking about this, but naturally, the immortal refused to explain it.

Eventually, Yaan reached the point at which his body threatened to completely give out. At this point, he gritted his teeth and made his Psyche Power surge through his mind. Within his Sea of Consciousness, the Psyche Power avatar carefully controlled the flow of Psyche Power, allowing Yaan to stay conscious and forcing his exhausted body to hold out for longer than it should have been able to.

After a short period of time, his Psyche Power was also depleted, at which point, Yaan finally lost consciousness.

The moment he passed out and slumped down to the floor, the whirlwind of grey mist suddenly reversed its flow. The grey mist began rotating in the opposite direction - it was now rising up from the ground, passing through Yaan, then entering the upper formation imprinted into the ceiling of the chamber.

After a few minutes, Yaan tiredly woke up. The moment he opened his eyes and sat up, the grey vortex reversed once again and returned to its original flow, causing the immense strain to reappear within his body.

This was the 10th cycle like this that Yaan had been forced to endure. At first, he held out for close to one hour, but he barely lasted for a quarter of this time by the 10th cycle. Even though his body was being healed over by the grey mist and the golden elixir, allowing him to recover enough to continue training, this was taxing on both his body and mind.

The reverse flow grey mist actually had the effect of recovering his mental energy, but recovering Psyche Power took longer than the recovery of the body, it wasn't enough. Yaan's mind was left in a perpetually exhausted state, where he was being pushed back and forth between a state of being able to briefly hold on, then passing out from absolute exhaustion.

The white-haired immortal watched from the side, From start to finish, he kept his silence and showed no change in his expression.

The Grey Mist Pressure Chamber was a room dug into Grey Peak, making use of the strange grey mist in order to temper the body. However, when Yaan first attempted to use this chamber to cultivate his body and draw out the power of the golden elixir within him, he discovered something…

This place was excellent for cultivating his Psyche Power!

When Yaan met the Spirit Plane Lord, she divulged the Four Paths Cultivation Technique to him, but she also provided him with multiple feasible cultivation methods that he could use to cultivate the four paths. Yaan's Qi refining and body tempering cultivations did not need much assistance - he possessed the Fiend Foundation and was a fiend by race, so he would naturally use the fiends' methods for these aspects.

The soul was the most problematic path, but that wasn't Yaan's primary concern right now anyway. His soul cultivation would not become relevant until he reached the Peak Vital Qi Core Realm.

Unlike his soul cultivation, Yaan's mental cultivation, the cultivation of his Psyche Power, was an immediate issue that he needed to resolve soon if he wanted to have any chance of successfully forming the Vital Qi Core.

There were two fundamental ways in which Psyche Power could be cultivated.

Firstly, the mind could be stimulated using intellectually trying challenges, such as studying formations.

Secondly, the mind could be tortured, forcing the cultivator to use their Psyche Power to resist the pain and difficulty, tempering their mind in the process.

The second cultivation method could also be achieved with certain formations, and for this reason, Yaan originally planned to learn the art of formations. The Spirit Plane Lord taught him various formation blueprints that could be built and implemented into his psyche path cultivation. He could not build these at present however, because he had little to no understanding of formations.

Learning the art of formations, building these formations, then finally using the formations, would all temper Yaan's mind and help to develop his Psyche Power. He still planned on doing this, however, this really was something of a long-term goal.

Right now, he was already experiencing a variation of the 'self-inflicted torture' concept that was conducive to Psyche Power cultivation. By repeatedly putting himself through these cycles of rapid exhaustion and recovery, his mind was being tempered, slowly but surely. With each consecutive cycle, the improvement to his body became less impressive due to the period which he was able to endure becoming shorter and shorter, but these shorter cycles were actually no less effective at training his mind…

Yaan found that forcing himself to power on through the accumulated exhaustion was an excellent method of tempering his mind!

The biggest downside to this method of cultivation, was that it was extremely unpleasant. Many people would rather die than actually implement this method as their daily cultivation practise…

But in his case, Yaan really was being forced to choose between cultivating like this, and death!

And so, Yaan powered on.

It became clear that the Immortal Ancestor really had developed this chamber with Yaan's exact needs in mind. The Grey Mist Pressure Chamber allowed Yaan to draw out the full potential of the golden elixir. Not only that, but it allowed him to immediately begin making progress with his Psyche Power cultivation, which should have originally been a long-term goal for Yaan.

Obviously, the immortal had set up this situation to allow Yaan to charge towards the Vital Qi Core Realm as quickly as possible.

In order to form the Vital Qi Core, there were multiple aspects that Yaan needed to develop, one of these being his Psyche Power. To form a Vital Qi Core in the dantian, it was necessary to fuse the five Obsidian Rank constitutions together, then to use this moment whilst the body was undergoing drastic changes to fuse together all of the Qi Channels and blood vessels in the body, before forming the unique core within the dantian. This entire process was such an incredible shock to the system that it was completely impossible for a person to remain conscious throughout the transformation under normal circumstances.

The only way to maintain consciousness throughout all of this, was to develop the Sea of Consciousness to a certain level.

Psyche Power was unique. Unlike soul, Qi and body cultivation, there was only a single known path of mental cultivation, and this was the cultivation of Psyche Power. Also, unlike the other three paths, there were no boundaries within the Foundation Step for psyche path cultivation; the Sea of Consciousness was continually expanded, whilst the Psyche Power was refined and grown, until the peak of the step was attained.

Or at least, that was usually the case. In truth, if Psyche Power was cultivated solely and not as an accompaniment to other paths of cultivation, then boundaries would indeed be encountered. However, this was basically not practised in reality, not on the Qi Plane at least.

So long as someone possessed a certain rank of cultivation in any of the other three paths, then their Psyche Power cultivation would not be hindered by any boundaries. The progression of Psyche Power cultivation was mysterious…it seemed to progress through the broken boundaries of the other paths, allowing smooth and seemingly unhindered progress.

Because of these reasons and because he needed to cultivate as rapidly as possible in order to meet the Immortal Ancestor's ridiculous three year deadline, Yaan gritted his teeth and continued to endure.

The 15th cycle, 20th cycle, 25th cycle…

At this point, he could only endure for less than a minute before the exhaustion took over his body and mind, causing him to collapse.

When he woke up a few minutes later and forced himself to sit up for the 26th cycle, the light in Yaan's eyes had started to fade. The intense motivation to push on, to survive, to persevere, had diminished massively. Seeing this, the white-haired immortal finally raised an eyebrow.

He was not surprised by Yaan's dwindling motivation, it was only normal that a person's will power would fade over time, especially when they were not given adequate time to rest and were instead forcefully woken up and made to repeat the exhausting process time and time again without reprieve.

What surprised him was the fact that Yaan showed no signs of stopping.

After 30 cycles, Yaan was barely able to keep his eyes open for a few seconds before breaking. He had no energy in his gaze, no burning desire to continue…and yet he went on.

Eventually, after 37 cycles, Yaan was unable to endure a single instant of the grey mist before falling unconscious. After this, he fell into a much deeper sleep, to the extent that even the reverse flow grey mist was unable to wake him up within a few minutes. However, the reverse flow grey mist continued to pour through his body. Combined with the nourishing and regenerative effect of the golden elixir, Yaan's body rapidly recovered to its peak state within two hours. His mind, on the other hand, required a full four hours before he was able to painfully open his eyes and sit up with a tired groan.

Whilst this longer period of rest allowed him to recover somewhat, it was not nearly enough. When the painful process of the grey vortex continued to rain down on his body the moment that he sat up, Yaan smiled bitterly, before sighing and closing his eyes, continuing to endure.

However, at this moment, the vortex suddenly stopped. Yaan's eyes shot open and he immediately turned towards the Immortal Ancestor.

"You plan to continue training despite your exhaustion?" The man asked Yaan slowly.

"I do. Is that ok with you?"

Yaan did not know if there was a cost to operate the formation, if it could be operated indefinitely, or if the immortal wanted him to do something else. If he was told to stop, then there was nothing he could say about it.

"It is fine…continue for as long as you wish." The immortal answered, after staring at Yaan expressionlessly for an uncomfortably long period of time.

And so, Yaan went on.