Boundless Human Core

*CRACK*

Lightning struck the ground next to teacher Wong, he didn't even bat an eyelid, his gaze was focused on the grandiose spectacle before him.

A young woman, appearing to be in her early twenties, levitated in front of him. She was preparing for her ascension to the demi-immortal realm from the mortal realm.

Inside her human core, the pond's pure golden water-like Aratra began to exceed the pond's natural capacity. She was in the process of absorbing enough Aratra from her surroundings to smash her human core's crystal-like walls by pure pressure.

The golden Aratra raged inside her core, waves were forming huge torrents reaching ten bamboo huts high and crashing against the crystalline walls with such violence that the walls began to crack and groan.

Her face in agony, she howled towards the heavens and the heavens answered, enraged. The frequency of lightning strikes soared and the already storm-like rain became even heavier, it was a deluge of water and electricity pouring from the sky.

"Everyone's ascension is different, some experience unimaginable agony, others pure bliss, but all have one thing in common, they defy, forego, and therefore enrage heaven-"

"This is the turning point! Your core is about to shatter, after it does, the Golden Aratra inside will contaminate the shards of your broken core.

"The longer you let the shards be contaminated, the higher your future potential will be! But if you let your shards soak in the Aratra too long, they'll start breaking down, as at this point the Aratra won't strengthen the crystalline connections anymore but destroy them!"

"You have to balance the shards' contamination to the point where they have become a pure translucent golden color and have not yet become pure gold."

Teacher Wong yelled through the rain, his long hair disheveled by the wind and rain, the young woman just barely nodded as she continued to scream in unending agony.

"As you balance the contamination of your shards, heaven and earth will, at some point, send an earthly catastrophe!"

"I don't know which catastrophe it'll be, but remember heaven's methods are endless, boundle-", he was abruptly interrupted by a lightning strike shaking his body and charring the ground beneath him.

As the electricity entered his body his eyes rolled back and only the pure white remained.

A normal lightning strike wouldn't be able to even cause his hair to stand up, even less cause him to faint.

But this wasn't a normal lightning strike, it was one sent from heaven amidst the ascension of a person from the mortal realm to the demi-immortal one, the highest major realm humanity ever reached.

"Teacher!!"

The woman's shock enabled her to push aside the veil of agony for just a second.

"Concentrate! DON'T LET THE CONTAMINATION IMBALANCE!!"

Somehow teacher Wong managed to regain his consciousness after just a second of blanking out, though a wary glimmer remained in his eyes as he started to frown.

She hastily concentrated on balancing the contamination again.

Slowly but surely the contamination progressed in a controlled manner, her progress was fast, and many shards already reached the maximum saturation without exceeding it.

'If I manage to keep this up, I'll have a high chance of receiving a high-quality demi-immortal human core! My potential will be boundless!'

'Though, where is this catastrophe teacher Wong mentioned?'

As the young woman was absorbed in her thoughts and with difficulty maintaining the balance, her teacher's face grew ugly, he frowned deeper and deeper.

Though, he watched on as his student reached the critical stage, reuniting her fragmented core!

'I am almost there! Only a little bit more and I'll be able to ascend to demi-immortality!'

As the young woman took her last step before completing the ascension, teacher Wong seemed to have come to a decision and slowly approached her from behind.

His face showed a pained expression, but he was determined.

"I have almost made it! My core is almost reformed!"

Her usually so emotionless voice was now filled with joy and anticipation.

Teacher Wong reached her and hesitated for a second, but then he activated his power core, -sword arm core-, as he impaled the young woman's chest from behind, a glimmer shone on the surface of the bloodied weapon.

"I am sorry, Thia-"

A tear escaped his right eye as his lip quivered for a second, though he quickly adjusted his expression.

"but heaven needs you to die!"

"Or you'll break everything-, you'll destroy the world."

He whispered in a soft mourning voice.

She shook as blood escaped from her wound.

"So I was just another pawn, to be used until deemed not useful anymore-"

Thia chuckled in a weak voice, she turned her head, looking teacher Wong dead in the eyes.

"Though I don't understand why. This doesn't make sense, you'll only give up on benefits in the future from betraying me!"

Teacher Wong smiled ruefully, "I don't want to do this Thia and I will atone for my sins, but there is no reason to tell you why, your life comes to an end now!"

"And furthermore, even I don't quite understand the profoundness of my orders."

Thia's pupils shrunk, she actually looked quite shocked now, quite in contrast to how she wasn't even flustered when she got betrayed.

"You, a rank eight core-lord, are being ordered by someone?!"

'Weren't rank eights supposed to be the overlords of the demi-immortal society?'

She gradually lost more and more blood, her condition was quite bad, she had to find a way out somehow, now!

"But it doesn't matter, even if you were ordered by someone or something that you can't resist,-"

She activated her strongest move, forming a raging space-time tornado, the rain that was dense and cold just now got trapped in this tornado and enveloped both of them.

"I don't care, the only thing that matters is that you crossed me!"

"Haha, I wouldn't have expected less from you my student, your strength of dual cultivating time and space type cores really speaks for itself!"

"It is a pity- that I have to kill you and that you are up against me!"

He reached to touch the inner walls of the tornado.

it shattered!

Teacher Wong destroyed her strongest move with just his body!

Though Thia achieved what she needed, she grasped the opening, slipping from her teacher's blade and retreating into the dissolving space-time tornado.

Teacher Wong frowned, he might be strong enough to easily destroy her move, but it was risky to venture into disrupted space-time, even with his own defensive methods!

Thia exhaled relieved, teacher Wong didn't follow her, she knew of the strengths and weaknesses of her move. Her space-time tornado might have high offense, but in actuality, it was relatively easy to break, this was both a strength and a weakness.

When it broke it would dissolve into pockets of disrupted space-time, that were highly dangerous even for her! These pockets where were the true strength of her move lay, with their strength she could punch far above her weight class, though she couldn't control these pockets and could only either lure the enemy into them or hide.

And even then there were risks involved, if she wasn't careful she would get ripped apart by the raging and chaotic anomalies inside the pockets!

But she was relatively safe, for now.

'I still need to find a way out of this predicament-'

She sighed and feverishly searched for a solution, her moves except the space-time tornado were all basically useless against teacher Wong, it was already a miracle and a one in one thousand year feat, to be able to defend against a rank eight at two ranks lower!

And when you consider that she was just a rank 6 that recently ascended, there may be only a few hundred cases in history!

'But that is not of importance now, there has to be a way!'

She was not contend with dying like a thrown-away toy, she had many aspirations and now there was one more, pay back the betrayal a hundredfold!

Grinding her teeth, suddenly something piqued her interest!

'Oh? What is this?'

A core she had long forgotten roused, it started glowing and absorbing her demi-immortal Aratra.

"This?!"

"This is my innate core! It was always dormant and I never figured out what its effect is."

'After those three hundred years of my life, I must have forgotten it even existed!'

Her eyes widened, 'Its rank just rose?! How is this possible!'

As she watched her innate Ability-Core actually refined itself!

It started from rank one and soon was at rank two, a while later three, four, five, with each rank it gained it actually took longer to refine itself!

But then she noticed something and quickly grew alarmed.

'I have been wondering how it could refine itself without any materials, but it actually uses my human core as material!'

That meant when it reached rank six she would probably die, as her core exploded in the most grandiose way!

Thia shuddered.

As if that wasn't already bad enough, she suddenly heard the voice of teacher Wong.

"It's pointless! You can't hide in here forever, it's already been 5 days! And the pockets have become much less volatile-"

She activated her investigative moves and soon found teacher Wong cutting through the space-time pockets and searching for her inside!

'Oh no!'

She was in a precarious situation now and there wasn't much she could do, furthermore, she had to quickly resolve the situation with her self refining core.

As she thought feverly about how to resolve her crisis, her teacher destroyed more and more pockets, she had to jump between some of them fairly often now, or he would have already found her.

"Only ten remaining, this is bad!", she exclaimed alarmed.

In this life threatening situation inspiration suddenly struck!

'There might be a way! I don't believe my innate core would just kill me, why did it activate now and never before? There has to be a profound reason!'

'Should I trust that my innate core will truly save me and let it consume my human core?'

A smirk appeared on her face, "I might as well come out and fight with you before I die!"

She appeared behind teacher Wong who was currently cutting one of the space-time pockets.

He was startled, did she find a way to escape, or why was she so confident now?

"Very well, then let me appraise your abilities!"

He conjured up a storm of blades moving unbelievable fast in her direction.

But Thia smiled and used one of her time methods to slow the storm down, 'Teachers attack is so strong! My move could have frozen most attacks in time.'

"But that doesn't matter if I also expand the space between me and your attack!"

Her second move complimented her first one perfectly, a small pocket of space, maybe of a diameter of one meter, got extended by several kilometers!

"What if your move is strong enough to kill me by the slightest touch, as long as I evade it doesn't matter!"

"Heh, that's why dual cultivators are so hard to deal with, it's a shame that so little of you actually manage to ascend. Cultivating two paths is too much of a burden!"

"Give up, you can't win!"

Thia snorted, "Then take this!"

As teacher Wong made himself ready to defend against a strong attack, she suddenly teleported in front of him.

He was caught off guard!

"I want to see you defend against this!"

Her human core had reached the critical state, it was about to implode! As he sensed her cores instability his eyes widened and tried to get away from her as fast as possible.

"You-, you are willing to forgo your chance of nirvana?!"

At this moment he sensed her dedication, it was a mistake to cross her path, even if he was ordered by heaven!

He felt incredible regret, it was almost impossible to survive a human core's implosion from this distance! And he couldn't just teleport like his disciple, he was a blade path cultivator, not space path!

But it was all too late now, with a smile her body and human core imploded into a singularity!

This was the specific type of implosion of a space and time path cultivator, conjuring up a small black hole!

Sucking up everything in the vicinity the black hole grew, but it was highly unstable, it would only remain for a few days, but that was more than enough, teacher wong was too close and already behind the event horizon.

The implosion of a rank nine or fabled rank ten cultivator might be stable enough to exist for eternity!

As her core imploded Thia suddenly got hooked by her mysterious innate core and dragged into another dimension!

The dimension encompassed a giant cascade, a waterfall, that came from infinity and went to infinity, if one looked at the droplets they could see scenes of events, places, humans, it was the cascade of time!

And she went upwards as everything else went downwards, dragged by a small crystal.

'This is one of the mystical places of the world! The chronicles of Genus speak of it, it is the most important time path mystical place!'

She marveled at the profound cascade, then a sudden realization struck her!

"Wait if I go upwards while everything else goes downwards, doesn't that mean I go back in time?"

She glanced at her innate core, 'This must be the -time cascade traveler-!'

A legendary core, but its weakness was that it could only be used when it reached demi-immortal, power core, level.

'That's why I was never able to activate it! But I have never heard of it being able to self-refine.'

Before she could progress her thoughts any further she was suddenly dragged down to the cascade, as she was about to strike into the water, her body shrunk and she entered one of the droplets.

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Definitions:

'I think therefore I am' < ' ' Are used when characters think something to themselves.

"I really like talking to you!" < " " Are used when characters talk in any way, that includes knowingly telepathically

???What are words??? < ??? ??? Are used when I don't know the word of something on top of my head while writing, so if you see this, then I have screwed up, let me know!

--- < This is kinda a transitionary thing, it is used when either location or time, or both, change in a significant way.

--- great jade-ice mountain : noon --- < place description and time, like the first one, but when the place and time are important. Either place or time can be unspecified.