Dual-Cultivation

"Okay sit let me educate you..."

For body cultivations, cores are formed from the materials one uses to refine their body, the essence of those materials are drawn out using Ki and is used to build the core. The more essence one is able to extract from the ores, the larger the core one can make. Once the creation is done, all that is left is linking it to one's dantian.

"...think of the core as a container for storing Ki, the shape and size depends on the amount of ore essence you are able to extract, and that's about it".

After digesting the basic information about cores, Shiro sat down in the lotus position and began putting it to practice.

It was difficult at first, but with time Shiro was finally able to begin the extraction

"This will take a long time so I need somewhere I would be able to concentrate without issues".

Shiro said after getting the basics of essence extraction down

"Hmm? I think we have somewhere like that at the top of the mountains plus the Ki there is extremely high quality, let me show you".

A few moments later, Shiro and Yato began heading towards the mountains.

Once they were there, Yato left Shiro and went back while Shiro sat down in the lotus position and began Sword cultivation, he needed to be at least sword foundation realm before he could begin extracting his ore essence.

*whoosh*

Sword Ki began entering Shiro's dantian at extreme speeds as he spent the rest of the day cultivating.

The next day, Shiro jumped back into cultivation as he managed to even up both his cultivation levels. His cultivation had progressed a lot smoother than he had thought enabling him to reach the third stage of the sword foundation realm, however, this time there was no tribulation.

'Hmm? No tribulation? I wonder why that is'

Shiro couldn't help but get a bad feeling about this, his guts kept telling him that no tribulation wasn't a good thing, but there was nothing he could do.

Still in the lotus position, Shiro began extracting the black fire ore properties. The black fire ore had finished absorbing the tribulation lightning which gave it a glow of light blue with sparks around it.

Three days later...

"Fuck! How the hell is the black fire ore essence this much, it's been three days already and I still don't see an end to this"

Shiro cursed out loud as he kept extracting the black fire ore essence, the continuous extraction coupled with no sleep, food and water for three days had accumulated a lot of stress in his mind making his usual calm demeanor almost non-existent.

"But first, what kind of core should I even build?"

"Why don't you use the heavenly domain as the base idea for a core?"

"Let me try-"

*Whoosh*

Shiro instantly jumped back as he used his martial awareness to search the area

'Nothing! Where is he?'

Shiro scanned the area around him but was still unable to find the source of the voice.

"Being able to use martial awareness despite being blind, truly impressive...

Even for a god!"

'!!!'

Shiro was shocked, the only person who should know he was a god was Yato, so how? How did this person find out?

He couldn't remain calm anymore, all his danger sense were acting up, and he had to find that voice!

"Don't worry, I am here!"

It was just a statement, but that statement was enough to completely shut down Shiro's mind.

'How? How did he get so close? He's already beside me?'

In Shiro's mental image, the only living thing other than him in the mountain top was a blurry figure who no matter how much Shiro tried couldn't see.

"Hello, I'm Shin, Shin Hayasaka, nice to meet you"

The young boy said as he opened himself for Shiro to see.

He had snow white hair which disobeyed the laws of gravity and fair skin, his eyes were sky blue in color and he had the stature of a 13 year old, he wore a temple Gi which looked like it had seen its fair share of dangers, however, the monstrous aura hidden behind that smile was something Shiro could never forget.

'A Lost Seeker!'

'So he is the one Yato talked about'

Having finally found the source of the voice, Shiro calmed down as his mind began working again

"I'm Shiro Kusikage, it's also nice to see you"

Shiro said responding to the lost seeker's greeting.

'See?' Shin thought as he walked towards Shiro and sat down beside him.

"As I said before, why don't you use the heavenly domain as the inspiration for your core?"

Having found out Shin's identify, a lot of the things he said began making sense to Shiro, it was no longer strange that the guy knew about the heavenly domain.

'Hmm...? I can... or maybe I should and since I can't seem to exhaust the black fire ore essence, I would just link for it to keep expanding in size'

"Hmm, that's a great idea"

Shiro felt excited as he sat down back in the lotus position.

Shiro wasn't the type to get excited unnecessarily, in fact he lived a pretty boring and monotonous life, however, the very thought of cracking down the code to dual cultivation without losing any benefits was something anyone would be excited about.

Shiro's life motto was 'Time is the greatest essence, so only do things when needed'; and just like his motto said, he would only cry when needed, smile when needed, and feel excited when needed, he felt like he needed to manage his time well.

In order to keep to his goals and manage his time well, Shiro only learnt the basics of every skill he knew, even his sword play and fencing style was only the basics, in his mind, he had no time for extravagant and unneeded movements only the basics were enough.

Shiro closed his eyes and began constructing his cores, Yato had already explained the process to him, so it wasn't hard for him to do, he splited his mind into two so that one could focus on the body cultivation core while the other one the sword cultivation core.

His actions were based on his theory that if he could make two separate small cores consisting of the two energies, he should be able to cultivate the both, however, if he did this, not only would his cultivation speed be reduced by half, he would also need to consciously focus on gathering both energies during cultivation, making cultivation itself a lot harder than it should be.

Shiro separated the normal Ki from the sword Ki present in the environment and then used them to refine the black fire ore essence.

After refining it for about two hours, Shiro finally began forming the core. Forming the cores took Shiro half a day while linking it to the cores took him nearly an hour. After the basic preparations, he then began linking the two already massive cores to his dantian, it was a trial and error method as he needed to keep checking the flow of Ki through the link. Once he was done, he began absorbing Ki to fill up the cores.

How much Ki one can use in a fight depended wholly on the size of the core and the said person's cultivation.

By the time he was done with everything, another three days had gone by, during that time, Shin was keeping watch over Shiro while hunting down any beast that might have attacked them. It hadn't been long since he met Shiro, but just the fact that Shiro was connected to Yato made it enough reason for him to protect Shiro.

Meanwhile, at the end of the third, Shiro's cores were over filled with Ki energies, he hadn't noticed it yet but his cultivation had gone from 3rd stage body transformation realm to the 1st stage blood replacement realm and from the 3rd stage sword foundation realm to 9th stage sword foundation realm.

He had broken through nearly a whole realm in his two cultivation during the process.

'Finally done'

Shiro thought while given an exhausted sigh, he opened his eyes only to see Shin battling a beast.

The beast was a bird type magic beast, it had brown wings and fiery talons, and its beak was as sharp as claws as they tried to rip Shin to shreds.

Shiro stood motionless as he watched the fight unfold, Shin's body was wrapped in some kind of energy which forced sparks to occur as he moved, each of his attack would release explosions in the form of sparks which caused damage to the surroundings as he fought.

"Hey! If you have time to study my fighting, why don't you lend a hand?"

Shin shouted immediately breaking Shiro's concentration.

"Sorry, hold it still for a second"

An enormous amount of Sword Ki gathered around his hands as he pointed towards the beast in a slashing motion and chanted

[Sword Style: Second Form…]

*Swish!* *Slash!* *Boom!*

…Sword less]

Shiro hadn't even completed his chant when the attack instantly tore the beast apart.

"Wow… Awesome!"

Shin shouted as he watched the magic bird get evaporated

"That attack was just… awesome! I've seen many people use that technique 'sword less' but I doubt anyone would be able to make it that powerful"

Shin showered Shiro with praises as they came to where the bird had died. Below a pile of dust, there was some kind of shinny crystal, Shiro didn't know the use so he just stored it away in his bag.

"So did you complete it?"

Shin asked after a while

"Yeah"

Shiro said as the two types of Ki began flowing into his body at astonishing speeds.

*Whoosh*

"Alright, let's head back!"