First Step

Four days had passed, I have yet to fully understand how to circulate the Poison Spiritual energy in my body, but I had learned a few things.

First was, I no longer felt hungry, strange as it might be. I am satiated almost all the time. Also, I didn't go to the toilets even once. Strange as it might be. It's weird, but I could live with that. Also, the poison pool. It… tasted sweet. The poison that had killed so many people, tasted like the purest and most expensive champagne I have ever had in my life. And with every cup I downed, I felt the pain in my broken leg lessen, and the buzzing in the eye I could no longer use subside.

Healing properties? Perhaps, but it is poison. Bone and Body Grinding poison.

I re-read through the manual, it didn't have anything beyond the method to reach Qi condensation. And I didn't have any mentor to show me the way, and no way to leave this place unless I become a Qi condensation stage cultivator…I hope.

With no other objective, goal, or purpose than surviving, I sat down and continued trying to circulate the energy. Trial and error, at first I had no idea on what to do, I tried to picture how the meridians should be, then… then nothing, how the hell was I supposed to circulate energy I don't even sense? I was lost and had no idea how to go on about this.

For all those main characters, circulating energy was as easy as breathing, why is it this hard for me? Perhaps I never interacted with this energy and don't know what it even feels like or if it is here or not.

Days went by, as I tried different methods, meditation, dipping myself in the pool, that one was dumb, the poison, when drank tasted amazing, but when dipped in it, it felt painful beyond belief. I regarded leaving that option for later trials and tests.

Time kept going, and thankfully hunger and sleep were no longer on my conscious, I was fully dedicated to finding out how this circulation works. As I was moving around the cave, for the millionth time now, I stopped and looked at the pool. Something about the poison in it was rather inexplicable.

The liquid moved, it was not sentient, but it moved. It didn't have a shape, it just changed itself into random forms that made no sense, but overall, the entirety of the poison moved in a circular way around itself.

This was not a living thing, but it still moved. It had a rhythm that it followed. Water in a pool would not move, and would soon become rancid still water. But here, it moved without pause and following a strange rhythm.

I sat down in front of the pool and closed my eye. The other one apparently was forever close.

I couldn't sense the energy in me, the one that needs to be circulated to become a Qi condensation cultivator, but if my hunch is right, the secret lies within this pool. The way the poison moves, could I make the energy within me move like that? That is of course a question that can only be answered I I could even feel it.

While I was thinking up some random stuff, I felt a tingling in one of my meridians. Soon, that tingling became more and more apparent. Then it transformed into a thin line that spread and linked itself to another meridian. Then to another and finally another, then returned to origin. It made a full circle. And the energy that I have never felt before became clear and bright as day.

A powerful surge of energy began rotating following that path and it continued, moving, circulating, and rapidly accelerating.

This is it! This is how to circulate energy! I thought and then immediately coughed up a pile of black sludge.

I kept on coughing up that disgusting sludge. It was rancid, black as charcoal, and tasted worse than a camel's dung that's been mixed with fish guts on a hot Sunday morning.

I sat down, thinking about this stuff, impurities? If I remember correctly, these are human impurities, the way to ascend to immortality, one must remove all that relates him to the mortal world, starting with food and otherworldly natures and needs.

I doubt that I became a Qi condensation immortal, this was too easy. Perhaps I just started on the path to circulate the energy or poison energy as the book said in my body. I definitely have more to do and need a lot more time to become a real cultivator.

Days went by, and it was hard and difficult to enter that state where I could link the meridians and make them circulate the energy within them. But I understood later that I needed to be in a semi-absent-minded state. As the state, you're in when you're half asleep. Just about to doze off, but still aware of what was happening. I needed to remain in that state constantly. It was hard at the beginning but became much easier as time went by.

Energy coursed through my meridians, and for every couple thousand of circulations, I would cough up a big pile of disgusting stuff.

After a few days of doing the same thing, I felt my head turn blank, I was about to pass out. It was the same as if I was in an extreme hunger scenario. And in that instance, that pool, looked extremely appetizing and delicious to eat from.

I moved almost mechanically toward it and took a handful of the purple liquid. I drank it, and it went down like honey water on a hot summer day. I began consuming more and more of the poison, not even caring for the corpses that have been buried in it, and the mix of flesh with the disgustingly looking and horridly smelling poison still tasted heavenly whenever I drank from it.

After a while, and having felt full, I continued my practice, continued rotating the energy and cultivating. The feeling of being stuck in a treadmill, unable to move forward in my cultivation soon dispersed, and I felt a slight increase in the energy rotation of my meridians.

That slight increase soon began to accumulate, accelerate, then as if it was a snowball effect, the rotations turned faster and faster, until I felt that I was about to explode, and not in a bad way.

A wave of energy shot out of my body and all over the cave walls, it rebounded everywhere, shaking rocks and pebbles away from me.

I took a deep breath, and honest to the mighty, it felt like it was the first breath I had ever really taken. The pain in my eighty-year-old joints had disappeared. The broken leg had not healed perfectly but I could only feel discomfort in it instead of bone piercing agony.

I began sweating, not your regular sweat, but an oily, black disgusting one. I've been in this damned cave for far too long and there is no clean water source. Hell, I don't even know how I managed to survive this long without water. I suppose the poison and the cultivation have something to do with the body's needs.

The book, the green book vibrated in my chest, I had placed It inside my robes so I wouldn't casually leave it somewhere and forget about it. I'm old… it happens sometimes.

I opened the book and there were few more lines written there that I didn't see the last time.

===

Being able to read this line means that you have successfully reached the lowest tier of Qi condensation.

Since you're able to read this, your cultivation level has increased. As a disciple of my arts, you must not have ever been in contact with cultivation, as it needs a fresh sprout that has no meridians unlocked to learn it. So I shall impart upon you some wisdom that will aid you in your path.

All cultivation levels are divided into nine levels. And these nine levels are also divided into three distinct layers. Bottom, Middle, and Peak.

For the QI condensation, it is composed of the following layer and sub-layers.

Bottom Low, Bottom Medium, and Bottom Peak.

Middle Low, Middle Medium, and Middle Peak

High Low, High Medium, and High Peak.

Having reached the Bottom Low Qi condensation, your lifespan has increased by two more years. You're urged to reach the Bottom Medium Qi condensation level within these two years.

If you were a regular cultivator, you would be able to sense the world's Qi, the spiritual energy, and start absorbing some of it to circulate your QI, though it is the most obvious of methods to increase your cultivation, it would take a great deal of time. Some skip this by consuming pills that can generate a good deal of Spiritual Energy and is much purer and can be rotated with ease. Yet, this method is not without fault, it will make the foundation unstable if one was to rely on pills to increase their cultivation and will create a sub-par cultivator in the future that will be stuck and unable to ascend to further heights.

The pills made by alchemists may be good, maybe great, but they can never match the perfectness of the world's energy.

As for you, Disciple of mine. You are treading a path only I have walked through before you. Our path is lonely and full of danger. To increase your cultivation, you'll need the energy of plants, poisons, and bugs. It is the same as consuming pills in a sense, only these 'pills' are not made by man, they are made by the heavenly will and are as pure as nature's own energy.

Here is the diagram of the only spell you'll be able to use once you stabilize your cultivation at Bottom Low Qi condensation.

Under the text was a picture of a man, rotating his energy in the same manner that I have done while meditating, the only difference is that, instead of continuing the rotation to increase their cultivation, they channel it toward their mouth and breath out a fog.

I sat down and began mimicking the picture of the man in the book.

After a few rotations of energy, I willed the energy to leave through my mouth, and a substance green as a liquor bottle shot out from my mouth then transformed into a small puff of green smoke.

The green smoke touched against a cave alga and it instantly withered.

"Poison breath!" I exclaimed.

I just learned my first new spell in a cultivation world.

***

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