Victory
The process of advancing in tiers of the evolved realm was incredibly dangerous and extremely painful. Absorbing elemental energy until the cultivator's core's limit was slightly surpassed would place immense pressure on the core and would cause pain to the cultivator. If this was not handled properly, the cultivator's core could develop cracks that would take a long time to heal or directly shatter which would lead to the cultivator's death.
The essence of cultivating this way was to increase the cultivator's elemental energy pool. The cultivator's core slowly adapts to the pressure at its elemental energy capacity slowly rises until a qualitative threshold is met. With the increase of the elemental energy pool, the cultivator's body will also be forced to mutate, pushing the cultivator into the next tier.