94 Foundation Establishmen

A pile of spirit-stone ore crumbled to dust as Cha Ming filled his dantian to the brim. The process was effortless compared to the past, thanks to his increased talent. His qi pathways were thick and flexible while his tempered organs made circulating his qi so much easier than in the past.

It took less than a day to fill up his nearly full dantian, and his qi seas were at their maximum capacity. A boundary, much thinner than before, prevented the qi from expanding past its natural borders. Without much thought, Cha Ming swallowed a Barrier Breaker pill and urged his qi to burst through the thin and weakened membrane. The membrane shattered effortlessly, allowing the limits of his qi sea to double.

Having achieved his first objective, he urged his cultivation forward, reducing spirit-stone ores to dust with the formation plate to fill his dantian. A week later, another effortless breakthrough brought him to the peak of qi condensation. Since his soul was already in the Incandescence Realm, it no longer received nourishment from these two breakthroughs.

Two weeks later, his qi seas were once again filled to the brim. The small room he'd secluded himself in was filthy, but he didn't care. All he cared about was increasing his cultivation rapidly. It was reckless to do so on his part—after all, rapidly increasing one's cultivation could lead to instability and lack of control over one's qi. But what others worried about, he used the force of his soul to overcome. The control offered by his late-incandescent soul was far greater than most qi-condensation experts could manage.

Having reached the peak of qi condensation, he now focused on the next task at hand—establishing his foundation. From what he'd gleaned from his cultivation method, one established a foundation by condensing their qi into one to nine pillars, which started at the base of where the qi seas were located. Establishing a one-pillar foundation was a difficult process for most people but could easily be achieved using pills. Even a pig could be forced into foundation establishment with sufficient spirit medicine.

The second, third, fifth, and sixth pillars were much easier to condense than the first, but the fourth and seventh pillars were watersheds that were difficult to overcome, save through sufficient talent. The eighth and ninth pillars were more difficult to establish compared to the previous seven combined. Nine pillars signified a perfect foundation.

Regrettably, Cha Ming wasn't completely sure how to proceed. His cultivation method highlighted several possibilities, but the specifics had yet to be determined. For example, he could attempt to make nine mixed pillars, but where would he place them? In theory, he could attempt to produce ten pillars, whether mixed or single element. However, ten pillars were much more difficult to produce than nine, and they would be less potent than a perfect nine pillars.

After exploring these points, his Perfect Five-Element cultivation technique suggested establishing five pillars, then using the creation and destruction qi to establish a supportive matrix that could grow with these five pillars. This way, the five pillars would as effective as a nine-pillar foundation plus a little bit more. The genius of this method was that establishing five pillars was relatively simple, and the process would enable one's pillars to be much larger than normal foundation-establishment pillars due to the sheer amount of qi available compared to other cultivators.

As such, Cha Ming directed his consciousness into his dantian, first drawing his wood qi together to form the outline of a pillar. It felt sturdy compared to the liquid qi in his dantian, and it radiated an aura far superior to what normal qi could emanate—the aura of foundation establishment. Once this outline was completed, he used his incandescent force to direct his qi into the pillar, where it began filling out its empty shape and solidifying little by little.

A day passed by as he condensed his first pillar, and finally, the entire wood-qi sea was dry. He then moved on to the fire sea, the earth sea, the gold sea, and the water sea in succession, each easily forming a pillar. Then, with slightly more strain, he laid out a white circular foundation that connected the pillars, then did the same with the black star formation. On the whole, the process took a full week.

Most of the process was finished, and if he wanted to, a single push was all he needed to step into foundation establishment. However, he didn't do so. With but a thought, these five pillars and their foundations collapsed, melting back into the qi seas they were originally formed with. While he wanted to achieve foundation establishment as soon as possible, he felt that with his powerful soul, he should be able to improve upon the technique.

He used the next two days to recover before proceeding with the next step. If he failed and his idea couldn't come to fruition, he could always revert back to establishing a traditional foundation. This time, he withdrew three spirit pills and placed them just within arm's reach. The spirit-stone ore that he hadn't used yet for refining his body was still in a dirty pile next to the formation plate, ready to be used at his leisure.

After breathing in deeply, he began the process once more. This time, however, he did something most people would find unthinkable. First, he used his wood qi and shaped it into a tiny leaf. The process was akin to painting a sigil with his brush. Once the first leaf was formed, he drew five more and joined them with a stem. This process took much longer than when he first made a qi pillar, and the process caused great strain to even his incandescent soul.

Gritting his teeth, he continued and drew another eleven stems each containing five leaves. Finally, he used another wisp of wood qi to form the character for wood, completing what he saw as the most elementary wood sigil. Once the outline was completed, he rapidly drew in the remaining qi from the wood sea, fully materializing a solid sigil pillar.

The completed pillar gave off a far different sensation than the original one he'd condensed. It resonated with an aura of truth and subtle mysteries of the universe. In addition, he felt that the power emanating from it was at least fifty percent stronger than the original pillar he'd condensed.

Elated with his success, he proceeded to the fire pillar, forming it in much the same way as he had when drawing sigils for the Seventy-Two Transformations Technique. This second pillar was formed even more easily than the first, but it still took a considerable amount of mental energy on Cha Ming's part. To make things worse, there was no stopping the process to rest once he started. He could either establish his foundation or fail.

The third sigil he crafted was the earth sigil. This time, however, the pillar was formed with much greater difficulty than before. He felt an intense vibration as he built it, and it threatened to crush the foundation he was trying to build. Gritting his teeth, he continued forming the earth sigil brick by brick until he finally managed to solidify his entire earth sea into a pillar. Only once it was complete did the shaking and instability stop.

Next, he focused on forming the gold pillar. The process was even more difficult than the last. With every blade he formed, it attacked the wood pillar. Meanwhile, it was being strengthened by the earth pillar but melted by the fire pillar. It was a nightmare of unbalanced forces, and this pillar almost collapsed in the process.

Finally, he started the water pillar. Worse than any of the others, he felt four different forces threatening its stability. The power of the water pillar began leaching into the fully formed wood pillar. Meanwhile, additional energy from the water pillar was diverted to attack the fire pillar, and while it received some support from the gold pillar, the earth pillar constantly sapped away at its strength. After building only half of the water pillar, he was forced to swallow one of his precious foundation-establishment pills.

The pill provided a much-needed boost to both his mental strength and to the stability of his pillars. Using this window of stability, he finally managed to complete the fifth and final pillar. Unfortunately, only a third of the pill's medicinal efficacy remained.

I hope it's enough, he thought, mobilizing the white creation qi and forming a lattice similar to what he'd done in establishing the original formation. After successfully establishing the circle, he began forming the star line by line. While the first two lines were successfully drawn, he finally noticed some instabilities in the formation as a whole.

Frowning, he could only continue the process. He didn't want to waste a foundation-establishment pill simply because he didn't yet understand the root of the problem. He slowly proceeded in drawing the black star, paying attention to every minor detail. Before long, he'd finished the third stroke.

Kacha! A cracking sound alerted him that a small piece of one pillar had crumbled. Such a flaw would make it very difficult to complete the process. In fact, his intuition told him it was impossible. He continued to the fourth black stroke, well aware that the process would ultimately end in failure. In the process of failing, he would note where the sigils cracked and how he could improve the process next time.

Kacha! Kacha! Kacha!

Several other fragments fell once he completed the fourth stroke, and he finally noticed a pattern in all the defects. He gulped at the implications but still continued. After the fifth and final stroke, the remaining destruction qi was used, and his qi seas were dry. Yet dozens of fragments fell from the sigils, and finally from the black-and-white framework supporting them.

Still, he decided to proceed with the final step: condensing his foundation. As he concentrated his spiritual force onto the formation, another few dozen cracks formed, and eventually the formation became incapable of supporting itself. It crashed into five mixed pools, and the failure caused Cha Ming to cough up blood as his qi flowed in reverse. He nearly passed out but managed to stabilize his cultivation and ultimately separate the qi into their five distinct qi seas.

So dangerous. However, it was all worth it. Next time, I'll be able to do it. If I fail, I'll just have to fall back to the standard formation.

During the reconstruction of subsequent destructions of his foundation, he discovered multiple flaws in the process. The first flaw was very similar to when he'd originally condensed qi. That is, he needed to keep his five qi pools in balance at all times. Building a pillar upset the balance. Therefore, he would need to build the pillars simultaneously. Forming the creation qi and destruction qi matrices had similar issues.

In addition, he realized that while he could use flawed sigils to complete the Seventy-Two Transformations Technique, his foundation would not allow such unbecoming structures. At the very least, he would need the core pieces of each elemental sigil. A full sigil wasn't necessary, but his most primitive sigils contained far too many imperfections and instabilities. It was precisely these flaws that broke off whenever his foundation crumbled to pieces. He needed to correct them to stand a chance at success.

As a result, his pillars would need to be much more complex than he'd originally expected. He needed to draw extra support from foundation-establishment pills. In other words, to attempt the process, he would need to use the last two remaining pills. He would only have a single chance to succeed.

Sighing, he swept the dust off himself and cleaned the mess in his room. Afterward, he spent a week recovering from his injuries and stabilizing his cultivation base. Finally, he sent his spiritual force into his dantian once more and began the process anew.

This time, he painted the leaves in a livelier fashion and intertwined them with vines. He added more flickering to the fire, and more cracks to the earth. He added crystalline grains to the gold blades and added ripples to the water. All of these might seem unstable, but they were what added life and energy to these sigils. These instabilities in the drawing process would benefit the overall stability of the sigils upon completion.

And so he painted them despite the great mental strain. After completing fifty percent of the characters, he saw them shaking and was forced to swallow one of the foundation-establishment pills. The characters began to strain once again at ninety percent completion, so he ate the final foundation-establishment pill. If he failed this time, he would need to double back and tread on the path of mediocrity.

The last ten percent involved drawing the final strokes of these characters. He painted them with great precision and completed all five characters simultaneously. To his delight, they showed no signs of the instabilities from last time. Instead, they let out joyful and lively hums of approval. They had been built in accordance to Heaven's laws, and he felt that should he choose to do so, he could immediately condense them and achieve a five-pillar foundation. This foundation would be akin to an eight- or nine-pillar foundation due to their special construction.

Still, he chose to strive for perfection. He took a deep breath and simultaneously began drawing the intricate creation framework and the complex destruction framework, moving from ten separate points at the same time. He had effectively divided his mind into ten parts, each accomplishing a task just as strenuous as building an individual elemental sigil. He knew that he could not continue for long—only a fifth of the time he'd originally used to build the five pillars in the first place.

Working quickly, he encountered the first major hurdle in the process: the intersection of the destruction lines. Each line intersected with another once to complete the star, and the interacting energies made it difficult to complete the destruction structure that stabilized the entire formation.

Cha Ming coughed up blood in the process but managed to overcome this hurdle. Pale faced, he continued and brought the black and white lines to mere millimeters away from their connection points. Then he clenched his teeth and let out a roar as he used the last of his mental strength to force them together.

The ten connections sent shockwaves through his body. He bled through his five orifices as a power much greater than he should be allowed to wield at his realm surfaced. He didn't have the mental capacity to continue the process, but to his delight, it didn't matter. He smiled as he passed out, realizing that his foundation was so perfect that it instantly condensed itself and lay down gently where his qi seas used to be.

In these last few moments of lucidity, he felt euphoria as heaven and earth qi rapidly rushed into the gaping void, filling his qi seas all the way up to the top of his foundation pillars with a much thicker qi than had previously been present.

It was foundation qi.

***

Cha Ming woke up a few days later. During his long slumber, the Custodian had thoughtfully tidied up the dirty room and prepared a basin of water. Smelling a fishy scent in the air, Cha Ming disrobed and began washing off a grimy residue from the surface of his skin. These were impurities that were not truly such a thing when he had entered bone forging. They were residues formed by qi from his previous realm, which were completely incompatible with the foundation qi that now resided in his body.

After washing himself, he directed his consciousness to his dantian, where he saw five stable runic pillars surrounded by vibrant oceans of thick qi. They were joined by thick white rivers of creation qi and separated by raging rivers of black qi. Strangely, these ten rivers didn't seem complete. Rather, he felt that there were only three much larger rivers of each color, alternating so rapidly between each state that they superimposed, giving the illusion that there were five rivers. It was similar to a situation he had studied on Earth, where a benzene molecule alternated between several resonant structures.

He inferred from his previous experiences that he could, in theory, ignore two destructive interactions and two creative interactions. Effectively, this meant that he was no longer restricted to using only "allied" elements collectively, such as water, wood, and fire. Instead, he could also mix opposing elements, such as metal, wood, and earth, which contained two destructive interactions. Exact applications would need to be determined, and he would need to evaluate the potential of ignoring creative interactions in depth in the future.

With but a thought, he summoned the five different types of qi as a barrier. This was an ability that was automatically granted to those having achieved foundation establishment. Unfortunately, he knew no advanced skills that could take advantage of his newly upgraded qi. The only thing he could do was make rudimentary improvements to his staff arts and then use his remaining qi to shield himself against incoming attacks. With any luck, he would be able to contend with Wei Chen.

After examining his qi for a moment, he moved to the last item that might provide him an additional boost to his power: the black-and-white orb left behind by Elder Ling. Withdrawing it from the Clear Sky World, he filled it with his newly minted foundation-establishment qi. The ball shattered, slowly revealing three items that carried his teacher's familiar aura.