Chapter 36 - 34

It was 9 in the evening.

Inside the inner chambers of the main palace where a guest room could be found. Zero was in a crossed legs sitting position on his bed as he felt the surrounding qi energy.

He was practicing his cultivation as he was still in the Profound realm High stage, even though he was proficient in manipulating the qi energy by borrowing from the world energy on his surroundings, still it was a minuscule achievement because he had no supply of energy of his own. His qi whirlpool was not yet dense to supply the body in order to replenish his blood, bones and muscles.

The matter was, he had been tested at the Palace Pillars which measured a cultivators qi control but to his dismay, he was an average martial practitioner with a 132 qi control. Usually a genius would be around 200 and up while an average was 120 to 200. But he was not troubled by this as he could just practice his qi control and advance to the next cultivation level and it's alright to be average than nothing.

Zero concentrated as to feel the world energy that was present and slowly he tried it to convert into his qi energy, and filled his qi whirlpool.

It was not enough as he consumed too much time and he just converted a small amount of qi energy, his qi whirlpool was not even half full nor one-fourth full.

'Too slow.'

'Need to breakthrough to the next realm.'

The young man was so focused on his cultivation that he didn't notice that his body was smoking as his skin was turning red. This was a sign of an elemental mage.

An elemental mage that specialized in fire manipulation.

There was a renowned magic theorist who studied about the four elements of magic, the water, the earth, the air, and the fire. The rarest of them all was the fire element as it was hard to manipulate because if you couldn't control it well, then it might consumed you.

The magic theorist once said that, mages were rare but fire elemental mages were rarer.

Zero was so immersed of converting the world energy into his qi energy as he filled the vast qi whirlpool with it. Slowly by slowly, time ticked by and when he opened his eyes, he was in a black space full of abundant qi energy.

'Where am I?'

'Was this his inner consciousness?'

He looked around as five color spectrum was seen floating by the surroundings. It was the four elements but there was an odd silver light was floating, too.

And as if it was moving into one direction. He tried to follow it but in the end of the silver light was a barrier blocking him from moving forward, the silver light just continued to flow through it that was like it didn't had any difficulty as it passed the barrier.

There's something telling him that he needed to go where the silver light was heading of. As if a voice was whispering on his ears, speaking to him in a sorrowful manner.

'Help me! I need to get out!'

'Help!'

"Who are you?!" Zero asked as he looked around, finding the voice.

'Help!'

It ignored his question as it continued to plea for help. It did not matter, though, as the young man decided to break the barrier.

He smashed it using his fist but the barrier did not budge as his fist recoiled from the on-slaught. He proceeded to use his qi energy to penetrate the barrier but it did not even get a crack from it.

The crying voice at that moment suddenly went silent from the display of power by Zero, as it looked at him like he was crazy.

'Truly, did this person perhaps put his brain in a rabbit hole as he didn't know how to open a simple locked door?' The voice helplessly thought as it went quiet, not willing to see this invidual on doing foolish things. Like right now.

"Maybe, it needs a verbal password?"

'You just need a key, young man!' The voice wanted to shout at him but it had a limit to what it was supposed to say. It was only permitted to cry for help and nothing more. It couldn't even talk to the young man.

"Abracadabra open barrier!"

"Magic door open up!"

"May the force be with you! Alakazam!"

Zero finally stopped doing drastic methods as he thought for something else.

The voice gave up of looking for help from this man. Its poor host should need to wait for a bit.

'Maybe some kind of mechanism needed here to open this.'

The young man decided to ignore the barrier as it doesn't affect him from continuing his cultivation.

He examined first the black space for him to understand why was he here and how did he got here.

The energies were floating everywhere freely without any problem. Like the four elements co-existed with each other. It was believed that the four elements repel each other, when fire and water mixed, one would gave way for the other so fire would be put out by water as they were both incompatible. The same as the air and earth, air couldn't pass through the solid form of the earth so the air would avoid it.

The odd one was the silver light which it doesn't only co-existed with the four elements but it served as a medium in order for the elements to not repel each other.

A very mysterious element.

Zero went back from channeling his qi energy throughout his body as he sat down within the black space. Despite, not knowing how did he got here but the black space was helpful as it made his qi conversion faster. The qi whirlpool that he was trying to fill was now almost full to the brim.

'Might be because of the abundant energy here.'

He tried absorbing the four floating energies as it easily went in his body. Confirming that he had now a firm foundation for his body, he opened his eyes to observed the surroundings once again.

The four energies were still abundant but he could see that it was less than the earlier before he absorbed them.

Looking at the silver light, it did not budge or the energy of it wasn't even lessen. Zero closed his eyes and started to absorbed the silver light but it was rejecting his control to it.

'Maybe he was lacking of cultivation?'

As he pondered, he opened his eyes to see if he could figure it out but the scene that appeared infront of him was his room.

Now, he understood that these four elements was not rare in a normal cultivator's perspective but in a mage' perspective it was freely seen.

He observed his qi whirlpool and saw that it was now full to the brim so he started replenishing his blood, bones and muscles after successfully expelling out the defects from his body due to his coma, he felt that he broke through the Profound realm and now he was at the Median realm Nascent stage, unexpectedly.

In Median realm, a martial practitioner needed to stabilized the qi fluctuation inside his body in order to make another qi whirlpool and practice his mental strength because Median realm was more of stabilization of your qi control after building your foundation.

Knowing that he advanced to the next culivation level because of that mysterious black space, he wanted to conjure it up again but to no avail, he was still in the same spot.

He sighed, perceiving that it was hopeless, he gave up and started to try to summon a fire using his fire basic spell.

The Xiu Royal family did not know that he was a mage as he hide it when he discovered, even though they saved him. He still had no trust to them.

Having trust-issues was another matter but being vigilant made the young man instinctual to it.

A ball of fire appeared from his hand as he smiled from succeeding at one try.

'Finally! It's not a spark.'

---

A deity who had a smirk on his face as he looked on the light reflecting water on his own haven while through it a young man with raven black hair with silver white fringes reflected on the water, "Truly interesting." He whispered.

He opened the window of his hut, as he looked out to the field of sunflowers, there laid upon a young woman who had a long silver white hair, flowing around her as she was sleeping, peacefully, in the middle of the field.

The deity of Prevalent Tragedy smiled.

"Sleep, my dear princess and wait for your knight in shinning armour to save you."