Second Time

Chapter 2 - Spirit World

Typically, martial artists would begin their life of training by opening their Eight Extraordinary Meridians. In the orthodox martial path, every human started at the Principle Realm First Stage. Each opened meridian advanced them forward by one stage.

By opening their meridians in such a way, the cultivator could draw in qi through them directly, as well as expel the impure qi out of them. It highly simplified the process on top of drastically increasing the speed at which they could gather qi. Every human cultivator in the world opened their meridians aside from Shao Yue, to the point where techniques to cultivate without open meridians had long been lost, if they even existed in the first place.

Shao Yue did it the hard way. She drew in qi with her breath and pores and refined it from there. If she opened her meridians, she'd be at least twice as fast at refining qi, but even without, she couldn't be compared to others around her age or cultivation thanks to her work ethic.

Sadly, she couldn't enter a secluded retreat. She had to eat, do chores, and play around like a normal child. The only time she could cultivate was overnight, when people expected her to be asleep. At least with her abilities, meditation could replace sleep, giving her around eight hours of cultivation per day.

In the Qi Refinement Realm, as the name implied, one had to refine qi to form their cultivation base. It was the most basic of all basics, something all cultivators would continue to do for their entire lives.

Despite the simplicity, Shao Yue didn't dare slack off. The foundation was the most important thing, the thing everything else would build off of. If it was shaky, unstable, or rushed, everything would suffer. She took her time and purified every drop of qi as much as possible before storing it into her dantian, the body's qi reservoir located just below the belly button.

Night after night, she sat cross-legged on her bed, circulating qi. Her muscles and joints screamed at her at first, but gradually grew used to it.

The pain didn't distract her in the least. It was far less than the pain of the river of time.

Twenty months flew by.

It wasn't that nothing happened in that time, but she simply didn't care about anything that did happen. Childhood struggles, town bullies, her family's issues, nothing mattered when compared to her cultivation. In a hundred years, they'd all be long gone while she continued seeking new heights.

Shao Yue informed her parents that she wasn't feeling well and went to bed a few hours early.

She was at the peak of the Qi Refinement Realm, ready to break through to the next. When she did, her soul would be transferred into the Spirit World. She didn't know how long she'd stay there, so she bought the extra time just in case.

She sat on her bed and started refining qi, as usual. She felt the sensation of countless ropes wrapped around her body. She remained calm and gently pushed against the world's bindings. Bit by bit, they loosened, then snapped with a rush of air, tossing her hair around.

Shao Yue felt as if she were floating. She opened her eyes and found herself in an expansive field. Behind her, a thick forest grew. Ahead, impossibly tall mountains jutted against the sky. A distant ocean sat off to the left, while the rolling dunes of a desert greeted her to the right. In the sky above, directly in the center, the sun sat unmoving, looking down on everything.

Shao Yue was stunned temporarily. The Spirit World she remembered wasn't anything like her current view. It had been a world of dense fog where she could barely see three meters in front of herself. Now, she could tell it was a miniature world about fifty kilometers in diameter. Her divine sense could easily cover the entire area.