Dawn crept through the windows of Lan's chambers like a thief would, and it covered the room in pale gold.
He hadn't slept. Truthfully, he didn't need to sleep. Especially since every breath now carried more power than a week's rest ever could.
The floor around him had turned slick with sweat and melted frost—evidence of the night's work. His body hissed with something new, something alive, as though his veins had been filled with liquid lightning.
But it wasn't enough.
Not remotely.
Lan shifted into the lotus position, his spine straight as a blade. Time for the next step.
Qi Absorption
The palace was a terrible place to cultivate.
No spirit stones. No ley lines. Just the stink of politics and perfume clinging to everything. But Xie Wuchen had once meditated in a pit of rotting corpses during the Third Demon War—this was nothing.
Lan closed his eyes and began the Spirit Breath.
Inhale—four heartbeats.
Hold—two.
Exhale—seven.
Again.
And again.
At first, nothing happened. The air in Solaris was thin with spiritual energy, diluted by centuries of magical reliance on mana cores. But Lan was still patient. Ruthlessly so.
Then—
A flicker.
A wisp of something more than air entering his lungs.
He seized it.
> Spiritual Qi detected.
>> Qi Absorption process initiated.
With the precision it required, Lan guided that wisp of qi down through his meridians, purifying it as it went. The process was agonizingly slow—like filtering an ocean through a pinhole—but he didn't rush. He was well aware the dangers of doing that.
One corrupted strand of qi now could cripple him later.
By midday, his dantian held barely a thimbleful of energy.
>> Qi stored in dantian: 3% capacity.
>> Core stabilization required to proceed to Foundation Phase.
>> Progress marked: Beginner of the Path.
It was a start.
Next, was the Dantian's Foundation
Lan pressed a hand to his abdomen, feeling the fragile glow of gathered qi. This was the dangerous part.
Building a foundation wasn't about brute force—it was about balance. Pour too much in too fast, and the dantian would rupture like an overfilled waterskin. Use impure qi, and the foundation would crack under its own weight.
But Lan had advantages:
1. Xie Wuchen's Memories: A thousand lifetimes of trial and error to draw from.
2. Solaris Bloodline: Even dormant, his royal heritage resonated with white qi—the purest kind for forging foundations.
He began cycling the gathered energy in tight, controlled spirals—compressing, refining, tempering it like a blacksmith folding steel.
The pain was exquisite.
Every rotation sent whitehot needles shooting through his core. His muscles trembled. His vision blurred.
Every completed cycle made the qi denser. Brighter. More.
By nightfall, the thimble had become a cup.
By midnight, a bowl.
And then—
Resonance.
His dantian shuddered, the gathered qi crystallizing into something solid at its center—a tiny, perfect sphere of condensed power.
It was the First Foundation.
>> Qi Condensation Stage I achieved.
>> Foundation successfully formed: Integrity rating—High.
>> Vital status: Stable. Internal meridians reinforced.
Lan's eyes flew open.
His reflection in the window was haggard, bloody, grinning.
The candle had burned to its stump when Lan finally uncurled his stiff fingers. Three days.
Three days of cycling qi through raw meridians, of rebuilding what sixteen years of neglect had broken. His mouth tasted of copper and ash. The once-fine silk of his robes clung to him like an obsessed lover, stiff with dried sweat and flecks of blood from where his teeth had torn his lips during the worst tremors.
Not enough.
The thought burned brighter than the fatigue. His dantian now held a swirling pool of qi—enough to mark his official entry into the Qi Condensation stage.
Any other cultivator would be celebrating. If he were a prince in his last world, he would be summoning tutors, selecting spirit stones from the royal vaults, choosing a safe and respectable path.
Lan dragged himself to the window, letting the predawn chill bite at his face. The first sliver of sun bled across the capital's spires, drowning the world in colors of fire and gold.
Beautiful. Fragile.
What wasn't?
His memories coiled in his mind—a thousand forbidden techniques, a hundred bloody paths to power. But one stood apart from the rest:
The Sutra of the Severed Heaven.
A cultivation method that didn't just bend the natural order—it shattered it. A path that demanded everything and promised only one truth: absolute freedom from all chains, even those called divine law.
Lan's fingers twitched at his sides. He could almost feel the sutra's weight, its terrible potential. But Xie Wuchen's memories also carried warnings:
"To walk this path is to wage war against existence itself. The first step alone has broken saints."
As the words bounced of the walls, Lan knelt on the floor. Not in prayer—he'd stopped begging the heavens long ago—but in preparation.
The first character of the Sutra burned in his mind's eye:
Sever.
His fingers traced the shape in the air, leaving faint trails of black qi that hissed against reality. The moment the final stroke connected, agony ripped through him—ten thousand needles of ice and fire stabbing into every meridian at once.
>> Sutra of the Severed Heaven: First Seal broken.
>> Initiating system lockdown: Body adaptation sequence triggered.
>> Caution: Host survival threshold exceeded. Proceeding...
Lan's back arched. His vision whited out. Somewhere distant, something shattered—glass or bone, he couldn't tell.
The sutra was doing more than resisting him.
It was a test.
And Lan—
He grinned through bloodied teeth as the darkness swallowed him.