He’d known that this moment would arrive at some point and prepared for it. Natural treasures and beast cores spilled from a storage ring and onto the ground. There were cores from lightning cranes, wind serpents, and some kind of strange shadow beast he’d never been able to identify. There were wood, fire, and earth-attributed natural treasures that he’d picked up on this trip through the wilds. He’d had similar, although dramatically less potent versions of the same cores and treasures before he’d ventured into the wilds. It just seemed foolish to pass up the opportunity to maximize the potential benefits of the new layer to his core.

There were lesser treasures and cores alignment to qi types he didn’t regularly cultivate, but that he’d still seen signs of lurking around the edges of his techniques. There was winter ivy for ice qi. He’d found himself relying on other techniques to make ice, but he’d sensed the ice qi inside of him. There was a core from a stormhawk. He’d been hovering around the edges of making storms of his own for ages. Each core and treasure corresponded to something he was already using other techniques to do or things that he thought were realistic evolutions of things he was doing. After getting those treasures out, he had to focus. While the process was familiar to him, he was theoretically introducing new elements. That could mean instabilities in the process he lacked the knowledge or experience to predict.

Mostly, though, he needed to bend his mind and will toward drawing all the different kinds of qi he needed to mix with that divine qi to form the new layer of the core. Plus, there was the compression required. He’d been warned that each successive layer would likely require more effort. As with alchemy, Sen didn’t try to actively control the process. He knew what he wanted and needed. He trusted his instincts to guide the details. Even as he focused on compressing the gathered qi, he felt other things happening. He felt the pool of liquid qi in his dantian drain away to be added to the layer. He felt himself dragging qi into his body and dantian from the cores and natural treasures. He felt the subtle manipulation of all those disparate types of qi being fused, melded, and woven together in ways he could never have accomplished with a conscious effort.

The new layer grew over the old and, yet, it also grew into the previous layer, as though the process had liquefied the old surface of his core to allow for a better, more stable layer to form after the process was completed. He got lost in the process, most of his mental energies devoted to compressing that qi down into something ever-denser and more compact. Not simply a layer, but a shield that would protect the nascent soul growing inside his core from the dire tribulation that awaited him at the transition between core formation and the nascent soul stage. A tribulation that killed a dreadfully large percentage of the people who attempted to break through between those stages. A very legitimate fear of annihilation had stopped many cultivators cold at the peak of core cultivation. Sen just wished that he had that option. He was more certain than ever that if he tried to just stop advancing, the world itself would turn on him and force the issue.

There was a momentary burst of relief as Sen felt the fresh and substantially thicker layer on his core solidify. That relief was immediately undercut by the heavenly qi that just kept pouring into him. For one terrifying second, he was completely at a loss. He’d formed his core. There was nothing left to do. He imagined drowning in that river of qi before determination rose up to displace the animal fear that was threatening to unmake him. The new layer might be complete, but it wasn’t as though he was nothing but a core. He seized control of some of that qi and used it to reinforce the spiral of divine qi that orbited his dantian. What had always looked relatively slender in his mind’s eye grew thicker and then thicker still.

If it had been an object in the physical world, what he did next might not have worked. Inside him as it was, he was able to exert the same kind of pressure on that helix as he had on his core. He compressed the qi of the spiral, making it denser and, he knew through some kind of intuition, more efficient. That helix of divine qi started to glow. With heavenly qi so abundant, he repeated the process and then repeated it again. The helix was so bright that it was almost difficult for him to look at it with his mind’s eye. Yet, he could also tell there was a problem. That spiral of divine qi was too potent. He could feel the pressure from it unraveling the other helix, that bizarre multicolored helix he’d never really come to understand. What he did understand was that those helixes worked in tandem now. The loss of one would be bad for him in some fundamental way.

He desperately started dumping cores and natural treasures out of his storage rings until he was almost the image of a greedy dragon lounging among his treasures. He siphoned off whatever kind of qi felt right, weaving them together and into the second helix, his conscious mind only nominally in control as something deeper, something more profound, a part of him that Sen rarely interacted with directly took a hand in the process. It’s my soul, Sen realized. That revelation was so jarring that it very nearly disrupted everything. There was a lurching sensation inside of Sen as the helixes threatened some kind of terrible mutual destruction. He knew that if that happened, he wouldn’t survive it. Slowly, so slowly that Sen’s heart was racing in panic, the process stabilized again. He kept weaving more and more threads into that second helix until it reached a point where something needed to happen.

Taking a chance, Sen did with the second helix what he’d done with the first and compressed it. It took so much effort that beads of bloody sweat broke out on Sen’s forehead. At what felt like a glacial pace, the second spiral condensed and transformed. Rather than countless threads of individual qi, it was a single strand of that multicolored qi. Sen would have cried out in joy at his success if he hadn’t known that he’d have to keep doing that until the helixes balanced each other out. Meanwhile, that divine qi had just kept pouring into him. He took a brief moment to direct some of it into his core and his dantian. Then, he started cycling it out into his channels and letting it bleed into his body. He’d already done this once, so he doubted that he’d be doing himself any harm by giving his body a second dose. Once he got that process started, he could relegate it to the back of his mind. There was so much heavenly qi that the process would sustain itself with only the barest direction from him.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He returned to the second helix. He pushed away his mental exhaustion and the screaming agony from his body as the heavenly qi did something that was reforging his organs, bones, tissues, and even something in his blood. He really wanted to go and investigate that, but there simply wasn’t time. The helixes weren’t balanced, yet. They’d been stable enough to let him take that quick break to make sure he didn’t die, but that was it. He kept dragging in qi from the beast cores around him, the natural treasures, and the environment. He took a hint from making his core and wove a new layer on top of the multicolored spiral. That gave him a brief respite from exerting constant monumental pressure. A respite that vanished all too soon. He’d hoped that what he’d just done would be enough, but the densities weren’t right yet. He had to do another layer, and then another. Some part of him said there was something important about the variance, but he’d have to worry about that later. The helixes finally settled into a state of equilibrium.

He was certain, absolutely sure, that when he got that far, the heavenly qi would stop. It didn’t. Bone-deep fear started taking root inside of Sen. He’d done everything he could think to do. He couldn’t direct any more heavenly qi into his body. It was still trying to process what he was already feeding it. He’d added a layer to his core. He’d remade those odd helixes. There was nothing left, but the qi kept coming. He wildly scanned the cores around him and started filling any that were empty. Then he searched his storage rings for any others that were empty and filled those. It was barely enough to give him a moment of relief. Everything inside of him felt like it was being scorched by the sun. Every piece of his body, his dantian, and even his usually shadowy core were blazing with light. He didn’t understand. Why were the heavens doing this? If they meant him to die, there were easier ways than burning him up with heavenly qi. And they could burn him up that way.

Heavenly qi was a unique, powerful blessing, but it usually came in small doses. A fraction of what had been shoved inside of him was enough to trigger advancements and offer insights into the nature of existence. He felt like a fleshy sack that had been overstuffed and some negligent clerk was trying to cram more inside of him. If he was going to survive what was increasingly feeling like some kind of punishment or bizarre cultivator nightmare, he had to act. He needed to find something to do with all of that qi. It was anathema to everything cultivators believed, but he could expel it. Just dump it into the environment. He had no idea what that would do to the plants, animals, and spirit beasts in the area, but he was swiftly approaching the point of not caring at all about those kinds of things. Other cultivators would lose their minds at just discarding all of that qi, but other cultivators didn’t risk dying from a so-called blessing.

Resolved to do the unthinkable, Sen tried to push the divine qi out of his body. He’d barely even started before something from outside stopped him. It was an immutable force. A will the likes of which he’d never felt that simply decided that he would not discard this gift from the heavens. Sen had thought that the pain in his body earlier had been severe, but that was a sip of cool fruit juice compared to the incandescent torture he was going through now. He couldn’t tell if he was screaming or not. He thought he must be, but his mind had retreated from all of it in some act of sanity preservation. He struggled to find a solution, but anything he came up with simply wouldn’t use enough of the heavenly qi to matter. Meanwhile, he could sense his body starting to unravel. I’ve got seconds left before this really does just kill me, he thought with an odd level of calm.

Maybe the heavens had expected him to find a solution and he’d just failed. It wasn’t like people overcame every challenge the heavens sent their way. He had done everything he could think to do and come up short. Accepting that truth let him move past the fear and panic. He supposed he could stop worrying about some master manipulator from beyond the stars waiting for him after ascension. That was liberating, even if it did come mere moments from death. As Sen braced himself for the final moment, he felt something odd. Something inside of him, something he couldn’t see or access directly, shifted a little. There was a tremendous crack that reverberated inside his being, and it was like a gate had opened to somewhere. All of that excess divine qi started draining away from him. No, he thought, not away from me. It’s draining away from my body and my core. But where is it going?

He tried to follow the path of the qi to whatever hole had opened upside of him, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t stopped like he had been when he tried to expel the qi. Nothing intervened to prevent him from doing it. He just didn’t have the mental strength left to do it. He’d taxed his mind to its limits and then taxed it some more. Now, the price was due. He was conscious. He was aware. That was as far as it went. He had to satisfy himself with the reality that the qi was going somewhere and that somewhere wasn’t causing him pain. He could feel questions or things that might become questions later swirling around somewhere below his conscious mind. There was, as usual, too much happening that he didn’t understand. But as all that qi was dragged away to somewhere else, all he could really think about was that he wasn’t going to die.

A breath Sen hadn’t realized he was holding exploded from his lips as the crushing pressure of heavenly qi finally relented. The last of the heavenly qi was pulled away to its mysterious new home. Wherever that was. Sen’s head lolled to one side and he lifted a trembling hand to wipe away the wetness on his face. He blinked at the sight of his hand and then shook it off. He’d deal with that later. He wiped his face and wasn’t surprised to see the hand came away bloody. This hadn’t been an easy advancement. Some of the physical misery he was still in leaked through to his conscious mind and Sen groaned.

“The heavens are definitely mocking me.”