Chapter 328: Genesis: The Birth of a Cultivator
He wasted no time. "System, add Camilla Dragomir to my harem."
A series of notifications immediately appeared before him.
[Camilla Dragomir’s Favorability toward Host: 65.]
[Target meets the minimum requirement.]
[Successfully added Camilla Dragomir to the Harem.]
The moment the bond formed, Camilla frowned.
It was subtle, but she could feel that something inside her had changed. An indescribable sensation settled over her heart, making her feel strangely uneasy. More surprisingly, the overwhelming hunger for Stan’s blood, a craving that had steadily intensified over a long period of time, abruptly diminished.
"...Weird." She frowned even deeper.
She couldn’t explain it, but she felt... restricted somehow, as though an invisible set of rules had quietly wrapped themselves around her.
Still, nothing else seemed different.
For now, Stan set Camilla’s situation aside.
There was something far more important he had wanted to do for a long time now, the real reason he had come to Antarctica in the first place.
Taking a deep breath, he turned his attention inward.
’System... I have a substantial quantity of Liquid Qi stored in my inventory. Can I use some of it to remove the meridian obstruction you detected earlier? To officially become a cultivator?’
[Confirmed.]
[Does the Host wish to initiate the meridian-clearing procedure?]
’Yes!’
The response was immediate.
A small portion of the Liquid Qi stored within his inventory, perhaps no more than a tenth of a liter, vanished from storage before materializing inside his body. He felt it appear within his lower abdomen.
From there, it began to flow through his meridians with slow, deliberate purpose, moving in a way ordinary blood never could.
The sensation was... strange. The Liquid Qi did not dissolve his flesh the way it had effortlessly melted through the researcher’s equipment.
Whatever principle made Qi so terrifyingly corrosive to ordinary matter seemed completely suppressed within his body.
That was because Qi wasn’t inherently corrosive to everything.
It was only destructive to beings and objects that had yet to comprehend the Dao, or lacked a Dao Mark.
The Dao, quite literally, meant ’the Path.’ The Path to transcendence, the Path to godhood.
Anyone who had stepped onto the road of cultivation had already comprehended a fragment of the Dao, no matter how insignificant. That tiny understanding left behind a Dao Mark upon their existence, allowing them to safely interact with things that also bore the Dao’s imprint.
Qi was one such thing. As a result, rather than destroying him, the Liquid Qi naturally flowed through the pathways that had always been meant to contain it.
Slowly, it traveled upward until it reached the center of his chest.
There, along his primary meridian, it encountered the obstruction the System had detected.
The clearing process was mercifully gentle. There was no unbearable agony. No violent explosion of energy. No dramatic shattering of invisible chains.
The Liquid Qi simply dissolved the blockage as effortlessly as water dissolved salt.
Over the span of barely ten seconds, the obstruction melted away completely. The pathway opened.
For the first time since obtaining the System... His meridians were complete.
For the first time in his life, his body could draw ambient Qi from the world around him.
Everything changed. It was as though he had spent his entire life blind, only to suddenly open his eyes.
He could feel it. The countless streams of Qi flowing through the air.
The lingering spiritual essence permeating the cave.
Even though the Spirit Pool had vanished, the cave still contained an astonishing concentration of ambient Qi, far denser than anywhere else he had ever encountered.
And for the first time... He could truly sense it.
Taking a deep breath, Stan instinctively drew in the Qi surrounding him.
The moment the energy entered his body, an indescribable sense of exhilaration washed over him.
’So this is what cultivation feels like... It’s intoxicating.’
The sensation made him wonder what it would be like in a place where Qi was almost nonexistent. The Introduction to Earth had described Earth’s environment as being nearly devoid of spiritual energy. Compared to this cave, it would probably feel like trying to breathe through a blocked nose.
Here, however, he could clearly sense the lingering Qi left behind by the vanished Spirit Pool.
Even though the treasure itself had disappeared, traces of its spiritual essence still permeated the cave, slowly leaking into the surrounding glacier.
He absorbed as much of it as he could.
Then he noticed Camilla. She, too, was cultivating.
The ambient Qi rushed toward her with astonishing speed, spiraling around her body like a massive vortex before disappearing into her meridians.
Stan’s eyes widened. At the rate she was absorbing it, the remaining Qi inside the cave would probably be completely exhausted within an hour or two.
’Royal Blood vampires are monsters...’ Just then, another notification appeared before him.
[Meridian clearing complete.]
[Host is now officially classified as a cultivator.]
[Current Realm: Genesis Realm, Initial Stage.]
Stan slowly let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He was finally... A cultivator.
Beside him, Camilla frowned.
Her crimson eyes fixed themselves on him, carefully examining the aura now radiating from his body with the practiced instincts of a Royal Blood.
’Impossible... A moment ago, he didn’t possess the slightest trace of Qi. Now... He’s emitting the aura of an Initial Stage Genesis Realm cultivator.’
’What in the world is he...?’
’How did he?’
She had barely formed the thought when Stan suddenly vanished. Not into the mysterious treasure she believed he possessed, as one would think...
He simply... Disappeared.
The sensation was similar to the last time he had vanished when the werewolf attempted to sever his spine.
Yet this time, it felt fundamentally different. Stan hadn’t activated nor willed anything.
He felt as though an invisible hand had suddenly seized him before violently pulling him sideways through space itself.
The icy cave blurred into streaks of distorted light. Reality twisted around him. He had no time to react. No time to resist. No time even to comprehend what was happening. It happened too fast...
He was first blinded by darkness. Then all he could see was blinding white. Then... The world reassembled itself.
An instant later, he found himself standing somewhere entirely unfamiliar.
Back inside the cave, Camilla stared at the empty space where he had stood only moments earlier.
Her crimson eyes narrowed. Then, to her own surprise, she smiled.
A faint, amused smile tugged at the corners of her lips as she gently shook her head. ’Did he think I would kill him now?’
’That life-saving treasure again...’
’So he can use it multiple times.’
She let out a quiet chuckle. "How curious."
"Why is someone who’s supposedly just a mortal so much more intriguing than the true humans I’ve met?"
Naturally, she had mistaken his disappearance for another use of that mysterious treasure.
There was no conceivable way for her to know that Stan hadn’t entered any storage space this time.
Nor could she know that he had been forcibly teleported, dragged away by an external force he neither understood nor controlled.
Her gaze drifted toward the empty cavity where the Spirit Pool had once rested.
She sighed softly.
"How long can you hide inside that treasure of yours?" she murmured, more to herself than anyone else.
"I’ll wait."
"Whenever you decide to come out... I’ll still be here."
A dangerous glint flashed through her crimson eyes.
"If I truly want you..."
"...there’s nowhere you can hide from me."
With graceful elegance, she sat upon a protruding ledge of ice overlooking the empty basin.
She folded her hands neatly in her lap and settled in. She had all the time in the world. He, she assumed, did not.
Then, without warning, an embarrassing thought surfaced in her mind.
’...Wait. Why am I waiting for him?’
She blinked. For the first time in centuries, confusion overtook her.
An instant later, a faint blush quietly spread across her flawless cheeks.
She froze. "...Huh?"