Cultivating in Reverse: My Sign-In System Wants Me Dead

The enormous pupil shifted. Its gaze settled directly on Su Bai.

For an instant, the dark expanse seemed to become still.

Su Bai felt an indescribable pressure descend upon him.

It was not like the pressure of the Heavenly Dao.

There was no familiar law within it.

The pressure simply existed, vast enough that Su Bai felt as though his entire consciousness had been placed beneath something too enormous to comprehend.

His spiritual sense contracted violently.

Even his thoughts began slowing.

The eye continued staring at him.

Su Bai could not tell whether it was curious, hostile, or merely trying to understand why something unfamiliar had suddenly appeared at the end of a connection that should have belonged to one of its own.

Whatever the reason, the pressure continued increasing.

For the first time, Su Bai felt his consciousness begin to strain beneath the pressure.

Before that strain could deepen enough to threaten even his thoughts, something inside him reacted.

The remaining connection trembled.

Reversal spread through it.

At the same time, Su Bai’s abnormal foundation pulled at the foreign spirituality that had entered his body with the Root Organ.

The connection began to distort, and the dark expanse around Su Bai wavered with it.

The enormous pupil narrowed.

A final wave of pressure descended upon him just as the connection gave way.

The darkness disappeared, and Su Bai found himself back at the altar with his eyes already open.

His breathing came out far rougher than he expected, and for several moments he remained crouched beside the dead flesh mass while his consciousness adjusted to the sudden return.

The ancient weapons immediately gathered closer.

The saber’s earlier amusement had disappeared.

"What happened?"

The hammer released a low vibration.

"Your spirit almost vanished."

Even the bow had moved closer than usual.

Su Bai raised one hand.

"I’m fine."

His voice sounded slightly hoarse.

He took several slower breaths until the pressure lingering inside his consciousness finally faded.

The artifact spirits did not move away immediately.

Su Bai could understand why.

From their perspective, he had swallowed the last piece of the Root Organ, frozen in place, and nearly stopped responding.

That probably looked concerning even by his standards.

The remaining sealed sources had noticed as well.

Their flesh shifted beneath the ancient restraints.

One of them released a low, layered laugh.

"YOU SAW IT."

Another voice followed.

"YOU TOUCHED THE ORIGIN."

"NOW YOU UNDERSTAND."

Their confidence began creeping back into their voices.

Perhaps they believed Su Bai had finally experienced something terrifying enough to understand why the Immortals had failed.

Perhaps they expected him to realize that whatever existed beyond the roots was not something a young cultivator should ever provoke.

Su Bai remained silent while his breathing gradually steadied.

The sealed sources continued.

"YOUR END HAS ALREADY—"

The voice cut off as an uneasy silence spread across the altar.

The flesh masses shifted beneath their restraints, and only then did the significance of what had happened seem to settle over them.

Su Bai was still alive. The connection had reached their Origin, whatever existed there had clearly noticed him, and yet he had still returned to the altar.

That realization seemed to unsettle them far more than his silence.

Their earlier certainty disappeared almost as quickly as it had returned.

For thousands of years, their Origin had represented the one thing beyond doubt.

As long as the connection remained, they would return.

Yet one of their roots had just been completely consumed, the connection had somehow reached Su Bai, and the young cultivator was still sitting beside the corpse as though he merely needed a moment to catch his breath.

None of them seemed eager to continue mocking him.

Su Bai finally straightened.

His attention immediately turned inward.

The Root Organ had done far more than nourish his body.

He had felt that much while eating it, but the connection to the dark expanse had interrupted him before he could properly examine the changes.

Now that everything had settled, Su Bai finally looked.

His first attention went toward the Dao-Devouring Blank Stele.

The spirituality carried within the Root Organ had entered him along with everything else.

Normally, foreign spiritual remnants were exactly the kind of thing the Stele would devour and process.

This time, however, something unusual had happened.

The Stele had absorbed the remaining spiritual traces, but no new inheritance appeared.

No cultivation scripture formed and there was no new Dao comprehension to study.

Su Bai examined the surface for several breaths before understanding why.

The sealed source had never followed the Heavenly Dao in the first place.

Whatever path these creatures used to exist, reproduce, and strengthen themselves was fundamentally different from cultivation.

There was nothing for the Stele to translate into a normal method.

That did not mean the spirituality had been worthless.

Far from it.

What remained inside those spiritual traces was something much stranger.

The connection.

Su Bai’s expression became thoughtful.

When he swallowed the final portion of the Root Organ, he had not physically traveled anywhere.

His body had remained beside the altar.

What had been pulled away was his perception.

For a brief instant, the Root Organ’s connection had lost its original endpoint.

The sealed source was dead.

The Root Organ was inside Su Bai.

That left only one possible destination for whatever still remained of the link.

Him.

For that single moment, Su Bai had become the new endpoint of the connection to the Origin.

That was why he had seen the dark expanse.

That was why the enormous eye had been able to notice him.

Fortunately, the connection had not remained intact for long.

Reversal had begun overturning the foreign influence almost immediately, while the rest of Su Bai’s cultivation foundation had instinctively absorbed whatever could be made compatible with him.

The original connection collapsed. But not everything disappeared with it.

Su Bai’s attention moved deeper into his body.

His expression changed.

The nine Gateway Qi Reservoirs were trembling.

Su Bai focused more carefully.

These nine structures had once been his Major Meridian Gateways.

After the Nine-Severing Frost Pills transformed his body, they had expanded into miniature reservoirs capable of holding enormous amounts of Qi.

Later, the Myriad-Path Meridian Web had connected them to an increasingly complicated network of circulation routes.

Even so, they had always remained reservoirs.

They could receive Qi, store it, and release it back into his circulation.

But they were still dependent upon the rest of his cultivation foundation.

They were not true Dantians.

Su Bai’s spiritual sense entered the first reservoir.

He immediately noticed what had changed.

There was now something deeper beneath the internal space.

An invisible sense of stability ran through it.

The reservoir no longer felt like a structure that merely happened to hold Qi. There was now a deeper sense of stability within it, as though its existence had finally gained something solid to rest upon.

Su Bai’s eyes widened as he swept his spiritual sense through the remaining reservoirs.

The same change was present in every one of them, and by the time he finished examining all nine, his expression had become increasingly strange.

The Root Organ’s connection had been overturned inside him.

Originally, the Root remained stable because its existence was anchored to something beyond itself.

Its Origin.

Even complete bodily destruction could not permanently erase it while that deeper connection remained intact.

Su Bai’s Reversal had not preserved the foreign connection itself.

Instead, it had changed the principle behind it.

The nine Gateway Qi Reservoirs were not reaching toward some distant alien Origin.

They were anchoring themselves inward.

To Su Bai.

More precisely, each one was beginning to anchor itself to his entire cultivation foundation.

Everything was becoming part of the same foundation.

Su Bai remained motionless.

A ridiculous possibility appeared in his mind.

He examined the nine reservoirs again.

Their internal spaces were already developed. Their circulation routes were already connected. They could already receive and release enormous quantities of Qi.

The only thing they had always lacked was the ability to exist as independent cultivation centers.

A true Dantian did more than hold Qi. It possessed its own stable foundation. It could regulate and support cultivation from within itself.

The Gateway Qi Reservoirs had never reached that point...

...until now.

Su Bai’s breathing slowed again, although this time it had nothing to do with the enormous eye.

’Don’t tell me...’

He focused on the first reservoir.

The anchoring sensation was still incomplete. The structure had not become a Dantian yet. But the direction of the transformation was unmistakable.

Su Bai swept his attention through the remaining reservoirs and found the same change taking place in every one of them.

The Root Organ had given them something they had never possessed before.

A stable internal anchor of their own.

If that transformation continued...

His nine Gateway Qi Reservoirs might truly become nine additional Dantians.

Su Bai sat there for several breaths without moving.

Even he found the thought unreasonable.

One Dantian was enough for every cultivator he had ever known.

His Infinite Dantian was already abnormal enough.

Now his body seemed to be considering adding nine more.

Su Bai rubbed his forehead.

’At this point, I should probably stop asking why.’

The strange stability inside the nine reservoirs continued strengthening.

However, it soon slowed.

Su Bai immediately noticed the problem.

There was not enough.

The anchoring principle contained in one Root Organ had changed all nine reservoirs, but none of them had completed the transformation.

Their foundations had begun forming.

They simply lacked enough of that strange principle to finish anchoring themselves.

Su Bai slowly opened his eyes.

His gaze moved past the artifact spirits.

Across the altar, the remaining sealed sources were still pinned beneath their ancient weapons.

Several of them shifted when his eyes landed on them.

Su Bai’s expression gradually changed.

There was no urgency in it.

That somehow made the remaining flesh masses more uneasy.

The first Root Organ had almost transformed nine Qi reservoirs into something that should not exist inside one cultivator.

There were still more Root Organs waiting beneath the altar.

A very familiar hunger returned to Su Bai’s eyes.

The flesh masses noticed.

One of them trembled.

Another tightened itself around the ancient weapon pinning it down, as though several thousand years of failed resistance might suddenly become useful.

A third remained completely still.

Su Bai stood.

No one spoke.

He took one step toward the nearest sealed source.

The flesh mass shuddered.

A faint layered murmur came from somewhere farther across the altar.

"ORIGIN..."

Su Bai paused.

The voice continued in a tone that sounded suspiciously different from every threat they had made before.

"HEAR US."

The saber trembled.

Su Bai slowly looked toward it.

The saber was desperately trying not to laugh.

Another sealed source suddenly spoke.

"THIS IS RETRIBUTION."

The hammer turned toward it.

"What?"

The flesh mass ignored the question.

"ALL CAUSES BEAR CONSEQUENCES."

The clearing fell silent.

Su Bai stared.

Even several of the younger artifact spirits seemed confused.

A creature that had spent thousands of years threatening to tear apart everyone around it had apparently discovered karma.

Su Bai continued walking.

The flesh mass began reciting something beneath its breath.

Another sealed source simply stopped moving altogether, as though accepting its fate might somehow make what came next less unpleasant.

The saber finally lost control.

Its laughter echoed across the altar.

Su Bai reached the nearest flesh mass.

This time, no threat greeted him.

The creature only tightened beneath its restraints.

If it had possessed eyes capable of crying, Su Bai suspected the altar would already have been flooded.

His gaze settled on the flesh hiding its Root Organ.

The smile returned to his face.

He still needed more of that anchoring principle.

Fortunately, there was plenty left.