Vessel of Worlds

Dozens of spirit stones—in five colors!

Pale gold, verdant green, deep azure, blazing red, rich yellow: the five colors answering to metal, wood, water, fire, and earth—and every single stone brimming with power. High-grade spirit stones, all of them!

To spend dozens of high-grade spirit stones on one assault at the Core Formation bottleneck—in all the ages, scarcely a handful could ever have done it!

In the present day, even among the old monsters of the Nascent Soul realm, few indeed could array such means around a meditation seat!

Cross-legged, eyes half-closed, face serene, Andy wove seal after slow seal—following the Primal Unity Technique, drawing in the five elemental energies, compressing, condensing, striving to transmute them into the Primal Unity Golden Core.

Dozens of hair-fine threads of light—gold, green, blue, red, yellow—curled from the high-grade stones toward him, drawn slowly into his dantian, compressed drop by drop into liquid, transmuted into five-element primal true essence.

That ceaseless intake ran for three full years. In all that time Andy refined the five energies without a moment's pause, pressing always toward solidification—yet however he labored, the surging power in his dantian showed not one trace of setting. And as the refined power mounted, even a dantian nourished by the Heart-Cleansing Pill and forged by the twin liquids could no longer contain it.

At last, after one more failed attempt to condense the core upon a great tide of gathered energy, his dantian broke—and cast every wisp of power out of his body of its own accord. Such was the Primal Unity Technique's nature: fail to form the core, and all cultivation dispersed, to be begun again from nothing.

This dispersal came unbidden—and its agony yielded nothing to the twin liquids' tempering.

Andy did not despair. He had foreseen this, and prepared for it.

When the last thread of five-element power left his body, he calmly took out a Qi-Gathering Powder pill, swallowed it—and began the climb through Qi Condensation once more.

Take the pill; refine; meditate. Simple repetition, quiet practice—and twenty years and more flowed past...

On a certain day, two cultivators keeping vigil partway up Jade Clarity Peak—a man and a woman—suddenly looked at each other, both sensing something amiss.

"Junior Sister Shuiyi—do you feel it? The ambient spiritual energy has gone strangely chaotic... as if it's flowing toward some single point!" said the square-faced, thick-browed, imposing young man of mid-stage Foundation Establishment, brows knotted, to the girl several zhang away.

The girl, of early-stage cultivation, her delicate oval face likewise clouded with puzzlement, tapped off the ground and rose dozens of zhang into the air—then cried out in alarm: "Senior Brother Li—look! Strange signs over that man's dwelling!"

By then the square-faced youth had risen too, gazing toward a cloud-wreathed dwelling dozens of kilometers away.

Above it, hundreds of zhang up, a sphere of five-colored light a dozen zhang across had condensed from nowhere—and was still swelling, while the surrounding spiritual energy gathered into visible streams of light and poured into it.

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"Senior Brother Li—what is happening? Is he breaking his restrictions to come out of seclusion?" the girl asked, her voice sweet with confusion.

"Hardly. He's the dwelling's master—to come out, he need only open a path through his own wards. Why raise a spectacle like this? He must be practicing some secret art," the square-faced youth said, shaking his head.

"An art that raises this much commotion must be no small matter. Should we inform Elder Ma?" The girl's fine brows drew together. "And look—cultivators are noticing. They're coming from every direction—see all those escape-lights!" She pointed.

"You're right. Elder Ma set us to watch this dwelling's master day and night. We haven't seen the man himself, but with a disturbance this size, we must report—better that than offend Elder Ma. I'll go to his dwelling at once. Be careful, Junior Sister!" the square-faced senior brother said with concern.

"Mm—Shuiyi understands," the girl answered softly, coloring faintly.

The youth mounted a small blue sword and split the air away. The girl stayed, watching the wonder unfold above the dwelling.

By now the sphere had thickened into a bank of five-colored spirit-cloud dozens of zhang across, and still it grew—the surrounding five-colored light rushing in as though seized by something within, the cloud swelling past a hundred zhang, and swelling on.

More: a howling wind rose, and for dozens of kilometers around, the sky darkened as though the very sun had been swallowed behind that five-colored cloud.

At last the girl remembered, and breathed: "This... this is the legendary heaven-sign of Core Formation! The man in that dwelling is assaulting the great Dao of the core! And by the look of it—unless the inner demons devour him—six or seven parts in ten, he will succeed!"

Nor was she alone. The cultivators drawn by the spectacle recognized the Core Formation sign as well—among them two Core Formation cultivators, who fell to murmuring over it.

"Brother Qiu—another one about to rise to what you and I are!" said a big man with a broad face, great ears, and a full beard, grinning.

"Not settled yet. You and I both know how vicious the inner demons are at core-forming. Whether he passes through safely is anyone's guess," the middle-aged cultivator in Daoist dress said, shaking his head, unimpressed.

"True enough. Still—since the ancient sealed space opened, successful Core Formations come more and more often these years. Think what you and I endured, the mountains of hardship, to scrape into this Dao!" the big man sighed, envy in his voice.

"Heh. In our day, without superb aptitude and a chain of lucky chances, who could form a golden core at all? These new ones may reach the realm—but riding on two liquids and luck, their real strength will be thoroughly ordinary. No comparison to us," the Daoist said, faintly disdainful.

"Just so! What is the realm without the strength to match—they'll only die faster, heh. A man like Brother Qiu, tempered through countless battles—early-stage Core Formation, yes, but against a common mid-stage cultivator you'd not give an inch!" the big man declared, folding in a compliment.

"Brother Zhang flatters me. Say what you like of others—your own Earth-Breaking Technique and Mountain-Breaking Whip are famous far and wide. Even I might not best them," the Daoist returned, smiling.

"Ha ha—too generous! Come, let's away. We don't even know this dwelling's master—what's his core to us?" The big man laughed and streaked off as a bolt of yellow light, the Daoist following as a ribbon of green.

By now the five-colored cloud spanned two or three hundred zhang, drawing on the world's energy for nearly a hundred kilometers around; five-colored motes streamed into it without pause, and the whole region darkened, oppressive as the hush before a cloudburst.

Within that range, the early-stage girl Chen Shuiyi felt a colossal pressure descend—she swayed, barely able to keep aloft, and had to raise a barrier before she could steady herself. Even so her power drained fast, and soon she settled onto a boulder, watching the five-colored cloud with awe-struck eyes.

A passing high-tier Qi Condensation cultivator fared worse—limbs gone soft, power unanswering, he sat down hard upon the rocks.

The cloud drank and drank, swelling to four or five hundred zhang—then abruptly stopped, hanging silent in the sky, the streams of light stilled.

The girl knew: this was the moment of moments. Success or ruin would show in how the heaven-sign moved within the next few breaths.