The Undying Immortal System

Before taking the test to join the sect, I wanted to set myself up for as much success as possible in a short timeframe. So, after leaving the Academy, I did not rush to take the Exam. I rented an apartment and began preparing my cultivation base.

For the past few years, I had been switching between the Profound-Rank techniques that Instructor Yuan had provided me. This let me test out a few different ideas for meridian construction, and I got a better sense of how they helped qi flow through the energy body.

In the Academy libraries, I had gotten a few Earth-Rank techniques that took these ideas to another level, and I wanted to try them out. I hadn’t done so before because I felt they would need the proper Rank 1 techniques to work at full efficiency, and I didn’t want to undo my Rank 1 cultivation until I finished permanently improving my earth affinity.

Outside the walls of the Academy and in a disposable timeline, I had a new limitation to worry about. I could not allow myself to cultivate essence. If my earth affinity suddenly jumped up several stages when I reverted to my reset point, people would begin to ask questions that I didn’t want to answer.

So, as soon as I was alone in my apartment, I began working toward building a brand-new foundation.

The first thing I did was create both a Rank 1 and a Rank 2 Qi Gathering Formation with filters for earth qi embedded into them. Unfortunately, this wouldn’t create a completely pure cultivation environment like in the Trials. Without completely purging the area of energy first and establishing a qi barrier that could completely prevent other energies from entering, there would always be some amount of impurities in the air that I would need to be careful of. However, since the earth qi inside such a formation dominated everything else, it would be much faster and easier to cultivate in it than in the more general formations.

Once my preparations were complete, I began dispersing my meridians. Once that was accomplished, I took a Qi Expulsion pill to finish off destroying my cultivation base and return to Martial Disciple 1.

At age 25, qi stagnation would begin to set in if I remained as a Martial Disciple for too long. The general estimate was that I would have a grace period of one year before natural aging would begin to take effect on both my physical and energy bodies. This didn’t give me too much time to waste, but it was more than enough.

I decided to cultivate the Writ of Steady Stone. It was a Peak-Earth technique with the mental effect of making one more deliberate in their actions and less prone to acting rashly. Taken to an extreme, this seemed like something that would lead to indecisiveness and a cultivator who was unwilling to do anything at all. It wasn’t my favorite effect, but I chose it because I saw a connection between the mental effect and the meridian design.