Chapter 87: The Long-Awaited Breakthrough to Foundation Establishment (Part 1)

A mountain range nestled close to the Central Ring, its curves dividing the dense crimson forest in two.

After just over three weeks, the cave where An had settled had transformed dramatically.

All the walls and cracks had become home to numerous plants. The bottom of the pool was covered in aquatic moss, filling every open space, only allowing flowers to reach the surface through their long stems.

Sitting by the shore, An's legs were completely covered in grass and vines, making him part of the cave's flora.

Woosh!

Opening his mouth, he exhaled dense Qi saturated with the Wood element, carrying traces of the Wood Dao and enriched with abundant vitality.

The moment they felt his breath, the surrounding plants immediately opened their petals, revealing flowers or budding fruit. After absorbing every last drop, they hid them away again.

'I'm on the verge of the peak state... Just two, maybe three more weeks, and I'll reach the peak of Qi Condensation.' Without opening his eyes or moving, he created several hundred Qi Blades, converting each into different elemental Qi, every element he could transform. He began manipulating them, replicating the pattern on the cave ceiling that he had carved in the first days of his Qi manipulation training.

The pattern depicted a dense forest with many different birds. Beyond the forest stood a castle, like something from medieval times. In front of the forest was a clearing with several small puddles containing hundreds of miniature beasts, creatures from both of his lives.

If you looked at this image up close, examining it in detail, you could see that even the birds' feathers were intricately carved, each barb individually rendered. Every pine needle on the trees, every blade of grass in the clearing, everything was carved meticulously, down to the finest details.

Having carved this image using only Qi, now during each training session he replicated every element of the pattern, guiding all the blades simultaneously along every groove he had previously etched. Training and developing his control over energy and his own thoughts.

'My idea of trying to upgrade my Evergreen Qi Technique for the Foundation Establishment realm can only be realized when I actually encounter the energy inherent to that realm. Only then will I understand what exactly I need to change and how...' Finishing his Qi training, An began recalling and reviewing the content of the Evergreen technique.

'The only thing I can do now is understand the process of how the technique functions during cultivation down to the smallest detail. Not the cultivation process itself, but the concept within the technique that makes the cultivation process possible.' Running through the technique many times, constantly re-examining it, he spent several hours like this. Afterward, he moved on to his soul cultivation technique.

Three weeks later.

<"F.o.o.d.">

<"P.o.w.e.r.">

<"R.e.a.c.h.">

At some point, he began to clearly hear internal voices. At first, he didn't pay them any mind, since these voices had previously been more like an idea conveyed through Qi.

About a week ago, when An reached the limit of his dantian, having achieved the peak stage of Qi Condensation, his energy began to change, becoming heavier and denser.

During these cultivation moments, as he released his Qi, oversaturated with the Wood element, vitality, and Dao, into the environment, the surrounding plants constantly underwent cycles of evolution: being born, absorbing nutrients, producing offspring. This cycle repeated every day, eliminating flaws with each new generation.

Some individual plant species, breaking from the reproductive pattern, began continuously absorbing energy for themselves, accelerating their evolution several times over and outpacing the species that invested in the next generation through seeds.

Absorbing more and more energy, these individual species began developing primitive chains of thought, learning to transmit them through Qi. Since all the energy around was essentially An's, emanating from him, and every plant contained the same Qi within itself, they found it easy to establish mental connections with one another.

Having learned to communicate, albeit at a primitive level, they began constantly sending signals toward the source of their energy, their progenitor.

In nine out of ten cases, these thoughts were about food. Only a few of these plants had developed their thought processes enough to create thoughts unrelated to basic needs.

<"D.a.r.k.n.e.s.s.">

<"H.a.r.d. b.e.d.">

While cultivating his soul technique, An caught every one of their thoughts, paying special attention to the more developed individual plants. 'How do they know words and their meanings? Since I started my closed cultivation, I haven't opened my mouth once... Oh...' He immediately remembered his habit of muttering his thoughts under his breath.

'Even though I mutter from time to time, it would be hard to hear, especially for plants that have no hearing at all. Besides, after fully accepting myself, my muttering has almost completely disappeared from my life... How amusing.'

Through his closed eyelids, An looked at the plant just a few centimeters from his overgrown legs. A green stem with round white leaves, and at the very top, something resembling a small, soft-blue cone from which tiny white hairs had sprouted.

'Though you're creepy-looking, you're the most intellectually developed being in this cave.' A small clump of his energy suddenly shot out from his body and flew straight toward that plant.

Sensing food, all the plants immediately began reaching out, trying to snatch their share and satisfy their hunger.

An didn't stop them, allowing the fastest ones a chance to steal energy from the clump, deliberately moving it not too quickly.

By the time it reached the intended plant, it only received about half the energy that had originally left him.

<"H.e.h.e.">

Satisfied, the plant transmitted its thoughts through Qi. An just shook his head.

'Perhaps linguistic knowledge is transmitted through Qi itself. The moment you begin absorbing it, you inevitably fall under certain unbreakable rules of the energy itself. Perhaps language is one of those rules? Or maybe I'm overthinking and just looking for an excuse to distract myself?' With his mouth slightly open, lost deep in thought, he continuously released excess energy from his body.

.

.

Throughout that entire week, An worked on his Qi. Without much deliberation, he decided to create a very thick and dense membrane of energy around his dantian. 'Better to have it than to regret it later.'

Having sat motionless for a month, he finally opened his eyes.

The moment he did, the entire cave was illuminated by a bright green light. The accumulated Qi that had inevitably leaked from An during cultivation, since he had stopped using Qi Silence at full power, finally burst forth the moment his body moved, enveloping the entire cave in a wave of energy.

All the plants immediately began reaching out, devouring the particles of his Qi from the environment. Each tried to straighten up and grow as tall as possible, trying to reach more Qi.

Ignoring the greedy, perpetually hungry plants, he extended his arm to the side, breaking through several vines that had dared to wrap around his arms while he sat motionless.

'I'm finally on the home stretch... There's no point in cultivating further. My entire body is like a balloon on the verge of bursting, nothing else fits...' With his extended arm, he activated his Qi and pulled a bottle covered in a layer of ice toward himself.

'I'll rest for a day, recover my mind and body to the maximum, and only then begin my breakthrough...'

Opening the bottle, An took a large gulp. The delicate flavor, something like a mix of apple and banana, slightly sweet and tart with a faint bitterness from the alcohol, washed over him.

'Heh... Thanks to the second-rank fruits used to make this wine, the alcohol is incomparable to the wine from my past life. If an ordinary person took a sip, their throat would simply dissolve in an instant.' Taking a few more gulps, he watched the pool, specifically the small creatures resembling fish.

Medium-sized creatures were searching the bottom, constantly pushing through the underwater moss and peering at it, trying to find something inside. The smaller ones gathered in groups, tore off pieces of the moss, and swam into small crevices, dragging the pieces with them.

Finally, after a long rest, An looked away from the pool, tired of watching these small creatures work on building their new home.

Closing his eyes, he completely relaxed his body.

'What did old woman Doshu say when I asked her about the breakthrough process?' An entered a state where his heart beat only two or three times a minute, and his breathing came to a complete stop.

'According to her words, the breakthrough process itself consists of four stages... The first stage is compressing the energy into the smallest possible volume. The smaller the volume achieved through compression, the easier the second stage will be... Well then, let's begin!'

Concentrating all his attention on his dantian, he began manipulating the Qi within it.

Starting to compress the Qi slowly, he made sure not a single particle was squeezed out of the mass. Evenly distributing pressure across the surface, he slowly pushed the particles together.

Carefully introducing Qi from his reserves, drawn from his muscles, blood vessels, blood, remaining organs, and slowly feeding it through the membrane he had prepared in advance for protection, he continued compressing the energy inside his dantian.

'I need to monitor the amount of Qi I introduce into the dantian for compression. If too much of my body's energy merges with the dantian Qi I'm compressing, it could greatly complicate the second stage and even cause failure... And I don't want failure. I only have one shot!' Only the Foundation Establishment pill can protect a cultivator during a breakthrough, specifically, their dantian.

The reason is that during the first stage, when a cultivator compresses their Qi within the energy source, they involuntarily use too much of their body's Qi, and during the second stage, they crash and fail. Only this pill can eliminate that risk and protect the cultivator at that stage.

The reason cultivators constantly make mistakes in the first stage is insufficient practice with Qi manipulation and a lack of understanding of their own internal energy.

This is because people who begin cultivating strictly follow the instructions of their technique. The Qi cultivation technique, strictly by the manual. Combat techniques, strictly from the scroll, point by point, following every pattern written in that same scroll. Non-combat techniques, take alchemy, for example: all students follow only existing recipes, memorizing timings and properties.

Foundation Establishment cultivators suffer from the same problem, a lack of deep understanding of Qi itself.

Only when cultivators reach the Golden Core realm do they begin to feel, some exceptional individuals can even see, the Qi around them. And only then do they start studying and understanding something about the Qi surrounding them.

Eventually, they begin experimenting with their techniques and modifying them, seeing and understanding the entire process of the technique. Unlike cultivators below Golden Core, who only see the result of their Qi and technique. In other words, if a cultivator is a hole in the ground, and the lake that has accumulated in it is their Qi, then a pre-Golden Core cultivator understands that a stream flows into their lake and fills it. But where that stream comes from, what path it travels to reach their lake, they cannot see and cannot even feel.

This is where the great difference lies between ordinary cultivators and An, whose eyes evolved the moment he drew in his very first particles of Qi, giving him the ability to see the world as it truly is, in nearly full measure.

Thanks to his constant training with Qi and his understanding of the energy itself, he could control the volume of Qi he introduced, just enough to maintain the compression process and no more.