Chapter 111: The Responsible Thing

Late Topaz didn't feel much different from Paike. Sure, he was a touch stronger, he felt quicker, and his senses had improved, but there was no major sea change.

What it did give him was an idea of what was next.

In Ruby, reaching the peak came after the dantian was stretched to the extent needed to trigger the change to Topaz. Paike even understood now how to calculate exactly how much was needed to have enough density and pressure to force the change. Where Liming had been struggling with some idea of herself didn't really make sense in that context, but he just took that as some hidden variable he might be able to uncover later.

If the key to Ruby was amount, in Topaz it was density. Not of the qi, but of the walls of his dantian. They were getting stronger; likely, it just needed to be strong enough for him to generate enough force to compact it into Emerald.

The whole process was remarkably similar to Ruby, which made a lot of sense, as in the end it was just about combining more qi particles to form the next stable configuration. Apparently, the real personal revelations were needed when trying to move past Emerald.

Paike considered what Peak Topaz would look like. For Ruby, it was just having it stretched to the max size and filled. So he would need to go one more round of strengthening?

That didn't sound quite right, but he couldn't find the flaw in the logic either.

If he needed the strength to force the qi together, he didn't need stronger dantian walls, though. He could just apply more force in various ways. Moving the qi into a collision or reinforcing the dantina with ambient qi. Or even something like his latch system on his dantian.

But that wasn't supposed to work. Was it?

Paike couldn't help but see for himself. Wrapping his dantian in the qi around him, he began to squeeze. He gradually ramped up the pressure until it was at its absolute maximum. There was no change. Interesting.

It seemed that the density of the dantian walls wasn't actually the only requirement. As he moved through the stages, he was able to compel the qi to flow with greater authority than before.

As his spirit upgraded to the new type of qi, he became more powerful in some inherent way he had somehow overlooked. He knew it was the case. It was one of the reasons to even increase the stage, but he hadn't really considered its utility.

Had he lost something when he had skipped the Ruby stage? Was it more than just the dantian size that he had to make up?

Paike didn't think so, but he didn't immediately discard the idea. Instead, he compared how his qi felt to the others he had seen at the same levels. Not only was his qi stronger, but the change in his qi strength as he grew correlated with theirs. He found it did. So, skipping the stage, he didn't likely let him miss out.

Now the real question was: could he do it again? And if he could, should he?

Even if he just got a bigger boost if he skipped Peak Topaz entirely, making up the density of the walls of his dantian wasn't the same as expanding it. Honestly, Paike wasn't sure if there was any way to accomplish that.

So he should probably not try. Because it was tempting. There were so many ideas he had for increasing the pressure he could exert with his qi without just pushing harder with his will. He could try twirling it around a bar of hardened qi, like putting on a turnbuckle.

There were ideas about levers or ratchets. So many things. But there was one more upgrade that he should get first. It was the responsible and adult thing to do. He needed to wait until.

Wait? Why did he need to wait? He just needed to reach Peak Topaz, not wait. Waiting implied that there was something on the outside that needed to happen first. Paike didn't think that was the case. In fact, he knew it wasn't. The only thing holding him back was just him not being at Peak Topaz, nothing else. And now that he had an idea of what was going on, he could guess that he just needed to find the pattern that would apply enough force to the qi.

So, once again, he started inventing knots.

Why did people take so long to advance through the early realms? Paike had heard about how hard it would be his entire life. That each advancement would take a long time of introspection. One needed to gather resources and qi. They needed to know themselves inside and out, and brace for a tough challenge.

It certainly felt like it for physical cultivation, but looking back on his experiences, what advancement had been so hard for his spiritual cultivation? Maybe others' spiritual organs didn't take to the changes well? But that wasn't what he had heard about. It was more that others had trouble triggering the change.

Certainly, there was a bit of recovering afterward, but that was usually only if the breakthrough failed or was in the much higher realms. As it was, there was no need for him to wait. Even as he poked and prodded at his dantian, it felt much better than after he gathered qi.

It seemed to him that others were just lazy. If they had the qi, they should be able to just follow the next steps in their manual and get stronger. It would be so easy for them. Here he was doing it without a manual because he was stubborn.

Or maybe that was the problem. That the manuals were not good and were leading others astray. He would need to take a look at one of the Topaz ones after he had finished with the realm to see. If they were the problem, he didn't want their wrong ideas polluting what was apparently working well for him.

That did raise the question of whether, if they were wrong, he could devise a better method. That, and the fact that he didn't think Liming or some of the other people he knew were lazy, made him think it wasn't something to do with cultivation manuals. Maybe there was something inherent in his qi that lent itself to easier advancement. He would need to see if Elder Song had found a correlation between her intrinsic metrics of qi and cultivation speed.

Paike assumed either she hadn't or wouldn't want to tell him.

It also didn't quite follow. If he was some naturally talented cultivator- and by that he didn't mean having fast qi, like talent was traditionally described as, but just being good at understanding and implementing the theory, like some children are good at math -- why did his awakening take so long?

He supposed that awakening was different from advancement, and knowing qi wasn't useful for it, and one's qi factor was more important, or some equivalent metric.

That explanation was actually relatively compelling. Paike didn't like that he had been stuck as a mortal for years beyond his peers, but he was slowly catching up. And he would much rather have his momentum than any of their advantages.

Paike refocused on his qi. Something had felt a bit different in his last attempt. Not that the qi had quite improved, but maybe it was close to it?

He fixed the pattern in his mind and opened his eyes.

Around him, he could feel the others all cultivating as well. There was a certain frustration and an edge to the way they moved their qi. As if they were nervous or frustrated. Maybe a little panicked? Whatever it was, Paike didn't think they would get far in such a state of mind. Only Taka seemed unbothered by whatever it was.

Father gave him a smile and made a motion with his hand, a gesture that seemed to say, 'Well, get on with it.'

Paike shrugged. There was one reason he hadn't jumped at the feeling of progress, and it was that he wanted to work on his physical cultivation and bring it up so that it didn't fall behind again. However, he wasn't going to do that while they were in the air like this. If he did happen to have a breakthrough, things would be messy.

If Father was telling him to continue, Paike felt it was safe to assume that advancement wouldn't cause a problem for his future physical cultivation. They had talked about things like this and as much as Paike didn't want o trust some cultivation manual made for the generic Topaz, he would absolutely listen to Father.

So Paike closed his eyes once more and dove into his cultivation.

He started by reforming the pattern. Again it gave off the same feeling. As if it was almost there, just not quite right.

So he started to form variations on it; each bend and twist he varied slightly and with intention. It took some time, but eventually he got a feeling even stronger from a new pattern.

Naturally, he kept going. Again and again he tried variations, each one getting closer to the ideal configuration.

And then he had it. He tugged, and the qi changed. Paike carefully examined the changes. The tiny bit of qi was now palpably vibrating with power. It was still Topaz, but it was obvious that the change had been forced on it, unlike the other stages in this realm.

Even as he watched, the energy began to subside. He wasn't aware of how long it took, but eventually it returned to its previous state. Just bassline Topaz qi.