It was time to begin his first attempt at spirit sculpting.
He quickly entered a meditative state and reached for his spirit body. Just as he was about to begin his attempt, he paused.
Wait, where do I go once I start? Shit! I remember some parts just fine but most of it is just gone. How am I supposed to memorize that entire thing?
Sebastian realized that although he had looked over the diagrams of the Peak meridian system many times, remembering the exact details was practically impossible. It was equivalent to building something based on the memory of a blueprint that you’ve only seen a few times.
Before he made a proper attempt, he would have to come up with a solution. The odds of him remembering everything were slim to none. Sure, you can do a small part at a time and check with the diagram before you continue but that would take literal ages. Even though the process of entering the Spirit Realm to cultivate was going faster and smoother by the day, it still took upward of an hour to fully get ready to start sculpting.
Whatever, that’s tomorrow’s problem, for now I’ll just try it out and then abort. I’m definitely gonna need quite a bit of practice either way.
A dose of realism and changing his perspective and expectations did Sebastian good as he began his first practice session of sculpting.
He tried to manipulate his internal essence and focus it on a specific spot. According to the manual, the centerpiece of ones meridian system was what it called the “Sea of Essence”, which was a chamber to be sculpted at ones spiritual center, just behind the navel. Sebastian chose a spot in his spirit body which seemed to be in the right place and focused his essence. He drew on his experience with basic cultivation to form an intent to try and carve out a dot from his spirit body.
As with most other aspects of cultivation, it was easier said than done. Not until the end of a several hour long cultivation session did he finally figure out the crux behind how to perform the so called sculpting.
Carving out a small space in the middle of his spirit body was a strange sensation. The space he sculpted out filled with concentrated internal essence. It sent bursts of energy to the same place within his physical body, as if the connection between his essence and his body grew stronger. The second his focus shifted, however, his spirit body actively sought to refill the negative space with… whatever the spirit was made of, to reclaim all that he sculpted away.
Feeling satisfied with his results for now, Sebastian let it refill and observed how long it took.
It was neither fast nor slow. The small space he sculpted would be gone within the hour. While it was too early to tell, letting a full attempt refill would probably be a matter of several days. Sebastian ended his cultivation session and went to sleep.
The next day he woke up and did it all over again.
At this point, he was almost exclusively sustaining himself off of the energy he gained by cultivating, which he did for most of the day. He took breaks every now and then, to keep himself from going insane. At times he read the manual, other times he exercised or trained with the sword. No matter what he was doing, however, a part of him was constantly trying to figure out a practical way to solve the issue of memorizing the entire Peak meridian system.
Over the course of the next week, Sebastian failed to solve the issue, but he did get better at sculpting, much better in fact.
He lay on his bed of cloth and leaves, one hand behind his head and the other playing with a glow rock, thinking about his progress.
It took some time to learn the controls but once it became clear that spirit sculpting feels an awful lot like playing a video game, it became almost easy. He chuckled to himself and shook his head ever so slightly. Those poor bastards in the time when cultivators were around had to figure it out completely on their own.
I’ve never been much of a gamer but even so, growing up with video games really got my brain used to controlling virtual things. It’s almost like a cultivation cheat code! By using my spirit body as the controller, and my essence as the “character”, I can sculpt even those tiny capillary-like paths without much issue.
I almost feel like I’m playing some old “follow the line”-drawing minigame from something like Mario Party from back in the day, except I don’t have any lines to follow, I just have to remember where they go.
He shot up, almost hitting his head on the roof of the alcove. As he sat there, he gripped the glow rock in his fist as his mind raced with the epiphany.
I mean, unless… Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just have lines to follow? What if I draw the lines myself? HELLS YES, that’s it! I use my internal essence and increase the concentration in the shape of lines where I need to sculpt, once I have the entire diagram drawn inside my spirit body, I can just sculpt it out by following the lines.
Sebastian immediately put his idea into practice and sank back into his cultivation. It took a few hours of hard work but eventually he succeeded in gathering his internal essence into simple lines, however, he quickly realized an issue with his idea. His internal essence didn’t want to stay in place. Like water filling the space of a container, essence wanted to spread throughout his spirit body to saturate it equally at every point.
Similar to how his spirit body heals and refills itself once sculpted unless you forcefully keep it going, the lines would naturally dissipate unless he actively maintained them. That wasn’t enough to discourage Sebastian. This was the best plan he’d had so far and he was going to see it through.
Over the next few days, he gradually constructed lines throughout his spirit body in accordance with the diagrams in the manual. To stop them from dissipating he couldn’t go more than a few hours without cultivating. He had to sleep in short naps rather than through the night, and the few times he overslept caused him to lose hours of work as the lines faded.
He almost lost his mind.
His short naps didn’t leave him fully rested, and he was plagued with dreams of lines going everywhere. Maintaining an intent strong enough to hold the lines in place was also mentally exhausting, but he persevered.
As he was nearing the completion of his blueprint several days later, he decided to check on his Status, both as a distraction and in the hopes that the [System] would recognize his efforts. Some recognition would go along way to encourage him.
System status
Name: Sebastian Moore
Level: 8
Cultivation status
Name: Sebastian Moore
Cultivation method
- Earthen Cultivation Art
Cultivation stage
- Spirit Sculpting
- → Minor stage: Low
Physical cultivation stage
- Clay
Titles
- Blessed
- Sole Cultivator
Talent
- Akashic Connection
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
The Status window didn’t show much but at least his System level had increased. Probably more so due to the increase in essence used to maintain the blueprint than anything else. Still, it was enough. He told himself that being deemed by the [System] to still be at the lowest minor stage was simply because he hadn’t started sculpting yet. Either way, it served as some sort of distraction, something to take his mind off of things to briefly rest his brain.
The distraction didn’t last for long.
He soon continued his cultivation, drawing the blueprint for the Peak meridian system with his internal essence. All in all, it took Sebastian well over a week to fully draw the complex diagram with his essence, but he finally succeeded. In order to not risk making mistakes, he decided to take a nap and look over his internal blueprint with—somewhat—fresh eyes when he woke up. Before he could begin sculpting, he had to make sure that he hadn’t forgotten anything or made any mistakes. He would also have to reinforce everything to ensure that the act of sculpting didn’t break the lines.
The gorge had been completely silent and unchanging these past few weeks ever since the goblins came looking for him. Most likely, the remaining goblins either decided it wasn’t worth looking for an opponent that was so clearly stronger than them. Why pick a fight you can’t win when you can stay at the camp to rebuild? With the exception of some occasional gusts of wind, the weather hadn’t changed once either, which Sebastian was very happy about.
Cultivating in solitude for weeks on end was tedious enough, but if he had to deal with rain then he might not have been able to come as far as he had. Not that he really minded the solitude, Sebastian had always enjoyed his own company. The exhilarating feeling of cultivating and growing stronger had awakened a passion in him that he hadn’t felt for a very long time, if ever. The nagging pain of betrayal and attempted murder aside, he quite enjoyed his pursuit of power in this strange place. Even so, he was feeling ready to move on from this gorge and begin his journey in this foreign world.
A few hours later, he woke up and did a final check of the diagrams. Once he felt ready, he took a deep, comforting breath and entered his cultivative state—a process which had gotten much smoother over the continued practice the past weeks.
Sebastian performed some maintenance and reinforced the blueprint that covered the entire inside of his spirit body. Larger pathways as a base, with branches of smaller and smaller pathways closer to the surface of the spirit body. Confident that everything was in order, he lay down flat on the bed to keep his spirit body in the best possible position, and began sculpting.
He started with his Sea of Essence at the center of gravity. From there, he sculpted along the lines, making use of the concentrated essence to not only guide his sculpting but to fuel it. He had to take periodic pauses to reinforce both the remaining lines of the blueprint and the pathways he’d already carved so that they wouldn’t fade, warp, or refill as he went. Which in turn meant that he also had to spend time drawing in more essence to replenish his supplies and to fill the already sculpted pathways.
By the end of the first day about 10% of the meridian system was complete before he had to reinforce everything again and take a break to get at least a few minutes of sleep. Without the advantage of his gaming experience and his extraordinary persistence to spend almost two weeks constructing and maintaining an internal blueprint, reaching 10% would likely take weeks rather than a single day.
The moment his head hit the pillow of rags, a [System] alert caught his attention.
Minor cultivation stage increased
The tedious process of spirit sculpting continued, day after day, as progress was gradually being made.
Minor cultivation stage increased
When the main pathways were complete, Sebastian moved on to the secondary pathways, which required more precision and care to ensure that the next step would work well. It took him a few days of hard work, and an increasing lack of sleep, to finish and move on to the final part.
All that was left were the tiny capillaries spreading all throughout the surface of the spirit body, sprouting out from his secondary pathways. Even with the hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills he had built up in his life, he still found these tiny pathways to be extremely difficult. He messed up several times and had to waste time to purposefully refill the parts that were wrong, all the while maintaining all his previous work.
While the pathways were smaller, and thus faster to sculpt, there were more of them and they were trickier to get right. So all in all, it still took a few days before Sebastian finally reached the finish line.
Staring at a specific part of his spirit body with his spiritual sense, as if through a microscope, Sebastian focused his intent and wielded his essence to carefully scrape away tiny bits of his spirit body. With a final push, he poked a hole through to a previously sculpted pathway, completing the circuit.
Woosh!
As if it knew that the Peak meridian system was completely sculpted, all the essence used to maintain the structures began to flow freely through his meridian pathways and circulated throughout his spirit body. Waves of energy rushed through his physical body in perfect harmony. It was like he had injected jet fuel into his blood stream.
Minor cultivation stage increased
He was now at the minor stage Peak, meaning he could ascend to [Essence Consolidation] at any point. The effects were palpable, especially in his physical body. As the essence flowed, it felt like his entire body just woke up from a lifelong coma. Before, for his entire life, Sebastian’s body may as well have been asleep, dormant and passive, but now, every fiber of his being was brimming with energy.
He crawled out of his shelter and stood up straight. Every muscle in his body tensed and relaxed as he matched his breathing with the circulating essence.
So, this is what it’s like to truly be a cultivator. And this is only Peak, once I fully ascend to the next stage all the hard work I’ve done will be solidified, forever.
Now that his essence was naturally circulating through his meridian system, he no longer needed to manually maintain it or reinforce it, the natural flow of his essence did that automatically. All that was left was to ascend.
Sebastian had only made one breakthrough thus far, and that was more difficult than he expected. This one was bound to be far tougher.
He enjoyed his new power for a while, before getting some proper sleep for the first in weeks.
In the morning, when he was at full strength, he would make his attempt to breakthrough.