After advancing to Martial Lord, I still had a large amount of karmic energy in my dantian that I needed to get rid of. It was enough to raise two people to Martial Lord, and I knew exactly who I wanted to share it with: Mei and Murong NaYun.
Murong NaYun was nearly 280 years old. As a Grandmaster, he was nearing the end of his lifespan, and his body had already calcified 190 years ago, so advancing seemed like a dream.
Still, I wasn’t willing to give up on the man. Over the past few years, he had displayed a deep understanding of Rank 3 talisman artistry, and his work ethic had been superb. I wanted to keep him around and turn him into my Revered Elder of Lightning.
To do that, we first needed to overcome his calcification issue.
At 20% of a person’s maximum lifespan, their body would begin to stagnate. At 30%, it would calcify. This was a lesson that I had learned long ago. However, I had yet to hear any theories on the mechanism behind these changes. Stagnation and calcification were simply treated as akin to natural aging. Calcification was a natural fact of life, and few people gave it any more consideration than the fact that children grew up or the fact that people needed to eat.
But what caused stagnation? What caused calcification? I didn’t have an answer, but I did have a few clues:
After entering calcification, a cultivator could still accumulate and use qi. Calcification only affected their ability to advance. And even then, it didn’t stop people from advancing entirely. In my early lives, I had been able to slowly advance through the later levels of Martial Disciple long after calcification had set in.
Also, when I was in the Brilliant Sun Empire, I had been given a pill to ‘loosen’ my energy body. This hadn’t been enough to allow me to advance on my own, but a higher-level cultivator had been able to take hold of my qi and force it into the shape of meridians, allowing me to break through to Martial Master.
Finally, my primary focus in this life had been on how Laws affected a person’s cultivation. The premise I was working from was that by advancing my cultivation base, I was attuning my body to specific sets of Laws. Advancing in the Warrior Tier meant attuning myself to elemental Laws, and advancing as a Ruler meant attuning myself to Laws of Karma.
Putting all of this together, I came up with a hypothesis: Calcification was caused by an aging body’s inability to further adapt to new Laws. This still boiled down to ‘calcification is caused by aging,’ but it at least pointed me toward possible solutions.
There were three ways that I might be able to help Murong NaYun advance to Martial Lord: I could find a way for his body to attune to new Laws, I could figure out how to force his advancement without attuning his body, or I could find a way for him to advance using only the Laws that his body already possessed.
The first possibility seemed impractical. Until I had more knowledge of what it meant for a person’s body to attune to Laws, I wouldn’t have any hope of accomplishing this.
Likewise, the third possibility was questionable at best. This again came back to the idea of making a core without using karmic energy. However, it also contained the additional restriction of creating a lightning core in Murong NaYun’s body using only Warrior Tier lightning Laws.
The second possibility was the one that held the most potential. A high enough karmic affinity should allow me to control the karmic energy within another person’s body. With qi, this effect was somewhat limited since a Martial Grandmaster would typically have a high affinity for the qi they cultivated, but few, if any, people had an affinity for karmic energy.
However, I didn’t immediately leave to seek out Murong NaYun and begin such a procedure. His body, having entered calcification, created an additional layer of complexity to the task of forcibly raising him to Martial Lord. Before trying to help him, I first needed to try raising someone younger.
I didn’t want to experiment on someone who only had one life to live. If I was going to try this, it needed to be with someone who would be able to return in a future life.
Sitting down in a blank, white room, I looked at Mei. “Are you certain that you are willing to go through with this? As a Peak Grandmaster, you are able to earn contribution points and purchase karmic energy like everyone else. This experiment is a shortcut, but it has the potential to end in catastrophe.”
Mei gave me a sad smile. “Ancestor Su, over the past decade, I’ve tried my hand at every possible profession. The only one I was even able to begin learning was beast taming. And while my blessing was somewhat helpful there, without water qi, my prospects for being a talented tamer are rather limited. As a wind cultivator, it seems that I can only serve as a warrior. Unless a war breaks out, earning enough points to advance to Martial Lord will be rather challenging.”
I wrinkled my brow in concern as Mei pressed on.
“It became clear to me that my blessing doesn’t want me participating in such tasks. I had thought that it wouldn’t allow me to advance to Lord at all, but instead, it seems to have wanted me here. So, please, Ancestor Su, perform your experiment. It is likely the only way that I will ever be allowed to advance to Martial Lord.”
I closed my eyes and nodded. “Alright.”
Folding my hands on my lap, I turned my concentration inward. “Do your best to relax. I am going to try to inject your body with karmic energy.”
I pulled on the energy in my dantian, directed it through my meridians, and out the acupoints in my lower arms. I then tried to direct it toward Mei, but the moment it entered the open air, it evaporated.
Sighing, I opened my eyes and looked at her. “Please hold out your arm.”
When she did, I took hold of her wrist and overlapped the open acupoint there with the one in my palm. This time, when I pulled karmic energy through my acupoint, it only had to travel a small distance before entering Mei’s energy body, so it didn’t have time to dissipate.
With this success, I channeled more karmic energy out of my body, pushed it into Mei’s, directed it through her meridians, and forced it to pool in her dantian.
During this process, Mei didn’t say a word. She sat stock-still, eyes open in shock.
Once enough energy was inside her dantian, I retracted my hand.
“Try manipulating the energy yourself. See if you can shape it into a ball.”
Following my instructions, Mei gradually formed the energy into the rough shape of a core. I wasn’t certain, but from what I could tell, her control over the energy matched what I would normally expect.
“Alright.” I took a deep breath. “For this next part, it would work best if I place a hand on your dantian.”
Mei smiled warmly at me. “Of course, Ancestor Su.”
She scooted her chair closer to me and placed her hands on her armrests.
Closing my eyes once more, I reached out, placed a palm on her abdomen, and focused on the energy that I had recently injected into her. Instinctively, her body recoiled and tried to fight against my control, but without any affinity for karmic energy, there was nothing she could do.
Working as quickly as I could, I shaped the energy into a pattern of the Core of Fellowship.
Once I was done, I pulled back my hand and nodded. Then, I took out a Rank 4 Qi Gathering Formation and several Rank 3 Qi Gathering Pills. “Alright, the next step is to fill that core to the brim with your qi.”
As I had already given Mei a high wind affinity, this wasn’t something that I could help with, but my help wasn’t needed. In less than a week, she had gathered the qi she needed and was ready for a breakthrough.
At that point, I placed a hand back on her abdomen and created a weave of karmic energy. Then, I instructed Mei on how to weave her wind qi into it.
As soon as this was done, she pushed a final bit of qi into her core, opening a hole in the world, and, together, we pushed the weave of energy through, breaking one of her chains and allowing her to ascend to Martial Lord.
Mei opened her eyes, and tears of happiness welled up within them. She jumped to her feet and hugged me. “Thank you.”
I patted her on the back awkwardly. “You’re welcome.”
With Mei having served as a proof of concept, I sought out Murong NaYun and explained the process to him. Not caring about the details or risks involved, he agreed to immediately proceed with his breakthrough attempt.
This time, as I tried to shove karmic energy into Grandmaster Murong’s body, I was met with a great deal of resistance. It didn’t take me long to conclude that trying to guide it all the way through his arm and into his torso would severely damage his meridians.
So, instead, I placed a hand on his abdomen and injected the karmic energy through the acupoint closest to his dantian.
Once it was all in place, constructing a core for him was a bit arduous, and from the look on his face, it was rather painful, but there were no surprises. Injecting the core with sufficient karmic energy to create a hole in the world, however, wasn’t so easy.
Instead of using just a Rank 4 Qi Gathering Formation, Grandmaster Murong needed a Rank 6 formation. This wasn’t because he needed more qi. It was because he needed the formation to provide pressure to help him shove energy into his new core.
After nearly a month of hard work, he finally reached the point where he was ready for his breakthrough, and, working together, we managed to break one of the chains binding him.
Upon feeling his ascension to Martial Lord, like Mei, Murong NaYun burst out in tears of joy. However, instead of hugging me, he only gave me a deep bow. “Thank you, Ancestor Su.”
With Mei and Murong NaYun, I had learned a valuable skill: transferring karmic energy from myself to someone else.
I found the current Lord of Dragon Gate, and after securing a few promises, he allowed me to experiment with pulling karmic energy from his body and storing it within myself. This was a bit trickier since his body instinctively wanted to cling to the energy, but the basic premise was the same. So, it only took me a few minutes to get the hang of it.
Once I did, I couldn't help but grin like a madman. I was two steps closer to replicating the way the Sovereign Clans were able to store and distribute karmic energy.