Void Cultivation-Chapter 175- The Foundation Establishment realm (3)
As Grey continued tracing the spirit perforations within his body, a faint tremor rippled through his core. At first, he dismissed it as a side effect of the surging energy... until a soft murmur drifted across his consciousness.
It was weak, almost gentle, yet it made his heart seize as if an invisible hand clenched around it. The murmur deepened, warped, and twisted, swelling into a tide of mad, deranged whispers that scraped against his mind like claws.
Then it happened.
A crisp, delicate crack echoed from deep within his chest.
Grey actually froze. Shock, real, raw shock flashed in his eyes. And the moment that tiny crack rang out, the whispers erupted, no longer murmurs but violent, frenzied ravings that battered against his spirit sea.
And he knew exactly what had broken.
The purple crystal.
Grey’s expression distorted, not in fear, but in a deep, bone-cutting disbelief. At once he abandoned the process of sensing his spirit perforations and plunged his awareness into the depths of his body. His breathing hitched.
There it was.
A thin, almost delicate fracture ran across the surface of the purple crystal buried in his chest. It looked insignificant, like something that could be brushed away with a fingertip. But the crack was spreading. Slowly. Inevitably. Branching like veins of destruction crawling outward.
Grey could feel it... the certainty that the crystal would eventually shatter on its own.
"W-what...? Why is it breaking now?" Grey muttered, voice tight. His previously calm features twisted into a rare frown, heavy and pained.
From the very first day he opened his eyes in this world, the purple crystal had been there. When corrosive substances should have melted him alive, it protected him. When he glimpsed the ancient sword art carved into the boulder within the Corroded Zone, it amplified his comprehension. It mended his wounds, purged poison, restored his spirit sea. And now, it was the only thing keeping the Divine flames sealed.
It wasn’t just a tool. It wasn’t just a foreign object.
It was the one constant he had.
His anchor.
His silent companion.
His only link to whatever he once was.
Now, while he was on the verge of his breakthrough, that same crystal was fracturing... and he had no idea why.
Lost in this storm of thoughts, he failed to notice that his power was still climbing rapidly. The Foundation Establishment soul pill was still burning through his system, pushing him upward whether he wanted it or not.
’If the crystal is breaking because of my sudden advancement... then I only have two choices,’ Grey thought bitterly. ’Either ignore what’s happening and force my way through Foundation Establishment... or halt my breakthrough and try to save the only thing that’s been with me since the beginning.’
His expression changed again and again in those fleeting moments, fear, stubbornness, confusion, resolve, despair, flashing like shadows across his face.
’What kind of fate is this?’ Grey exhaled softly, his heart heavy. ’I swore I would grow stronger. That I would uncover the mysteries surrounding me. But how can I walk forward if the only thing I’ve had since the start... begins to crumble right in front of me?’
His lips curled into a wry smile, full of bitterness... and something deeper. Loss.
’If I can’t even protect the purple crystal... how am I supposed to peel back the fog covering my memories? How am I supposed to find my siblings? How am I supposed to understand what truly happened to me?’
The thought weighed on him like a mountain.
Power... or the only thread that tied him to his forgotten past.
For the first time in a very long time, Grey hesitated.
Grey stood frozen, torn between two impossible choices: protect the purple crystal... or seize his breakthrough. Pain, confusion, despair, and a storm of other emotions twisted across his face. But the final one to surface, slow, bitter, paralyzing, was hesitation.
Yet as his mind replayed his first encounter with the purple crystal, the countless moments it had saved his life, the warmth, the guidance, the inexplicable bond... the hesitation shattered. A slow-burning conviction kindled in his eyes, faint at first, then growing brighter than the chaos rampaging inside him.
’I still haven’t unraveled why the purple crystal reveals... that purple moon...
I still don’t understand why it keeps my body untouched by Corrosive substance...
I still don’t know how it made that sword art bloom in my mind...
Or why those networks of purple lines crawl across my body whenever I stand at the edge of a breakthrough...
And I still don’t know what those insane murmurs were... those indiscernible ravings that tore through my mind.’
His eyes dimmed with confusion, yet the rising fire in his chest sharpened him. Burned away the fog. Clarified what truly mattered.
’The purple crystal has always been a mystery to me... and maybe it will always remain a mystery.
But if I can’t protect the one thing that has been with me since the beginning... who am I to search for my siblings? Who am I to confront the heavens? Who am I to defy Fate itself?’
That conviction flared, brighter, purer, more terrifying in its intensity.
And something subtle yet world-shaking began forming within him. Something abstract. Something with no physical form but more real than flesh or qi. That invisible force that defines people. That separates cultivators who kneel... from cultivators who rise. That makes individuals question heaven. Stand alone in storms. Push back against destiny itself.
When that "something" finally completed itself inside him, Grey understood it instantly.
If I can’t even forge my own will... who am I to oppose the natural laws of the world?
His spirit sea trembled.
The once-still waters of spiritual energy rippled, gently, reverently, as if a force beyond form pressed against them. Grey froze. In his entire life, he had never been able to stir his spirit sea. No matter how he tried, it always remained untouchable, something belonging to him, yet also existing beyond his grasp.
But not now.
’This is my will. My will is to keep the purple crystal... and break through at the same time. My will is... mine alone. It is the only thing in this world that will ever truly belong to me.’
The instant those words left his thoughts, the world responded.
The sky dimmed. Dark clouds spiraled into existence as if summoned by his declaration. Corrosive substance writhed. Spirit energy churned in chaos. A freezing wind swept outward, howling across the wasteland.
The entire desert seemed to have become completely silent at that moment. No sandstorm rose, no bizarre existences or mutated creatures roamed. It was like they were all afraid of the will that was about to descend
Roxanne, seated before him, jerked around in shock.
Her Phoenix blood trembled. Her ancient pride flickered. She sensed a force, formless, unquantifiable, that made her question herself.
It wasn’t cultivation.
It wasn’t aura.
It wasn’t even qi.
It was something deeper than all of them.
A will powerful enough to stand eye-to-eye with heaven.
Though Roxanne’s cultivation vastly exceeded Grey’s, though she was a Legendary Phoenix with arrogance forged through ages, she felt it... an unfamiliar, unfathomable will descending from Grey’s body.
A will that made even her hesitate. A will that made her chest tighten. A will she had never once witnessed in her entire lifetime.
Internally, Grey felt that something was being forged within him. It was being hammered and shaped due to his conviction and desire. Slowly but surely, Grey continued to sense the magic perforations in his body. As the heat from the soul pill helped him search for the nodes, he suddenly found a place in his body where a node was.
Without hesitation and a burning conviction in his eyes, Grey attacked the node. The moment Grey attacked the node, it let out a muffled bang. The moment the bang rang out, Grey felt that a place in his body had opened. He also felt like that place was waiting for him to fill it up with Spirit energy and turn it into his spirit perforation, so he did so.
However, the moment spirit energy rushed into that node, more cracking sounds came from the purple crystal. The ravings coming from the purple crystal that made his cultivation base start to unravel before grew louder and Grey could feel his power at the Foundation Establishment realm start to plummet a bit.
The moment that happened, Grey gritted his teeth. And without hesitation, he sent forth his perception and charged towards the purple crystal. The moment he did so, Grey had wrapped the purple crystal in his perception.
Soon after that happened, Grey found his very second node and attacked it. The moment it did, more cracks appeared on the purple crystal and started to spread all over it’s surface.
But Grey bore down on it relentlessly, refining the second node into his second perforation. He wrapped even more of his perception around the purple crystal.
At the same time that this was going, Grey felt his will slowly being formed. And as he did so, something else began to take shape within him... a will. A true, terrifying, iron-blooded will unlike anything he had forged before. It pulsed through him, resonating with every node he opened, every piece of the crystal he bound, every ounce of progress he clawed from the jaws of collapse.
The outside world darkened as strong wind began to blow in the middle of the desert.
But if one looked closely, they would find that this strange occurrence only happened within a circular radius of fifteen thousand feet. Right on the edge of that radius, a wall of fire that was several hundred feet tall could be seen. That wall of fire surrounded the fifteen thousand feet in a circle. Making the storm that was appearing to happen only in the center.
And in the center was a handsome boy with purple hair. A pale purple moon hung over him and made moonlight spill unto his back and form a cloak of purple moonlight. Though his eyes were closed, faint violet luminescence still seeped through his lashes, painting his face in a ghostly sheen.
Naturally, that boy was Grey.
