Yuan was the arrogant boy in front of me. The boy whose path ended early, but who stubbornly refused to accept his fate. The boy who had been beaten down by two young children and had lost his life in an unfortunate accident.He was Yuan. But then… who was I?“It hadn’t been until my so-called death that I had finally begun to realise who you truly are. Why do you think you remember my memories? Why is it so that, despite having an unfamiliar face and body, you moved as if it was your very own? As if you’d never had a doubt in the fact that this was you?” Yuan spoke, and I stared at him dumbfounded.“You’ve been there all along. A bundle of memories. Right from my childhood, you were there. Little memories of a world I’d never seen or heard of. Things I’d never encountered coming to my memory. I had never understood it. The elders called me spirit touched, and sent me to the cultivators, who soon found potential in my spirit and Qi in my budding core,” Yuan said, as I sensed dark mist

Yan Yun felt as if the world was spinning around her.Thunderous Heavenly Qi crackled within the chambers around Yuan, as he sat deep in meditation. Her heart thundered in her chest as her Qi rumbled in turmoil, crackling. Even Leiyu had left her dantian, perching upon her shoulder, too impatient to stay within.A tribulation, in the 4th realm? Yan Yun didn’t know anyone other than the great founder of her sect who’d managed such a thing. A man, whose name still echoed throughout the empire centuries after his passing.Was Yuan truly a genius of such calibre? She couldn’t bring herself to believe that.“Yan Yun needs to step away. The tribulation Qi spares none in its path,” Leiyu spoke in her mind, his concern audible in each spoken word. He was unsettled, and she didn’t blame him. All of them were. History was taking shape in front of their eyes.“Heavens. I’m too old for this many disturbances,” the old woman spoke, taking a seat as she quietly sipped her herbal tea. Yan Yun almost

I shifted back to my Qi core, flooding my pathways with Qi as I washed away the Miasma from my body. My mind was still in pieces, trying to come to terms with everything that I’d learned. The fact that I was Yuan, or a soul that had been inside Yuan ever since his birth. That I didn’t even remember my own name.The strange circumstances of my core and cultivation served to distract me from those thoughts. From the sinking sensation that I may not even be real. I had never had an existential crisis before, and I was glad. It truly sucked.“Why didn’t you kill me then?” I asked the old woman, as the sound of herbs being crushed played like a soothing rhythm on my ears.“I do not kill, child. My job is to heal. And I especially do not kill the saviour of one of my children. Not to mention, you hadn’t turned into a demon,” Granny Lang said, as she walked closer and held a pill to my mouth. I opened and swallowed, grimacing at the bitter taste.“How does that work? The demon thing. My memo

“You either split the core further into three, or merge them back. I honestly think of these as energy levels. The first, singular sphere is the most stable system. The energy is uniformly divided around a central spirit core within the dantian and remains stable. The second, what I think I have, is a two way split binary system. The rotation of each of the two cores balances out each other, but they do have to be polar opposites,” I said, glancing to the side as I spotted some herbs set nearby on a table.“For example, I’m pretty sure my Qi aspect is Wood now. I’m not completely sure, but I’m reasonably certain,” I said, extending my Qi out towards the herbs. A trickle of Qi poured towards the herb as new leaves began to sprout.I cut off my Qi, letting out a breath. Focusing on my cores, I switched to the miasma core. The Gu spread through my pathways, as I felt my vision shift just a little. I stretched out a thread of Gu towards the plant, and watched as its life drained in front

“What do you know about cultivation?” She asked me, and I scratched my nose.“I know about the five circles. The twelve realms, and that the first three realms are the foundation realms. And that realm fourth to sixth are about the core.”Yan Yun nodded, as her Qi stirred. “The fourth realm is the beginning of the formation of the core. The first three realms denote Foundation, Qi gathering, and Qi condensation. The fourth realm is the realm where the core forms. You… are somewhere in the middle of the third and fourth realm,” Yan Yun said, looking at my abdomen for a moment.“Up until the end of the first circle, each realm only had one step in between. A minor bottleneck to overcome. The midstep and the peak of the realm. But from the second circle onwards, each realm will be divided in three. Lower, Upper and Peak. You begin at lower, and breach the bottleneck to the upper realm, and finally the peak of the realm,” Yan Yun said and nodded.“So you’re at the Peak of the fourth realm