Of the myriad paths to Ascension, cultivating the body had always been viewed as an extreme path paved by martial masters seeking greater strength at greater expenses.
While most paths lay their foundations in the absorption of energy and the establishment of cores or centers to cultivate external power, body cultivators tempered their own bodies into powerful treasures capable of producing their own life force energy, thus becoming independent from the limits of the world.
Of course, if it were only good things, everyone would do it. Practitioners were rare because body cultivation was harder and more strenuous than most other paths, with few gaining anything for their efforts. If given a choice, most would embark in other directions.
The people of Earth did not have the luxury.
In a world barely hanging on by a thread, there were no native energies for humans to cultivate with. The only path was to cultivate and temper bodies that could stand alone.
The few hundred manuals with wisps of consciousnesses represented the pinnacle of all such paths recorded throughout the countless worlds, each with different philosophies and foundations.
Unlike the Grand Water Transformation Art or the Falling Leaf Sword Dance, that originated from worlds of martial might, the Great Heavenly Movement was not strictly martial based.
Through a special mantra that focused the mind and harnessed the body, the soul would resonate with the stars and attract celestial energies, powers that originated from creation, to nurture body and soul for a foundation that even demigods envied.
And it hurt like a bitch.
Lil Davie’s sweat drenched muscles twitched and screamed under unseen pressures that were repeatedly destroying and rebuilding his body as he moved. If it weren’t for the ever bursting strength exploding from his belly and the nurturing of the gentle starlight that pulsed like little cheerleaders constantly refreshing his mind, he greatly doubted if any sane person could survive the first step without literally exploding.
Regardless, Lil Davie was not deterred. He knew what kind of life altering opportunity he’d been handed so he focused on his breath, the movement of his feet, and the archaic mantra that was in a mysterious language he somehow both did and didn’t understand and was the key to all suffering and progression.
Once he finished the tenth step, lil Davie would succeed in the first Star Pledging Ritual. He wasn’t sure how that would work, since this wasn’t his sky, but he didn’t allow himself room to doubt and only strove forward.
Just focus on the next step.
Blood mixed with sweat, some dropping and irritating his bloodshot eyes, but he didn’t blink. Everything was pain, as nearly every muscle in his body had gone through at least one full round of destruction and regrowth. And with a breath and a chant, it began again.
Just focus on the next step.
----
Everything was darkness.
Everything was silence.
Everything was stillness.
It was small, but it felt vast.
The foundation of the Void Mind Resonance Guide laid in the ‘Void.’ It was developed by Lady Cynth in her younger years when, in laying the foundation for her legend, she was betrayed by her comrades out of jealousy and cast into Valley of Death, where no elf had ever escaped.
Within the Valley of Death, where the laws of the world were fractured and incomplete, the young Lady Cynth, the most promising sorceress the Devleian Empire had ever seen, floated in a darkness cut away from the world’s energies, making her talents in magic about as useful as her ability to bake cookies.
It wasn’t known how long she floated in still meditation when genius defined itself once more. The young Lady Cynth, cast out to die in an inescapable prison by the ones that called themselves her friends, resonated with the Void.
She embraced the emptiness that existed between the everything and drew power from it.
The day she emerged from the Void was the day all her precious ‘friends’ were repaid with similar fates as she hunted down each and every one and cast them into the Void through scars in space of her own creation and a new legend was born.
She later created the Void Chamber Pearl, a heavenly tool crafted from a Temporal Pearl that trapped the essence of the Void, making it the perfect place to train the Void Mind Resonance Guide, which was why she had gifted it to Jun for the little sister with the damaged spirit, since the main and most dangerous prerequisite to training was the experience of a fractured soul.
Unlike lil Davie’s restlessness of the body, Lily’s practice of the Void Mind Resonance Guide made it a restlessness of the mind as the core of refinement. The mantra of the Great Heavenly Movement that connected the soul with the stars through the body, The Void Mind Resonance Guide connected the soul with the Void through the mind. There was no excruciating pain or vigorous movements. She simply sat in a meditative pose and attempted to blend into the Void.
External stimuli faded.
The thundering sounds of her heartbeat and the rush of blood through her veins faded.
Doubts of failure faded.
Questions of identity faded.
With every round of the esoteric chant, everything faded.
Until all that remained was the essence of her soul and the essence of the Void.
----
Mary was falling.
There were no safety measures of any kind in place as she continued to fall from unknown heights into unknown depths.
And she was totally not freaking out. All was fine with the world. She was meant to be falling. She didn’t hate life itself in the least as she tried not to lose her bladder.
Jun had given her something odd, called something cool, whose name had lost all relevance as it pushed her into an eternal fall without destination. Mary knew it was the perfect training environment for the Falling Leaf Sword Dance, based on her injected mastery of the art, but that didn’t eliminate her newly discovered fear of endlessly falling into nothing.
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Mary wanted to laugh but was too busy trying not to cry. In all her shows of determination, she hadn’t factored in this newest of hurdles. But it was okay. She could totally do this. No problem. Just don’t pee in the air and everything was good.
With intense determination, Mary focused all her willpower in concentrating on balancing her fall based on the movement philosophy of the Falling Leaf.
Clumsy flailing quickly adapted into swaying and soon Mary was falling side to side.
Each sway was just a little more graceful and controlled until it no longer looked like Mary was falling. She was riding the wind like a gracefully falling autumn leaf.
It was so fun!
Her mind was free, and no burdens weighed her down as she discovered a wonderful new world in the one she thought she already knew.
Mary laughed.
The wind that graced her face was no longer a terrifying stranger. It was a new acquaintance, and it had invited her to a dance. And what a dance.
She lost herself in the simple sways and graceful turns, and as she became more comfortable with her dance partner, she entrusted more of herself and let it take the lead. It wasn’t long till Mary was flipping with the currents and slicing through the gaps with increasing daring and became assured that she had found her true calling.
With a squeeze of the ring Jun had given her, a thin sword that looked like condensed air appeared in her grasp.
It was time for her to take the lead.
----
AAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!
Chaos God’s Copper Body fucking sucked!
He should have listened to Jun and picked Earth God Stomp!
They both had ‘God’ in the name, so why did he have to pick this stupid fucking one?!
Right before Juan activated the Tempering Fire Bath, he was convinced he had made the right choice. Sure, Jun said this method was pain itself and once started, was irreversible until he gained a Copper Body, but he was familiar with all kinds of pain. All he had to do was to endure until it was over and he would have a tempered physique that would be impervious to nearly all attacks of those of the same step.
No-brainer.
The Tempering Fire Bath turned out to be a rather lazy name.
It was a literal bath of tempering fire.
It tempered not steel nor iron but human flesh.
Fuck.
He hadn’t even started the hard part.
After a moment to adjust to the agony of his flesh flaying in the flames, the spirit of the indomitable street racer that never lost nor ever get caught resurfaced through the age lines that were burning off in the flames.
Juan gritted his teeth as he focused on the Chaos God’s Chaos Mantra and took a deep breath.
Whooooosh~
It wasn’t the normal inhalation of a normal man.
Billows of raging flames were magically inhaled in a never-ending stream of tempering fire.
Juan’s entire body began to glow as blood dripped from his eyes instead of tears, only to burn into ash. His chest glowed red, exposing the shadows of his skeletal structure, his heart clearly brightening with each beat as it absorbed fire and spread through veins that glowed like molten steel.
The breadth was never ending, and the flames continued increasing in concentration in his core.
All Juan could do was focus on the chant and let all else go.
Even through the soul searing pain of refining the body with flames, he could indeed feel a welling power that was rewriting his former weak existence. It was sure to have been the correct choice.
The refinement was entering his marrow.
Fuck, he should have picked Earth God Stomp….
----
By the time Nicole and Tiana felt the restlessness, they had already split off and found their own positions under the crafted constellations, mentally refocusing on the task at hand. Each had needed a moment to themselves to process some of the things Jun had revealed to them.
The dire state of the world’s spirit and the very real consequences if something wasn’t done soon had startled them.
Nicole and Tiana were members of the highest castes of society and had always viewed the world as their canvas to paint their spectacular stories. They’d only considered the vast progress of the society they sat kings upon, never questioning if it was enough.
“It’s alright. We’ll figure something out.”
Neither knew if those casual words were irresponsible or domineering, but they did feel better. Jun had shown them so much in so little time that they couldn’t help but find him dependable even now, when neither princesses of the lofty S-Rank families had any inklings of a solution.
Nicole did her best to steady her breath. She couldn’t laugh at lil Davie anymore. The sensation of bursting energy was fierce and made her want to run!
Instead, she raised the enchanted fang that had given her a new path. Unlike the others, the only thing she needed was this.
This was the tooth of a primordial predator that once preyed on gods.
According to the shared memories of the fang, this divine creature had long ago been a dreaded menace for an era before a joint crusade of battle gods took it down after battling nonstop for a hundred years.
All its materials had been consumed by the surviving battle gods to gain its power, leaving nothing left but this one fang as a trophy.
Later, one of the gods had been inspired by the beast and created the Divine Beast King’s Fist. After inscribing the art on the fang, the battle god was shocked to find that the fang had absorbed his own expertise on the art he created, leaving him with nothing but the name of the technique and no idea of how it worked or how to read the scratches on the fang.
Eras past, with history becoming legends, into distant memories, and in the case of this legendary item, a forgotten mystery.
With no one able to decipher the writings, the fang of a beast that consumed divine flesh became a collector’s curiosity often exchanged by powerful beings willing to attempt the code.
Tucked within the hordes of precious gifts to a mortal youngster, a trace of ancient spirituality had, at long last, found its fated one.
Nicole could sense the excitement from the fang that was larger than her arm and covered in glowing blood red scratches. Instead of the initial foreboding vibe she felt before the connection, now the thrum of pulsing red felt like a small dog excited to play.
She never thought the day would come when she felt a sense of kinship with a tooth, but recalling everything she’d experienced and witnessed since the night had started, she gave it no more thought.
Instead, Nicole took another steadying breath as she endured in silence. The building sensation of bursting energy was triggering every muscle in her body to twitch with increasing intensity, demanding to be put to use.
Soon.
She knew that the fang in her hand was extraordinary, and that she was not prepared for what she was about to attempt. If not for the magical snacks, the very attempt was nothing but suicide. But she did have the magical snacks. And she had many.
When the feelings of rushing forces reached a peak, Nicole finally reached the limit of her tolerance, so she acted. Without hesitation, she harshly bit her lower lip and drew blood. Teeth dyed red, Nicole widened her jaw and bit at the base of the giant fang.
There was a lot of light.
And then there was pain.
----
Tiana walked a different path from her old friend and saw the world from a different perspective. She was more focused on the implications of their rune research having been the wrong path.
The runes that she and all those that came before had dedicated their lives to deciphering weren’t the native runes of their world but their enemies, because the world was too ill to support them. How tragic.
Did that mean that when the world was healthy again, the runes of their world would be revealed?
New runes. Tiana was excited.
She looked back, making sure she had gone far enough away. Trusting in the darkness and Jun’s honor, Tiana shyly got undressed. After she neatly folded her clothes and placed them to the side alongside her other belongings, with nothing but a softly glowing sphere of water tightly clutched in her right hand, she stepped further into the starlit darkness.
After a distance, she stopped and looked down at the magical object in her hand. Jun had called it a Portal Pool. This small fist sized orb of water held a volume of water the size of a large lake and was the perfect place for her to train the Grand Water Transformation Art, the martial technique most suited to her.
Suited to her.
Tiana Firestorm couldn’t suppress the shiver that had nothing to do with her lack of clothing.
People only saw the cold and proud princess of a vaulted S-Rank family and a young genius runesmith, a practical member of the new royalty. They only saw the girl that was born with everything and would have only more in the future on a gold plated road, all obstacles cleared from her path.
No one saw the turmoil of a child that had grown without warmth or affection, willfully blind to the emotional scars of braving to seize an opportunity that never existed and the weary resignation of acceptance. All because her physique was not suitable for the Firestorm Family Arts.
Now she had a new opportunity and a new purpose.
The family that never cared for her held little loyalty in her heart. She was tired of the disappointment from anticipating anything besides heartache from those she called her closest.
This was for herself. For her to carve her own path.
With a toss, anticipation rose as the orb came crashing to the ground, and then…
Plop
A few paces away from a neatly folded set of clothes was a small pool of water, and no one else.