The Essence Refinement Stage

To become a cultivator, two qualities were required: an immortal bone, and a spiritual root. The immortal bone was the aptitude of the flesh; the spiritual root, the aptitude of the soul. Both were mandatory, and taken together they were called the immortal root.

That, however, was only the common account. From time to time a constitution or a soul-nature appeared that the tidy measures of immortal bone and spiritual root could not explain at all, and the ones already named — the Departed-Soul Rebirth Root, the Ghost-Path Soul-Devouring Root, the Heart-of-Iron-and-Stone Root — were of that kind. Extraordinary soul-natures: even with a spiritual root alone and no immortal bone, their bearers could still become cultivators. Because heaven itself was said to have granted them, they were called heavenly soul-natures. Souls one might as well call born for the sake of becoming a True Immortal. A low-grade cultivator who possessed someone carrying such a nature was, more often than not, the one who ended up eaten.

She had gone looking for a body with an immortal bone, and a heavenly soul-nature's remnant had come hitched along with it. A two-for-one like this? Hard pass.

Not that it mattered in the end. A remnant was only a remnant, and Dokseon's soul was firm beyond any comparison with a low-grade cultivator's. A scrap of leftover soul could do nothing to her.

The trouble was that she could not peel it away just yet either. The po — the corporeal soul — was snarled together with the remnant, and tearing the remnant free by force would damage the po along with it. Had the cost been nothing but a few memories, she would have tried without a second thought. Touch the po, though, and there was a real chance the brain itself would go wrong. The po was the sum of experience, and at the same time the software that drove the hardware of the brain; ruin the software, and the hardware seized up with it. A simple computer could simply be formatted. Format the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠po, and the brain was wiped to blank.

In other words, she would be starting over from her first steps.

Dokseon's own soul had a po as well, but a po ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was, as a rule, a proprietary format, incompatible with any flesh but its own. Install it elsewhere and all you got was errors. For the present, then, there was no way to deal with the remnant. Removing it safely ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠meant climbing to the realm where the spiritual eye opened, and until that day the uncomfortable cohabitation would have to go on.

It was not wholly a loss. Handle the remnant properly, and a portion of the powers bound into its soul-nature could be taken for her own. Play it right, and maybe this two-for-one remnant even pays out like a jackpot.

With that, she set the thought in order and turned her focus back upon the inner world. Consciousness gathered there, then crept outward, slow and thick, until it spread through her whole body — awareness moving with the breath, the heart knocking, blood sliding the length of its vessels, the organs busy at their work, muscle twitching over the frame of bone, skin reading the drift of air against it. From the crown of her head to the soles of her feet, not one part of her went unfelt.

It was a good body. Restored though it was from what the drugs had ruined, it was in no poor state; if anything, it brimmed with vigor. Among immortal bones, this could be called high-grade. Before the drugs had wrecked it, it might even have been supreme.

A prostitute, carrying a supreme immortal bone and a heavenly soul-nature. Had she walked the path of cultivation, she would have been a talent fit to lord it over the Cultivation Realm — though the chance that some other cultivator would have refined her into a pill before she ever became a True Immortal could not be dismissed. Cultivators worthy of the name were precisely the sort who did not balk at making even their own kind into elixirs. Talent alone would never make a True Immortal. The Cultivation Realm was a truly merciless world.

And yet, if heaven's fortune touched you, even a low-grade immortal bone and spiritual root could carry you all the way there. Dokseon herself was the living proof: she had ground her way up from a low-grade bone and root until she became a True Immortal. Now that same woman, a True Immortal raised on talent that sat at the very bottom, possessed a high-grade immortal bone. The road of cultivation, once a burning hell, had turned into a path of flowers. A long and bitter training still lay between her and True Immortal again, but a high-grade immortal bone joined to the soul of a True Immortal would get her there far faster than before.

A cultivator's realms divided into three major realms, and each major realm into three minor realms beneath it. If a major realm was a mountain, the minor realms were the trials that had to be cleared in order to climb it, and each of those trials was split again into Lower Ascent, Middle Ascent, and Upper Ascent.

Ever since the Dao Ancestor spread the Heaven and Earth Art, cultivators had trained beneath a clear set of milestones — and still, most of them failed to conquer even the first mountain they met, and broke.

The Daoist Realm. That was the name of the mountain that had broken so many, and it was the mountain Dokseon was about to climb. Steadying her breath, she opened the road that led up into it. The first trial a cultivator met there had a name of its own.

She drew a long breath and led the qi the formation had condensed into her body. Little by little it accumulated, and before long it had gathered into a cloud. This far required no art at all; it was the foundation of foundations. From here, an art was necessary.

A cultivation art: the method by which a cultivator trained. The craft of refining the spiritual qi of heaven and earth into dao power, and of thereby supplying the force to climb toward the supreme realm. A cultivator of no lineage learned the Heaven and Earth Art the Dao Ancestor had devised, and Dokseon, having had no lineage of her own in the past, had trained by it as well. The Heaven and Earth Art was not a poor art. First of all arts though it was, it had stayed in steady use across vast stretches of time — the most stable of them, and one without any clear flaw. Put another way, it was an art without any clear strength, either.

For Dokseon, who had mastered poison so thoroughly that poison itself became her name, there was an art that suited her better. The Myriad Poisons, One Qi Art: an art for accumulating dao power specialized in poison qi. Because that attribute was so sharply fixed, converting it into any other came at a poor rate — but confined to poison, its efficiency was absolute. For one who handled poison better than anyone, no art was more efficient.

She had succeeded at forging the core. Along certain dao-lineages, the training that led up to that point was set apart and called the Foundation Establishment Stage, for without sufficient affinity for the spiritual qi of heaven and earth, and sufficient control over it, the stage could take a full year. Dokseon had compressed it into a matter of hours. Even in the Cultivation Realm, it was fair to say no one had ever finished Foundation Establishment so quickly — possible only because of a high-grade immortal bone and a soul that had already reached the ultimate realm.

Any cultivator would have rejoiced. Dokseon's mind was already fixed on nothing but the next realm.

With the core forged, the foundation of the Essence Refinement Stage was laid, and what she needed from here was the accumulation of the spiritual qi of heaven and earth. Once enough of it had gathered, the inner core would form a ring about itself, and that ring would mean she was ready to advance. Accumulating the qi by art alone took ten years at the least, which was why ordinary cultivators shortened the work with spiritual herbs and elixir pills. Dokseon had neither. She had a substitute: the spiritual qi left in her soul. She drew together the shards remaining from her fall and guided them into the inner core. It was less than a handful, but it was pure, and starlight pooled along the core's surface until it drew a distinct ring.

Beyond that ring of starlight, a road came into view that had not been there before. Three roads — the Heaven Meridian, the Earth Meridian, and the Human Meridian, which cultivators called the Three Meridians of the Dao. One of them had to be chosen, and the ring of starlight led into it. Open that meridian, and one of three different powers would be hers.

In time she would take every one of those powers into her hands. For the moment only a single meridian could be opened, and so a choice had to be made. Dokseon opened the Heaven Meridian of Tendon-Changing and Bone-Forging — the power that strengthened muscle and skeleton, and the one she needed most just now.

Starlight spilled from the ring, advanced into the Heaven Meridian, and bored through the darkness settled over it. The Dokseon of the past had been choked with turbid qi, and her immortal bone had been low-grade; she had been forced to endure a long grind of suffering. A high-grade immortal bone was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠another matter entirely. The starlight opened the Heaven Meridian with ease, and as the meridian cleared, dao power seeped into muscle and bone.

With a thick, wet crack, Dokseon's muscles and skeleton wrenched and sprang as if twisting out of true, and foul-smelling sweat ran down her skin. Before long the contortion subsided, and her body was no longer what it had been. Firm muscle had set itself over her whole frame, until she resembled a sleek leopardess, and the bones thrown out of line by years of habit had seated themselves true, achieving a perfect symmetry that left her like a carved statue.

Eyes half-lidded, Dokseon closed her fist. A different strength lived in the hand. The power of Tendon-Changing and Bone-Forging had remade muscle and skeleton alike.

Dokseon had taken, without a flaw, the first step back toward the realm she had lost.