CHAPTER 42 — Absorbing the Essence Blood
_
When Ren truly began absorbing the Phoenix's essence, he understood the meaning of excess.
It was as if a broad, ancient river had suddenly been connected to an endless ocean. Energy poured into him—not violently, but relentlessly.
The energy flood did not arrive with a roar; it arrived with the weight of an ocean collapsing into a well.
The moment Ren's Second Path—the Path of Accord—touched the essence blood, the droplet ceased to be a liquid and became a torrent. In any other cultivation system, a meridian was a pipe meant to carry a specific volume of Qi. If that volume was exceeded, the pipe burst. But Aetherion's Second Path didn't treat meridians like pipes; it treated them like riverbeds.
Yet, even a riverbed has its limits when the source is endless.
Ren's body buckled. Inside him, the energy surged with a turbulent, muddy violence, tearing through his pathways with the force of a mountain-born flood. It was white-hot and ancient. Within seconds, the boundary of the Initial Inner Realm was swept away like a sandcastle.
Intermediate Inner Realm.
The breakthrough happened so fast Ren didn't even have time to register the shift in perception. His cells were being saturated, his marrow vibrating with a frequency that threatened to shake his teeth from his gums. A heartbeat later, the wall to the Peak Inner Realm crumbled.
His cultivation was screaming upward, an uncontrolled rocket fueled by the blood of a Level Nine Phoenix.
Ren tasted iron.
His vision fractured into overlapping afterimages as the pressure crushed inward, forcing his organs to lag behind his cultivation. For the first time, his body—not his soul—fell behind.
Ren's eyes flew open, glowing with a terrifying, obsidian light. He felt the warning of the Phoenix Lady echoing in the back of his mind: "No greed. Or it will tear you apart."
He tried to slow the intake, to pull back the reins of his soul, but the energy was too dense, too eager. It was like trying to stop a waterfall with his bare hands. His meridians began to spiderweb with fractures, the pressure of the unrefined Phoenix energy becoming so immense that his skin started to weep a fine mist of vaporized blood.
"Accord!" Ren screamed internally. "I do not resist the flood—I widen the banks!"
He reached into the deepest layers of the Aetherion knowledge, focusing not on the power, but on the vessel. His Axiom—the inner energy storage at the center of his being—began to expand. It was a brutal, agonizing process. The space inside him was being forced open, pushed beyond its natural dimensions by the sheer accumulation of fresh, volatile energy.
The threshold of the Core Realm loomed before him.
He could feel it—the beckoning of a higher plane, the promise of a solid foundation. But Ren's mind remained sharp despite the agony. He knew that if he crossed into the Core Realm now, having skipped years of refinement in a matter of minutes, he would be building a palace on top of a swamp. His foundation would be hollow.
"Not... yet," Ren rasped, his voice a guttural scrape.
With a feat of willpower that defied his rank, Ren slammed a psychic barrier down on his breakthrough. He suppressed the level-up with the weight of a mountain. Instead of letting the energy push him into the next Realm, he redirected the flood.
He sent the Phoenix energy into his bones. He sent the black Phoenix Flame into his nerves.
He used the 'Mercury Baptism' from the altar as a template, using the Phoenix energy to forge a new kind of physical durability. Every fracture in his meridians was filled with liquid fire and then sealed. Every bone was tempered until it possessed the density of a high-grade artifact.
When the refinement was complete, Ren realized with a shock that his Inner Realm Axiom now held more energy than a Peak Core Realm cultivator's entire reservoir. This was the genius of the Second Path: it traded speed for absolute density.
Finally, the pressure became too great to contain. The Axiom could not hold a single drop more.
Ren released the suppression.
"Crack."
The sound echoed not in the room, but in the fabric of his soul.
In an ordinary cultivator, the transition to the Core Realm involved condensing a shapeless 'seed' of energy into a solid, singular sphere. But Ren's path had never been ordinary. His seed had already been mangled and remade during his Mortal Realm cultivation, and then plated in the mercury of the ruins.
As the energy crystallized, Ren's core did not become a simple pearl.
It manifested as a multi-layered, kaleidoscopic engine. It spun with a complex, interlocking geometry, and from its heart, the dark Phoenix Flame rose like a crown. It was beautiful and terrifying—a core that possessed the weight of a planet and the heat of a star.
The Axiom stabilized around it, no longer a container—but an extension of the core itself.
In the Core Realm, a cultivator's strength was no longer measured by quantity of Qi—but by the complexity and authority of the core that commanded it.
He checked the essence blood.
Despite the massive leap he had just taken, the droplet was only sixty percent depleted. The sheer volume of energy it contained was enough to turn a commoner into a Sovereign. But Ren was no commoner, and his path was a glutton. The amount of energy he required to advance was ten times that of a standard path; what would have made another man a God only made Ren a Master.
He settled back into the rhythm of the work.
Slowly. Carefully.
He didn't know how much time passed in that lightless chamber. Hours turned to days; days may have turned to weeks. He spent every second condensing his new core, layering the Phoenix essence into its structure until it felt like a solid, immovable fact of the universe.
When the last of the essence blood vanished, absorbed entirely into his system, Ren opened his eyes.
He didn't feel like he was floating. He felt like he was the center of gravity.
He had reached the Peak of the Core Realm. The boundary to the Anchor Realm—the stage where a cultivator fixes their soul to the world—was right in front of him. He could have stepped over it with a single breath.
Instead, he stopped. He pulled the energy back, coiling it tightly around his multi-layered core. He would not anchor himself until he understood the new world he was seeing.
Ren turned his head, his movements fluid and predatory.
The fox was watching him. It had finished its own portion of the blood essence. At first glance, it looked almost ordinary, save for the fact that its black fur now held a haunting, blood-red tint that seemed to shift in the light.
But Ren could feel the difference through their bond. The fox's presence was no longer a shadow; it was a needle. Sharp, precise, and impossibly cold. Its power was unreadable, a deep well of predatory intent that Ren knew would be a match for any Core Realm expert—and perhaps more.
Ren reached out and patted the fox's head. Its fur felt like silk over steel.
"We're ready," Ren said.
He stood up, his body feeling strange—lighter, yet infinitely more powerful. He pulled the wooden box from his storage ring, looking at it for a long moment. There was no vibration. No heat. The Phoenix was silent, tucked away in her wooden tomb, waiting for the cycle to turn.
He stowed the box back in the ring, ensuring it was buried beneath his other supplies.
The hall felt different now. The ancient stones no longer felt like a prison or a test. They felt like a starting line.
Ren adjusted the Abyssal Anchor on his belt, looked at the silent fox, and turned toward the exit.
He had entered the Sunless Canyons as a boy running from the shadows of Sovereigns.
He was leaving as a variable they had never accounted for.
Chapter End