What do you mean I'm a cultivator?-Chapter 57

Cheng kept playing with the ambient Qi, the way a child might run a stick through a shallow riverside, just to see ripples travel on its surface.

There was no technique behind it. No cultivation art guiding his movements. Only intuition. Cheng moved his hands through the still air of the chamber, shifting fingers, forming crude shapes. A circle. A line. A spiral. Each gesture tugged at the surrounding Qi, and though it responded with sluggish reluctance, it did respond.

The connection to the wood chunk had not vanished. Even now, buried in his robe, it pulsed faintly. Not with heat or light, but with presence. It was like a second core, a second heart, one that had bled outward and filled the room with Qi that felt almost entirely the same as his own. The Qi here was different. Not truly ambient, not truly external.

It was almost like the chamber had become his dantian, trapping this familiar Qi, allowing him to tap into a skill that he had no business harnessing.

Cheng’s brow was furrowed in concentration, his breath steady but deep. Sweat dotted his temples. With every motion, he refined his sensitivity, testing how far he could stretch his awareness, how much pressure he needed to apply. Could he pull Qi to his side? Shape it into a shell? A strand? A wave?

The answer was yes. Barely.

And barely was more than enough.

He flicked his fingers upward, and a thin stream of Qi rippled upwards, the movement able to be seen with a trained eye.

It was exhausting.

Because this wasn’t supposed to be possible. He was still in the Qi Condensation realm. Control outside the body wasn’t something he’d earned. Yet here he was, directing spiritual force not bound within his dantian.

Much like training a new muscle, this action was roughly the same.

If you couldn't sense said muscle, nor known of its existence prior, that is.

This was more like a baby learning how to walk. It was something entirely new.

Cheng extended his hand once more, and Qi stirred like wind across the floor, faint and obedient.

He smiled.

A quiet, patient smile. The kind that came before a storm.

Cheng exhaled slowly.

He sat once more at the center of the gathering array, legs folded beneath him in the lotus position, hands tangled in one another, on his knees, palms open to the sky.

His eyes closed.

Within the stillness, his consciousness sank inward.

Cheng delved past bone and blood, into his dantian.

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To reach Foundation Establishment, his Qi had to change. It could no longer remain as gas, diffuse, and light. It had to condense even further. It had to turn into a liquid state.

And form the very foundation upon which the next stage of cultivation would be built.

He drew in a breath and began gathering even more Qi within his dantian.

The pressure built.

Cheng gritted his teeth as the strain hit him.

His dantian expanded slightly, just enough to accommodate the denser Qi beginning to form.

He reached the Sixteenth stage for the second time in his life, and then, he tried to breakthrough.

He focused, moving his Qi, forcing it inward, folding it over itself again and again, like forging metal. Until the edges began to blur, and droplets began to shimmer in the center of the whirlpool.

Soon enough, it appeared. Liquid.

Not much. Barely seven drops. It was expected. It was exactly one drop higher than the amount an average sixteenth stage cultivator formed during their breakthrough.

The droplets thickened. Became heavier. Coalesced, suspended in the center of his core like beads of mercury, slowly reaching completion.

He almost lost it then. The pain in his dantian spiked, and his vision flashed white behind closed eyes.

But he gritted his teeth and endured.

This was the first step. The first true step into a realm beyond mortals, in the truest of sense.

A prepared mortal could kill a Qi condensation cultivator when taken off guard.

But a foundation establishment cultivator was a whole different realm. No matter how much strength a mortal had, they would be unable to even harm a single strand of hair.

Because in this stage, Qi was starting to integrate into one's vessel, much like how Qi settled into wood or stone.

Snap.

It was not a sound, but a feeling.

His Qi. All of it had suddenly collapsed inward, settling into those drops of Qi floating in his dantian.

Apart from those seven drops, Cheng had no Qi left in it.

Cheng’s breath caught in his throat.

Then, he laughed. Quiet. Short. Bitter. It was only now, that he understood the race against time breaking through was.

Within a second, each drop quivered.

And then they bled.

Not the red lifeblood churning through Cehng's veins, but essence.

A fine mist began to flow out of his body and into the chamber.

His eyes snapped open. He looked down at his hands. The Qi, his drops of Qi, formed of hard work and will, were vanishing. Not dissipating, not being wasted, but leaving him entirely.

It was out of his control. He had no Qi left in his dantian. The drops had formed from the complete emptying of his dantian.

And even if he had any left, its gaseous form could never seal the drain of the liquid stage drops.

His cultivation. The drops that comprised of his entire cultivation slowly dissipating out of him, and into the air.

Acting on pure instinct, Cheng sharpened his focus and tried to grasp a drop. Willing it to stop. At first, nothing happened.

But then, he felt something change. Like two blocks clicking together, his mind extended.

It was a chain. The chamber sealed him and his Qi, separating the two from the outside world. Then, the Wooden chunk released Qi, that he could control outside his body.

And now, thanks to this new dimension of control, his mind, his will, extended to a drop.

And to his surprise, it slowed.

For the briefest of moments, like a leaf caught in a breeze hesitating midair, he sensed it.

Even if it was just for a few seconds.

Then, the pressure in his skull spiked like a hammer to the back of his eyes, nearly sending him unconscious.

He gasped and let go of the harness, connecting his mind to the drop.

The connection snapped instantly, and the drop continued its slow, inevitable dissipation into the chamber.

Cheng laid on his back, head staring at the now pitch black ceiling, eyes wide, breath shallow.

His head throbbed, pulsed with the dull, insistent ache of overreaching. He had strained his mind, trying to grasp something he was not yet able to.

This was why you could not control ambient Qi yet. Even something so simple could give you the worst headache of your life.

Clearly, to do this properly, you needed the improved mind that foundation establishment brought.