At these words, Old Wang's eyes open in shock at the back of the room.
Through a cough, he asks, "Is what you say true?!"
I glance at Mu Shouxin, and he bows his head again in thanks.
The Mu Clan Patriarch leaves the cave, locking the complex guardian array behind him.
I turn back to the old bald man and his spirit moose, pausing to think, sifting through my mental storage for a few seconds before responding.
"It is true… but I'll need you to sign this to make sure my methods aren't revealed. It's not going to be as simple as a Tier 3 elixir the sect would use."
The tier 2 spirit contract that's been left unused in my storage for a while comes out.
I close my eyes and imprint it with a very simple command: to never speak of or transfer information about any part of the healing ritual he witnesses today, including use of pills, artifacts, spirit beasts, or any other feats I perform while inside this chamber.
The small contract becomes flooded with my hot qi, draining my dantian by about a fifth.
I toss it over, and the old man pushes his senses inside to see what I'm asking.
"That is it? Simply an agreement of secrecy? Senior Li, I thought I'd already made it clear. You are the Wang and Mu Clan's benifactor. My life has already been in your hands."
I nod. "It is just an extra precaution. If there is ever another strong force targeting my allies, using some method of information extraction you or I cannot predict, it is best you are silenced by a shattered dantian before accidentally betraying me."
The old man's eyes sharpen in understanding, and he pushes a pulse of qi into the contract without hesitating at all.
A small pulse of feedback ripples through his body and completely disappears from my vision once it touches his dantian.
Old Wang smiles and tosses the contract back to me.
"I understand."
The moment the contract disappears, a small white fox appears in my palm to replace it.
Meimei wakes up from her nap, letting out a short startled yip.
Her silver eyes look around the room, and a pulse of her physique fills the air, gently resonating with the fractured souls of the old man and his moose at the back of the room.
She looks at me with anticipation, her little legs fidgeting in place when she realizes why she's been summoned.
"Go ahead. Heal them both."
Meimei leaps off my hand and runs around the room to sit in between the two giants.
Wang Yang looks down at the fox, confused at first, but as soon as she gets comfortable, a thick white mist vibrates outward and touches his leg on one side and the spirit moose's leg on the other.
Deep invisible tremors vibrate through each of them as a force takes hold of their fractured souls.
His moose lets out a deep grunt, and Wang Yang closes his eyes with a serious expression.
I crush an enchanted defensive talisman and take a few steps back. "There's no need to hold back your auras. Give in, and allow her to heal you properly."
At these words, the entire chamber becomes suffocatingly dense with two mid-stage foundational auras.
The pressure starts to crack my talisman, and the bright white mist coming off Meimei's small body gets suppressed for a moment too.
I back up against the furthest wall and take a few deep breaths.
The soul mist from Meimei's physique slowly forces itself outward to push back against the two foundational auras and seeps into their souls again.
It begins to swirl and pull in the fractured portions of the outsides of their souls.
A full minute passes by, then five, then ten.
Each small wisp of their souls has enough density to be the entire soul of a mid-stage qi refiner, pushing the tiny fox to its absolute limit.
Over and over, Meimei pulls these wisps in through her body and channels them back toward the injured man and moose.
Sweat covers my face as I continue to break defensive talismans and wait in between to try and withstand the natural aura for as long as I can to save resources.
After almost twenty full minutes pass, only the fine outer layers of these foundational souls are even starting to show any progress. The deeper, more chaotic portions have not even been touched yet.
It's at this point that Meimei's body flashes bright with a sharp white aura, and the sound of cracking bones and intense vibrations echoes through the room.
My own soul ripples and pops with a warm pressure as I watch the information on the tiny soul fox's status shift.
She breaks the bottleneck she's been sitting at for weeks and breaks into the 7th level of qi refining, and her soul-nourishing physique instantly shifts upward to the late stage.
Her soul mist grows hotter and wider, and after a few long seconds, she runs forward, away from the two she's healing.
The white fox's body is filled with dense, undigested broken soul wisps she's absorbed during the healing process.
She jumps into my open arms and nuzzles up against my chest, closest to my own two souls.
I yell out to the pair, "Stabilize this progress. I'll return to continue soon… This appears as though it will take a while."
We disappear from sight, slipping away into my hidden realm.
I take a gasp once the pressure of the room is lifted and I can actually think straight.
Meimei digs her head deep into my robes, getting as close to my energy pathways as she can.
The small fox has grown a few more centimeters after effortlessly breaking through. Its silky white hair has grown softer and more qi-dense, and the vibrations from its late-stage physique make my souls calmer just from touching her. However, I can feel her flesh and bones are sore and not fully set right after breaking through in such an intense, chaotic environment.
I use an upgrade card to create a heavenly-grade healing elixir, and place it in the little fox's mouth. Then, sit down to cultivate using my Jade Purity Soul Scripture.
Her soul mist fills most of the 5 element cultivation array, and she anchors herself to my two souls to recover while medicinal herbs strengthen her physical body.
I mentally map the damage Meimei actually healed in the old man and moose and realize this is going to take many long hours, maybe even days…
All of my own bottlenecks loosened up from Meimei's breakthrough, and even now, I feel my souls growing as hers digests all the excess energy gathered.
She's going to grow much more, and I'll only get to take advantage of her breakthroughs once.
After almost an hour passes by, Meimei wakes up from her semi-dormant state and begins hopping around in my lap, wanting to go back outside. I scratch her head and send out a mental pulse to the flaming toad so he can hear me too.
"Both of you know this is another opportunity for me to break through. All the help you can give will be appreciated."
I slip out of my hidden realm, placing Meimei back down on the ground to run toward the Wang Patriarch and his Spirit Moose.
As soon as she sits in place and expands her physique, I disappear and return to my hidden realm alone.
I walk up the jade steps of my enlightenment island, and purchase another talisman.
The rising strength of my souls pushes me to gather my thoughts quickly.
I return to the center of the 5 element cultivation array, bring my enlightenment talisman to my forehead. In the limited amount of time I have, I'd like to find the optimal use of Meimei's breakthrough momentum to my advantage.
Instead of a focused text to memorize, or a specific task to perfect, my enlightenment today is far more free flowing.
I allow the golden light to use my intuition, and guide me while mentally sifting through all of the new, powerful, and rare items in my storage, and my hands move on their own, upgrading a few to explore even more mental pathways.
The three milk fruits all shimmer with heavenly golden vine patterns, then the 20 barrier-breaking pills and 10 qi condensation pills follow soon after.
I let them rest in my open palms, taking in the sweet scent of their active ingredients, and visualize my next qi refining bottleneck.
It almost doesn't appear in my mind.
At the perfected stage of level 6, I have no actual visualization of the 7th-level dantian.
Instead, what I can feel is a mountain's base deep in my mind.
It feels like I can only intuitively climb it and trust that the edge of the bottleneck is at the top.
My mind quickly shifts away from this as my enlightenment talisman becomes more and more focused.
I flip open my Martial Path manual and read over the last few pages, outlining the movements of the Martial Spirit transition. I've memorized these with an enlightenment talisman before, but now the words on the page feel even heavier.
It is because the heavy, perfect-grade tier 2 cauldron rests in my storage beside three mid-grade tier 2 soothing flame talismans and the old heavenly-grade martial root.
I pull them all out into the center of the cultivation array, and the immense pressure they all give off makes me take a few steps back.
The heavenly-grade root is by far still the most intense. It brings my memories right back to the Misty Forest when I used a fraction of its essence to rid my physique of poison.
Now, it still forces my ring to activate and makes my mortal-grade physique quiver under its pressure.
Both my souls tremble at the thought of consuming this whole root as the booklet says.
I stow everything away as my thoughts rush even deeper, as the talisman begins ramping up to hit its peak.
The thoughts of both 7th-level qi refining and the Martial Spirit Physique juggle back and forth.
They both seem out of reach, but as long as my souls continue to grow stronger, it's not impossible to put all of my focus and effort into one and break through.
Once one is achieved, the other will be far easier.
As these thoughts consolidate, and my focus moves elsewhere, both of my souls make themselves quite distinct.
I can feel the slight separation as one, the younger soul, is stimulated and pushing out unusually fierce, almost angry waves as it cycles around and around. This is the first opportunity it's had to get a moment of clear communication with the one mind that controls both of them.
It seems resentful at the fact it was suppressed and wants to feel the flames it touched so intensely for a brief moment once again. It enjoyed the sensation of resonating with another soul that understood it.
My older soul is much stronger and cycles without any fluctuations. It simply wishes to maintain control, hold my body and physique together, and become capable of withstanding and destroying anything in its path. It does not wish to take risks or perform acts without guaranteed payoffs. There is a solid, cold pressure that cannot be swayed in its essence.
Both souls are forced to spin together, but they do agree on one thing: that they need to become stronger.
In order for me to cultivate, both must be stimulated while using my Jade Purity Soul Scripture, and both must temporarily share their essence with the illusory soul fox in order to benefit from its physique.
They settle down, and at the peak of my talisman's usage, another very light pop ripples through both of them as Meimei hits the mid-stage of level 7 outside.
My eyes open, and I start off simply, eating a heavenly red milk fruit to prepare my body.
The white qi inside saturates and flares up my meridians, filling my dantian all the way up.
The red outer layer strengthens my physique further.
I eat a heavenly-grade barrier-breaking pill next, focusing my mind and body on the goal at hand.
It instantly dissolves into golden and purple liquid, seeping into my dantian and sea of consciousness.
The invisible bottleneck of my 7th level of qi refining vibrates, and the mental visual of a mountain's base becomes far more visible in my mind, but the pill does almost nothing to actually help me climb it.
I close my eyes and try one of the qi condensation pills next.
It dissolves with a rush of deep blue and golden light on my tongue and fills my meridians with almost as much raw qi as a few drops of heavenly-grade rock bee honey hold.
The qi is extremely dense, like over a thousand spirit stones worth of raw energy straight from the center of an overstrained perfect grade spirit vein is flowing into me.
I quickly make use of it, activating my 5 element qi control technique, and force out streams of all five elements at the same rate that raw white qi flows in.
There is no benefit for me to keep this elemental qi inside my body. Using my newest discovery of cycling qi through my meridians would only split my focus further. I simply let it flow out the pathways of least resistance into the hidden realm to disperse.
With the energy stored in a single heavenly qi condensation pill, I'm able to fill and empty out my dantian three full times, and I feel myself slowly climb the bottleneck mountain in my mind.
I get a glimpse of what might be a peak, but get nowhere near it. When the flowing rivers of qi stop, I slowly fall back down the mental mountain to my starting point.
A smile grows on my face, as once the time is right, I know where to aim.
I pull out a small porcelain jar of tier 2 congealed ox fat and tap a bronze upgrade card to it.
The base qi-infused refined fat does not change or react at all, but the subtle vibrations coming off of it do. From nothing but an inferior hum, a perfected-stage body reinforcement enchantment forms on the item.
My hunch was correct, even inferior vibrations that have not reached the initial stage can still be upgraded.
I upgrade a few healing elixirs, marrow cleansing pills, and various high-grade spirit fruits to prepare further. I even upgrade three new enchanted qi grass tufts, to give my focused mind everything and everything it might need.
My stockpile of upgrade cards runs down to zero.
Over the next two hours, my enlightenment talisman's most extreme intensity wears off, but there is a very present underlying deep focus that has not gone away.
With my spiritual senses, I can see that the glowing gold character on my forehead has faded, but it hasn't completely left. This has never happened before when I used it to complete a concrete task like memorizing a booklet.
I'm still riding the flow state of this talisman, using it for a less mentally taxing drawn out task. I wasn't aware it could be used in such a manner until now.
A few more small pops in my souls have triggered over and over until my near-flow state of concentration is broken.
Meimei has hit the 8th level of qi refining.
I instantly pop out of my hidden realm, back into the Wang Clan's cultivation chamber, and watch the tiny fox already running my way.
Wang Yang's eyes open looking like bright crescent moons. There is now a thick outer ring of his soul that looks to be smooth and intact. His spirit moose is the same. There is no longer an overwhelmingly uncontrollable pressure of desperation coming off them, though they are far from healed.
I simply give him a nod and disappear before his eyes when Meimei lands in my arms.
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Author's Note:
One chapter of Five Element Overlord will be posted every weekday: M,T,W,TH,F.
If you'd like to support me, and read 45+ chapters ahead of the public release schedule, my patreon is linked in my bio:)
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