Murong Xue Meng returned to her courtyard and dismissed all servants. She was wary of any spies among them, and since she was from a modern era, she wasn't used to servants. She then sat in a spring near the back of her courtyard and started to cultivate and stabilise her foundations. The lower-rank 3 qi Gathering Array in the spring helped her gather essence qi, absorb it into her dantian, and then circulate it around her meridians. The essence qi here was already considered plentiful, and with the qi Gathering Array, Murong Xue Meng was improving even faster. Soon, she was approaching the peak of the 9th layer of the earthly realm.
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Every martial spirit lies dormant in one's dantian before being awakened. Some people will have a martial spirit in their dantian for their entire lives without ever being able to awaken it. Of course, they can still cultivate, it's just that without awakening one's martial spirit, one can never step across the threshold into the Master realm. No matter how much of a genius Murong Xue Meng was, this would've just marked her as "trash".
However, this was no longer the case, with Murong Xue Meng's "death", the seal on her martial spirit had been completely removed. Once she awakened them, even if her martial spirits were the lowest common grade type, she could still work her way up and take revenge because the threshold on stepping into the Master realm would disappear.
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To awaken martial spirits, one needed to control a fine thread of essence qi and insert it into the martial spirit, circulating its meridians in full. However, the higher the grade of martial spirit one has, the harder it is to circulate the essence qi throughout it. Geniuses can get stuck at this stage, forever unable to step into the Master realm, left behind in the dust of even the most average tier of martial spirit cultivator.
Murong Xue Meng knew she needed to get this stage right, or else she'd never be able to pick up the broken pieces left behind by her mother and brother. Let alone perhaps even going back to her own world to pick up the broken pieces that she'd left behind.
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Sweat beaded her forehead, and a look of absolute concentration was clear on her face. Murong Xue Meng wasn't even a quarter of the way through circulating essence qi through her martial spirit, and she'd already felt spent.
The flow is getting faster and stronger, which in turn makes it harder to control. At this rate, my dantian will become damaged, and my martial spirit will be crippled! How do I steer this essence qi? She quickly and forcefully changed direction when she realised the energy was getting out of control. Although this method worked to a certain point, the longer Murong Xue Meng did this, the harder it was to control the energy. At this point, she had only finished 70% of the full circuit around the meridians of her martial spirit.
At 90%, she finally couldn't hold on.
Am I going to fail at this critical point?
Murong Xue Meng let go of the essence qi. But seeing it was about to crash through the meridians of her martial spirit, she immediately used all her remaining energy, only to give it a nudge; who knew this method really worked! Surprisingly, this remaining 10% was the easiest part.
With a brilliant flash, a bird burst out of her body. It was only around the size of Murong Xue Meng's head, but its wingspan was almost twice the size of its body. It was covered in beautiful black, blue and purple feathers, but the most amazing thing about it was the fact that it was a High Rank Unique Tier! The best tier of martial spirit that anyone can awaken!
Unfortunately, the current Murong Xue Meng couldn't enjoy this joyous moment as she collapsed in the spring from the draining effort of awakening her martial spirit.
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The sun shone down on Murong Xue Meng's face; her eyelashes glittered with droplets of spring water....
Or what remained of it. The spring was a diluted version of the essence qi formed by the qi Gathering Array. This spring... Murong Xue Meng looked around but then realised that her cultivation had burst into the 3rd layer of the harmonisation realm! She sensed that in her dantian, there was a very satisfied-looking bird....
Wait.
No.
That wasn't right, this bird, it's a High Rank Unique Tier Nirvana Mystic Phoenix. It's said to rank in the top 3 of all the Unique Tier martial spirits because of one of its special abilities to absorb other martial spirits and take their skills. However, all the people who have owned this spirit, well, to say it nicely, pursued the Unorthodox path, to say it harshly, the Demonic Way. There was no way for her to easily show this spirit.
Murong Xue Meng plopped down on the ground, racking her brain to find a solution.
"Dear, no need to think about it more. After my former owners were chased down and killed, I sacrificed half of my cultivation to change my appearance. The Tier, however, I can't change, but this should be enough, right?"
"...Ah? Nirvana Mystic Phoenix..?"
"That's me, dear."
"This, thank you."
"It's alright, when I change my form, I'll look like a normal Vermilion Phoenix, but that is still quite dangerous because I'm, after all, still a Unique Tier spirit. With your current strength, revealing me would be a death sentence, even after I change my appearance. Only when you get yourself a strong enough backing should you reveal my existence."