Seojin felt dazed.
It was as if his memories as Yoon Seojin and Seven Hart had been thrown into a blender.
"Fudge. Bring it on."
Eyes closed, he took a loooong breath.
From what he remembered, there were two zi paths: zi star, the path of magic, and zi ring, the path of the sword.
His path was the latter.
To ascend, he had to form a ring of zi around his heart. It sounded simple, but Seven Hart had tried many times before and failed every single one.
Then again, that was the old Seven.
Seojin steadied his breathing.
'The novel said the baseline ascendant rate is seven out of ten. That's a high number.'
At his current age, most nobles had already formed at least one path. Failure belonged to a pathetic minority. After all, in this harsh world, not everyone was granted the luxury or resources to try again after a failed attempt.
And someone carrying the prestigious blood of the Hart family absolutely could not afford to be part of that minority.
His older siblings had already formed two rings at this age. The eldest one, Eden Hart, stood so far ahead that a comparison among them felt entirely meaningless.
An hour passed.
Seojin remained seated, legs crossed and back perfectly straight. He turned his senses entirely inward.
Historically, there were three ways to achieve ascension:
Through meditation;
Through accumulated knowledge for mages and grueling physical training for the latter, and;
Through a direct assistance from someone beyond the Transcendent stage.
Meditation was considered as the most accessible route, and regrettably, it was also the most dangerous.
To ascend through meditation, one had to guide the raw zi flowing within their limbs back toward the heart.
The traditional method forced this energy against the violent, high pressure current of the arteries, the Yang flow, instead of letting it drift with the veins, the Yin flow.
It literally meant carving a reverse pathway inside one's own living tissue.
There was once a historical figure who tried a clever shortcut: Arven, the third Prince of Valen.
Arven believed he could let his zi follow the low pressure Yin flow of the veins back to his heart, while completely avoiding the struggle against the arterial Yang. It seemed like a much gentler, smarter method.
But Prince Arven died without a single external wound on his body.
Healers among the Sovereign stage has only understood the true disaster of the event upon investigating Arven's cadaver.
That is, the raw zi flow has caused rapid blood coagulation. Specifically, his Yin flow turned into a stagnant trap of clots, and that the accumulation of both zi and blocked blood caused his vessels to rupture from the inside out.
The tragic incident was recorded in history as a warning and called as:
"The fallen prince's path."
Seojin gulped.
No matter how desperate he was to ascend, he had to avoid that catastrophic trap if he didn't want to share the same gruesome fate.
Two hours passed.
Seojin still felt absolutely nothing. There was only the growing numbness in his legs and the faint, biting chill of winter air passing through the curtains.
'Shit! Why does this body take so long to sense even the slightest drop of zi in its bloodstream? Damn it.'
Two hours became three, then four.
By the fifth hour, his heartbeat echoed like a war drum in his ears. Cold sweat gathered thick at his temples.
Until.
'There it is.'
Seojin felt a faint tingling sensation inside his arteries. It was subtle like a static beneath the skin, but it was unmistakable as his eyes trembled beneath closed lids.
In Seven's memories, the useless bastard had only ever felt this sensation around the sixth hour.
'An hour earlier than I expected, but this is enough to start the real thing.'
Seojin carefully traced the faint thread of zi mixed within his blood. This was the exact point where Seven had always failed.
The fundamental truth was that zi was not a separate entity from a person's body. It lived inside the blood itself, molecularly bound to the hemoglobin inside the red blood cells.
If blood carried life, then zi was the impulse beneath that life.
'Inhale… don't chase it, Seojin. Feel it. Exhale.'
Seojin mapped his own anatomy.
He didn't view his body as mere flesh, but as a vast network of branching rivers.
The arteries were as red as tomatoes, high pressure highways that split into a much finer streams, and then eventually narrowed down to the microscopic capillaries.
Inside them, billions of red blood cells moved like highly disciplined soldiers.
Knock, knock.
"My lord, may I come in?"
It was Iria's voice from outside the door.
Hearing no response, Iria entered carrying a tray of lunch in her hands.
"My lord…?"
Iria halted upon seeing Seojin sitting in the middle of the room. She placed the tray on the desk and closed the window to block the cold wind.
Having seen this evey single day, Iria wasn't ignorant. She knew exactly what he was attempting.
"I wish you all the best, my lord. If you feel hungry, please help yourself. The food is on the desk."
"..."
Seojin remained completely motionless.
Receiving no response, Iria bowed deeply and left the room.
Creak.
The door shut.
Seojin was entirely oblivious to the food, the noise, and Iria's presence. His consciousness was buried leagues deep within his own bloodstream.
'So this is why bloodlines matter in this world…'
For a commoner, although zi was, again, bound to the hemoglobin inside the red blood cells, it still floated loosely in the plasma.
But in the exclusive bloodline of noble families, it was attached directly inside the cellular vehicles.
Seven Hart had always tried to tear it out, and that was his mistake.
In short, those with exclusive bloodlines didn't need to separate and re-route zi against the Yang current; they only needed to prevent its diffusion and simply let it along with Yin, though they still need to filter it to not share the same fate as the Prince of Valen.
This explained why nobles were always far ahead of the others.
Seojin adjusted his strategy.
He didn't need to force the zi against the brutal Yang current. He just had to exploit the natural cycle of human biology.
High pressure arteries carried oxygen-rich blood outward, and when they reached the microscopic capillaries, the flow slowed to a crawl, allowing oxygen to detach from the hemoglobin and diffuse into the surrounding tissues.
As the oxygen detached from the hemoglobin to feed his tissues, Seojin applied the slightest restraint to the cells.
'Only let the oxygen leaves.'
He locked the zi inside the deoxygenated red blood cells, and repeated the process across every capillary bed throughout his body.
The meticulous process took hours.
The sun had already set, dipped below the horizon, painting the room in twilight. By dinner time, Iria came back in to check on him, and the lunch remained untouched.
Still, seeing him shivering constantly from the sheer mental strain, Iria didn't say a word.
Iria knew this was the pivotal moment that would decide his fate, where he might finally succeed to be an ascendant after years and years of trying.
Thus, Iria gently placed her hands on his back to give him warmth, noticing his constant shivers.
Back inside.
The red blood cell darkened as it lost its oxygen and entered the veins, the Yin flow.
Seojin was so careful to keep them in line to avoid a violent collision of currents or sudden clotting.
Thereafter, zi finally detached only when the deoxygenated blood safely re-entered the cardiac chambers.
Slowly, Seojin guided those gathered zi to form an orbit around his heart.
The ring was almost complete. The two ends of the energy current were a mere millimeter away from locking into place.
'Hell yeah! I did it. I—'
Thump!
Seojin's heart suddenly convulsed. It pounded so violently it felt as if it would shatter his ribcage from the inside out.
In that exact split second, pitch-black hands erupted from the core of his own heart, with black chains on their wrists.
Those black hands viciously grabbed the two ends of the nearly completed ring and tore them apart. It sent a catastrophic shockwave of recoil ripping through his nerve endings.
"AAAaaAAAaAAaaaaaAaa!!"