Chapter 24 Problem
Without further ado Valerio directed all of his Void Lu into his right kidney. A small light blue vortex appeared as his kidney devoured the Void Lu, covering 1% of the surface of his kidney. Yet as small as the vortex was, it didn't stop absorbing Lu at all. In fact it didn't seem to have a limit, seemingly wanting to devour Valerio itself if it wasn't supplied with its energy. As Valerio was skipping through methods of acquiring more Lu, a change occurred as if his thoughts were heard. His Lu split into two streams, one stream diverging from the original and heading towards his left kidney.
Valerio's Spiritual Lu faltered, quickly switching focus between two locations was too difficult for the current him. He hadn't had any time to explore the usages of Spiritual Lu nor was his Lu control at a level where he could interpret two different locations at once. Just as he managed to balance his senses over two locations, his Spiritual Lu faltered again. This time it wasn't due to his control but what his senses were telling him, in fact, if his Spiritual Lu could express shock, it would have done so, for it finally sunk in.
He was forming two nodes at once… and he didn't have the Lu for it.
In a quick shift, Valerio's gaze turned resolute from the previously tired and resigned look it had. His posture straightened and with a deep inhale and sharp exhale, he stood proud, his body the depth and stability of a mountain.
It wanted Void Lu huh? Then Void Lu it would get.
Valerio's surroundings blurred and vanished, having been replaced with a majestic world of blues. What better source of Void Lu was there than the Void itself ?
Valerio completely released his control over his meridians and allowed the vortexes in his kidneys to draw in the Lu for him. Two identical vortexes formed outside of Valerio's body, funnelling Void Lu into his forming nodes.
Valerio floated in between the two vortexes, doing his absolute best to not move an inch. He'd heard his father explain the void too many times to make such a mistake. The slightest of location changes could be astronomical in the Material Realm. He anchored himself, balancing himself between the two funnels and stabilising his position. Valerio sat in the void in between two funnels, almost as if he was standing in the middle of an infinity sign.
What Valerio didn't know was that drawing in Lu at such a rate at a mere Quasi-Second Plane cultivation was asking for death. Such a high intake would most definitely rupture either the meridians or the body of a weaker cultivator. Alas the dreamweavers meridian had been born into existence for a reason far above Valerio's paygrade, a faster Lu intake wouldn't cause any issues. As for his physique, what other Lu could it conduct better than Void Lu?
The vortexes slowly came to a crawl, two shimmering ethereal stones replacing a small percentage of Valerio's kidneys. A soft pulse beat from them both, causing shimmering translucent veins to spread across his body. Then followed a second pulse, the translucent veins expanded again.The frequency of pulses kept increasing until ethereal veins had been formed across Valerio's entire body, forming a new vascular system. A final pulse beat, his two nodes harmonsing and pulsing together.
A proud smile etched itself onto Valerio's face as he saw his first nodes, the silhouettes of his family and friends flashing across his mind as he couldn't help but think: 'They'd be proud.'
"One day—"
Suddenly a much stronger pulse came from his kidneys, this time the pulse spread across his entire body, an extremely comforting feeling passing through him. Before Valerio could react, he felt his cultivation level drop.
Second Plane to Quasi-Second Plane.
Just as quickly, it dropped from the Quasi-Second Plane to the 9th Tier of the 1st Plane. Valerio desperately tried to absorb more Lu hoping to rebuild his momentum.
He fell to Tier 8.
Distress alarms blared in Valerio's brain as he thought himself to be approaching his death, afterall what other reason could he have for getting so much weaker so suddenly.
Tier 7.
Disregarding all thoughts, Valerio emptied his soul sea, a sea of Spiritual Lu pouring into his body, and projecting billions of cells into his mind.
Tier 6.
Valerio pushed through the stabbing pain in his soul, his eyes becoming bloodshot.
Tier 5.
Tier 4.
He scoured through his entire body, searching for something, anything. Dark ethereal flames started dancing around Valerio's figure, switching between ethereal and corporeal. Yet Valerio didn't notice them at all, he was about to die.
Tier 3.
Valerio's posture finally gave way, a void gaze painting his features. Though it felt like all hope was gone, his aura finally seemed to stabilise at Tier 2. Before it fell down to the peak of Tier 1, completely stabilising.
He was back at Tier 1.
No better than when it all began.
The fact that he had just escaped death seemed to fly over his head as a single thought flew past his mind: "I've made no progress."
Sheer disbelief covered Valerio's features, his Lu wildly fluctuating around him. He'd almost released his hold on his location. Was he crippled? Unshed tears threatened to fall again, yet he wasn't the same person as before. He had a few more tools at his disposal now, there'd be no point in getting emotional before understanding his situation, afterall, it was wholly abnormal. Valerio quickly set aside his curiosity and started shifting back to the Material Realm in order to give himself a thorough scan.
***
Valerio clenched his fists, an aura as stable as a mountain exuding from him, his strength somehow, seemed… the same? It took a few minutes of analysis and inspection and had come to two possibilities.
First, he had made a huge mistake in either the First or Second Plane, leading to cultivation deviation and by some stroke of luck he was crippled but had only fallen in cultivation.
The second and more probable option was his bloodline node. Just as his Void Lu purified, couldn't a bloodline do the same but on an excreted level? So what if his nodes had actually condensed and purified his body? Another reason Valerip was heavily leaning towards this theory was because of the change to his body. Perhaps because he hadn't refined his control over his Spiritual Lu he couldn't feel a drastic change in terms of bodily structure, but he couldn't say the same for the quality of his body. It felt as if his entire body and mind had been brought to a higher standard, though Valerio hadn't heard of such a thing. It was very easy to derive that there would be a difference between a 1st Planer that grew up in a 6th Plane world versus one that grew up in a 2nd Plane world. It seemed his Void Nodes would keep him from continuing forwards with a shoddy foundation, always bringing his soul, body and energy cultivation to a certain standard. By the looks of it, a very high standard.
Valerio immediately picked up his Sabre and started practising the foundations of [Vanishing Blade].
"Amazing." mumbled Valerio as he gazed at his arms and legs. His body felt as light as a feather and his hands seemed to be able to cut faster than his vision could keep up with. Which spoke volumes about the increase to his strength considering that his soul cultivation had likewise been compressed with his energy cultivation. The oddest part was that Valerio hadn't practised any body cultivation techniques, by all means, he wasn't even a bodily cultivator yet, sitting at the standards of a shoddy cultivator. The only reason he was stronger than a mortal was that cultivating any of the 3 aspects of cultivation, energy, soul and body, would bring the rest of those aspects higher though not to the level of the focused aspect. Hence why there existed people that focused on a single aspect of cultivation, even if one was to cultivate their soul to the 5th Plane, their bodily and energy aspects would at worst be at the 4th Plane. If they broke through to the 6th plane with their soul again, their body and energy cultivation would, by product of their soul, reach at least the 5th Plane.
As soon as Valerio stopped swinging his sabre, an unforgiving fatigue settled, the absence of adrenaline leaving him in solitude. Valerio carried himself up the ladder and through the door, bumping into his workbench before collapsing on his gaseous bed, the stress and burden of the day washing over him and dragging him under the darkness of unconsciousness.
***
As the sounds of light breathing filled the lonely treehouse, a phenomenon took place in a world light years away. A star burned in bright blue amidst the Void, and around it was a dyson sphere, a structure of impossible magnitude and a representation of the very pinnacle of crafting. Orbiting around the star was a huge planet with a small black moon. It was exactly on that small black moon that a flashing blinding light had appeared, enveloping the whole moon in bright gold light that was visible from the main planet. A figure with black hair and a back that seemed to carry the world on it looked directly at the golden light source.
A small yet proud smile grew on his face as he raised his hands and tapped at the air, a majestic formation seemingly etching itself onto reality and disappearing.
"The rest is on you."