In this lifetime, the lifeform had become a crocodile, it fought tooth and nail for several decades, not resting for even a moment, simply gathering Qi from its fallen foes. It was in its 94th year alive as a crocodile when it happened.
Due to its very old age the lifeform had to change the way it hunted for creatures due to the deterioration of its muscles and its dulled senses. It had killed a deer with one of the traps it had set and was feasting on its body when all the accumulated Qi in the crocodile's body went out of control and began to rush back and forth through its body.
The experience was painful beyond belief and despite the lifeform's ancient age it screamed in absolute excruciating pain as its scaly skin shed off and its muscles were spasming and contorting along with its organs.
Its bones, nerves, blood, flesh, organs and literally every part of it was getting twisted, destroyed and reconstructed.
This excruciating event lasted only a couple minutes and as it finished the crocodile had gotten a giant upgrade, its muscles, organs, bones and skin had gotten a qualitative upgrade being much higher level than before the advancement.
The lifeform had finally become a Spirit Beast after 102 lives!
It was overcome with an overwhelming amount of mirth and joy.
The lifeform continued its life as a crocodile, before advancing it only had a year or two to live but the advancement had given it several decades of extra lifespan. It had spent the next couple decades dedicated to making advancement easier in its next life.
Due to having more power now as a spirit beast it had managed to uncover a very basic beast manual that increased the percentage of energy you could extract when eating from a corpse making it so the lifeform would only need half the amount of beast corpses to advance in its next life due to the basic manual.
The lifeform died from old age while searching for further techniques and manuals.
Lives flowed like water and the lifeform had quickly begun to consistently reach the spirit beast level in every single life after it had reached it the first time by accumulating more techniques and more manuals and becoming more efficient.
Once the spirit rank was no longer a challenge the lifeform set its gaze above, now wanting to become a Foundation Beast.
Every life he kept on progressing, and eventually he managed to reach the peak as a spirit beast, simply a step away from ascending to become a foundation beast, but that's when the lifeform discovered another shocking truth.
Everytime the lifeform was just about to step into the ranks of the foundation beast something always stopped him. Whether it be a travelling sage that was annoyed at the commotion the lifeform was causing due to its breakthrough and decided to kill it on a whim or a group of human hunters that accidentally discovered the lifeform when it was just about to reach the foundation stage and decided to kill it for its valuable parts or an enraged dragon that was causing destruction around itself and by coincidence destroyed the mountain where the lifeform was ascending thus killing it.
There were countless other incidents of something or someone stopping the lifeform from stepping into the ranks of the foundation beast. The first couple times could be chalked up to coincidence or bad luck but when it happened again and again dozens of times, the lifeform knew it was more than mere coincidence.
It had conjured a theory on why this happened, it was never meant to reach the stage of foundation beast, but the lifeform had gone against the odds and was at the precipice of reaching it. This infuriated fate and caused it so that every time the lifeform would try to ascend there would always be something in its way stopping it.
So not only did the lifeform have to cultivate with a restriction causing it to need hundreds of times more energy then any other being but now even fate was stopping its advancement.
Despite knowing this, the lifeform was not discouraged and continued trying every life, trying something new every time trying to somehow scheme against fate. But the lifeform failed again, and again, and again.
It had been over 500 cycles and the lifeform had still not broken through to the foundation stage. It had taken it around 100 cycles to become a spirit beast, then another 200 cycles to reach the top of spirit beast and for the remaining 200 cycles the lifeform had been stuck at the peak of spirit beast, unable to take that last step.
But eventually after continuously trying and expanding its knowledge into more bizarre topics it had succeeded in taking the last step. The life form had discovered an ancient spatial formation and that gave the lifeform an idea.
Though implementing it took an extreme amount of effort as a spirit beast should not even be able to touch concepts such as spatial travel until much later on in its cultivation journey.
It was on its 526th cycle.
The lifeform was in a massive ritual with itself being in the middle of it, and when it began its ascension the ritual activated and the lifeform was constantly teleported to random places while it was ascending, the brainpower needed to both control an ascension and control a massive spatial formation was immense, especially for a mere spirit beast but the lifeform persevered.
Due to it being constantly teleported around, fate couldn't do anything to stop its ascension and after being teleported around numerous times the lifeform had succeeded in ascending.
It had stopped its teleportation and ended up in an endless desert, but the lifeform was more interested in itself as it could feel the immense power in itself.
As the realisation set in, in what the lifeform had just accomplished it began to shed tears of happiness, despite fate itself trying to stop the lifeform from ascending it had defied fate and succeeded.
Its hard work had not gone to waste!
But as the lifeform kept weeping in happiness it had sensed a change in its body, the endless amount of teleportations had caused a massive toll on its body that was only felt now. The lifeform looked down at its body and could see it slowly turn to dust due to the backlash of how many times it had teleported with a mere spirit beast body.
As the lifeform was slowly turning to dust it had a satisfied smile on its face.
Those who gain enlightenment in the morning, can die content in the evening.
After a few seconds the lifeform was completely turned to dust, becoming indistinguishable from the sand in the desert.