I messed up chapter 17 so if you want the context go back and read the new chapter, the old one was a duplicate
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Moving over to the brazier, Fal placed his hand on the rim and infused a bit of his Qi into the stone, activating the Spiritual Construct. Across the brazier's surface, previously invisible sigils were revealed as they lit up with a cyan light, and a small flame with the same hue flared to life in the very center of the brazier. However, there wasn't any heat pouring off the flame; instead, faint blue vapors rose up from the fire like smoke.
And despite looking like a flame, Fal couldn't sense the slightest hint of affinity from the blue fire; it was pure Qi, exactly what Silva needed to fuel his breakthrough. But the tiny ember was far from enough.
With a wave of his hand, Fal poured an endless tide of essence crystals into the brazier and watched the flame grow into a pyre, consuming them and releasing a dense vapor that filled the room.
'It seems I'll have to use this upcoming war to replenish my depleted funds,' Fal lamented as he continued to pour out essence crystals into the fire that climbed higher and higher into the air until it was nearly licking the ceiling.
The air had also grown hazy with the condensed Qi floating around which had no way to dissipate with the containment array sealing off the room, leaving it all up for the taking.
Feeling the heavy ambient Qi surrounding him, Silva's spiritual roots rejoiced as they greedily absorbed the bountiful harvest, sending it all pouring into Silva's dantian.
For hours nothing changed with Silva wholly focused on breaking through, but no matter how much Qi poured into his dantian Silva didn't feel as if he was progressing, 'I'm nearly at half of my capacity, in a couple of hours I should break through to the Spirit Manifestation Realm.'
But instead of putting himself at ease Silva's thoughts only reassured him that something was wrong. Trusting the intuition and instincts he had honed over the past four years Silva immersed himself in the feeling trying to interpret its source.
'Something…is missing.' Silva brow furrowed, 'Is it my path?'
Something within Silva resonated with the thought spurring him onwards, 'How can it be my path, I've been establishing it for all this time…what about it is incomplete?'
There was no response and Silva felt his frustration grow as he realized that his dantian was filling up faster than before, 'No it's not that…my perception of time is being messed with…my thoughts are moving slower.'
Holding back his breakthrough was out of the question, meaning Silva needed to figure out what was causing him to feel such a dissonance. If he didn't, Silva knew that he would lose the opportunity forever based on the sense of finality that was spreading through his mind.
Pushing such distracting thoughts to the side Silva honed in on his path turning his gaze from the uncertain future to the cemented journey behind him, highlighted by every step he had taken.
Looking back, Silva inspected every single major decision that had led him to this moment trying to find the source of the moment where he had made a misstep or overlooked something along the way.
But Silva found nothing, every move resonated with his path of growth and the farther he searched the more dismayed Silva became, 'It has to be here I know it!'
Silva retraced every last step until he arrived at the very beginning the moment he had opened his eyes and stared up at the sky from his freshly dug grave, 'This is it…but how?'
Silva could sense it, the shallowness of the footprint he had left behind, 'Like I only stepped with half of my weight, but what could possibly make up the other half, what could I possibly left behind the moment of my rebir-'
Silva's thoughts came to a sudden halt as his entire being resonated, 'I was brought back to life, given the opportunity to grow into something greater than I was before. But it came with a cost, I had to die, and so did my garden. Death doesn't exist in opposition to life, they are one in the same, life flourishes in death creating a bountiful harvest that will one day be reaped. A cycle that continues perpetually, with no true beginning or end or sequence. It is a continuum.'
As Silva's revelation flowed through him he felt the first step of his path emboss itself into his soul and he could now see the faint echoes where the new facet of his path had professed itself even without Silva knowing its truth.
However even after discovering this new side of himself Silva could tell that his task was not complete. With the duality of his path Silva understood that for every expression of life there needed to be an equivalent expression of death otherwise the delicate balance would eventually fall out of alignment making him favor one affinity over the other.
'But how can I possibly create a deathly equivalent of my heavenly physique?' Silva stressed as his spiritual roots continued to devour the Qi around him rapidly pushing him towards ascension, 'A physique I gained after assimilating with a heavenly spiritual herb, to create something on par I would need a natural treasure attuned to the death affinity!'
A suffocating dread gripped Silva's soul, but the moment before he could succumb to despair he felt another gentle nudge on his mind turning Silva's gaze towards his spirit which was undergoing a tremendous change as the line between spiritual and physical ever blurred, becoming nearly indistinguishable.
But it wasn't his spirit itself that Silva focused on, but what was contained, the black putrid pathways that had rotted to their very core full of the poison that had nearly claimed Silva's life on two occasions once when he was poisoned as a mere babe and during his teenage years when he attempted to cultivate.
'How can this be?' Silva questioned not in confusion but at the sheer absurdity of the scenario, 'Why does heaven favor me so?'
Knowing that the question was far beyond his comprehension, Silva did not linger on it long and instead prepared himself for the trial ahead, 'And through life and death I am reborn.'
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For the first time since the ritual had begun, Fal stopped pouring crystals in the brazier, reading the saturated aura rolling off of Silva, 'That should be enough.'
Stepping back, Fal sighed as he mentally calculated how much money he quite literally burned in such a small amount of time, 'That was almost a five centuries' worth of Clan Stipends. Your greed truly sickens me, Little Vine.'
Fal glanced at Silva, who hadn't moved a muscle in the ten hours since they had begun, filling his dantian with more Qi than it had ever contained previously. The breakthrough between realms wasn't all that different from the ones between stages, up until the very last moment when the ascension occurred.
Between the first and second Realm, the violent expulsion of Qi would irreversibly fuse the spirit and body, creating a gestalt being with the capability of connecting to the heavens and earth on an intimate level.
'I can't wait to see how you react nephew,' Fal thought eagerly with a broad smile s he watched Silva's dantian reach its max capacity, 'The look on their faces alone will be pay back enoug-"
"And through life and death I am reborn."
Fal only had a moment to register what Silva had said before his mind was assaulted by the baleful aura that suddenly surrounded Silva. It was thick and suffocating that seemed to leech life from the very air itself giving the impression that should anything enter its proximity, it would share a similar fate.
Gritting his teeth, Fal shook free of the primordial terror that had tried to grip his psyche, 'What is this?!'
Staring at Silva, Fal waited for his nephew to awaken from his meditative state, but instead, he could feel Silva's own presence recede even further, 'So you brought this upon yourself…of course you did.'
Fal smirked, witnessing Silva's unorthodox breakthrough, 'Why should I have expected anything less?'