Chapter 26: Bijuudama?! Let's Cultivate!
The world exploded.
At least, in the vicinity of Ma Sa, the world exploded.
Searing pain assaulted Ma Sa's mind as he came to his senses in a crater. His health bar had appeared in the bottom of his vision and it was almost empty and still draining rapidly. Was this it? Was he going to die to a fucking random explosion. Unwillingness filled Ma Sa as he considered reloading from the character creation. His foray into the world of the Qian continent as Ma Sa shouldn't end here to a fucking random explosion! His mind raced as he fought off the creeping feeling of death. What was that? A meteor?? How unlucky could he get? He tried to move but his muscles were shredded. He felt his biceps insertion tendon tear as the muscle pinged to bunch up by his shoulder. The extra wave of pain at this point nearly caused him to lose consciousness again. He needed to think about his options.
*i*
Phew! Finally some pain free clarity!
Okay... First up is to heal somehow.
The Elixir of Regeneration and Potion of Ultimate Healing will sort him out for now. Luckily he had spawned hundreds of them in advance! He used them directly from his inventory and then thought more about what that explosion was. Judging from the crater and his injuries it was unlikely to have been a meteor. If not, then what else was it? Was he attacked by a martial artist? Why would a martial artist bother with a kid like him? Maybe a Xia had infiltrated the back hills? No, that didn't make sense for a number of reasons. Most glaringly was that the Xia had Yin attributed Qi. The fiery heat of the explosion was all Yang. Then, if not the Xia, just some psycho? A beast maybe? Ma Sa decided that the first thing he should do when he exited the inventory and was healed was to dash straight back to the tunnel mouth. At least there he could hold up and try to properly detect the threat. The other thing he should do immediately was to start rotating his cultivation so that, in the event of another attack, he would be able to nullify the force.
Plan made, Ma Sa exited the inventory and felt a soothing wave run through his body as his health bar refilled in an instant. It felt weird for his torn muscles to stretch out to reattach to their tendons. Now that the healing was done... Run!
Ma Sa leapt to his feet and bolted for the tunnel mouth only to see that between him and his destination there stood a tall and imposing canine... With nine tails!
Kurama?!
The nine-tails looked at him with seeming confusion. Ma Sa looked right back at it and held up his hands in front of him. Easy... No sudden movements...
*i*
Ma Sa looked up his bestiary for information about the nine-tailed fox before him. It appeared that this fox was only an infant. A fully grown nine-tails was a disaster for anyone but the strongest of humans to encounter. This infant should instead be of similar power to a mid Martial Warrior. Ma Sa's heart sank. He would be no match for the thing at all! What was the creature doing here in the first place? Is it some elder's pet or something? There's no other way that something like this would be allowed to roam free in the back hills. Suddenly a thought hit him like a truck.
*m*
"Oh for the love of Hasselhoff's leather pants! How the fuck did I end up here!?" Ma Sa cried internally as he realised that he'd been bewitched by the snail pheromones for way longer than he had thought. He was in the freaking Jianghu! Just what the hell was a tunnel to the Jianghu doing in the back mountains?? Did Grandpa Su know about it?
*m*
Ma Sa hopped out of the map and observed the nine-tails. It bared it's teeth and fanned its tail out so that the tips were pointing towards Ma Sa. This didn't look good! Half a second later balls of Qi were forming at the tips of each tail and before the snout of the beast. Was this a fucking Bijuudama?! As it turned out, yes. It was a Bijuudama, at least as far as Ma Sa was concerned. Scary!
Since he was prepared for it, Ma Sa was relatively confident he could take it head on and absorb it using the Nine Dragons Void Siphon. It would actually be the biggest help to his cultivation he could ask for as he had had to keep his cultivation pretty low-key lately. Since the energy in a Bijuudama was enough to almost kill him then surely it would be just enough to top off his current realm and bring him closer to advancement. He was definitely close enough to becoming a Fighter at the moment. The surge of energy may just push him to the point of Qi condensation.
Ma Sa circulated his cultivation furiously in anticipation of the blast. The Qi fluctuations from the nine-tails rose and rose, continuing to spike beyond his expectations.
"Fuck this! I'm not sure I can take it all!"
Ma Sa looked at the nine-tails like a virgin bride. As the energy continued to rise it was eventually time for him to give up on the idea of using this for cultivation and just get the fuck out of there! Propelling himself upwards, Ma Sa used his cultivation technique to fly. He absorbed the gravitation force acting upon him and the air pressure acting on him in all directions but upward. He shot into the sky and tried to out range the nine-tails. The energy fluctuations had risen to a terrifying level. Here it comes!
The nine-tails form flickered and reappeared above and behind Ma Sa. Was some sort of foxy Goku Kamehameha?! There was no dodging this one. Ma Sa was simply outclassed! He could only grit his teeth as the energy ball rapidly expanded in his vision as he turned. He urged his cultivation to circulate at extreme speeds he had never reached before. As the glowing orb of death made contact with him there was no sound, no heat, no light, and no impact. Ma Sa absorbed it all. The explosion that the nine-tails expected never came. Inside Ma Sa's body, however, the energy was tearing his strengthened channels apart. Blood burst from his body in a fine mist as his health bar plummeted.
Think!
*i*
*~*
What should he do? Just bang Potions of Ultimate Healing every time his health bottomed out?? Or... Maybe try and go through with the original plan and use the potions to save his ass if he fails? That sounds like a plan! Since he was already exploding then why not channel the explosion into the Heavenly Explosion Mantra? The problem with that would be that a single energy well would rupture the instant he tried to form the Qi spiral. But... What if he was able to spread the load across all of his remaining energy wells? Was that even possible??
Ma Sa decided to rehearse the Qi construct he would need to simultaneously produce the Heavenly Explosion Mantra spirals in every remaining point. This was a no go. There was no way he had the mental energy to do this right now... Of course, in the console he had nothing but time, or rather complete freedom from time...
*******************
So began Ma Sa's arduous mental training regimen. He would occasionally take a break and read some of his many books in between trying to build his Qi constructs. He first began with working on two simultaneously and then, after over ten thousand books had been read, he finally finished the construction of three hundred and fifty eight Qi spirals at the same instant. He was elated and wanted to immediately cease this miserable mental torture but he knew that he still had the possibility of failure. To be sure he needed to successfully build the constructs multiple times until it required almost no conscious thought at all. Back to the grind stone!
During Ma Sa's stay in the console and inventory he had run out of books so he gave himself license to spawn more on a few occasions. Eventually he came across a book that he wished he had seen before he got into this mess: 'Split Soul Immortal Manipulation Art'. It allowed a practitioner to divide their mind into another copy of themselves. At advanced levels it could be used to implant full copies of ones self into external objects. Ma Sa thought it was pretty grim sounding... It reminded him of the Horcruxes from Harry Potter! Luckily this method didn't involve murdering people to split one's soul. It was created by someone called the Nine Palace Immortal. Ma Sa had no idea what cultivation realm they had reached but, through their writing, Ma Sa could tell that their comprehension was far beyond even that of the Monarch of the Eastern Dao.
Since it was a mental technique and didn't mention Qi at all, Ma Sa wondered if it was possible to advance this art in the console space. Seemed like it should work, right? Yes... But... Complicated!! This was even harder than forming the Qi constructs for the simultaneous Heavenly Explosion Mantra. Training in it actually made that task significantly easier for Ma Sa. He could feel that, as he worked through the beginning stages of cultivating the Split Soul Immortal Art, he was getting better at thinking.
Ma Sa started having to import books from other worlds to keep himself sane in between his practice of the mental art. He had long since mastered the Heavenly Explosion Mantra but he could feel himself getting closer and closer to being able to form his first copy of himself. This was exciting! Would it be like parallel processing or would he actually have just given himself schizophrenia? Once he had his first copy, one could practice the mental art continuously and both of them would reap the benefits! Ma Sa imagined building an army of millions of himself inside his own mind and started to really question if he had lost his sanity a long while back in his training...
Finally, Ma Sa was now two. There was no sensation in particular when it happened. He was simply able to multi-thread his thoughts. As in, he would think about something and the next bit of information would just appear in his mind as the 'other Ma Sa' had done the thinking over that part. There was no conversation between them but they came to the conclusion that there could be if they were in separate bodies and thus had separate sensory input. It wasn't necessary though as they were the same mental entity and currently, in the console space, there was no sensory input at all.
With his thought speed now doubled, Ma Sa decided it was time to get back to reality. He was keen to know what would happen if he was able to expand every single energy well. Once he did he would then immediately rank up his cultivation perks. --Spiritual Battery-- seemed like it would be able to take care of any excess Qi after his expansion.
*i*
ARGHHHFUGNCHIT! Pain!! It had seemed like an eternity since Ma Sa had experienced sensation and the current sensation was a highly unpleasant reunion with his senses. Luckily, Ma Sa's other half had taken on the task of building the Heavenly Explosion Mantra Qi constructs whilst he was reeling.
There was a brief lull in the raging energy within his meridians as the Qi was contracted into tight spirals. The calm before the storm... This was going to be rough!
BOOM! This pain was worse than before but it was a different type of pain. It was a welling and inexorable stretching throughout Ma Sa's entire being.
As the light around Ma Sa faded into the inky black void that surrounded him, the nine-tails was even more confused than before. This small creature could withstand one of his surprise attacks by chance but now it had seemingly survived his full force energy blast. Impossible! The black bubble triggered an instinctive fear in the nine-tails. Stay away! It dropped back to the ground and backed up to the edge of the trees to observe what was happening.
A small snow cloud had formed directly above the bubble. This was the result of Ma Sa breaking down the air, his clothes, and any dirt particles in the vicinity into hydrogen atoms which were then bonding with oxygen to form water. The water then froze in the chill as Ma Sa absorbed the ambient heat. The nine-tails was right not to approach physically otherwise it too would be atomized. Of course, Ma Sa didn't know he was doing this or he would have stopped immediately! The last thing he needed right now was more energy!
One expansion, two expansions... In mere seconds Ma Sa had expanded every energy well five times. There was still huge amounts of energy surging through his channels! Could he expand more? He directed his mind to form three more Heavenly Explosion Mantra spirals in his three Dantians. He might as well keep them all in line with each other... BOOM! The explosions continued and when the energy wells reached their tenth expansion Ma Sa finally felt like he had hit the limit of his limits. It was time to apply the perk points.
--Spiritual Battery (9/9)--
--Chilling Power--
--Energetic Flood(9/9)--
--Inner Gems(1/9)--
Ma Sa had had a huge windfall of proficiency from this current crisis! His overall level had also risen to ten but he still had no idea how that mattered apart from supplying him with boosts to his Vitality, Stamina, and Magicka. He would happily accept the bonuses though! He'd also pop another of the Potions of Ultimate Healing as his body still felt like it was about to fall to pieces at any moment.
He had been in his cultivation bubble for some time now and, as he opened his eyes to scan his surroundings, he saw no sign of Kurama. Had it gotten bored and run off? Ma Sa could only hope. He may have grown significantly stronger but he still had very little idea on how to actually use his power effectively. That would have to be remedied soon. He dropped to the ground and felt a chill. He soon realized that he was naked and his coiling dragon was dancing for all the world to see. Luckily there was nobody there! Taking another look at his body, he realized that he was covered, from head to toe, in blood. It wasn't a huge amount as it was only what had escaped from his pores after he had stopped circulating the Nine Dragons Void Siphon that remained. The rest of it had been atomized. Ma Sa would have died of hypovolemia if it hadn't been for the Potion of Ultimate Healing.
He quickly spawned a water skin to wash with and then changed into some fresh clothes. Although he was fast, it was evening now and it would take him a few hours to traverse the tunnel on foot. It may be cheating but, to avoid worrying Old Guan and Grandpa Su, he decided to CoC to the charcoal burners and then CoC back to his room before running to the Contributions Hall. If he was lucky he could make it in time before they closed for the night and turn in his mission.
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"Made it! Now, time to see what I gained from nearly dying!"
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone