God Of Crafting

During the first cultivation attempt at Leila's gardens, we somehow managed to gather this invisible, unnoticeable energy, achieving the first stage of cultivation. Then we condensed it into a single point, breaking through to the second stage, only to then go halfway through the process of refining it.

And this was exactly where we picked up the pace as we sat down, reached out to hold each other's hands, and then closed our eyes, allowing this weird, soul-borne pressure of the garden's second floor.

The process itself wasn't all that unfamiliar to me, even though I never really got to go through the process of cultivating this stage in particular. In its essence… it was pretty much the same as what I did before.

All I did was just drive the innermost core of my soul into an excited state, absorbing the energy that I attracted by doing so, only to then keep condensing it all into one point before using it to excite the innermost core of my soul, closing the self-reinforcing loop.

Somehow, however, I could feel this weird energy that I could hardly even sense somehow… getting tighter? Denser?

I couldn't even tell what the right word for it was, as this sensation was too foreign, too new for me to compare it to anything else, even though I supposedly already took this step in the past—just with normal spiritual energy rather than whatever it was that we were cultivating right now.

Nevertheless, just by stepping a bit deeper into the second floor of this miraculous garden, the process of gathering that presence-less energy grew a little bit… easier. And so, we continued to simply cultivate all the way to the point of the breakthrough, allowing us to breach the border between the third and the fourth stage.

The infamous fourth cultivation stage of the mortal realm, the Flesh-Qi balance stage.

It was the very last stage I found any information about when I was looking cultivation up prior to meeting Claire. It was also the stage I had absolutely no idea about, save for the little I'd learned from the study books and treatises, which was pretty much limited to how, at this stage, one would use their refined energy to purify their very own flesh so that it could properly accommodate both the energy one already gathered and the energy they would obtain in the future.

This was also where I felt yet another extremely weird sensation I could only compare to… constipation.

Just like one would feel the pressing need to go and dump some of their weight out in the toilet yet couldn't, for the love of all that's holy, physically achieve that feat, I felt as if my flesh itself was striving to achieve some sort of goal, only to fail due to…

Due to exactly what?

"Do you think we need to gather more energy to make it happen?" I asked as I raised my eyes, still bound to just using my words when communicating with Claire.

Even though our bond continued to grow more and more solid as we advanced through the cultivation ranks… it still wasn't there just yet.

"This stage is kind of tricky," Claire replied, knowing I was going to ask the question before I even did, although only learning what my question was as I asked it. "You need to get to a certain level of energy before you can force your body to start changing. But if we do it too quickly, we might break through before the process concludes, leaving us to either redo it all over again or live with the consequences of imperfect cultivation."

I raised my eyebrows a bit, not expecting to face a possible roadblock so soon.

'Wait, can I even claim it's soon?' I thought to myself, only to then roll my eyes over my naivety… or rather, skewed perception of what it took to cultivate.

"Let's take it slow, then," I muttered before closing my eyes and breathing out as I once again immersed my whole self in the process of cultivation.

Bit by bit, more and more of this hardly noticeable energy continued to pour into me, only to be condensed, refined… and then slowly added onto the pile of energy I could no longer infuse into the very center of my cultivation, the very core of my soul where that tiny amount of endlessly excited energy continued to allow me to cultivate.

As more energy converged into me, the resistance of my flesh started to gradually, slowly fade away, like an ice block obscuring one's path when subjected to the sharp rays of the morning sun.

I didn't rush it, though. Instead, I patiently waited all the way to the point where my flesh no longer offered even the minimal amount of resistance, the frame of its nature soon growing too weak in the face of the energy I'd prepared to actually push back against it.

"I think I'm ready," I announced as soon as I felt as if I was finally ready to go through with the next step.

"Good," Claire smiled, only to then stand up, breaking my focus as she did so, before dragging me down the labyrinth-like path of her mom's garden.

Claire didn't bother telling me anything else, opting to just drag me ahead in silence, all the way to the point where taking another step was too much for her current self, forcing her to stop and plop down to her knees.

"It's better to adjust our bodies under the strongest pressure possible, I assume?" I muttered right as I sat down on the garden's cold floor before getting myself right back in the shared-cultivation position we were in just a few moments and a few steps ago.

A moment later, Claire's soft weight came down upon my lap as she sat in the extremely familiar position one would normally expect from either a couple making out or… or a couple trying to hide they were screwing out in public.

Right now, however, it wasn't about sexual attraction, even if hints of it were already developing in both of us. It wasn't even about sticking super close together, although that did factor in on our cultivation, given the connection we shared.

No.

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By having Claire sit down on my lap, we simply aimed to enter the state of perfect relaxation, a state where we wouldn't consciously try to resist the change that was about to happen to our bodies.

"Are you ready…?" With a heavy voice, Claire wrapped my head between her hands before leaning over it, as if about to start making out with me with all the wildness I'd seen in her in the past.

"Yeah," I nodded my head as far as I could without shaking her hands away. "Let's do it."

Claire leaned in… and pressed her lips against mine right as we both closed our eyes and wrapped our hands around the other, as if desperate not to let fate, explosion, or some random freak event tear us apart.

And as we engaged our bristling spiritual energy…

'Oh…'

—fuck—

I couldn't even articulate my curse in my mind when pain of a level I never could imagine suddenly erupted all over myself. A pain I could sense an equal share of from Claire. A torture so intense not even the pleasure of our kiss or the relief of being filled with this weird spiritual energy could stop.

It felt as if every bone, every muscle of my body was all broken apart, split into the individual cells making them up. Then, as if this sense of myriads of ruptures wasn't enough, each of those cells suddenly started to rupture and then reform, mixing the pain of having the very foundation of my body redone with the sense of weakness that came rushing right after, when my reformed cells instantly started to absorb this strangely intense spiritual energy into them.

This process, for how torturous it was, only lasted a few minutes, even though it felt as if days if not weeks had passed since its start by the time it finally came to an end.

"Haaa… haaa… haaaaa…."

Breathing heavily in a bid to chase away the aftershocks of the pain, I clutched at Claire's body, desperately clinging to her, hoping for her pleasant warmth, her inviting softness to soothe the phantom pain still ringing in my head.

On the other hand, Claire did pretty much the same, burying her face in my chest as she attempted to hug herself into me, all in a bid to overcome this massive growth pain.

Our presence only offered a modicum of comfort to the other… But strangely enough, just hugging someone I loved brought a lot more mental relief than it provided physical anesthesia.

"Haaa…" Dropping her forehead against my collarbone, Claire exhaled… only to then raise her face with a look of triumph mixed with satisfaction in her eyes.

"We did it," she proclaimed, dropping her hands down on my shoulder only to then push herself away from my chest just far enough to get a proper look down on my face. "So how about we…"

Hearing her, I only smiled.

"Yeah, let's break through to the fifth stage and then go see just how much further we can go!"

Claire only smiled before rising up from my lap... Only to leave me feeling more alone than I was ever back in my past.

The effect of her leaving the range of a direct touch was so significant, she ended up falling right back down on my lap, only breathing a sigh of a weirded-out relief as she fell forth and rested down on my chest.

"Wha..." she failed to even produce a proper question, too taken aback by the sudden snap-back of our connection.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

"Let's take a moment to rest first, I guess," I laughed the whole incident off, more than happy to just hug Claire again. "It's not like anyone will care if we spend a day or two just focusing on our cultivation, would they?"