Watching a bunch of cultivators build my new house was enlightening. It took them all of two hours to dig my cellar. And another one to dig several deeper holes and stick long, wooden supports in them.

Three hours to finish the cellar for today. First a layer of gravel, then a layer of clay, then rough wooden planks, and another layer of clay, and another layer of wooden planks.

Then they build the cellar walls, just a bunch of clay bricks encased in yet more clay.

Once those walls were about half a metre off the ground they filled the house with cheap firewood, and lit it on fire, letting it burn for the rest of the day.

The second day was filled with people shoveling ash out of my cellar, giving it a rough cleaning. Then some of the workers started building my stairs down in one of the edges, while others started laying long, wooden beams in the gaps left in the wall yesterday.

They started hauling in more planks, this time of finer make, and started laying the ground floor's floor. Some others came with more wooden supports, those smaller than the ones yesterday, and already dry. The smaller supports were connected to the beams, and soon both stairs and floor were finished.

The workers, who were cultivators one and all, then went on to build my inner walls, really just wooden planks secured to the straight beams, with a little clay in between, to fill any gaps.

My outer walls were the most interesting part, seeing as they got two layers of wood, with a very thin layer of what looked to be wool in between the two.

The stair guys had already finished the second stairs, and even more wood came, thin supports, and more beams. I continued watching for a little, but they seemed to be doing the same as before.

So I returned home, secure in the knowledge my new home would actually be ready as promised.

Two days later my house was finally. The cultivators helped me move all my stuff over, but left me to decorate and move my furniture around.

I was fine with that. After all they did not know how I wanted my stuff and it would only stress us more than necessary.

Now I could really start to work. Though to be honest it wouldn't really speed my work up all that much. After my work was mainly gated by qi. At least it's officially was. I could do far more, but that would show my capabilities. And I did not want that at all.

It was time to start working on my part of the bargain after all pain a bunch of cultivators to do all that work wasn't cheap. I probably got off quite good, just having to do half a dozen gambesons over a year.

Hah. The mayor thought he shafted me with that deal, but really, I got the most out of it, after all I got to to something new!

Sure gambesons weren't all that interesting, but they were better than the endless robe! And far more protective too. I would probably add a little of my fake intent qi if not for the fact that I decided not to use it. After all who would be be stupid enough to use their armor as a cultivation resource? No one.

No. I would hold off of using fake intent qi until I was officially deep in the second realm. Which, by my plans, should take at least another decade.

And I didn't know if I would really still be in the same job as now. All I knew is was coming for a certain clan! One way or the other.

Still, with the new house ready only one month after I asked for it, and only a week after it had been build, I was more than ready to open my dantain.

Originally I wanted to wait until my meridians were all filled with qi. But I had long since decided that would be unnecessary. After all I had yet to see another cultivator cultivate with the same speed as me. They all only had access to small percentage of the qi I had seeing as they did not know about purifying qi.

Which meant they had access to a lot less of the stuff than I did, and even getting a meridian network as expansive as mine would be highly unlikely in their lifespan. perhaps not after all I did not know how I how or if qi changed a beings lifespan. Well I knew keep significantly increased the lifespan of the really powerful old monsters.

Like my friend. I should really visit him again, it had been quite some time, several months in fact. Well, I doubted he’d noticed the passage of time, that did seem like his biggest weakness after all. Or strength, it all depended how you saw it after all.

For now, it was time to cultivate in my new house for the first time. And what better way to do that than to advance? Even if only a step in a realm and not a whole realm. Anyways. I had spend quite some thoughts on the process I planned to do, and spend quite some of my time just meditating on my soul.

Which didn't help all that much, I still had no clue what my soul was made of, but I had managed to strengthen my connection to my soul significantly. I felt I had a good feel on its shape at least, and that shape seemed to be a representation of my body.

Anyways, I gathered all my free liquid qi in the meridians near and around the center of my brain, took control of a small part right in the middle, and focused on my soul, on the connection my meridians held to my soul. And I imagined that qi falling right out of my body, into my soul, using the strongest gravitational well I could imagine, a black hole.

I had debated about that for a long time, after all black holes also had a gravity so strong nothing, not even light, could escape them. Well, gravity could, but that was neither here nor there.

Focus Triss!

I felt as the qi’s connection to my body became less and less, even as it’s connection to my soul grew stronger and stronger, with a surprising lack of pain too. Refreshing.

I added a little more qi, making sure the connection to my body stayed strong, and waited, only adding more qi when the connection to my body started breaking. After all I didn't want to create solid qi, and concentrating a lot of qi in a small space had a tendency to do that.

By now, I was pretty sure it was succeeding, but so that I would run out of qi before long. Would my dantian only be able to store liquid qi? Unlikely, I decided, after all I should create my coreseed out of the liquid qi stored in the dantian.

As time went on, and my qi moved closer and closer to my soul I felt something enter my mind, an awareness of something new. And a lack of something too, a lack of an definitive picture.

Interesting. I reduced the pull of the black hole as much as possible without stopping the process to have some time to think, with a minor part of my expanded mind concentrating on keeping the process running, on adding qi from all meridians I wanted it to connected to to the qi I already had.

Well. It seemed I could actually supply a picture to my dantain, how it should work. Most cultivators probably chose a body of water. Well, if they chose. The feeling was faint, hell, I barely felt it. Which made it very easy to miss.

Anyways. What to take? Something that fit in with my theme so far, and the intent I knew I'd chose in time, gravity.

The black hole I used to move my qi right now did sound quite good. It was the ultimate expression of gravity. But it was also absolute. Nothing escaped a black hole.

Well, nothing but gravity. Perhaps I should take a little more than a black hole? Just to be safe. Yeah, I'd add the immediate surroundings of a black hole, beyond its event horizon, where stuff could still escape, and even orbit around it.

Yeah. I constructed a picture of the black hole like I wanted. And its surroundings of course. I didn't want the extreme surroundings a black hole was sure to have, and which I had no idea of, but some nice and controlled ones.

So, I imagined the black hole, and its event horizon as a small point in the middle, which always held the highest concentration of qi in my body and soul. Just beyond the event horizon was a large, stable orbit of qi, all in the same state, but one less than the qi beyond the event horizon.

That large space would or could expand, just like the black hole, depending on how much qi it held. Once done I added theoretically infinite orbits, every single on holding a lesser form of qi than the previous one.

They didn't actually have to hold any qi, but having them could prove useful, so I just did the extra step.

I made sure the black hole always had to hold more qi than all orbits combined, if it didn't qi would feel an inwards pull until it did again.

Now, whenever my core's qi reached a higher state of energy it would send out a pulse of gravity, creating a new, inner orbit.

As it was this would also allow the qi to move outwards if my core reached a higher state of being.

Still, something was missing. A way for qi to change orbits, or move beyond the event horizon. Me. So I added myself to the picture, everywhere and nowhere all at once, always ready to give something to move to a different orbit, up or down.

No, something was still missing. A way to move qi out of, or into my dantian. So what to do? Ah. Easy. I created wormholes, two for each meridian, in each orbit. One would allow qi to move out of the dantain, the other in. And both wormholes were still connected to each other, which meant to cycling qi would move into them at speed, move through my meridians, and come back into the dantain by itself.

Perfect.

I pushed that complete mental picture onto the still waiting feeling, and felt something click. I had long since connected all meridians I wanted, and now I let go, and watched.

My mind expanded first, and I could feel the spot my qi concentrated in, and then expanded, creating a dantain just like I pictured.

Black hole, event horizon, and orbit after orbit after orbit. All infinitely small, but ready to expand to hold as much qi as needed.

Now I just had to find all the foreign qi intent in my qi, cleanse it, and concentrate some qi to break into the third realm. Once I felt ready for that.