The Cauldron made a low rumble and a small white pill was spat out, landing on his lap....

"This pill?"

Lief could not contain his confusion, he wore a complex expression that was a mixture of both doubt, fear, confusion and most of all, anticipation.

He reached down and placed the pill on top of his hand gently as if he were handling a precious thin glass sculpture, and as soon as he sent a strand of Qi into the pill he was dumbfounded and could only stare at the pill in utter confusion.

The pill was in fact, the pill he had been about to refine, but the Cauldron for some reason refined it instantly?! If Lief had gone along with creating the pill it would have taken him at least a month to complete, but right in front of his eyes, it had been completed within 2 breaths... It really was too much to take in for a 10-year-old child...

He sat there in a daze, for no less than 10 minutes just staring at the pill that was sitting in his hand. When he finally came out of his daze, he decided that he would now consume the pill and immediately go and consume the Qi Stored in the Qi Collection Stone, he currently did not know but that stone had become full to the point of bursting more times than it could count but strangely instead of blowing up, it compressed all of the Qi each and every time, without fail.

Swallowing the pill, he waited about 3 seconds before he could feel it take effect and as soon as he felt his body throbbing he placed his hand on the Stone this time, however, he didn't pass out.

Instantly after placing his hand on the stone he could feel his hand lock in place. He could no longer control his own hand! Suddenly, several thick, silky, golden strings of Qi discharged out from the cube and mercilessly forced its way into the defenseless Lief!

Wave after wave of the Qi was followed by an indescribable pain, he could not resist the pain no matter how hard he tried, then as if wanting to cause him more pain, the effects of the Pill took effect!

He could feel an immense amount of golden Qi force its way through his entire body, it felt as if it was eating away at his flesh and bones, but before completely destroying them they changed their minds and started rapidly healing him only to then decide they wanted to eat him again!

This insane pain went on for what seemed like years but in reality was only 3 hours before finally stopping. Lief couldn't stand as soon as his hand was released from the stone he slumped onto the cold hard floor wanting to sleep however, as as soon as he reached the floor he felt a strange pleasure and actually wanted to stay awake to dwell in this feeling for an eternity, unfortunately, it seemed like today any pleasures would be taken away as he passed out after relishing in the pleasure for just a few seconds.

Days flow by and soon 2 entire months pass, before Lief, at long last, woke up. As he woke up he didn't move at all and lay there, unmoving as if a fallen statue. Although he wasn't moving, he was silently checking to see if his body was okay.

When he realized he was totally fine, he slowly sat up before sitting crossed legs and meditating. Even though he did not know what realm he was currently in, he could easily tell he had passed a realm, but he wasn't going to use even the slightest bit of Qi until he had assured himself that his current realm was stable, just what would happen if his Realm wasn't stable and he used Qi?! Would he feel pain similar to the pain he felt while he absorbed it? Whether he would or wouldn't, there was no way he would risk it.

He meditated as if his life depended on it for several days before he finally felt safe to check his realm, but to his surprise, he was currently unable to check!

Confused he looked down, only to see himself, still sitting down in the meditation position!

'What!? D-Did I die!? Am I a ghost?!'

As soon as he thought this he refused that it was true and rammed himself into his own body, moments after Lief rammed into himself, he was relieved to find himself back inside his own body. Lief was relieved when he was inside his body again. He couldn't imagine being forced to live as a ghost! Who knows how long ghosts even last? What if he was forced to stay as one forever?

Only after making sure he was actually inside his own body with a few pinches was he readied himself to attempt to look at his realm, he wanted to at least get to the Low Heaven Realm because after reaching this realm he would be above everyone in the city bar his father, with this he could rest assured that no one could force his father to marry off his sister, and she could find someone she liked in the future without being forced into marrying for the Clan.

He couldn't help anticipating what Realm he would be in after all of the work he had done these past months he had forgotten how long he had even been here! He could wait no longer! He looked into his Sea of Qi in order to find out his current realm, but it wasn't how he expected it!

He expected that upon entering he would be floating in front of a gate that leads to an empty city sitting on the clouds as this is what indicated you reached the low heaven realm, even if it wasn't that he expected to be within the city but...

Instead of what he had expected he was floating above the City of Cultivation! He was flying above heaven, he could not believe it! This was The God realm! He had no idea what level of god realm he was in, however, for some reason instead of being like when he was in either Low, Middle or High realms he was unable to see the words that indicated this...

It was just like this one time when he heard some kids talking about their class a while ago...

"Today's class was so boring! Why do we even need to learn about how realms look? We can just ask someone to check for us as they can easily see the words but we have to look for the signs?"

"Haha doesn't be so lazy, James what if we are in the mountains or something? Knowing this could be beneficial for our future!"

"As if! *Sigh* It's so boring it takes ages to learn this crap!"

"But now we know that the bottleneck stages are all similar so it's easy to tell! Isn't that a good thing to know? I already knew how the Low King Realm was when you stand as if watching the throne from the audience, whereas in the Middle Realm is where you stand where an adviser may stand whilst giving advice to the throne. I was able to guess that the high king realm was when you was sitting on the throne, but I had no idea that each time you hit the bottleneck of a Realm you was flying above looking down at the realm you was just in!"

"I guess."

As soon as Lief remembered this he was astonished to realize he was in The Heaven Realm! The bottleneck to break into the Low God Realm!

"Wait, So, Was all that pain part of the endurance trial followed by the doubling of my strength?!"

But even though he thought this was the case he had doubts, the Endurance trail was supposed to be full of waves of the elements that you had to survive but he had none of that happened to him! After a few moments, he also realized that he hadn't had the doubling of his Strength, Speed, Endurance, Stamina, Intelligence and had the ability to trigger that at will! He sensed that it was like a button in his Sea of Qi that he could press whenever he wanted! At this moment he decided that he would wait as long as possible to press it, as the longer he waited the stronger he would be, and the stronger he was, the more that would be doubled!

You may wonder why he didn't have to go through the endurance trial? He actually did, do you remember that pleasant feeling that he wanted to dwell in, well, that was the trial that killed an immeasurable number of people trying to pass the Mid Heaven realm! This shows just how painful absorbing all of the Qi was for Lief, he wanted to dwell in something that stops most people from even trying to advance the Mid Heaven Realm! If news of this were to get out Lief would be thought to be crazy even by masochists!

After preparing himself he was ready to leave and go back to his father, but as soon as he got to the door he realized that inside of his clenched hand was a tiny little Cauldron, the same Cauldron that was in the center of the room had somehow shrunk and even came into his clenched hand?

After placing the Cauldron back on the ground it immediately grew back to its original size as if nothing happened.

Lief again turned and began walking towards the door when yet again, the Cauldron was in his right hand! However, this time when he tried to move it and put it back onto the floor his hand got a shock that completely parallelized his right hand for a good 5 minutes!

Shocked, Lief stared at the furnace sitting innocently on his right hand, only to see that straight red lines had come off of it and ran up his arms! Alarmed, he immediately pulled up his silky, long white shirt, however, instead of seeing long straight lines he realized that the blood red lines formed words!

Words not of English, but some strange kind of scribble that, if shown to anyone else on the planet they would think of it as a child's unusually neat and straight, fake language that was made up of scribbles, but could still change based on how it was read after they assigned words to it, but for some strange reason when Lief saw this he felt familiarity, no, not because this was a language he made up, but for some other reason he couldn't make heads or tails of...

The words read,

Human, this Cauldron has grown attached to you, take it. If you say no ill order it to destroy your little city, but if you saaaaay yeeeeees ill tell it to show you its original form AAHND do a little Cauldron dance on the spot ,Haha! Hmm? Oh! Surprising, hold on a second don't answer i'ma come to you real quickzies since your the little kid who had the balls to drink my blood!"

As Lief saw a familiar voice was also reading it in the back of Liefs head Lief watched the words and listened to the voice, his face constantly changed from a ha, your shit at spelling look to shock, dread, then to surprise and finally horror as he realized that the blood he drank a while ago in that cave was...This Cauldrons owner?