All sizes, all forms, and yet strangely coherent with each other, that was an accurate description of the Qi Components inside of Liu Baotian's middle dantian. Now, all that was left to do was to give them a definitive shape, and he would advance into the Qi Building stage.
"Heaven gives us the light to see, Earth gives us the ground to stand, and in between is the spiritual energy that lets us truly feel the world through our heart. May my heart become one with spiritual energy, and let me progress to new horizons! Fall down, Qi Building Tribulation!"
At his words, clouds started to gather. His parents, Liu Zhenyun and Liu Jianhong were all watching. Liu Zhenyun in particular seemed strange. There was something in his gaze that was almost… otherworldly.
'Did he finally grasp the feeling of spiritual energy?'
That was… good for him. And for Baotian, that was one more reason to succeed!
Electricity started to gather amidst the clouds, and Baotian used his spells in quick succession: with a fire spell, he made flames rise around him. With a wind spell, he spread them in the air, evaporating the water in the air to make the conduction of electricity much harder. With an earth spell, he covered himself in a dome. And with a force spell, he made his sword levitate and spin above his head, adding a last protection.
At the Qi Refining realm, no matter the scripture used to cultivate, one can normally only use basic elemental spells and force control spells. Baotian wasn't exempt but thanks to his ingenuity, he could combine them all to shortly put up Qi Building level defenses.
And that was enough. As the Tribulation lightning fell, the dry air weakened it, the earth wall blocked most of it and the spinning sword dispersed what was left of it, ending the tribulation.
In the end, a Tribulation was nothing more than a casual strike of the superior realm in terms of strength. Hard but far from impossible. And while most Qi Refining cultivators defying the Tribulation ended up with different levels of minor injuries, Baotian managed to get away without a single scratch
And yet, at this moment, Baotian felt the Qi Components slip. They slipped off his grasp and bumped into each other continuously in his middle dantian, wrecking havoc until it returned to the shapeless, messy lump of spiritual energy it once was.
"Ah, no…"
Liu Baotian had successfully passed the Tribulation and would be able to progress to the next stage without having to go through it again once he recovered.
But for now, Liu Baotian had returned to Qi Refining mid stage.
'Ah… dammit. I guess I couldn't fake talent forever, after all'
As he spat out blood, suffering severe internal injuries, Baoxian looked at his parents and his master and still found it in himself to smile weakly at them. Instead of looking disappointed, they just seem to worry for him.
'It's still not over, heavens didn't give up on me yet'
But at this moment, he saw a light coming from the side and, turning his head in this direction, he saw Liu Zhenyun, sitting with his legs crossed as his middle dantian was progressively filled with light. He had undoubtedly reached the early Qi Refining stage. While it was a great feat, it was still within reason: after all this time struggling and learning formulas, it wasn't that surprising that he could grasp the feeling of spiritual energy directly once he passed through his bottleneck.
No, what was truly shocking was that… his absorption rate was still getting higher!
"After all these years repeating the formulas to understand the intricacies of Qi Consolidation and early Qi Refining, now that I have grasped the feeling… the path, I can walk it down now"
And as the energy accumulated, Liu Baotian finally understood.
"N-no, that's impossible" elder Jianhong blurted out. "He's approaching mid stage Qi Refining already!"
As the gaze of his master, of everyone, of even his parents, turned away from his pitiful self to look at Zhenyun, whose spiritual energy was skyrocketing, Baotian understood that the young man in front of him, who is sometimes saw as his little brother, sometimes as his best friend, sometimes as his nephew and sometimes even as his son was what he faked to be all this time.
He was a genius. A true one.
That day, both Zhenyun and Boatian ended at the beginning of Qi Refining mid stage.
And so on, ten years passed.
Both Baotian and Zhenyun reached the peak of late Qi Refining, also called Grand Perfection. Baotian simply recovered his cultivation, while Zhenyun reached it from scratch. And while Zhenyun successfully passed the Tribulation. Baotian once again failed.
"Why, why, why! Why can't I reach Qi Building!"
Zhenyun, who was half his age, had succeeded with as little resources as him, so why didn't he!
His parents consoled him. His master consoled him, too. He had himself been stuck at the peak of Qi Building for over fifty years by now, having less than twenty years of lifespan remaining, so he understood his pain. He didn't suddenly start to look down on him while holding Zhenyun on a pedestal.
Seeing this, seeing them all worried for him, Baotian only felt worse, like worthless trash.
He needed to ascend to the next realm, he had to do it!
Twenty more years passed by.
Liu Zhenyun reached Qi Building late stage. His master, Liu Jianhong, had finally managed to reach the level of Core Formation by staking his life, at the price of losing his future potential due to an injury sustained during the Tribulation. Thanks to the vast lifespan granted during the advancement, he looked nearly twice as young as Baotian, now a eighty years old grampa.
The joke of the Liu clan.
Be it his master or his junior, they were the only ones that weren't mocking him, weren't calling him a senile failure.
'But I know better. Behind their smiles, behind all their encouragements and kind words, pity outweighs hope'
"Haha, that's pretty sad right? Mom, dad"
Baotian kept talking, but nobody answered. The dead couldn't talk after all, especially once they were buried under a grave like his parents. Sitting in front of their tombstones, Baotian kept talking and talking.
"In the last twenty years, I have tried thrice to reach Qi Building. You already saw the first one, didn't you? You two, who suffered injuries stopping you from reaching Qi Building, your lifespan was already nearly exhausted, but even with all your teeth and hair gone, you still dragged your bodies to see my advancement with force control spells. Truly, transmigrator or not, I couldn't have hoped for better parents"
He buried his head in his arms:
"And yet, I still failed. My Qi Components exploded again when I failed to turn them into Qi Pieces, I passed out, and when I woke up, you were… just gone"
Baotian gritted his teeth:
"I used to think that having this opportunity to live longer was enough to be satisfied, but now that you're gone too, I realize: no matter how long it is, a life with a set end can only be lived in fear or denial. I want… I want to live forever. I want to become an Immortal. At the very least, I want to believe I have a chance to one day become an Immortal and one day surpass death, no matter how little the hope is"
He punched the ground:
"BUT I CAN'T! EVEN REACH! THIS DAMN! QI BUILDING!"
He hit his forehead against the ground again and again:
"Heavens above, earth below! I beg you! Give me one chance, just one! I don't want to die, I'm terrified of death! Heaven, earth, Immortals, even demons, I beg you, give me the chance to escape this fatality!"
As his forehead began to bleed, he finally stopped, still crying as his tears mixed with the blood on the ground.
At this moment, he heard a mocking laugh behind him:
"Heh, so you're the trash disciple of the sword elder, uh?"
Liu Baotian recognized him. He was one of the disciples who started cultivating around the same time as Liu Zhenyun. While not a genius like him, by now, he had already catched up to Baotian's cultivation, and had planned his Qi Building advancement for the next month.
"Yes, I guess it's a good way to call me"
Liu Baotian, seeing him, instinctively knew it: he would succeed in his Qi Building advancement, leaving him behind too.
"Hah, look at this trash admitting it! When I think that such a toad dares to call itself 'senior brother' to our clan's genius, it makes me sick!"
"I see"
"Your parents are better off there, beneath the ground, so they don't have to live seeing the kind of trash you became"
"That is probably the case"
"To think an old man like you could be so pathetic, your parents indeed deserve to be below the ground for not knowing how to keep their pathetic bloodlines to themselves instead of sharing with each other"
"..."
"What did you just say?"
"I said that it's okay to be trash, it's only because of your parents that you are that way, after all"
Baotian's thoughts stopped. He calmly wiped his face, got up, and looked at the junior.
"I am sorry, my old ears can't listen all that well anymore, could you repeat, please?"
"Are you deaf, you antic toad? I said you were a failure because you inherited the blood of two failures! Everybody in the world has limits to their talents, and even if their cultivation is smooth all the way up to a certain point, once they reach this point, they'll simply stop advancing, and nothing they do will help them take even one more step forward! Hardwork, hope, nothing could ever replace talent, that's why someone like you who's born being looked down upon by heavens, could never be anything more than a failure, and the ones to blame for this failures are nobody else than your unworthy genito- ah?"
The cultivator stopped in his tracks and looked down. There, he saw a sword piercing his stomach, but didn't seem to understand why it was there.
"... Ah?"
"Such a shame… that such a promising junior, about to reach Qi building, die because this old geezer's hand slipped, it truly is a shame, indeed"
Baotian turned the sword inside the wound and used it as a medium to transmit a wind spell inside the cultivator's body, effectively destroying his organs and making him suffer a brutal, pitiful death.
"You could have had a bright future if you only insulted me" he said to the corpse with empty eyes. "Oh well, I guess I have to report the incident now"
And as Liu Baotian walked away, a centipede came out of the cultivator's ear, crawling around before disappearing.