It was a gentle, soothing, and self-contained warmth.
Like a small, sun-warmed phantom weight resting in his belly. Each breath he took exciting it into a rhythmic throb that seemed to pull Eric's consciousness deeper into its erratic dance.
And with it, as if the warmth had ignited a fuse, a line of fire roared to life along the path it had taken.
The awareness of his Qi was the key that unlocked the awareness of everything wrong in him.
"Arghh!"
The sudden, excruciating pain arrived with the raging fire.
It crawled throughout his body, battering against his brain and roughly dragging him out of the meditative state.
[CONGRATULATIONS HOST!]
[SOUL IGNITION: QI SENSING COMPLETED]
The system's messages did little to quell Eric's aching body.
He trudged out of the water with great difficulty as he struggled to understand what had just happened.
Eric had divided the soul ignition stage into three levels.
The first, Qi Sensing, which he just achieved, was like introducing a blind man, who only knew darkness to the concept of light.
He would try imagining it all he could and might even glimpse it when concentrated beams hit his face, succeeding once he built an internal image of what it was.
In Eric's case he wasn't relying on imagination alone; he could observe his own Qi.
After that came Meridian Dredging, where a practitioner cleansed their pathways from the inside out and put stoppers at each end of their extremities.
This is done to seal off worldly Qi from entering the practitioner's body, and to create a closed internal system. It was essential since the body tempering stage came later and the body wasn't yet ready for world Qi.
The impurities blocking human meridians acted as natural insulators, forming this closed system.
What was odd with Eric was he could sense his meridians were not fully blocked.
Fractures snaked through them, allowing external Qi enter in miniscule amounts, ravaging him in unprecedented ways.
Once out of the water, Eric collapsed to the floor, struggling to move.
The pain he felt was numbing, unbearable.
It was as though his eyes had gone from knowing only complete darkness, to becoming partially blind. Only for the sun to glare its rays into his sensitive maladjusted eyes.
But instead of intense light he had viscous lava surging through his veins.
Eric embraced the breathing technique to numb his senses, but the disorientating throb of his body made his attempts futile.
Once he sensed his internal energy, it became a switch he could not turn off. Like his hearing, or touch.
Instead of continuing Eric decided to have the breathing technique act as a medium. He used it to hyperfocus on the sole thing he often lost himself to while remaining conscious.
Like his years in Panacea, where all he knew was endless pain and the cold restraints against his limbs.
He receded to the only place they had deemed too irrelevant to have taint: his own mind.
Eric distracted himself with his own thoughts.
Eric remained collapsed in the mud. Sometimes groaning, sometimes heaving, and often silently weeping.
Until his breathing became more even and the prince trembled to unsteady feet.
He gulped parched breaths while regaining marginal control of his body.
The pain was still persistent in its assault, though his mind and body slowly became accustomed to its constant presence.
Eric ran his palm through his hair before heading into the mansion with short, gentle steps.
'System, is our cracked meridians the reason for our illness?' Eric asked, voicing his acute suspicions. 'And is it why we're both so compatible with the core?'
[AFFIRMATIVE]
"Gnghh" Eric grunted, before continuing his questions.
"Then why am I not dead?" Eric screamed, clutching his chest. His ignorance worsened his mounting irritation. "You said World Qi causes instant death. I'm drowning in it!"
[IMMORTAL CORE ATTUNED TO HOST MERIDIANS]
[WARNING: Qi Absorption LOCKED. Attempting to draw ambient Qi will result in Meridional Collapse and instant death.]
Eric almost wept at the sight of the system's prompts.
He quickly calmed himself as he entered the mansion and made a beeline for his bedroom.
He read the message over and over in an attempt to understand the system's replies.
Not long afterwards he entered his room, undressing from his drenched clothes, and collapsing onto his bed.
'So you're somehow regulating the world Qi entering my body?' He asked to confirm what he had gleamed from the system's responses. 'And if I actively absorb external Qi you can't help me as what's entering me at the moment is only passive absorption?'
[AFFIRMATIVE]
'No wonder we were sick. Our unprepared bodies had a steady stream of concentrated energy pervading it over years. Slow, building poison.'
Eric sighed, sinking deeper into his thoughts. After a while, his eyes shot open.
'And why don't you seal my meridians completely?' He asked.
The system had given him the initiation art, so it clearly knew how to use internal Qi for sealing.
It could seal Eric's meridians temporarily instead of just regulating the world Qi—enough for him to live, but with mind-breaking pain as a side effect.
[IMMORTAL CORE REQUIRES OPEN MERIDIANS FOR COMPATIBILITY]
The single line delivered a large dose of disappointment upon Eric's tired mind.
Incompatibility was the reason for the gruesome deaths of the dozens of subjects Panacea had worked on before stumbling upon him and Victoria.
The most common way they'd died was by gruesome sudden bodily explosions.
Not ready to give up, and prompted by the extreme wish to not feel the slow gush of fire coursing through him anymore, Eric pressed on.
'How long can I last with blocked meridians?'
[3 HOURS]
'In the span of?' He continued.
[EVERY 24 HOURS]
Eric closed his eyes in deep thought before saying aloud.
"Block them. Leave closed for only an hour."
The moment he completed his sentence, Eric felt the cool sensation of relief wash over his tired frame.
A deep gasp escaped his lips, as the pain finally left him, albeit only temporarily.
The prince sat up, rubbing his reddened eyes.
He planned to use these short breaks in reorganising himself, while mostly setting his body on autopilot when the blockage period elapsed.
'The only true solution is to complete body tempering.'
'This very well confirms the cure for Victoria is also Cultivation.' Instead of a smile, his face held a grimace.
'But once she senses Qi, she'll suffer the pain of feeling the energy that's killing her slowly entering her body. And with her already weakened state, it's unknown what effects that would further have on her.'
He posed another question for the system. 'How do I block another person's meridians?'
[BODY TEMPERING STAGE REQUIRED FOR EXTERNAL QI MANIFESTATION]
'Body tempering seems to be the major milestone that solves most of our immediate concerns.' Eric thought. 'I need to complete Soul Ignition as quickly as possible. But Victoria doesn't have the grace of time.'
'Just the beginning and I'm already facing this many hiccups.' He lamented. 'The disadvantage of having no reference points I suppose.'
But Eric knew this was the price to trudge a unique path. This was the price of the first.
Alone in his own seminary. Rendered a living experiment.
A price the prince was more than willing to pay.
Lying in the blessed, temporary silence, Eric's mind, freed from pain, turned to colder fears.
Eric wasn't oblivious to the conveniences he had been awarded since his regression.
The regression itself was a major mystery still bothering him. Unfortunately it didn't look like it was going to be solved any time soon.
Then Baskar and his Lord's repeated timely arrivals. They were an unpredictable variable who seemed to know everything about him while he knew next to nothing about them.
His only clue into discovering their true motives was Victoria, the focus of their attention.
And lastly the coincidence of the base they now occupied.
Its vast utility could be explained as the machinations of a King who saw the coming end.
But its appearance...
Eric knew if he had not brought Victoria along they could never have managed to activate the obelisk and make the base appear.
Eric would have remained ignorant of the veil and the various supernatural ways his uncle and Panacea could have found him after some time.
And within a few weeks, before he could gain any strength, he would have found himself back in their clutches.
He could see all these coincidences. And it bothered him with his new knowledge of the mystical world. It felt like he was a puppet prancing to the will of its masters.
Cultivation, despite its similarly mysterious source provided him with a means of power he had independent control of.
It was Eric's way to leave the system's that tried to shackle him.
It was his. And he would hold onto it through the coming fire.