Seeing the little time remaining, Eric steeled his resolve.
He swiftly assumed a lotus position on his bed and meditated to calm and focus his mind.
With his senses braced and a time of less than five minutes left, he said, "Remove the blockages."
And like a meandering wave, he felt his torment wash over his body in a thunderous return.
Each strand of Qi, as it permeated his skin, crawled through the fractures in his meridians excruciatingly slowly. Each ilk driving towards his core.
The utility of the breathing technique shined brightest at this moment.
Despite sanity-bending pain coursing through every fiber of his flesh, his mind held firm.
Perhaps because he had prepared himself for it, the technique helped him push through, redirecting his focus to the hollow space of his dantian.
A flickering flame drove back the darkness, leaving only a warm orange glow.
It danced sporadically, further soothing Eric's mind.
He forced himself out of its trance, returning to his grim reality.
Eric recalled what meridian dredging entailed. Beyond being a step towards ending his pain, he looked forward to the abilities that opening his remaining meridians would unlock.
'Steady breaths.'
His thoughts kept slipping under the Qi's onslaught.
Before proceeding, he spent time in simple meditation. Eric was very wary of making errors in his fragile state. He knew any mistake could spell unknown doom, and he'd avoid that at all costs.
When he was done he focused once more on his flame of internal Qi and guided more billowing air into the hollow space.
The flame gradually grew larger as air circulated within.
Not long after, it became an intense kiln.
Its flames roared, filling the space until no room remained.
The burning fire bathed the walls of the mock furnace in relentless rage. Yet, Eric continued guiding air from his mouth into the space.
When the flames grew so hot they threatened to destroy the container, he doubled his efforts.
CREAAAAAA
The black walls began melting like wax, turning gelatinous like heated fat.
Despite the horror, Eric's desensitized mind barely registered the throbs that came with it.
His full attention was fixed on growing the flame within.
The meridian dredging phase was straightforward: Grow internal Qi. Build internal Qi.
Growing internal Qi was a continuation of stoking from the Qi sensing stage.
But instead of coaxing it to appear, he aimed to raise it into a ravaging inferno.
Building Qi on the other hand meant preventing the natural tendency of Qi to dissipate and scatter from a point. Although Eric found countering its natural dissipation from occurring as a subset of growing.
This process of increasing the potency of internal Qi was so that the resulting spiritual heat would reach a state it melted the blockages in the meridians.
The heat, built under immense pressure, then guided uniformly through all major passages, would clear a path from the dantian, out of the body from all meridians.
Due to the torso meridians surrounding the dantian and connecting it to the other five, they were to be the first.
Eric breathed in rhythmic cycles of deep inhalations to fuel his Qi, and heavy exhalations tinted black.
His lungs and mouth acted as an exhaust for the internal reactions.
Asides the dulled pain, Eric's true challenge was control.
To control energy he'd never had a grasp of and had become attuned to for barely a week, he relied solely on one thing.
His will.
By sheer will, he guided the Qi in the direction he wished, in the intensity he wished.
He controlled the flames so they weren't so fierce they burned through all the blockages and charred his meridional walls, nor so mild they only licked against the impurities of the paths.
Eric knew the torso's meridians were most delicate as they surrounded the dantian.
Damage to them spelt doom for a prospective cultivator, forever sealing off the container of Qi within the body.
Conversely they were also the easiest to cleanse due to their sheer size compared to the others.
This created a paradox: their proximity made them perilous to damage, but their larger size made the process of clearing them less finicky than the thread-like pathways in the limbs.
Eric remained focused.
The blackened crust of impurities coating his Dantian began to weep.
The blockages were burned away, and guided by his body's senses he carefully expanded the space around his dantian.
Sensing he was reaching his limits, Eric fell out of his trance and returned to reality.
He released a held breath and watched the black gas flow out before being dispersed by outside wind.
Just as he was about to apply another hour's blockage on himself he heard Victoria's calm voice cut in.
"When did you turn into a chimney?"
Eric's head snapped to the corner opposite the door, where a single chair and table faced his bed.
Victoria, with a tray of food laid on the table, ate an apple while reading an unnamed book no doubt from their father's library.
Moonlight through the window revealed how time had flown.
He rose with some difficulty, his joints strained.
After applying the blockages via the system, he approached his sister.
She gracefully stood and claimed his bed while he sat with the food she brought.
"Thank you." He said, stuffing his face immediately afterwards.
Victoria continued staring at him in return, awaiting an answer for what he'd been doing.
"I was experimenting with the immortal core." He said.
"What experiment involves breathing black smoke?" Victoria asked, unamused.
"I've been here almost an hour, making subtle noises your paranoid mind should've picked up the moment I stepped through the door." She continued. "But you remained oblivious."
Unprepared for the barrage of questions, Eric first drank a glass of water to wash down his food.
He took the precious few seconds it awarded him to gather his thoughts.
The soft clink of glass against hardwood drew Victoria back from wherever her mind had gone to speculate.
"I think the core holds the key to curing you." Eric said. Victoria dropped her book, giving him some attention. "And not just that. I think it offers strength the world has never seen before."
"How exactly?" Victoria asked sceptically. She was visibly offput by Eric's sudden claims.
Eric caught on to these, but he expected it. "I know this is all hard to believe, but haven't you wondered why I'm stronger than I should be? Why the Core keeps us alive?" He took a pause here, staring her dead in the eyes. "What's been killing us?"
Victoria narrowed her gaze at this.
When he saw he'd regained her complete attention he said. "It's all tied to the core and I'm close to something... tangible."
Then he fell silent. He watched frustration crease her face as she suppressed a chuckle.
"And...?" Victoria said, urging him to continue.
"That's where my experiments come in. But essentially everything focuses on Qi." Eric said.
Victoria claimed he was paranoid, but the only difference between them was she hid hers better.
If Eric had gone on to rant, preaching about the supernatural benefits of an energy that had little in the way of evidence, he would be doing nothing but making her wary.
The best way to wean her unto the idea was to feed her bits, and let her conduct her own research.
Forming her own conclusions was an expected result but it would be far easier for Eric to broach the topic of self inflicting harm so she could get stronger and cure herself.
And it additionally bought him extra time to clear his meridians. This would, hopefully, grant him access to more conspicuous technique, unlike his Qi sight, to further buttress his point.
Judging by the rate the blockages melted, he aimed to complete meridian dredging before Raz and Baskar returned.
This would allow him setup formations to further aid Victoria in her own stages and offer her better guidance.
The princess gave a tacit nod.
Eric knew she would recognise what he was truly doing, subtle manipulation. But her nod signalled she would trust him and play along.
"Did you come because you missed me and worried about my diet?" Eric teased, changing the topic.
"That, " She replied, stifling a chuckle as she spoke. "and I found something interesting in one of Father's book's."
"What is it?" Eric prodded, intrigued.
"A possible solution" Victoria replied. "To our current inability to leave the Estate."
"How?" He asked, interest tinting his tone. Eric would have to leave the estate at some point, and he'd prefer his movements not to alert every mystic within the Thalassa isles.
"An unsolved case I found in father's study. Bundled with a bunch of other odd official reports from a government organisation called the Aegis Division." She said, her last words having a hint of inquiry.
Eric in turn thought hard, trying to see if he'd ever heard of the name.
After a few seconds he said.