Cha Ming let a light puff out of his lungs, releasing tiny residual impurities that had broken free during his breakthrough. He didn’t immediately get up but continued absorbing energy into his core. It had completely emptied itself out during its rapid growth, so he continued draining away his spirit stones one at a time.
A full week passed before his core was filled to capacity with a thick, fluid qi that felt more like liquid than a gas. It somehow traveled in and out of his core without need for porosity. The solid and fluid overlapped without any issue, just like it always had when his qi was thinner.
“The peak of core formation,” Cha Ming said. “At long last.”
“The next step is rune carving,” Sun Wukong said. “Though I’d imagine you don’t want to do that right now. You’d be severely restricted on this plane if you did.” He was busy picking his sharp teeth with his staff, as he often did. Despite his strictness as an instructor, he couldn’t help but lounge in an undisciplined fashion whenever he was teaching.
“No, the next step isn’t rune carving,” Cha Ming said, shaking his head. “I still need more power while I’m here. I’ll perform a pre-carving first.”
The Monkey King stopped picking his teeth.
“Are you sure?” Sun Wukong said, creasing his brow in worry. “If you pre-carve your core, you still need to etch lines. You’ll be stuck along this path when you decide to advance.”
“Is there really a need to etch?” Cha Ming asked, raising an eyebrow. “I was going to try something different.”
“Which is?” Sun Wukong asked, leaning in curiously.
“Why, I have this wonderful brush,” Cha Ming said. “I might as well try painting it.”
“Painting it,” Sun Wukong said flatly. “Painting your core.”
Cha Ming shrugged. “If any brush can do it, it’s this one.”
Sun Wukong thought for a moment, then shrugged as well. Cha Ming ignored him and instead focused on his core, which floated in the void, superimposed with his body. He imagined the Clear Sky Brush, and unsurprisingly, it appeared, floating outside in empty space. It didn’t contain any overwhelming presence like it did in the world outside. It behaved like a perfectly normal paintbrush.
Motivated by the stubborn brush’s cooperation, Cha Ming urged the liquified elemental essence he kept stored in his brush to the tip. The ink was soft blue, glowing with unaffiliated energy, sterilized from the natural evanescence that normally dosed it. He began painting. He didn’t paint runes like he usually did. These were runic fragments like those he’d seen on the Bridge of Stars. He painted them on the lustrous surface one at a time, and to his surprise, they moved about as he did.
The painting was excruciatingly slow. Every character he painted took an hour. While this might not seem like a long time to those outside, it was still around twelve minutes per runic fragment from an outsider’s perspective. Every character he painted migrated to its proper place, just like runes did on the Myriad Truths Diagram. Soon he finished painting the 300th character. A full thick circular outline was complete. Only the inside remained.
Since these unaligned runes were finished, Cha Ming changed to colored ink. He first painted the five elements, the core of the thirty. There were thirty elemental runic fragments, one for each of the mixtures. Five creative mixtures of two like water and wood, five destructive mixtures of two like fire and metal. Five allied mixtures of three, such as earth, metal, and water; five opposing mixtures of three such as wood, fire, and metal. Then, five mixtures of four.
The moment the last colored fragment fell into place, the unaligned runic fragments came to life. Color seeped from the inner circle and into the outer circle. It followed the pathways he’d painted in elemental essence, obeying the truth they conveyed. The color bled to each of them, bringing an additional dimension of meaning where uncertain hints had once existed.
When the final colors appeared, Cha Ming’s metaphysical hand trembled as he poured white creation essence into the brush. His brush flowed like the wind itself as he painted a perfect circle onto his core. It bit around itself like an ouroboros eating its own tail. He then switched to destruction essence, the riskiest of the bunch. He only dared draw it because the circle of creation essence he’d already painted. The black ink attempted to etch itself into his lustrous core, but fortunately, the white circle kept it from doing so. Instead, it could only wait patiently as Cha Ming painted jagged, lightning-filled lines that threatened to destroy the entire matrix.
He completed the star without a hitch. Then he proceeded to the next step. He concentrated five elemental essences into a gray ink, which, instead of painting normally, he simply dabbed into the center of the diagram in as small a dot as possible.
That small dot brought the diagram to life. The complete Myriad Truths Diagram, which he’d only seen in its full magnificence on Jade Moon Planet, suddenly glowed on his core. Energy from all around him rushed in, completely crushing apart the spirit stones on the outside, and even the flags and ink he’d used to draw the energy-gathering formation so many months ago.
His surroundings screamed, and even Jade Moon Garden trembled as his qi raged. Now his qi was less a fluid and more an embodiment of… something. He wasn’t sure. But as he summoned it
