A Cultivation Tale: The Godly Punisher

Chapter 121: Mid-phase condensation stage

- Evening -

Alex and the rest finished the day's training. So they went to their different apartments to rest. But Alex didn't return with them. He still wanted to cultivate. So he bade them bye and went to the cultivation hall.

He chose a top-grade cultivation room and this caused the staff there to marvel at how Alex was carelessly spending Jennifer's money.

When Alex got in, he immediately made way for the energy-synthesis array and sat down at the center.

Once the array activated, after he had infused the central energy-gathering column with the comprehension of the five realm-energies he wanted to cultivate, the four energy-accumulating columns at the four corners of the square platform began to draw the five energies from the world.

Realm-energies, also called world-energies were energies one would have to harmonize with. That is, one would have to attune one's senses and perception to the frequency they vibrated in before one would be able to perceive them and cultivate.

Alex projected his understanding of the five energies that he wanted to cultivate into the array and this made it able to draw in those energies from the surroundings, based on the information Alex transmitted to it.

Not long, being an highly-efficient, top-grade cultivation array, a multicolored fog of energy appeared around Alex. This fog totally shrouded his figure.

Alex then began to absorb the energies into his body. Because he was moving large bundles of wisps of the energies into his body, he experienced great pain.

The intense pain he experienced was because of the large bundles of threads of energies that entered into his body through his pores.

Because of their large sizes, they caused his skin pores to expand that it tore and began to bleed from various places. Despite his tough skin, the pores actually tore from expansion by the realm-energies when they moved into his body.

Alex continued to grunt within him as he tried to withstand the intense pain that flooded his senses. His eyes were red from pain and veins bulge from all over his body. His face looked pale and he was bleeding from his teeth as a result of gritting them too hard just because of the pain that racked his body.

Three hours later, the pool of energy belonging to his strengthforce energy, darkforce energy, speedforce energy, phantasmforce energy and radiantforce energy increased in volume that they now matched the others in quality and quantity.

Then Alex's eyes snapped open. A smile appeared in his face. He had finally broken through to the mid-phase condensation stage.

He stood from where he sat on the platform. Then he stretched himself and cracked his bones. But he couldn't go out just yet. He was bloodied and people would still be around. So he decided to wait for the sky to get darker before leaving to go have his bath. He removed the cloth he wore and used it to wipe off the blood stain on his body and on the ground. Then he wore a new cloth.

Since there was nothing to do and feeling idle, he sat back on the ground in the cross-legged position.

Then he thought of Karen. He hadn't seen her since. He wondered where she went to. Then he remembered their battle. He recalled that he had to switch on and off his physique transformation ability to be able to fight her. And why he did that was because he wanted to swallow soul invigorating pills to refresh his soul, to give it energy. And he felt that although Karen was really angry at him that day, she didn't really wanted to kill him. If it was a serious life-or-death battle, he wasn't sure he would still be alive. He knew that in a real battle, no one would allow him to take pills to energize himself after he had reverted and then try to re-transform. It would be an insane, fatiguing, deadly battle. And the time to remain in his physiques was very limited. Just about a minute and he would suddenly blank out.

"I have to work on my soul. I have to cultivate it." Alex said. He felt that only by cultivating his soul would he be able to last longer in his transformed state.

Then he looked into his dad's necklace and scanned the vast storage space for any book that had information on cultivation of the soul.

He saw many of such books, about thousands of it. He nodded his head with a smile. Then with a thought, he made one to appear in his hand. This was larger than the rest and had a more attractive cover.

He looked at the book and saw 'Soul Cultivation' boldly written on the front cover.

'Nice' Alex said inwardly.

Then he opened it to read.

"Introduction: Soul is the sentient, formless entity that resides within the body. It's what is responsible for life apart from the vitality in blood. No soul and the vessel it resides in which is the body becomes dead, lifeless.

But the formlessness of the soul only applies to mortals. While for cultivators, it's only formless till they reach the heaven adept stage. At that stage, the soul gains a substantiated form that completely resembles the vessel or the body it resides in. That is, it takes the same form as the body it inhabits.

The soul can be found in the soul-dwelling region of the body. This region can also be called the soul inhabitation realm and it is found in the head.

One doesn't need to reach the heaven adept stage before gaining ability to see the soul and make out it form. Through cultivation of it, one would gain the passive ability called 'soul-vision'. This is the ability to look into that region to see the soul.

Also, cultivating the soul comes with many other abilities such as:

1. Compulsion: a soul cultivator gains the ability to compel others to do things for him or her. Also called mind-coercion, anyone under this power would be forced to do things that is against their will.

2. Soul-slaying ray projection: one can shoot rays of soul-energy to wipe out the soul of another.

3. Vessel hijacking: one can take over the body of another and reside in it for as long as one desires.

4. Illusion casting: one can project illusions into an opponent's mind to make them run mad or to distract them and kill them in battle.

5. Soul absorption: a soul cultivator can absorb other people's soul to enhance his or her soul. Coupled with the vessel hijacking ability, this would birth an ability called 'Death-evasion' or 'quasi-eternal existence'. This is the ability to evade or defy death by leaving a body which is growing weaker due to being unable to break through into the next cultivation realm to another body, and absorbing their soul to increase his or her soul-existence period; the amount of time a soul can exist before decomposing and the energy that constituted it returning to the realmverse.

"Cool" Alex said with glittering eyes. Then he continued "This is awesomely great. So one can achieve false eternal life? Why didn't I cultivate my soul all this while. The powers one would gain are way tyrannical."

Then he paused in his thought to think of something.