To reach Middle Foundation, he had to fit twice the qi into a smaller space. He could feel what the pressure was doing to his channels each time he drew a breath. A cultivator with weak spirit veins could tear himself open from the inside.
On the ninth day, Pei Jing sat bare-chested on the dais, slick with cold sweat. Wind hit the mountain outside the jade door. In the cave he heard the spring and the steady hum of the earth vein.
In three days he’d eaten six pounds of Thunder-Horn Viper and used three flasks of marsh-ox marrow oil. The iron pot beside the dais was empty. Viscera Refinement sent the food where his body needed it. The lining of his vessels thickened. The tissue around his organs grew tougher. He would need both when the pressure rose again.
Five mid-grade stones were giving up the last of their qi in the channels. They were the third set. The cave held eight times the ordinary density of qi, thick enough that he could feel it with every breath.
Pei Jing picked up the chipped cleaver and put three drops of spring water on the Black Mountain Whetstone.
Shhh-krr.
