God Of Crafting
Chapter 108 - 108: The goal of the sixth stage and the tool to achieve it

Something was going on.

I wasn't blind enough not to notice the small bits and fragments of weird behaviors, glances, or words. And while sure, I have yet to piece everything together, that much was clear: there was something going on that I wasn't updated about.

Then again…

If something was really going on, Claire was clearly, for the lack of a better word, in on it. And that begged just one question.

'Do I trust her?'

On the more rational stance, my best bet was to gather up my energy and scrap, escaping from whatever this girl was cooking that she deemed better not to inform me about.

But on the other hand…

'What would be the point? I'm a goose laying golden eggs, so how could they consider me as anything but their most prized asset?'

When taking the reality of my circumstances into account, it was hard to keep any worry in my heart… That is if my heart followed something as flimsy as logic when it could rely on just my feelings and premonitions!

Thankfully, when it came to my feelings, it was an easy task to just choose to trust Clarie and focus on playing with the scythe rather than bother myself with what could be the conspiracy that was clearly unveiling right now.

"I'm going to take care of everything else," Claire repeated, with the same faint voice designed only for my ears alone. She then pushed herself off my embrace only to swing her sword back onto her shoulder.

For a second, she stared right in my face with a strangely torn look in her eyes, before turning her stare away and lowering her head a bit.

"Just be careful, okay?" she asked, only to pass by me… and run into the forest.

'Are they trying to ambush whoever might come to attack us here?' I thought, feeling as if I figured the whole mystery out.

But at the same time.

'She told me she's going to take care of it, so let's focus on myself instead.'

Closing my eyes… I brought my scythe down before planting its butt into the ground.

For a short moment, I was content just breathing in and out, feeling the sparks and flow of my energy within my flesh as it circulated into the core, only to discharge to one of the thousands of random points all over my body at a rate quick enough it turned into constant radiation of energy that then… flowed right back to the core.

And as I calmed myself down and focused my thoughts, my debacle with Chihiro reappeared in my might right away.

"When you start your cultivation, there are several steps you make. But if you look at them from the outside, if you narrow down the scope of the entire first phase of cultivation… You could say that you master the directions of the energy. You learn and practice to figure out how to use the QI, and how to move it in space to a desired effect."

Back then, this was part of the conversation I couldn't even comment on, given how I jumped straight into the fifth stage of cultivation, forever to miss the effort of conquering the first four of them.

But that was merely a preamble to the greater lecture rather than what Chihiro wanted to talk about instead.

"When forming your core, you fold all of your ability to manipulate your spiritual energy through the three basic dimensions, folding it on itself to turn all of your power into a singularity. And what happens then?"

I could vividly recall Chihiro's smile back then, as if he genuinely enjoyed talking about the topic, proving he did his fair share of thinking it through.

"You first expand the reach of how far the core can affect your body. Then you learn how to move its energy outside, just like you did in the early stages. And then, can you guess what happens next?"

The hints the man dropped back there were obvious enough even for a complete newbie like me to figure it out.

'You fold it back on itself?" I suggested despite lacking proper confidence in this answer.

"That's right, you fold it right back. That's an eight-cultivation stage for you. Then, the ninth stage is all about… repeating the whole process and folding it yet again! And then, for the tenth stage, again!"

It was back then when I realized just how close Chihiro was to breaking through to the tenth stage of cultivation. He didn't need enlightenment for it, just to have his cultivation grow mature and resilient enough to attempt yet another folding of it!

In other words, all that held him back from reaching the tenth stage was the amount of energy he could supply to his cultivation to make it grow stronger and more mature!

But while that gave me a clue over just how important my recently discovered device would be for the man… it also gave me a better perspective on what cultivation was at its core.

'The first phase of cultivation goes through a total of five stages before you collapse it into a spiritual core. Then, it takes up until the eight stage before you do it again, then you do it again and again at the ninth and tenth stages respectively.'

I could still remember taking a deep breath back then as it just struck me.

Because now that I took a proper look at the idea in its entirety… I could look back at my current challenge and start forming some ideas on how to overcome my need for the next enlightenment!

It was a process that soon proved to be quite wasteful, given how I came up with a solution long before I could build my cultivation base well enough to attempt another breakthrough.

And so, rather than forcing a breakthrough way before I was ready for it, I just crafted a tool that allowed me to do exactly what I believed I was supposed to be doing at the next, sixth stage of cultivation.

"The fifth stage was all about establishing the power of the core throughout, laying the foundation for the very next step," I muttered under my nose as if it was a chant of sorts while slowly tightening my grip over my scythe.

"The next logical step would be to use those foundations and expand the power of my core beyond its current limits, beyond the limits imposed on those without the spiritual core. Or, in other words…"

My eyes flared up as I picked the heavy scythe up, raising it just far off the ground to be able to freely swing it.

Now that I was in a state of focus and with my spiritual energy long since agitated, the residue radiation of my Qi fueled my scythe so much, that it was growing more and more eerie-looking and all mystical by the minute.

Then again, it was merely a side-effect of the high-quality materials I used, not the effect I intentionally designed… or, in fact, not the effect I was now ready to bring forth to reality.

'Let's see how it does!'

Reaching a point where my breath, the position of my body, my mind, my hands… when all of myself aligned with just one, single purpose, I pushed a sliver of my Qi into the circuitry of the scythe before executing a swift slash right against the empty air.

I cut the air, leaving a trail of staggered cut in its wake… and a mark that, contrary to the aftershock of the cut, remained in place as mere added quality to that point in space.

Or, in simpler words, with a simple cut, I've created a new node the power of my spiritual core could now discharge to.

'And now,' the smile on my lips soured as I acknowledged that it was merely the beginning of what I could tell had the potential to blossom into quite a ridiculous ability. 'And now, to learn how to control it.'