The tournament came just right to be honest. The mayor announced it about seven months ago, and the town was packed full by now. Full of cultivators, who all wanted to do that last bit of cultivating before the actual event started.

And myself? I stopped all work for the last few days, as I wouldn't finish something new while to tournament went on anyways.

Which was quite fitting, as I used these days to do my final push to purify all my qi. Which I did.

It was finally time to continue my cultivation! That meant filling myself with qi full of intent. There was no question what that intent was going to be. I felt it in my bones, my muscles, everywhere. I would fill my qi with gravitic intent. At first I had debated on using only specific aspects of gravity, but learnt that was unnecessary over the last months.

Unlike my aura my qi intent and qi did not influence other qi. Or at least it didn't do so passively. It was very much possible that I could actively use qi filled with an intent to influence other qi. Or not. I would see in time.

Anyways. I closed my eyes, released control over my aura, and focused on all of my qi. On the qi in my bones, my tendons, my muscles and organs. On the qi in my dantian, still filled with just as much qi as it held over the last months. And on my meridians, where qi moved through my body, propelled by my dantian and ready to return in it.

And I thought of gravity. Of it being an elemental force of nature. Of the way all livings things were the way they were because of gravity. Of the power this seemingly innocent word held if taken to the extreme. Of the way moons were held in a planet's gravity well, and a planet in its sun's gravity well. And suns in that of their galaxy, and the supermassive black hole it probably held in the middle.

How gravity could influence even space and time, warp it even. But also how even the smallest bit of mass was origin of a little bit of gravity, and influenced even the biggest object in the universe, if only a little. And finally how gravity got exponentially weaker with distance, but never actually stopped influencing stuff.

And then I pushed all those thoughts into my qi. Unlike when using fake intent I actually felt a resistance. But it was weak, seeing as my qi was in an unnatural state. Only a small part of all qi was pure after all. And I had cleansed every single speck of qi in my body.

Which meant I just had to push a little to make the image stick. Perfect.

I felt a shiver pass through me the moment my qi accepted the intent.

Wow. I felt like the first time I sensed qi as my whole world expanded by another sense. I could feel gravity around me. It was strange, like miniature lines connecting everything to everything, and a bigger line connecting everything to the ground.

The feeling was much more than that though, but it was hard to describe. There was more to it too, I knew without knowing that an infinitely big amount line connected me and everything else with each other. I could feel and find the lines I wanted, but they were too weak to show up without that.

My new sense for gravity was enough to already start doing improvements on my understanding of gravity. To be honest I could sit here and just watch gravity for days.

How far out did this new sense of mine go? Right to the edge of my aura. Sad, but to be expected. Now. Tests!

Could I influence gravity like I could qi? I felt I could. Time to test it out. I went outside, got myself some of the gravel from the beach, and went back inside.

All those small stones were spread through my living room a moment later, at varying distances from me, some even hidden behind objects.

And every single one was connected to me with a small, straight line. So I pulled on that line. And nothing happened. I pulled again, this time with a little qi. Nothing.

Great.

Wait.

I pulled on the line, and burned a little qi. The stone jumped towards me, but fell to the ground again. I grinned. I pulled again, and burned qi until the stone was secured in my hands.

I could finally do real magic. I opened my window, threw the stone out, and pushed, burning some of my qi again.

It shot off towards the ocean. Good. Now the real important test.

I returned towards the middle of my living room, and pushed on the line connecting me to the world. I burned some of my qi, slowly ramping it up. As I watched, still carefully regulating the qi I burned as I slowly moved into the air, until I was levitating in the middle of my living room, having reached an equilibrium. I smiled, I could FLY!

Right until I had burnt all my qi, and fell down, sprawled all over the ground. I quickly looked around, making sure nobody saw that, just in case, before standing up and dusting off my clothes.

That was embarrassing.

Lucky no one saw that.

Still, if I wanted flying to be useful I'd need more qi. Far more actually. Well, I better get to it then, qi didn't gather itself. Well, now that I thought about it, it actually did. I just had to change my aura to allow qi to actually hit my body again. Before I went that far some tests were in order though, like what happened when my qi intent came into contact with normal qi, purified qi and foreign qi intent.

The last one would take some time, qi intent was quite rare after all. I suspected qi most qi intent in the air was released when a cultivator died, with a small percentage of those foreign qi intents being actually planted with malicious intent.

Well, time to get to it. First I released a small cloud of my qi, and watched as it stayed under my control, not being corrupted by the ambient qi for the first time. Fascinating, it seemed qi intent was superior to natural qi.

Next, purified qi. I drew my own qi back into a small cloud, had it encase some of the qi in the atmosphere, and quickly purified all qi within.

I watched, equally fascinated and horrified as my qi clashed with the pure qi. Well, clash was wrong. It was a massacre as my qi lashed out, gravity pulling the pure qi apart, slowly converting it to be my own.

Well. I definitely knew what would happen if my qi were to meet with foreign qi intent. They would nuke it out until there was a winner, with the loser utterly assimilated.

Well, probably at least. Nonetheless I really should advance my understanding of gravity, or what I understood of gravity at least. To be superior to all qi I'd randomly encounter, though my qi should win simply because of quantity, seeing as any qi intent in the air was a small speck of qi at the best of times.

Before opening the floodgates I really should wait though, just in case.

Three hours later different feeling qi entered my perception. A quick peek confirmed my thoughts, fire intent qi. Which did seem to be the most common qi intent I found. I send out my cloud of qi to intercept the free floating qi, and then watched.

Nothing actually happened visibly, but through my connection I felt the fire lash out, creating streams of fire as it tried assaulting my own qi.

But my qi was gravity, so it simply ripped the foreign qi apart, swallowed the even smaller pieces and drowned out any fire trying to act up. Soon enough the cloud of qi had grown a bit, having eaten the fire intent qi.

I checked it over to the best of my abilities, and found nothing of the fire remaining, all of it having been extinguished by me. Perfect.

The tournament would start in three days, and with my qi acting as a vacuum cleaner for pure and intent qi I could focus all my attention on purifying natural qi, which was strangely exempt from being absorbed and cleansed by my own.

Anyways. A thin cloud of qi floated at the edge of my extended aura, eating up a small part of the qi entering it, held in place by a small part of my attention.

And for the next three days the rest of me solely focused on cultivating purifying as much qi as I possibly could.

My meridians cleansed all qi directly coming into contact with me, and a regular pulse of my sphere cleaned up all free floating qi cleansed by me.

It wasn't the most efficient method - I'd have to fully extend my aura for that - but would have to do for now.

Suddenly something lit up on my qi senses. My qi had found yet another packet of qi intent, but the battle was going strangely.

I didn't like it! Not one bit!

I took a single step in the direction of the battle, and moved my sphere to press on the foreign qi from all sides. Then I send some mental feelers into the foreign qi, and found something strange.

I knew that qi. I had ready cleansed it in my sessions once, and still remembered because it fought back the most.

So much in fact I simply moved it out of my body. Well, here it was again, bigger. You wouldn't escape me now!

With the qi imprisoned in all of my qi, and all of it trying to assimilate it the qi had no time to evade my mental probes, and soon enough I was staring at the most intricate qi intent I had ever seen.

And what an insidious intent it was. The whole purpose of this qi seemed to be burry inside another's cultivation base, hide inside it. For what I did not know. But someone had spread his qi around on purpose, and a lot of it, considering the world's likely size. I wanted nothing to do with that, and I knew I had no clue about any such insidious qi.

No sir.

But I knew the strange qi inside my own had to die, whatever it was. Die in fire. So I constructed a mental crystal around it, encased in several more crystals just to be sure.

It took longer than I had ever seen something like this take, but eventually the qi was purified. I shuddered. That was most certainly unpleasant. Luckily it was still night of the second day, so I had time for a little sleep, and time to fresh myself up before the tournament started.

It was going to be great, though I didn't look forwards to watching idiots bashing themselves in the head for an extended period of time. But considering the absolute hype all other cultivators seemed to feel at the mere mention of a tournament it would be too strange not to attend.

And I wasn't old enough to be comfortable being seen as that weird. Yet. As I drifted off to sleep I small smile came to my face nonetheless, tomorrow would be so fun!