I was falling. Why was I even descending? I wondered. A male whose face was hard to tell disappeared as I kept falling farther down from the edge of the well. Or was that a wall? It was hard to see outside. There were traces of hands on my legs and a pain in my chest that I could feel. The man in front of me had a horrible emotion coming from him.

I couldn’t scream or maneuver, for I was uncertain why my body was not moving. I know I was roaring in a hot, seething rage about why I can’t remember my intellect is hazy. Why? What is this darkness?

My red dress with sewn golden designs danced in the little sunlight it could get from the entrance. My long hair was disorderly; I imagined it was all nice and tied up with golden hairpins that matched my dress.

My psyche recollected a few things as I fell, but my emotions burned like oil on the blaze. I knew that my mind would change later.

Declining further into the gloaming darkness. I will get that, man; I will make that man pay. I whispered in my mind. My body lost its struggle to move. I was struggling with whatever transpired for my body to endure this tragedy. I was exhausted, low on stamina from a battle. The new unknowns made me feel like a toddler.

The descent was heading to someone or to some place I wasn’t too sure where I was going. Then my body began to de-materialize into golden fragments that dissolved into the unknown. As my flesh pulled away, all that was of me was my soul, I am assuming. It was the color of pure jade. It was beautiful.

The void of nothingness that had summoned her into its greedy jaws at the beginning was like a siren calling a sailor to his demise in the sea; I could not force myself to fight against this compressing tension.

I got used to the never-ending blackness; The abyss became a companion that knew all of your secrets.

Not even my wind power could protect her as she descended into the ravenous vacuum that the darkness engulfed; it was the sort of darkness that could barricade out every sense like one of those blackout enclosures. I could feel nothing, but I could feel the heavy pressure surrounding me.

No powers could rescue me. I could only depend on myself.

[SYSTEM TRANSMITTER]

PROCESSING….

THE HOST HAS AWAKENED.

“Li Yan,” a pacifying female voice popped into my head. Huh? Do I hear things? Did being in darkness affect me?

Arriving back to consciousness, I unfurled my eyes or multiple of them. I have no recollection of when I drifted to sleep in the darkness, but what greeted me was not black, but close.

I wasn’t looking through my typical vision of two eyes in my soul, but through various eyes all over me. I could see in every direction. It felt ordinary, not in the way where it should have been challenging and discomforting.

The scenery that welcomed me differed from the total darkness before. I could see now. It was an advancement from when I was drifting. Everything looked enhanced; like looking through a microscope. I could see every component.

The chamber I had gotten repositioned into looked more like a cave or underground. Dirt and all kinds of different rocks were on the walls and ceiling. Only the flooring in the room looked out of place, being it was the only section of the room that was flat and smooth.

Upon further examination of the room or cave that I’m in, I find my gaze drawn to the beautiful glow at the center of the room. The light was composed of swirling chaotic green light and, in a pristine clear, what looked to be a glass orb. The orb was floating off the ground by who knew what and was about the dimensions of a marble. It’s A.V.A. That thought popped into my mind. How did I know that this was A.V.A, and who was A.V.A? For some reason, I felt pleased when looking at A.V. A’s body. The light in the cavern started to flicker with my emotions.

The hues of jade colors from the sphere reflected and danced on the ground and the ceiling, like light refracting in water. As far as I could tell, A.V.A was the only thing in the room.

“LiYan, welcome, although I am unsure how we are fused.”

----------------------------

“LiYan”

A.V.A said as she pierced the peace inside her mind. Li Yan had the same dream again.

The dream of her continuous falling had been the same since she had first awakened a few years ago. So was it years ago, she thought as she came alive.

It felt longer than a few years, especially with these more frequent dreams. Li Yan couldn’t comprehend the meaning beyond the blackness. Yet, a piece of her had the burning desire to kill. It was nerve-racking, but it added inquiries about why she desired to kill and kill what or who as it became more frequent.

I gave a mental head-shake and focused on the task I had to accomplish from A.V.A.

“I’m going.”

I had to transform this cavern that I ended up in by somehow fusing with A.V.A, a dungeon core. I had the power of wind spirit root, which surprised A.V.A. She told me that we were in The Three Realms and it was separated into three distinct places in the universe: The Heavenly Realm, The Mortal Realm, and the Underworld.

Our current cavern was placed in the Mortal Realm and made us a prized target if the Magical Beast and Cultivators discovered us. Wind power coming from my spirit root is not known to be here, while Qi elements are. Qi, Qi is the Spiritual Energy of Heaven and the world, or it could be said to be a natural life force or the essence of everything. The Qi itself has five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water.

An individual who wants to cultivate must contain a spirit root to walk the cultivation pathway. It is usually better to have fewer spiritual roots because a cultivator must fill all their spiritual roots with the Qi from the surroundings to advance to the next stage. The living beings that harness Qi go against Heaven and receive divine punishment.

Everything that cultivates Beast or Cultivators goes against the Will of Heaven; the Heavens, in return, will send down a trial called tribulations on them of the same rank to oppress high-level cultivators who produce progress towards Immortality; the Heavens expect that the tribulations exterminate them. Tribulations often transpire right when they enter a new cultivation stage.

When A.V.A and I became fused, we started at the beginning of the cultivation path Qi Gathering Stage. I took over the building and summoned the creature component of the dungeon while A.V.A provided the logistics.

Existing as a Dungeon core, I discovered a lot from A.V.A well; I was the arms and legs while she is the brain; When I first came awake from our fusing. A.V.A helped me understand and found myself in a better spot instead of feeling rage.

A.V.A told me that our rank is by our essence level, based on our size; we are more significant and purer than most by having wind as an element for a newborn core; most cores have one of the five essential elements. How you can tell what the other core’s features are by the color of their body.

As a dungeon core, the Qi that we cultivate permits us to control the territory around us and alter it to suit our requirements. As A.V.A told me, our aura or the green light marks the zone under our domain. The area-marked environment will become an extension of our will and serve as a shield to protect ourselves. That is why we are underground to further protect ourselves from living things that want to destroy us.

Being a dungeon core is an entity of pure energy. So some living creatures want to harness that for themselves.

As for Qi enhanced cores, Qi helps one evolve purer in a sense and increases life; in theory, if one tries enough, one can ascend to Immortality, so that is why we are underground.

A.V.A expressed that as a dungeon, she could hold treasures of the world that they were reborn on to counterbalance the destruction generated outside from the chaos. On the other hand, I presume it fused me to A.V.A for another objective.

I learned from her that we would get precious treasures as we grow and conquer, material such as spiritual herbs, ore to be mined, or even what our defenders drop could be a treasure.

We need to develop our territory to shield ourselves from the peril of being destroyed. The entire dungeon is lost and will collapse if the dungeon core is damaged or destroyed.

A.V. A’s job, well now mine too, now that we are one, is to grow and balance out the chaotic Qi from the outside. If it is not balanced, the chaotic Qi will ravage the world. We must rank up, make traps, and make our dungeon into a deadly labyrinth to stay alive. If any living creature is inside our dungeon area, we shall feel the need to kill them. If they die in our influence, we can absorb them for Qi and gain knowledge of that creature like a blueprint.

It would help extend our essence out of our core to cover more ground. We should be able to see everything our green light touches. As our territory expands, our vision should also be able to grow. Try to make this whole cavern ours and add a hallway for right now. Try not to make an entrance until you make some traps, okay?

I watched our essence shift on the ground and wished it to move out. It took a while before I noticed a shift in the area. Then I felt my eyes expand, and my vision cleared. I could see everything closely, but now, having to grow, I could zoom out some. I am not sure how the effect was on A.V.A.

It drained our energy, expanding the territory. Then, finally, our light died down to a mere flicker as my development took the remaining power from our core. It took a lot out of me mentally, and without any warning, my consciousness faded away into darkness.

I felt like my Qi was entirely compact in our core when I came again. I had a long conversation with A.V.A. about not doing that again. Suppose I use up too much of our essence. In that case, it will make me go into a hibernation state while A.V.A is watching from the sidelines, which could be dangerous if we had enemies inside us. Because I am the one that was in control, if I go out in a battle, there will be no defense for A.V.A., So I should probably expand until I feel low on our Qi, then wait passively to get whole again and keep going like that until I claim all the caverns for us.