Am I willing to deal with immense amounts of pain and struggle to achieve higher levels of power?

This is the question that remains after considering my options. Obviously, after discovering that I can use these channels to access the upper area, I tried to see if there’s any way to mitigate the pain at all.

I find the complete opposite.

If I increase the pain and widen them even further, flooding them and all my dantians with Qi, I could reach even larger peaks of strength. Especially since any damage would be both healed and optimized.

The harder and bigger I go, the better. The downside is that the pain won’t get easier. It would be the same for another person. This kind of pain isn’t something the healing mitigates. For whatever reason, there’s no potion or skill that will help either. The universe seems to want this to be felt, maybe as compensation for challenging the status quo. In actuality, it’s just the nature of how ripping these open is. Just like how you would still feel the pain of getting your arm ripped off.

It’s just how you deal with it.

There is an upside to this. The further I push this, the less pain I would feel when something goes on with Qi later on. More specifically, my body would be better equipped to handle any issues, and I’d be used enough to that type of pain to handle it with a clear mind.

Sigh.

This is really the best time to do this.

Right now. After I stop circulating this Qi, it locks things up a bit.

If I wanted to restart it after this, I would need special ingredients or already have my cultivation method running. It would then cause even more pain to reach a lower peak.

In short, if I choose to go through the pain now, it will not only strengthen me but also allow me to deal with any type of Qi related pain or injury several times more easily later on.

And with the myriad of different techniques and abilities which can cause those sorts of effects, that is an invaluable skill to have. Paired with my healing abilities, I’d be unmatched.

I made a commitment to help and protect the demihumans.

I will be constantly fighting against major forces that could take me out easily. Even if they can’t kill me, they can at least lock me down.

… And I already avoid the smaller things I could regularly do to increase my abilities through pain.

If I can’t at least do the major things… then I’ll really be wasting my gifts.

FUUUUUCK.

This is going to suck.

I harden my resolve. I use my scan to look up the different methods to do things that would be beneficial to do at this stage, regardless of the absurdity or cost.

Several options appear, offering things like instantaneous Qi usage, increased capacity, and many other strange abilities.

One requires that you make a spiral shaped tunnel within your meridians, to optimize Qi flows while others it so that you create concentric tunnels just outside the normal dantians and meridians. These will fill up and push against the other parts of my body, but still give it more space to fill with Qi.

Among all of these is one of the craziest options, which is to tear open multiple paths within the same meridians, only connecting back together at the start point and the end point. An added option for this is to tear branching paths from these into the existing areas of the body, for Qi to already be usable in that area with barely a thought.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, as there are numerous small changes which would be painful in their own right and may even cause regular pain after this is complete, but would give abilities that could be called body constitutions in their own right.

These are actions that would be crazy, suicidal, and impossible for a genius, let alone a normal cultivator, to do. It is only because of my healing abilities I can attempt this. With my scan and perfected, I know I can achieve it.

Even with the things that will cause me continued pain after all of this is done and I use my Qi normally, eventually that pain will go away.

Short-term pain for long-term benefits.

I decide to do them all at the same time.

I need to start with the first step, which will open the path to the upper dantian.

I collect my Qi at the minuscule entrances to the upper dantian and slowly rotate them in a spiral formation, without pushing against it. Faster and faster they move until it is indistinguishable from a spinning screw. Besides that, I employ two other techniques to make this initial entry slightly quicker to go through.

The first of which is to have it resonate at a frequency that will allow it to resonate and collapse. Having accomplished these two things, I then add fast moving molecular sized grinders on every part of the Qi.

These will help to set the initial shapes and sizes of the tunnels, while being instantaneously scalable.

Just creating this form for my Qi has taken most of the day.

I’m now over two days into my 16-day time limit. However, the preparations are well worth it, as making the right tool the first time will be the best way to not make me go through pain for a longer period.

The last thing I do is an attempt to program my Qi with my scan to automatically move into every place it needs to, so that the pain won’t slow the process.

This is unsuccessful. It can’t do the job for me. It can only provide the path.

I go for it.

As soon as the vibration changes to the correct frequency, I can feel every part of my inner body squirm in discomfort, which then changes into nausea, then full body burning.

Let me repeat. It feels like my entire body is being melted with acid. I’m only able to hang out mentally, because my healing constitution successfully keeps my body together and ends up numbing this pain with its continuous pleasure properties.

A strange sensation of pleasure and intense pain mixes. Despite the pleasure, all this does for me is make me feel intense nausea… but still gives me to ability to keep moving.

The combination of the two forces temporarily changes my dantians and meridians to the consistency of softened butter.

Which prompts me to strike fast. I plunge them all in.

Everything goes black before I’m immediately rocketed back into consciousness.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGUAUSUSNS.”

My body instantaneously contorts backwards while I hear screaming. I arch so quickly, so forcefully that I could feel my spine and neck snap as I leaned back in agony.

My body rockets back forward as I instantaneously heal, only prompting the waves of pain to increase and force my body back again, causing it to snap again. Repeating the cycle.

The shattered remains of my teeth slamming together have already punctured in the roof and bottom of my mouth. They reform, pushing them deeper in and out as I clench even harder.

It is at this moment that time slows and drags for me, as my brain goes into survival mode.

Similarly, to when Mei Lin had smiled at me, my body has chosen this moment to slow down how I perceive time passing. Likely, to help me determine the source of the pain and stop it.

Unfortunately for me, this only makes it so much worse for me.

Having it go quickly by allowed the layers of pain to be obscure. Not that this wasn’t already a form of hell in itself. This just made it so I now know exactly what is breaking on me and why why why why why whywhywhywhywhywhywnywbyegney

My healing activates and the haze clears.

But the pain doesn’t.

And as the pain only gets worse, I realize the worst part of my healing constitution.

I can’t pass out from pain.

And it won’t let me go crazy.

I have no protection from this.

And I had stopped plunging it deeper in, almost immediately after entry.

Fear fills my heart as I realize what I started.

I can’t turn this back. Once this starts, the pain won’t end unless the Qi can move freely. My body may eventually recover, but that would mean going through this perception-slowed, despair-filled hell for even longer than it would take to go through this AND theAhahbahahahabahah

The haze clears as my healing activates.

I immediately plunge it deeper and move the process forward.

My heart bursts.

It reforms.

Back and forth, my body rocks, as I continuously seizure. I try to puke but and can’t even open my mouth, even though blood continuously spurts from my mouth and all my orifices. With nowhere left to go and having a softened body, bloody puke periodically squeezes itself out of my neck at high pressure, spraying the walls with a black, green, and red chunky fluid.

My limbs flail all around, rocking the building with their strength and snapping apart while reforming.

My brain is boiling in my skull, melting as the intensity of handling this destroys it. Only for it to reform in place and in continually worse situations.

…

After hours of this, comparative weeks with my perception, I am finally in a fetal position, managing to control the back snapping motion.

I’m halfway through the process.

The pain hasn’t stopped.

I am just able to perceive even more of it, while being able to think coherently.

I also can finally see what has happened to me.

They threw me out of the building, array, and safe area. One guard literally chucked me as far as he could throw me away.

I am tens of kilometers away from the edge of that camp. I can feel their sense still watching me.

I can’t blame him.

It was clearly a fear filled throw.

If there was a bleeding, screaming man who had his body continuously breaking, snapping, and reforming instantaneously, I’d think it was a demonic cultivator achieving his final form.

They have alarms built into the array that tell them whether I am, but I’d be scared as well.

Not only that, but even with it being reinforced, attacks from the inside had the potential to weaken the building.

I was a threat, plain and simply.

I’m lucky he was more scared than hardened, because they could have attacked me directly, instead of dragging me out and throwing me away.

This isn’t saying they aren’t very experienced and hardened cultivators, but a non-demonic entity acting like that is confusing and would be like a ghost story. Incomprehensible.

Even the hardest person has things that unnerve them.

That also goes for creatures as well.

Even though I’ve been out here for an hour, the movements and sounds of my body have caused any creature in the area to flee in fear.

This is doubly so for the creatures that are sentient. The more capable you are of understanding, the scarier it is when something completely lies beyond it.

Thus, I find myself alone. In fetal position. And still pushing through the changes.

I hate myself.