A flood of Embryonic Qi rushed out of Ryu's body, flooding into the body of the White Phoenix. The little creature, who had just been looking around somewhat adorably, was shocked awake before greedily swallowing. However, very soon, what was greed turned into worry and then fear.
Accelerated growth was great, too much accelerated growth made it feel like it could die at any time. Its eyes flickered with a wronged light, but Ryu didn't stop. In his opinion, if this ticking time bomb was going to be in his body, it might as well become useful.
More than a full minute later, the rush of Embryonic Qi came to a stop because Ryu had run out. It seemed that his Embryonic Qi still wasn't an endless flow, something hard for a Ryu, who had gotten used to being able to tap into an entire Plane of Existence for his qi, to accept. But it was what it was.
Ryu felt that it would probably take him a week or two to recover that much
Embryonic Qi, but it was still much faster than it had been in the past, while the White Phoenix had undergone a great amount of growth.
Watching it writhe and be forced to grow, Ryu sat in silence, watching it. Various thoughts surged through his mind before he tossed them all out, focusing on the task at hand.
He wanted to form his Cosmic Seeds. This time would be far more involved than they were for his first two, funny enough. During that process, he only needed to
absorb outside sources and his Spiritual Foundation formed the rest on its own. But this time, it would be dependent on his comprehension.
On top of that, Ryu couldn't just forge his Cosmic Seeds out of the elements, it had to be beyond that, they had to be a match for his Dao, and his Dao had no particular elemental leaning. However... he already knew exactly what he needed to do.
And that was of course to form an eight trigram diagram upon this White Phoenix
Spiritual Foundation. Namely, two of them, one of light and the other of darkness.
Wind. Water. Mountain. Earth. Thunder. Fire. Life. Heaven.
Each one of these, even the elements, was beyond just the superficial underpinning of strength. In some ways, they were even more profound than the Infinity Mist that he had taken on, and probably equivalent to Origin Flame Cosmic Seed. Even worse, the more abstract they were, the more difficult it was for them to form because Ryu had to figure out a method to give them life in a way that made them more than just an ideal.
Of course, Ryu was just stepping into the Cosmic Seed Realm, he didn't need to form them all at the same time. But he did definitely need to form two of them at once so as to maintain perfect balance.
To start, there were only two potential choices, either Mountain or Earth. But in the end, Ryu decided that it would have to be Mountain. Earth and Heaven both represented the truest core of his Dao, they should be left to the last and most final steps, that would be the most perfect.
Mountain would be an excellent foundation to lay for the first step, but what he needed to think about was exactly how he would approach this.
During his meditations, he had had several thoughts. Da and Cultivation seemed to be separate existences, but just how heavily reliant on one another were there? Ryu felt that if he wanted to break the stigma of his Da and truly enter the Sky God Realm while others could not, this Godhood that he was forming currently would be the ultimate foundation for that.
His Cosmic Seeds needed to be perfect. More than perfect.
So what was Mountain? What were the two sides of the coin that it represented?
Ryu's concept of Mountain came from Shrine Mountain and his Natural
Enlightenment. But he realized now just how little of it he understood, he had never really considered much, or rather he only had a superficial grasp of what he was truly dealing with.
This made sense, though. His Natural Enlightenment wasn't at a very high level, at least not according to his own standards. At the same time, Natural Enlightenments progressed far more slowly than other comprehensions did, and it was heavily reliant on the natural phenomena that one observed from the very beginning.
It was also slightly worrisome that his Natural Enlightenment came from a small world. Could it continue to support his Founding Dao?
Ryu believed so. If Shrine Mountain was able to produce the Shrines, it was more special than he knew. It was up to him to unearth those mysteries.
He sat in silence, entering a deep State of Meditation. Soon, Ryu actually slipped into Breath of Earth, something he hadn't experienced ever since his eyes were sealed away. Although it was only the second State of Meditation, it was a great boon to him currently. He could only give the credit to the Origin Flame although it wasn't nearly as good as what his eyes could accomplish.
'Mountain...'
Ryu's stare flickered beneath his eyelids as he pondered back to the Prayer Mat. He remembered sitting upon it just once, and he felt like he had sat within the bosom of the world. He saw all the births happening in that instant, those beautiful cries of joy... but he also saw all the pain, all the devastation, every single death that had happened in that mountain as well.
That was the burden Shrine Mountain held everyday, that sense of pride in what it had created, but also that sense of despair in knowing that they all had the same, inevitable end. That was a cycle of karma, of it beginning, of it blooming, of it twisting and distorting, or of it brightening and purifying, leaving a mark on the world before it faded into obscurity, scattered and forgotten... or permanent and shimmering.
A surge of Cosmic Qi began to swirl around Ryu. The commotion was violent, so much so that the barrier of formations around his Immortal Cave shattered in that instant.
The qi accumulated until it was visible even by the eyes of the ordinary man. One stream of gorgeous, bright and vibrant rainbow color, and another of dark, sinister and ominous.
They all rushed into Ryu's immortal cave, the thunderous thunder shaking the Sixth Heaven.
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