The wonderful and peaceful days of Maria’s life were gone now that Mira was here. For the past 6 months, she was basically tortured every day. Sometimes Maria would try to sneak out of the house after sparring with her during the afternoon, but Mira would sense it the next day and force torture on her. This would happen over and over and Maria kept complaining to Mira saying that she needs a day off from training. After complaining enough, Mira gave in and gave her 1 day per week to do whatever she wanted. That one day off was like heaven, no it was better than heaven. No demon instructor yelling at her for making the simplest mistakes, no freezing hell that would almost kill her every time she got in, no mindless meditating. The only thing is that the next day after her day off was always the worst. She couldn’t tell if Mira was angry or bored the previous day and decided to take it out on her or maybe Mira just enjoys torturing her.

Mira would come up with these outrageous things on this day. During the frozen hell training session, Mira would push her down farther into the pond. Mind you the pond was so cold after a couple of months that icicles would form out of thin air constantly. Someone that doesn’t have a strong enough body and can’t circulate Qi would immediately just in the presence of the pond. The maids of the house classified the whole back area of the house as a danger zone.

After suffering from this kind of cold they would move onto sparring. Well, it wasn’t really sparring. Mira would make her practice her accuracy along with power control. Maria would be forced to hit blocks of wood over and over again with varying amounts of power. There was a specific block for 5%, 10%, 25%, 50%, and 80% power; Mira herself would be 100% power. She would hit these blocks with the specified amount of power for 2 hours then move on to the next segment. Mira would spin her scythe and Maria would have to hit the same spot on her scythe over and over again. Mira would only fight back if she missed the spot. It was barely a fight, as when she missed she would immediately wake up on the ground. If Mira was in a really bad mood, then Maria would have to do this with her light element.

After fulfilling Mira’s sick desires on the training grounds, Maria would get dragged to the frozen abyss of a pond and forced to temper her bones and muscles. This is not an easy thing to do. It’s incredibly painful. Having your bones constantly fractured and repaired due to the cold is way more painful than just breaking your bones. After doing this till midnight, Mira would go back to Maria’s room with her and made sure she meditated on her Dao of Light at night.

While she was able to enjoy heaven, her day off, she would have to face its opposite the next day, but to Maria, it was worth it. She enjoyed this kind of life for 6 months until she told Mira and her Dad that she was ready to break through.

Now it was the day of her breakthrough. Mira is now 10 years old and Maria is 17. Mira hasn’t grown a whole lot and still has a childish look, but Maria looks a lot more mature than she did when they first met. Maria looks like a young woman now.

Maria was currently sitting in a lotus position in the middle of the training grounds with Mira, Cole, and Erika around her watching.

“Alright Maria, to break through to Qi Condensation you have to absorb the Qi in the air and circulate it through your meridians. After you have circulated it once, then you can start absorbing the surrounding Qi and collecting it into your meridians. When all of your meridians are packed full of Qi, start condensing the energy. Continue the process of collecting and condensing until you have reached your limit. Then after you’ve reached your limit circulate your Qi one time. Once you’ve circulated it once, your body will then start sending it to the rest of your body. It won’t send much, but you will feel like you are overflowing with power and vitality.” Cole explained to Maria and she nodded back at him and started doing exactly as he said.

She absorbed the surrounding Qi and started circulating it. After that, she began to gather and absorb the Qi in the surrounding area. A small vortex appeared above her. She continues absorbing Qi for a little over 24 hours, which was more than the average person. This was due to her meridians being stronger than an average person because of her using the freezing pond. She was able to absorb more Qi in her meridians, but it will also take a bit longer to break through each minor stage in Qi Condensation as she needs more Qi.

After collecting enough energy in her meridians she began to circulate it all throughout her body. After 1 full rotation, it started to seep into every part of her body. She opened her eyes and felt overflowing with power. She even looked more beautiful than before due to the effects of the massive amount of energy now in her body. She stood up and looked at everybody with a big smile on her face.

“”Congratulations on breaking through to Qi Condensation!”” They all said at the same time.

Mira examined her for a minute and nodded. She was very satisfied with the result of this breakthrough. Maria was a lot stronger than she had originally anticipated.

‘At least sparring might not be so boring now.’ is what Mira thought looking at Maria.

“Get used to your new strength for today. Spend some time with your family and celebrate a little. We will spar all day tomorrow to get you accustomed to your newfound strength. Oh, one more thing. I’ve changed my plans a little. I will stay here for another 6 months. In this time I will break through to the Organ Refinement Stage. Your training schedule will also change. You will still spar with me, but not as much. Most of your time will be spent learning how to control your power and the accuracy of it. We will also be focusing on your footwork and tightening up your movements as to not waste energy. I don’t really know anything pertaining to sword footwork, but I can work on making your movement more precise and fluid. After these 6 months, we will go to the forest. Before going to the forest, I want to see your cultivation consolidated too.”

Maria started to panic. She thought that might be free of this demon for almost a full year, but now not only was Mira staying here for another 6 months. Maria also had to follow her to the forest after that. She knew that the forest isn’t going to be some relaxing vacation. Cole and Erika saw Maria’s face completely devoid of color and just laughed dryly. They could tell Mira to leave and she would probably leave instantly, but they had no reason to. Mira kept to herself, almost never talked or bothered anyone, and only made Maria stronger. Hell, even they used that pond and got a bit stronger. Mira being here was mutually beneficial to everyone. They just gave Maria a thumbs up and snickered with a bit of schadenfreude. Maria looked at them and asked for help with her eyes, but they just turned away. It didn’t take long though for Maria to go back to her cheerful self. She spent time with her parents and celebrated with them. It was one of the best and most fulfilling days of her life. By the end of the day she had already forgotten about the next 6 months of never-ending hell.

The next day happened and Maria was drilled on everything. They didn’t spar at all, but Mira was just watching over Maria waiting for her to make a mistake in her training. Once she did, Mira would whip her. This whip had a sharp end to it as well. Maria was covered in blood by the end of the day and had to take a rejuvenation pill to restore her wounds.

For the next 3 months, it was like this for Maria. Mira wouldn’t always be with Maria, it was only around once a week that she would come and check on her. Most of the time Mira was working on refining her organs.

After 3 months Mira finally reached the point where she can break through to the next stage. She sat in a lotus position and gathered Qi to forcefully enter all of her organs. The Qi that was sent to her organs began making small tears all over all of her organs. It hurt like hell, especially her heart. After tearing and healing her organs over and over again, something clicked. The surrounding Qi entered her body and wrapped completely around her organs. The energy then began to seep into them until it was all sucked in. This is an extremely painful process. It felt like the organs in her body were trying to be born anew. The Qi was starting to replace the cells in her organs, making them stronger. This also allowed her to become a vessel to help store and control the energy in her body. After this long and painful process of integrating Qi into the organs, Mira finally opened her eyes. Because her body is extraordinarily strong for someone at the Body Tempering Realm, her organs needed to catch up and therefore collect, absorb, and integrate more energy into them. Normally this process wouldn’t be this long and painful. It took her over 30 hours for this process to finally end. This was longer than Maria’s breakthrough into Qi Condensation.

She stood up and immediately went to her bed and collapsed. She slept for 2 days and 2 nights and woke up in the morning of the third day. Everyone congratulated her on her breakthrough. Mira thought about leaving to the forest now but decided against it. There are still benefits to be had from the pond, plus she doesn’t know how to get past this bottleneck in her Dao. So might be able to talk to Cole as he is a Half-Step Core Formation Realm expert. Maria decided to herself and Maria the day off. They tried various food, Maria showed her around the house or brought her to her favorite places in the house and Maria chatted with her all day. Mira didn’t talk much but would answer any questions she had to the best of her abilities. Maria also demanded that Mira sleep with her since it was their day off and Mira had no reason to decline and decided to stay in Maria’s room for the night.

The next day, Mira got up and went to go talk to Cole.

“Oh hey Mira, what’s up?” He asked casually, seeing that Mira was looking for him.

“I want to ask you something. I’ve hit a bottleneck in my Dao and I don’t know how to breakthrough. What do I do?” Mira asked.

“That’s a tough question since every Dao is unique even if they have the same element. Daos are profound and limitless. All I can tell you is that you have to gather enough insights and enlightenments to progress further in a Dao. You should also try to shape the Dao to match you. For example, let’s say two people are progressing in the Dao of Fire. The first person might want to shape his fire Dao to have destructive properties. This type of person might be hot-blooded, wanting to destroy everything in his path. But the second person might shape his fire Dao to be controlled. Only burning what he wants to burn. Not all Daos are equal either, but generally, the harder a Dao is to progress the more potent it will be.” Cole said, trying his best to explain this to Mira.

“I see. I think I understand. I need to figure out what sort of ice suits me the most and try to gain insights into that. Thank you for the explanation.”

“No problem. You have helped Maria so much that this is nothing! HAHA” Cole laughed.

Mira just nodded and walked away. She wasn’t sure how long it will take to figure out what suits her, but she won’t try to rush it as this is very important for her future.