Gravis looked through the surroundings and smiled a little. Lots of loot was lying around. Cultivators at the Spirit Forming Realm always kept their wealth in their Spirit Space, so what would happen if that cultivator died? Their Spirit Space would crumble, and all their belongings would fall out into the surroundings.
Of course, not all the loot was safe. The loot from the darkness cultivator, for example, had been completely decimated. He had died inside Gravis' insane explosion, and all his belongings had already appeared in the surroundings when the explosion wasn't even over yet. Like this, everything but his weapons had been obliterated.
Gravis gathered everything together and looked at his loot. "Some gold, lots of Energy Stones, some weapons, some pills…" he narrated as he inspected everything. After a while, Gravis found what he was looking for. Gravis' Spirit made a pill bottle fly up, and he looked at it more closely. "That's the pill that made the others breakthrough," he commented.
Sadly, this was the only one remaining. Sear had died due to Gravis' sneak attack, so he never had the chance to take out his pill. The other four had taken those pills, which made Sear's pill the last one remaining. Gravis smiled. "Let's see how good you are," he said and swallowed it.
WHOOOM!
As the pill fell to his stomach, it rapidly dissolved before it could even reach its goal. A mighty wave of Spirit broke out of the pill's remains and directly shot at Gravis' Spirit. Gravis didn't resist, and the pill's Spirit entered his mind.
BZZZZZ!
And like that, it was over. The lightning in his mind had destroyed the Spirit as soon as it touched it. This wasn't some kind of digestion or absorption. This was only pure destruction. Like this, the effects of the pill had been destroyed with nothing gained.
Gravis gritted his teeth. "First, the Heaven's Balance Cultivation Technique doesn't work anymore, and now this pill is also useless? Do I actually need to increase my Realm without outside resources?" he asked with frustration.
How did one increase their cultivation in the Spirit Forming Realm?
It was actually rather simple. The growth of the Energy had stopped and had become irrelevant, and the body's growth, just like before, could only be considered auxiliary. The increase of the Energy or body were both unimportant to the Realm. Only the increase of the Spirit was relevant. So how does one increase their Spirit?
It was the same as the initial breakthrough to the Spirit Forming Realm. The Spirit wasn't able to increase just by itself, so it needed support from outside, and this support was the Energy in the dantian. The Energy of the dantian had to be pushed into the Spirit, which then transformed the Spirit slowly.
At some point, when the Spirit had been sufficiently nourished, the whole Spirit would condense into one small core. This was the Spirit Seed, and when that happened, one would have reached the Seed Stage. Like this, one only needed to push more Energy into their Spirit to increase their Realm.
Of course, there were outside resources that one could use to expedite this process. Some rare plants had some inherent Spirit in them, and when condensed into a pill, could release that Spirit into the user's body. Of course, those pills were expensive, but that was irrelevant to Gravis because even those expensive pills were useless to him.
"The good comes with the bad, and the bad comes with the good," Gravis said with a sigh. "This inability to rely on outside resources might seem bad at first, but I went through enough shit to see the positive in that."
If Gravis could rely on external resources to increase his Realm, he would go out to gain as much wealth as possible to exchange for those resources. All this wealth would have been used to increase his Spirit. Yet, what about his Energy and body?
Gravis was pretty sure that there were ways to further increase the Energy in the Spirit Forming Realm. Wasn't it the same with the body after one reached the Energy Gathering Realm? Like this, Gravis could use his wealth to increase his Energy and body, further solidifying his battle-strength.
Gravis went through all the loot and got about 4,000 Energy Stones, an unimportant amount of gold, and some Spirit Weapons. "Hmm, I think I can sell those Spirit Weapons for an additional 6,000 Energy Stones. With this, I should have around 15,000 Energy Stones. I wonder how much that's worth in the Core-Continent. I need to check!" Gravis said.
With that said, Gravis left in a random direction. He had no idea about the layout of the Core-Continent. He only knew that it was a circle, nothing more. Where were the Sects? Where were the cities? He had no idea.
The open question in all this: How long would it take Gravis to increase his Realm without outside help?
Gravis had already infused a lot of lightning into his Spirit, which gave him the answer. In order to reach the Seed-Stage, he would need around a full year. In Gravis' mind, this was insanely slow, but for others, this was insanely fast.
Normal people would need, at least, ten years without outside help, and only if they already had a powerful enough will. Did Gravis need less Energy, or lightning in his case, to increase his Realm? Definitely not. In fact, the opposite was true. He needed an insane amount of lightning to increase his Spirit. So, how come he would reach the Seed Stage that much faster?
The reason for that was that there was no difference between his Spirit and dantian. An average cultivator had to push the Energy into their Spirit slowly. If they did it too fast, their Spirit would grow unstable. There was a difference between Spirit and Energy. Spirit was Spirit and Energy was Energy. This fact was obvious at first glance, but it held incredible importance!
The Spirit could only transform Energy into Spirit slowly. So, if the cultivators pushed too much Energy into their Spirit, it would grow sluggish. The Energy would mix with the Spirit, making the Spirit's density decrease because it was distributed over a wider area. Therefore, the efficiency of the conversion would suffer.
Yet, in Gravis' case, he had lightning in his dantian and lightning in his Spirit. He could just push all his lightning into his Spirit without any worry. The only issue would be that he would have no lightning left to fight if he emptied all of it into his Spirit. Of course, Gravis wouldn't risk his survival like that. He decided that he would push 10% of his lightning into his Spirit and then wait until he regenerated all of it again before he repeated the cycle.
'I'll use the next year to increase my body and dantian. I should also keep a look out for Joyce. She said I could repay my debt when I reached the Core-Continent. She also mentioned that I just needed to look around to find out who she is. I guess a city would be a perfect first stop, in that case. I can exchange some of my loot for other stuff and also look at some news.'
Like this, Gravis decided to do the same thing that he always did when reaching a new continent.
Look for a city.