Immortal Ice Empress: Path to Vengeance

Mira began preparing for her breakthrough into the Xiantian Stage. She took out her Qi Gathering Array, 500 Low-Grade Spirit Stones, and the Mid-Stage Rank 5 Energy Gathering Pill. All of these items were things that she had received as rewards in Lunar Fox City for playing a major role in defeating the Soul Devouring Sect army.

After everything was ready, she started to clear her mind, making sure she would have no thoughts other than breaking through.

Although Mira has 100% confidence, she still doesn't want to take any risks. Breaking through into the Xiantian Stage is similar to breaking through a major realm or some might say that it's even more important.

The Foundation Realm does exactly what the name implies, it sets one's foundation. In the Houtian Stage, a cultivator absorbs and cultivates Qi in their body and will only be able to gather a certain amount of Qi based on their body's potential or otherwise known as how strong their body is.

While cultivating in this stage, one must increase their bodily strength to keep up with the amount of Qi present in their bodies. Of course, the Qi present in one's body will slowly nourish their skin, bones, organs, blood, and everything else, but there is a limit and it doesn't continue indefinitely.

The Xiantian Stage continues this process but adds in an extra step. This extra step is one of the most crucial steps during one's entire cultivation journey.

This is because one has to create an origin point in their dantian. While a cultivator is in the Foundation Realm, their Qi has no point of origin or a storage place. It's just roaming around the cultivator's body aimlessly.

This origin point is the first step to becoming a Core Formation Expert and if one were to mess up during this step they will never be able to advance to the Core Formation Realm.

As Mira thought about this, she became extremely serious. She's hasn't reached the Xiantian Stage before, even in her past lives, so this will be a new experience for her.

She was only able to reach the Peak-Houtian Stage before dying, but even if she did advance to the Xiantian Stage, she was sure that reaching any higher realm was only a pipe dream.

Things were different now though, she was fairly young for someone in her realm of power, her body already has the strength of a Core Formation expert, and she has plenty of resources to help her.

Even a pig could break through if they were in the same situation as Mira.

A few hours later, Mira started absorbing Qi that had condensed around her due to the Qi Gathering Array.

Qi was being absorbed into her body like crazy as Mira continued to suck what seemed like an endless amount of Qi from the surroundings.

After almost all 500 spirit stones turned to dust, Mira had reached the point where she could breakthrough into the Xiantian Stage, but Mira knew her current body could handle much more than that.

She quickly dumped another 500 Low-Grade Spirit Stones into the array and continued to cultivate. She wanted to reach a point where it felt like her body may explode due to how much Qi was in her body.

The hours went by as Mira started to grit her teeth due to the pain. Her body was slowly expanding like a balloon and her organs and bones felt like they were going to pop out of their designated locations, but Mira pushed through as she knew her body could handle more.

Her body's strength was already somewhere in the Core Formation Realm so she knew that after she broke through to the Xiantian Stage, she should have no problem breaking through to the Core Formation Realm while just relying on her current body strength.

Mira soon had to put down another 500 Spirit Stones, but it didn't take her long to reach the absolute peak amount of Qi her body could handle.

Mira's body had now expanded quite a bit and was around 2 times large than before. It was incredibly painful, probably one of the most painful experiences Mira had gone through. Her lips were bleeding and her nails had pierced her hands while the ice underneath her showed signs of cracking under the pressure.

Mira smiled and started the next process, condensing all of the energy as much as possible.

She popped in the Rank 5 Energy Gathering Pill to assist her and contrary to what some might think, it does require more Qi to help during the process of condensing.

ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ

She soon began the tedious process of condensing all of the Qi in her body.

Every time she condensed, her aura would rise higher. Anyone watching Mira breakthrough would be shocked to see how strong Mira's aura is. This is because if they didn't know better, they would've guessed that Mira is trying to break through to the Core Formation Realm!

Days started to pass as Mira continued to condense the abnormal amount of Qi in her body and these days soon turned into weeks.

Three weeks went by before Mira's body had shrunken down to its normal size and all of the Qi in her body had been condensed until she was unable to condense it anymore.

While the current amount of Qi she had stored in her body only looked like a tiny drop compared to what it was before, this small amount of Qi was much more potent than what she had before.

That's not to say that Mira has less Qi in her body compared to before as that couldn't be further from the truth. She was several times more powerful compared to before, although she didn't know how much exactly.

But the process wasn't over yet, she had to create an origin point in her dantian, linking the Qi in her body to that place.

She focused on the Qi located in her body and started to drag a piece of it towards her dantian that started to stretch almost like slime, signifying that it was still connected to the rest of the Qi in her body.

When this piece of Qi was placed inside of her dantian, Mira started to circulate her cultivation technique, The Hell Scythe Essense Cultivation Technique. The Qi started to transform into a vortex like normal, as proof that Mira was about to successfully break through. But two sudden changes started to happen as soon as it reached this point.

First, the vortex started to turn into something akin to a small blizzard. Outside of Mira's body was starting to ice over. The Qi inside her body also started to gain ice properties yet still flowed through her body like water. It was quite strange.

Mira felt her affinity with the ice element grow along with her control, but this wasn't the only change that surprised Mira.

Her soul had also formed a link with this vortex and her body was crazily sucking in the remaining Qi around her, sending it inside her soul.

Mira didn't expect this to happen and quickly checked her soul and was shocked yet ecstatic at what she saw.

Her scythe, The Abyssal Sea Scythe, started shining as it sucked in more Qi. Mira kept circulating her Cultivation Technique and it didn't take long for her weapon to stop glowing and reveal itself.

(A/N: The 'Sea' part of the Abyssal Sea Scythe does not mean it is good for underwater combat. It merely means that the scythe was made out of materials located in an abyss at the bottom of the ocean possibly even forged at the bottom of the abyss. The make might've also intended it to be used by a water element user. Again, this does not mean that it performs better underwater!)

Her scythe looked a bit different than before. The size and shape remained the same, but its crystal blue veins running along it had become more ice-like. The blade that used to be black, now had an icy-blue hue to it. Mira also felt the temperature around the scythe had dropped significantly as well. It seemed much more suited for her as her connection with it became stronger.

Not only that, but the grade of the weapon had also increased. It had gone from a Peak-Mortal Grade weapon to a Low-Earth Grade weapon, increasing its sharpness and durability by a significant amount.

Mira kept circulating her technique until she felt all of the changes were done and sighed in relief and excitement!

She checked her dantian and the blizzard vortex was still there, perfectly stable, and could finally stop cultivating.

She opened her eyes and had a huge grin on her face, something she hasn't done in many years.

'I have now surpassed my previous lives in cultivation and in terms of potential and strength, I vastly outclass any of my other lives! Not only that, but my weapon had upgraded and it seems like the vortex formed in my dantian is a mutated version of what it was supposed to be, but I can feel that it was a good thing! Hehe, this is the life where I finally kill that bastard! Haha! Wash your neck for me, asshole god for I will be the one to chop it off!!!' Mira thought to herself while clenching her fists in determination.

She took some time to settle down before going back to her normal aloof self and destroyed the ice barrier between Mira and the two girls.

She noticed that the two of them were talking with each other so she walked over to them with a slight grin on her face.

This has been one of the happiest days of her life, how can she not be happy?!