Construct

To others, the spiritual pressure here may spell the end of the road if they couldn't bear it. But for Lucian, things weren't so cut and dry. After the formation of a spiritual anchor, his soul needed time to stabilize and adapt to the sudden influx of power from his own cultivation. The more stable it grew, the more powerful, until that anchor could enhance his soul no further, and it grew truly stable.

Here, beneath pressure enough to jam his mind and scramble his thoughts, his soul fought desperately to remain intact, stabilizing far faster than it would normally. And with that stabilization came the power to resist greater pressure.

When his head no longer felt clouded, and his soul began to settle, Lucian opened his eyes and advanced further up the long stone stairs without delay. He continued until reaching his limit once more, and then sat again.

Like this, he made the most of the pressure here, using it to accelerate his cultivation bit by bit. The physical pressure was intense now, but he still felt little trouble on that end.

Twice more he stood, advanced, and sat again, and would have done so a third time if he went uninterrupted. Alas, the feeling of something gathering ahead of him, on the empty stairs stopped him from sitting.

Appearing out of nowhere, as if walking out from a dense fog, a man in well-crafted plate armor appeared, his hand holding a heavy rigid glaive in his right hand.

'No, not a man.'

The suit of armor was very complete, but there were always gaps between the pieces, and in those gaps, Lucian saw no padded clothing or chain mail. Instead, it was flowing blue and orange energy, like water contained in the suit of armor, animating it.

As the metal of its boots sounded on stone stairs, bloodplate armor grew around Lucian's body.

Habitually, he tried to clear his mind and enter that tranquil, observational state. It didn't come immediately, and so he practiced that old breathing method, but still, it did not come. His mind was slow and foggy, a result of the pressure here being as much as he could stand.

The sound of a metal boot hitting the ground louder than ever forced a shred of clarity to his mind as the armored suit stepped forward with a long reach slice of its glaive, rising up and across from the side.

It was fast. He barely pulled his head back in time to witness the tip of that blade cut the skin on his nose before a featureless armored mask had time to grow.

The armor kept moving, it spun swiftly, carrying the momentum as it swiped at his legs, but Lucian's hazy thoughts were catching up now. With a swing of his arm, a polearm similar to a halberd, featuring a small hammerhead rather than an axe was conjured from liquid blood.

With a low sweep, he caught the enemy glaive in the right angle of his polearms spear point and pick, forcing it aside with more effort than he expected.

Bringing his weapon, the bed de corbin, up to chest level, he made to stab forward with the spear point while his foe's weapon was still thrown out to the side, but the suit of armor spun with the momentum of his thrown aside weapon, building in speed as it stepped forward to the side with one leg and swung its weapon at his head.

If Lucian continued his stab, the suit of armor would be able to deflect with the pole of its glaive, and cut at him in the meanwhile.

Instead, he abandoned the attack, stepping around to the other side and deflecting the glaive, guiding it to his side while closing in on his foe, such that they were side by side with their weapons held a distance away, tangled with each other.

It was at times like this that his unusual methods showed their greatest merit. A crimson arm grew from his shoulder, shielded in that same bloodplate armor as it stabbed at the enemy with what was really no more than a long, thin spike of crystal blood.

The spike pierced through the animated armor, but not at all smoothly, coming into contact with the swirling energies within the suit of armor.

Immediately, the withering technique imbued in the blood spike began to drain, but there was no lifeforce to take. Instead, the animated armor bashed him with a shoulder and moved back to make distance, freeing its glaive from his control as it righted its combat posture.

There was just a moment's pause during that break, and Lucian tried using that time to consider what to do next.

Alas.

'No… life.'

His thoughts came slowly, without any real concentration. How he fought now, he did on instinct and muscle memory, with no plotting or deeper considerations.

The suit of armor struck again, building speed and momentum as it swung its weapon, spinning in circles at times, cutting like a steel wind that never ended. Gradually though, Lucian's mind began to clear as he adapted to the pressure, and his soul stabilized at a frighteningly quick pace.

It fact, it had finally cleared enough for him to realize something about his foe.

'It's dumb. I mean, it's simple-minded, like I am- was. Like it's just going through the motions, it has little adaptability.'

With that realization, the fight became a little bit easier. He had the clarity of mind to gauge the power of the thing now, and guessed it had the strength and speed of a mid-4th stage augmentor, and as he pressed the thing, relying on its lack of adaptability to catch it off guard and hammer the metal plates down with his weapon, it began to exhibit a few external wind techniques. The kind that created cutting gales in the wake of its weapon, effectively delivering two or three successive attacks with every swing.

Lucian began to match its fierce spins and wide swings, building momentum enough to rival that of the strange construct as he attacked with four arms and three weapons. Hole after hole was punctured through the animated plate armor, followed by a series of dents and impacts enough to break pieces off the construct, revealing that shifting energy within.

In the end, it was with a pulse of the Heart of Dawn that he delivered a series of eighteen stabs in an instant, rendering the entire suit of armor broken and unusable as it all fell to the ground in pieces.

It did not move anymore.

Panting with the exertion, Lucian supported himself with the bec de corbin, watching as that flowing energy exited the creature, splitting into orange and blue streams that collected in floating balls. This was new, but familiar. With an outstretched hand, he touched the orange stream, and it invaded his body like something immaterial, filling every fiber with raw physical power.

The blue stream too invaded his body, but rather than spreading to every inch, it split into three portions, aimed at his mind, his heart, and his core. It flooded his three anchors, flowing forth into his soul, and like an explosion of clear breezes, like cool water on a chilly day, it woke him. His cloudy thoughts vanished for a moment as the power surged throughout his soul, only half of it returning once the power had settled.

Unlike the transferring of his physical cultivation into his soul through the anchors, this enhancement to his spirituality did not cause chaos or destabilization, but nourished gently and soothed his soul.

His now stable soul.

'So in the end, it was ambition and determination huh? Ambition to choose the highest peak, and determination to fight on as the very air exhausts you.'

Lucian smiled faintly at that. This place was very human indeed, for both better and worse.

'No point continuing just yet I suppose. I have an anchor to form.'

Ordinarily, forming spiritual anchors was a difficult process. One had to squeeze power from their lifeblood to forge the anchors, and every one was harder than the last, needing more pull to stretch the soul over that much more of the body.

Even the most talented who cultivated the Grand Life Tome completed the 3rd stage with 120 drops of lifeblood, unable to handle the imbalance of any more. But Lucian had exceeded that long ago. A twentieth of his body, thousands of drops of blood, were filled with both life and death, Trueblood far more powerful than either Life or Paleblood alone.

To him, forming the anchors was the easy part, it was waiting for his soul to stabilize and completely integrate that part of his cultivation that took time.

Here, that was no longer a problem for him.

Just an hour after his fight with the animated armor, an invisible sun blazed into existence within his left eye, a fourth spiritual anchor that tied his soul to his body, and shared another part of his cultivation between them.

Having completed the fourth anchor, his spirituality would begin seeping into his senses now, allowing him to see things normally reserved for Daoists.

And as with all anchors, not only did his soul strengthen, but his body did too, gaining aspects of spirituality, capable of interacting with more than material flesh in a fight. With four spiritual anchors now forged, four blazing suns within himself, he was almost halfway through the nine anchors he needed. When he had achieved them all, he could truly integrate soul and body, and become a singular existence.

But for now, he had constructs to kill.