The night passed at a crawl, and the day wasn't much better, but Wu Hao had to force himself to wait an entire 24 hours before he'd allow himself to get started on absorbing the core. Holding himself back took more effort than he'd expected, and double that effort at least when he looked at Shan Kong's smug face and knowing that the other boy would more than likely challenge him tomorrow.

  Shan Kong wouldn't be a problem anymore, anyway. Or probably not, Wu Hao corrected.

  Jin Qilong, standing next to him, had coughed slightly. If Wu Hao had hoped that maybe attempting to stand up against his mother would've seen some growth of Jin Qilong's spine, he was disappointed, because if anything the other boy seemed angry with him. He was bad at expressing it, though, and all he did was huff occasionally at Wu Hao instead of his usual cringing away, and he had tried to make an effort not to talk to Wu Hao during training.

  It hadn't worked because he must've realized Wu Hao hadn't really minded all that much, so instead he'd come up to Wu Hao and stared at him for a while in silence, before simply sighing.

  "What're you going to do with the core?" he whispered.

  "Don't know," Wu Hao said. "Can I eat it? You're the expert on treasures here."

  He hadn't meant it entirely seriously, but Jin Qilong just nodded.

  "Sure," he said. "There's alchemistic ways of improving the effect, but they're usually not worth it. Just swallow, mind you. Don't bite it, is my tip. I chipped a tooth because I nearly choked on a beast core when I was seven."

  Wu Hao stared at him. He'd nearly forgotten that, like Shan Kong, Jin Qilong just got handed the resources that Wu Hao had had to steal and plot for, probably on a literal silver platter.

  "Right," he said. "So, yeah. I'll take it in the Resonant Caves."

  Jin Qilong nodded, then winced. "This is the last time, though," he said. "My mother - well, she made mention of it after you left. I'm not supposed to do that anymore."

  "Why'd you do it at all?" Wu Hao asked.

  "I thought you needed the help," Jin Qilong said. "I... guess you really didn't, huh?"

  Wu Hao sighed. "It's fine. Thanks anyway."

  Jin Qilong smiled at that, though then he rubbed at the back of his head.

  "So," he said. "In return, could you just tell me the next time you've got a plan like that? I thought my heart was about to stop a dozen times or so."

  A slight smile came to Wu Hao's lips, unbidden.

  "Sorry, young master," he said. "You might try to talk me out of it, otherwise."

  Jin Qilong groaned.

  "I said -"

  When it came time to walk into the caves, Wu Hao first made his way back to his room, retrieved the box, and made sure to only walk in when almost everyone else had already gone into the caves. A few people looked up as he hurried past, but he'd carried the box under his arm to make sure that no one had a clear look at it, and while he did attract a few odd glances they didn't stop him.

  Then he was into the refreshing dark of the caves, hurrying out past the light of the outside and deeper into it. The mat beneath his feet was a more ratty thing this time, but then he'd already known that from previous goes at the cave.

  He sat himself down onto the mat, put the box in front of him, and steeled himself, firming his spine as much as he could.

  Next to him lay the Unyielding Will Manual: he'd read it through from cover to cover, but it really wasn't the kind of manual that could be cultivated, unlike what he'd expected at first. It was really more of a collection of sayings and phrases that could be chanted repeatedly, which were said to firm the mind against illusions, fear, and which kept the holder "balanced out".

  It also contained recipes for medicines that would improve the mental state of whoever took them, but Wu Hao hadn't had the time nor the means to concoct those. It included incenses, various pastes, and even a collection of mushrooms that were supposed to be eaten raw. Those, he presumed, were the main reason that the book had been put on the second floor, rather than on the first.

  In any case he'd picked one chant to memorize from the litany that the book had recommended, and he had to trust that his talent would do the rest. It wasn't quite self confidence that was buoying him now, though. It was more an awareness that if he failed, he'd taken every precaution he could, and he could still reset the day without consequences if he messed it up.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, breathing in and out slowly, he took the lid off of the box and felt the absolute flood of qi burst out of it again. Those same waves of fear ran through him again, sending slivers of ice running down his spine. The cave was of an unremarkable temperature but a sudden surge of that freezing terror made his blood run cold.

  All he could do in response was to speak the first of the litanies against fear.

  "I will not allow fear to rule me," he whispered.

  The rest of it took him a moment more to remember, but after that he mumbled his way through the entire phrase anyway. It helped, more than he'd expected: just the fact that he was focusing on the chant instead of on the fear that was coursing through him. It helped, too, now that he was better able to distinguish the fear from his own feelings. It was a foreign influence, something that was running through him because of the treasure in front of him.

  It wasn't his fear. That was the most important thing, and he seized hold of that thought like he was clutching a life raft. It wasn't his fear.

  It felt real, but it wasn't. He swallowed, repeated the litany against fear again. It helped a little against the constant thoughts that he should open his eyes, that he should get up and run - that there was something out there, watching him and searching for his weak points. He banished those thoughts, but they kept returning.

  He reached out with a single hand, felt for the core with his eyes still closed, and then placed it against his lips. The fear doubled the moment he touched the core with his bare skin, as did the feeling of the cold, clammy shivers running through his body.

  At least it didn't really taste of anything, the way the Mountain's Breath Mushroom had tasted of dirt and earth.

  It'd get worse before it got better, he thought, and opening his mouth he swallowed the core. It'd been the size of a glass marble and he might have choked on it anyway, but the core spun as it entered his mouth and began to dissolve into a long stream of qi, an endless surge of power that streamed into his body through his throat, burning through his meridians as it made its way to his heart.

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  The impressions it created as it went were vivid. There was a sound of rustling leaves, of river water burbling down a mountain brook. There was the soft sound of padded feet travelling quietly over mountain ground. In the corner of his vision there was a flash of white and black as camouflage was broken, and there was a sensation of spinning around too late even as he was being pounced upon. There was a feeling of pressure and then a blinding pain as he was subjected to the feeling of having his throat ripped out by sharp fangs.

  It was mere phantom pain. He almost sneered. Compared to actually having his throat torn out, this was a pale imitation.

  He returned the favour, sending memories of his own deaths at the tiger's spirit. Each and every single one: his endless suicides, his deaths by weapons, having his body parts crushed. Waves of misery coalesced into a knife that he held in his hand.

  In his mind's eye he saw the tiger, rearing back in front of him. It was a magnificent beast in his imagination, a true king of the mountains with beautiful white stripes and a long, swishing tail. It had carried no battle scars and no wounds, until now. Long scratches had appeared all over its pristine coat, gouging out its eye and cutting into its legs and its body.

  The tiger had tried to make him afraid, and yet now in its wide eye he could detect a fear of its own. It was wise, cunning, even sagacious, and yet now it couldn't even begin to make sense of the boy in front of it.

  And what it didn't know, it feared.

  Nonetheless it was a brave beast, and it pounced again. Its claws were held wide, ready to slash him to ribbons, and in response Wu Hao swung his knife with all the effort he could muster. Knife crashed against claws, and both didn't move an inch. Wu Hao felt the impact smash into him, but he couldn't do anything except hold on and pour more focus into subduing the core.

  "I will not allow fear to rule me!" Wu Hao roared, repeating the same litany against fear again and again and again. "Fear has no hold on me but that which I give it!"

  And - slowly, almost unwillingly - his knife won out.

  The claws cracked. The tiger roared, a deep-throated sound of anger and anguish. It knew it was broken, and yet it struggled, tried to claw at his mind with that fear, but its attempts to send Wu Hao into mortal terror had failed, had lost their edge.

  The fear held no more hold on him.

  "I alone rule my mind!" he finished, and he could hear the tiger scream its desperate attempt at him even as its claws were ripped from his spirit and discarded entirely.

  Its roar resounded, so close in his ears that it seemed to be coming from his own throat. It wasn't the roar of victory, though - it was a roar of unwilling defeat, a feeling of a king's fury at being forced to submit against someone it saw as lesser.

  Wu Hao's eyes shot open, his fingers clenched into fists, and the tiger's roar cut off abruptly as he crushed its remnant will with his own.

  Forcing the tiger's qi to stick solely to the pathways that he'd chosen, he poured more and more and more power through each of his meridians. His veins felt like they were on fire as each of his muscles twitched at the same time in pulses, like his tendons were attempting to fight their way free from being bound to his skeleton.

  But he refused to let out the building howl of pain. Instead he forced the qi to go faster and faster, burning away the last impurities that had slumbered in his meridians. Brilliant white qi ran through him like an endless river, interspersed with thick black stripes.

  When it burst into his core again, he inhaled as the flood smashed into the seed that he'd formed and drowned it entirely. The seed fell into the sea of qi, more qi than he'd ever had before even when he'd broken the limiters that Father had installed in their dantians, and drank it all greedily. With every heartbeat it swelled greedily, taking all of that qi and using it to fuel its own growth.

  It sped through the stages of becoming fully mature. From the size of a mustard seed it grew into a bigger and bigger seed, until patterns began to emerge on its sides, patterns that Wu Hao had no chance of deciphering. It shook, once, twice, like something was struggling to get out from the inside, until finally a loud crack ran through his entire body as the seed broke open.

  The contents of the seed burst outwards from the shell, vines of power building themselves out rapidly as they formed a complex structure in the middle of his soul. Ropes of qi snapped out, building connections outwards on their own as his core began to take shape, and formed into tight loops of crystallized power that swirled and slung and folded into each other in dizzying ways.

  How long he'd sat there he wouldn't have been able to say. Maybe hours. Maybe just minutes. All of that time he just watched the core forming in his soul, finally settling into a more or less spherical shape with tiny porous holes in it. Stripes swirled across its surface, almost like he'd tried to create a combination of his half-remembered core from his future with the White Tiger's Core, but he hadn't tried to push it into a specific shape. It had taken this shape of its own accord.

  It sat there, humming as it spun slowly around its own axis. If he focused he could push it slightly forward, setting it skittering like a ball held in place by invisible pins.

  After making sure that he hadn't messed anything up, he withdrew his attention from his own soul.

  Wu Hao flexed his fingers a few times, shaking off the feeling that they were really supposed to be claws instead. His skin had become more pale, with the veins and the thin muscle beneath his skin standing out more starkly than it ever had before.

  But his vision was bright like it wouldn't have been for years now, every breath of air brought new sensations to his sharper senses, and best of all, the white-and-black core sat in his dantian, quietly accumulating power. He teased out a single thread of pure power and pushed it through a simple loop, not in any organized technique but simply a whim. It fizzled out before it even manifested into the air, but he smiled nonetheless.

  He'd done it.

  Wu Hao was a third-grade martial artist once more.