All of a sudden the pressure was relieved as his spirit expanded. No, as he expanded— he could feel it in some strange dimension tangential to his body, inextricably linked but even further separate— as his spirit ballooned outwards and became more. The tiny kernel of his cultivation that had been his Shedding cultivation blossomed into a fullness that suffused his entire self, and in that moment, right then, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he’d advanced to Opening.

He opened his eyes and collapsed to the ground with a thud and a groan, only barely noting a second later that the grass in a radius around him had been burnt to ash. Well… that had been a lot more dramatic than his first breakthrough. Hopefully the ones in the future wouldn’t be like that, because that had been intense…

He chuckled breathily, then laughed, the sound scraping at his throat and carrying out melodic into the silence of the spring festival. “I did it.” His whisper carried up to heaven above him, and was lost amongst the clouds. “I did it!”

Something impacted against his chest, so weakly he could barely feel it— yet in turn he could feel it almost better than he ever had, his senses expanded by his advancement. “You did it!” He could feel Lily’s hug as she wrapped her arms around him, but it certainly didn’t do

anything to him. He couldn’t help but huff out a soft laugh. Of course. Lily was going to be so mad when she realized that it would be even harder to push him around now…

For a long moment he just lay there, catching his breath and coasting down from the almost intoxicating feeling of fullness that breaking through gave. “Geoff.” He almost shoved her away, but stopped himself at the last moment. “I don’t know my new strength yet. Please.”

“Aww…” but that managed to convince Lily to back away… physically, at least. Crouched on a boulder a few feet away from the ring of burnt grasses, she stared at him with wide-eyed, excited eyes. “How strong are you? I’ve never seen an Opening cultivator other than Guxi before, and…” she gestured, and Avyr couldn’t help but snort in agreement. “She’s not that nice.” That was an understatement, if anything.

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Still, he was kind of curious himself. It was slightly funny to think that her experience with cultivators was mostly with Foundation Establishment cultivators, which might have given her a bit of a… misleading idea as to how strong cultivators really

were. Dragging himself to his feet, he positioned himself exactly in the center of the circle of burnt earth and channeled his qi to his paws— and froze.

He had so much! It flowed smoothly in accordance with his will, swirling and eddying with a grace that felt effortless compared to how much using qi as a Shedding cultivator had felt like pulling teeth at times. An enormous amount of qi— probably two or three times what he’d had total in his spirit before he’d advanced, pooled in his paw, a ghostly golden glow igniting around the appendage, such was the sheer amount of qi he’d managed to pack into it.

With a breath, he drew up his paw and slammed it down— and the ground ruptured. Before, if he’d hit the earth as hard as he could, he might have been able to leave a particularly firm pawprint. This, though? When the dust and ash settled and the two of them stopped hacking their lungs out, he stood in a crater almost as far across as he was long. That was… a bit more than he’d expected. The other Opening cultivators back in the clan hadn’t been that powerful back when they’d first advanced…

He’d just have to be careful, he supposed. Looking at Lily’s sheer excitement though… feeling the way the qi flowed within him, seeing the way it swirled around him, though…

He found himself satisfied before he knew it.