Elsewhere within Nox's chaos garden.
After Shinji had warmed up a bit, he and Alex had chosen to go explore, but Kenji had decided to stay within the fire plane instead. The high concentration of fire energy in the air was perfect for him hence he made astounding progress in record time. For nascent souls, the cultivation of their core between advancement can be split up into initial stage, mid stage, and peak stage based on how close they are to their next advancement. Kenji had merely been an initial stage red core when he entered this place, but now he had already reached the mid stage. To most cultivators on this continent, moving up a stage could take several years, so Kenji making this level of progress in just a few hours is astounding to say the least.
"hey! Hey! HEY!"
*Bonk*
"AAAH-!"
*BOOM*
Unfortunately for him, he had been so immersed in his cultivation that he had ignored his irritated master who had suddenly showed up, earning a swift stick of pain to the head which resulted in him losing control of his qi and exploding. Fortunately for Kenji, the explosion was an external one that only left him with a few scratches, rather than an internal one that could result in the loss of a limb or organ.
"Ugh! Well, that hurt! So, what's up boss?"
"What's up is that you are stealing important nutrition from my fire flowers!"
"Huh? But-!"
"No butt talk for you mister! Now come with me before you ruin any more of this fragile ecosystem!" Nox said, as she threw a slab of meat on the ground that was consequently roasted and savagely devoured by the surrounding plants.
"Doesn't look very fragile to me!"
"What was that?!" Nox said as she held out the pain stick.
"Nothing!"
"Hmph!"
"S-So, where is Aiko?"
"I left her to practice the thing I taught her, and you're next! I'm gonna teach you how to cultivate!" Nox said.
"Huh? To cultivate?"
"What's that look you're giving me?"
"Boss, I know your great and all, but can you actually teach me anything about cultivation?"
"Of course I can! Why wouldn't I be?"
"Well, you're not a cultivator for one! You're a magician! I mean, I guess you might be able to teach me some qi techniques since you use body enchantments and all, but aside from that, I can't really imagine what you could teach me about cultivation!"
"Is that a challenge I hear?"
"Wait, no! That's not-!"
"MEATHEAD! Get your butt ready, cuz I'm gonna teach you so hard your gonna need to go pick up Chucky just so your brains don't explode from the overload of wisdom I'm about to drop on yo ass!"
"Whose Chucky?"
"Come on!" Nox said as he grabbed unwilling Kenji.
"WAIT NO! BOSS! I TAKE IT BACK!"
Half an hour later.
"AAH! HOT, HOT HOT, HOT! BOSS, LET ME OUT OF THIS THING! IT'S TOO HOT IN HERE!" Kenji screamed while being boiled in white hot liquid from inside the caldron his crazy master had trapped him in.
"Nonsense! You're a fire cultivator! This shit has got nothing on you! In fact, I'm gonna turn up the heat! You better hurry and reach peak stage to up your resistance or you really will die in there!"
In under an hour after accidentally riling up his master, Kenji advanced from mid stage red core to peak stage red core, at the cost of some serious burns. However, that was merely the beginning.
"Good you're at peak stage! Now we just need to bulk up your body a bit and you'll be ready for your next advancement!"
"Please! No! Ouch! My body already hurts all over!" Kenji pleaded while trying not to move as to not agitate his burn wounds.
Paying his begging no mind, Nox just grabbed him by the leg and dragged him across the ground until they reached their next destination, the earth plane. Once there, she threw Kenji on the ground and whistle summoned her rockmen and had one of them fight Kenji, which usually ended with most of his bones being broken from being pressed beneath the full weight of a living mountain. Whenever that happened, she would drag him over to a nearby Reinforcement Magma Spring, a rare mystical pool of liquid sometimes found in chaos planes full of earth and fire energy, which is known for its ability to temper and reinforce bones.
*Snap*
"Ah!"
*Snap*
"Ugh!"
Unfortunately, the process is not a very pleasant one. Every moment Kenji spent inside the magma pool he would feel a sharp pain followed by one of his bones snapping back into place. Once his bones were healed and she had patched up his remaining internal injuries, she'd make him fight the Rockman again, then repeat the process.
A few hours later.
"I think that's enough physical exercise! Your body should be sufficiently durable! Now let's go!"
"*Huff**Puff* Please, no!" Kenji begged, struggling to breathe after barely managing to take a single hit without being crushed flat.
Unfortunately for Kenji, his master was not going to stop until she was satisfied, which meant he'd at least need to reach orange core before he'd finally get the break he desperately wanted. And so, Kenji was dragged out of his master's chaos garden to have his advancement.
"Okay, this place should work! Now, Meathead, I want you to make this enchantment-!"
"Please! Just let me rest for a bit!"
*Bonk*
"AAAAAHHH!"
"If you have the energy to scream, you have the energy to work! Now, before you get started on your advancement, I'm gonna teach you a nifty little ritual barrier enchantment that's gonna be useful to you! It'll block the impact of the tribulation lighting, absorb and store 92% of the energy unlike the 50 or 60% you'd normally get from each lightning bolt, while also further refining the purity of the energy before it's injected into your body. Not only will this give you a bit of a jumpstart as an orange core, but it should have a positive effect on your cultivation core's quality, potentially giving you a boost in energy generation and/or qi purity. NOW GET TO WORK!" Nox shouted after throwing a map of the enchantment array in Kenji's face.
"Huh?"
While making Kenji draw his own protective enchantments under the threat of the pain stick should he make even the smallest mistakes setting it up, she would also explain the theory behind each part of the enchantment as he was making them.
"Okay! It's poorly drawn but it'll work regardless! Now get your ass in gear and sit down! We're almost out of daylight!"
"My head hurts!"
"That's normal! Now stop your prattling and start advancing!"
"Ugh! Okay! …? So, how do I do that again?"
"Hm? It's more or less the same way you became a nascent soul! Now get going, I'm on the clock!" Nox said, as she pulled out her pocket watch.
"Uh, yeah, so how did I do that?"
"Don't you know?"
"It's a bit of a blur! I had been staying up for days testing things out, and I was kind of in a daze when it finally happened! So, yeah!"
"…! You know, I'm not sure whether to be concerned or amazed at how consistently you seem to make such headway when you so rarely know what the hell you are doing!"
"Hehe!"
*Sigh*
"Okay, so what you do is take your core and…"
Nox then began to explain the process of nascent soul advancement, and not long after, the first red tribulation lightning struck down.
*Crackle**Boom*
"Finally! Its started!" Nox said, as she looked gleefully at the sparks of red elemental energy flowing into the energy containers she had placed off to the side.
The reason Nox had pushed Kenji into advancing was not purely out of a desire to see her disciple grow, nor because she had been riled up, though it was definitely a factor. She wished to make use of the remaining 8% of fire energy from the tribulation lightning to make up for the amount Kenji had absorbed earlier. That might not sound like a lot, but even just 1% of the energy contained within tribulation lightning would be far more than what Kenji had absorbed to go from initial to mid stage.
Tribulation lightning is a unique and extremely powerful elemental phenomena that normally only occurs when a peak stage nascent soul is ready to advance their core. It is created by gathering large quantities of elemental energy from the surroundings to push the cultivation core through a qualitive evolution by injecting it with an absurd amount of qi. During this process, nearly all of the qi tends to either be released into the surroundings or absorbed by the core during its evolution or the brief window of opportunity to improve upon its quality before it has fully stabilized. Many compare tribulation lighting to an immortal's qi technique, as anyone below that realm struck directly without something to absorb most of the energy contents imbued within it, would be lucky to not evaporate upon contact. Hence, even just a fraction of a tribulation's power is quite a haul.
Of course, the leftover energy from tribulation lightning was not the only benefits Nox would gain from having Kenji advance.
"Well, well, well! What do we have here?" Said the seedy looking man who suddenly walked out of the woodworks.
As Nox did not wish to lose any more of her fire plane's energy, she had teleported far away from the capital city to have Kenji undergo his tribulations in the wilds. However, even though the enchantment array can keep the energy from leaking everywhere and attracting as many magic beasts, it does nothing to keep the more intelligent beasts and cultivators who can recognize tribulation lightning at a glance from showing up and cause trouble.
"Fuck off or die!"
"hehe!"
*Swoosh**Boom*
The moment the seedy looking guy tried to make a move, Nox whipped out her magic gun and shot him dead. She then turned to look at the hundreds of cultivators that surrounded her.
"So? Who else wants to die today?"
*Chuckling crowd*
At her words, the masses of vultures who encircled them began to laugh, however, only a scant few minutes later, every single one of them would be lying dead on the ground, while Nox would be counting the number of cores she had managed to extract.
During Kenji's last advancement they only survived thanks to multiple factors lining up in their favor. Being as deep within a chaos plane as they were, relatively far from any human settlements, their chances of running into people like the ones that took Aiko were much lower. Most of the beast population consisted of low intelligence magic beasts, who tend to be far easier to defeat than their equivalent in cultivators due to their simpler move sets. Additionally, they also had help from Aiko's ancestor golems, damaged though they might have been, they were vital in thinning out the herd. However, even with all this, had a single one of the beasts been above the unique grade, even if it had low intelligence, the disciple trio would have perished in seconds.
While to her three disciples, the hundreds of nascent soul bandits she had just slaughtered might have seemed like an insurmountable force, to Nox they were hardly a threat, because she was an arch mage. An arch magician is a mortal who has tread upon a realm of power that rivals the immortals through research rather than cultivation. Though, often viewed as inferior combatants to their immortal counterparts, if given the time to prepare, an arch magician would be no less dangerous than an immortal, if not more so. To pose a problem for a well-prepared arch magician they would need to be at least a human immortal or a legendary beast.
*Roar*
"Well, hey there big boy!" Nox said to the legendary grade fire mammoth that showed up right after she ripped out the core of the last nascent soul.
However, Nox is no ordinary arch magician.
*THUD*
"Hm? I guess that's a decent haul!" Nox muttered, looking out at the piles of corpses surrounding the corpse of the legendary grade fire mammoth she just killed.
Nox is someone who has achieved arch mage status both in enchantment and spellcasting, has access to spirit magic of all elements through a greater spriggan core, is well versed in all manner of black magic, is a powerful aura master, and has undergone all sorts of body modifications. On top of it all, she has extensive combat experience built through countless battles. She is a combat-specialized arch mage with a large and versatile arsenal of skills who is practically built to fight. So when she looks at a hoard of experts or even a legendary grade elephant covered in flames, all she sees are a bunch of free bags of money and materials she can loot.
With the energy harvested from the tribulation lightning paired with the loot from the corpses surrounding her, she has amassed a small fortune in a matter of hours.
That being said, the one who benefited the most today was undoubtedly Kenji. Absorbing 92% of a tribulation lightning is far beyond incredible, it's insane. Most cultivators only absorb 50 to 60% of the tribulation lightning, however, that is not just because they lack the means to absorb more than this.
While undergoing an advancement, the body will be placed under an immense strain while enduring the transformation process, while the core will become more and more unstable the more energy that is absorbed. Once someone passes a certain amount, they'll need to rely on their force of will to keep the core from falling apart, however, even if their will is strong enough to keep the core from crumbling, if the body cannot endure the sudden surge of energy, then it will all be in vain. Should someone overreach and try to bite off more than they can chew in the hopes of getting a better result, they'd be gambling with their very life. Even just 70% would be risky, but Kenji had done 92%, a percentage so high even though his core reached the highest quality the process would allow, he still had extra qi left over.
In his current state, the performance of Kenji's core is nearly on par with that of the average yellow core despite only just having become an orange core, and he has Nox to thank. However, it is not because of the suffering she put him through today.
The training, though relatively productive for his development, head at best made a 1% difference. The real difference came from the struggles and experiences she has put him through. Shiro academy, Walpurgisnacht, the ember sect, summer camp, the Nishi royal palace, even the pain stick. Nox has put him through all kinds of trials and experiences that strengthened both his body and soul to an abnormal degree, making this result possible.
"Boss! *Huff* Please! *Wheeze* Break!" Kenji begged as he crawled out of the enchantment array, completely spent.
That being said, the benefits did not make the struggle any less grueling.
"Nope! Now let's go!" Nox replied, before grabbing his arm and dragged him along the ground.
Nore his master any more merciful.