After Elder Zal took a moment to take care of her bleeding nose which still surprised me even now, she continued her speech.

"Now, Infernals play a pivotal role in maintaining such Laws, and it is something you will naturally learn more about as you get stronger. Especially when you visit Planet Infernal.

"For now, you might wonder why all of this matters. It goes back to you currently being weak. I will leave after the next five years have passed. That means you will be without the protection of an Immortal.

"The name of Infernal will still hover around you for soft protection, but there are plenty who are wholly ignorant of that name, or do not care for that name even if they do know it, or they are purposefully seeking members of our race to cause them harm, or perhaps they are just that desperate.

"Whatever it may be, once I depart, any random Immortal could decide to pop in and rid this planet of all life. Even that individual whom you have met underwater could take the life of every soul on the planet before you could blink.

"That is the reality of being weak. You know this already, but the contents of this vial are how we will set your foundation for accelerated growth without ruining your future. Not only will this help to boost your actual cultivation speed, but it will make your foundation firm.

"Firm in reference to the geniuses of the world.

"If someone who wasn't capable attempted what you were about to do, their death wouldn't be peaceful. But you have been and will continue to be baptized in the Eternal Flame.

"It will not be painless, but not out of your abilities. Any questions, Patriarch Raizen?"

I didn't immediately answer her question and instead genuinely thought about everything she just explained to me in detail.

It was one of the very few times where Elder Zal genuinely explained a topic to me without riddles and purposely laid holes.

She revealed a lot.

Far more than I expected to receive on this training trip of mine.

The law that shall not be named, huh.

If there was one thing I really wanted to ask, it would definitely have to be that… yeah.

"I just have one question, Elder Zal. What if I didn't reach out? You gave me the option of reaching out to you for the remaining ten years that you were here. What if I didn't? Would you have just delivered the vials to me instead, I wonder?"

She answered without batting an eye, as expected, of course.

"No. I would've simply left. The steps of a Patriarch are not to be forced too stringently. You will walk the path you want to walk and do the things you want to do. Remember, Patriarch Raizen, no one can ever dream of dictating your steps.

"If you chose not to reach out to me, then all it meant was that you chose a different path. Nothing more, nothing less."

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Hm.

Well, I suppose I can't argue with that logic. I have half a mind to believe it has something to do with that law that shall not be named, but I doubt asking about it is the right decision after witnessing what happened to Elder Zal. That was the very first time I ever saw any form of vulnerability with her.

Either way, I get it. It's literally what I've been hearing since I first found what I really was.

No one dictates my actions except for me. No one. I've always known it wasn't just some random quirk of Infernals, but with this explanation from Elder Zal, I now know for sure that there is something far deeper at play here.

Hopefully something I learn more about in the future… I clearly, literally, cannot handle the truths of the far weightier things.

"Alright, let's proceed with the training."

And that began the most painful experience I've experienced.

Drinking the contents of that vial was literally what I imagined swallowing lightning was like. The pain simply didn't compare to anything else I've ever done. Now I understood why people died from drinking this.

If I were to use a high-pressure power washer to fill a regular glass vase with water, the vase would probably break. It wasn't strong enough to withstand that. That is the exact same thing that is happening here.

My body is a vase, and all of the pure, concentrated Qi is filling up my body with immense force. It was quite literally being destroyed and rebuilt in real time, and it was in this environment that I now had to focus on completing the cycles needed to advance in the Core Formation.

Something that should have taken me years to accomplish was shrinking in timeline with each day that passed.

Every painful moment that passed was promptly rewarded with an even greater advancement of my core and its cycles.

Especially since Elder Zal was there to guide me along the way. There were times where she asked me to both slow and stop my progress altogether so that we could cement the gains I made.

Other times she pushed me to overcome moments where the pain seemed like it would overwhelm me instead.

While I could handle pain, and I had no problems pushing through it, I wasn't invincible. There was only so much my body could take before it would give in to the pressure it faced. It was in those moments that Elder Zal was there to encourage me to push.

And that is how I completed all 12 cycles that I needed in the Ignition Stage.

The actual breakthrough was something that happened in one of two ways. Either you would rush it and begin the process before you completed the necessary cycles, or it would simply happen on its own.

There was no need to rush or force it for this minor stage.

Once the cycles were completed and the core was purified to an extent that it shined and pulsed with so much Qi, it would advance on its own.

And the advancement was simple.

In fact, it was overly simple, and technically it was barely a minor stage on its own. If anything, the resonance stage was nothing more than a staging ground for something more.

The signal to breaking through to resonance stage was the first time the core itself moved. Not a large movement either. Just a small one in any direction. Once that happened, all I had to do was flood the core with Qi, and it would essentially become filled with even more power and begin vibrating rapidly.

This was the state of resonance.

If Ignition was thought of as the tempering of the core like you would a piece of ore, then resonance was the time for shaping the core or the ore that was just tempered.

Except the shaping in this case was more like a copying. The core would be shaped in my image. Not literally, of course, but figuratively.

It would be shaped by all that I was. My Qi, my personality, my entire being. In this case, that of course included my flames and everything that they were and will be.

Which turns out is a cheat code for the resonance realm.

The goal here was to make my core become an imprint of myself. There was no better way to do that than to constantly bathe in my Eternal Flames… after all, there is nothing that reflects me more than that in all of the Multiverse.

This was another benefit to being born a Patriarch.

Still, the process, while now quicker, still wasn't instant. It would be some time before I reached the point where my core and my being fully resonated with one another.

So my training continued.

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