Widening one’s meridians was actually quite simple. It was probably the second easiest part of the body fortification stage. The whole process only required you to gather as much spiritual qi as you can in the meridian and ball it up bigger and bigger and then slowly expand the meridian. The trick was you had to be sure of two things. That first, there was no pain in your meridian as it expanded, and second was that the meridian was stable before you withdrew the spiritual qi.

Yuki actually had some expectations for this. She hoped that with her new meridians that she would be able to mix the spiritual qi and demonic qi together and let them both go to work. She did not know if this was dangerous or not but she figured she could stop at any time so if she felt any pain she would not continue at all.

She took a deep breath and began doing just that. She began taking in both types of qis into her body and surprisingly it was much more simple than she had originally thought. She was able to take in both without issue and evenly at that. It was as natural as breathing for her. They even combined together, making a half white and half black ball of qi swirling around in her fate meridian.

She took another deep breath and began slowly building up the qi in her meridian. Slowly but surely making, it grew in size, each time taking in small strands of qi to make sure everything was done evenly.

Time passed, and the meridian kept expanding bigger and bigger to the point it was almost the size of her thumb. Only then did she feel a bit of resistance. As soon as she felt a bit of resistance, she took in one more strand of each qi before stopping and waiting for the meridian to become stable, which took almost half a day.

Once the first was done, she did not stop there, moving on to the next. She continued on like this for who knows how many days before she finally expanded the last meridian. With a sigh of relief, she realized she was two steps away from truly becoming a fate star cultivator. She clenched her fists and began readying herself for the next stage.

She planned to find a cultivation sect that Elder Eijiro had spoken about before. She had to find a place that could help her grow and allow her to learn the things she did not know. Her path to get revenge on the people who attacked and took her family away and the old man she needed to find and do on to him, what he did to her, were her main goals. What came after that, she did not know, but for the time being, she was not going to give up so easily. But she learned to be very wary of the people around her. But even if she is wary of others, she would still need to join a sect for its resources.

The next stage of body fortification was the connection phase. This is where you begin pushing spiritual qi through your meridians and creating meridian veins to allow all your meridians to connect up in a kind of tree fashion. Each point leads to another, while your fate meridian is the root of the tree. Only when you do the final stage, which is called full circle, and connect your dantian and fate meridian together will you be considered to have entered the Fate Star realm.

Yuki began taking in spiritual qi and demonic qi and merged them together as she did before, but this time she was using them to form her meridian veins. The trick to this was to keep the qi together and expand it to the size of your meridian before slowly adding on to it. It was like stacking blocks on top of one another perfectly. She had to do this in a way that would not cause her qi stack to fall apart. So each step was very delicate.

An entire day passed when Yuki finally felt her first meridian vein forming. She could feel the different qis flowing through it without issue. She took a deep breath and began again. It was too early to celebrate. Only when she connected all one hundred and eight of them could she truly feel she had accomplished something this time around.

As such, the days and weeks passed until four months later, early in the morning hours, she felt her last meridian vein form. She let out a long sigh as she finally completed one of the hardest parts. Now she had to form her last connection to her dantian and fate meridian. But she knew this would not be easy as she had to split her meridian vein off and connect them to her two dantians. Only when she did this would she be able to leave this place and begin looking for a sect to join.

Time ticked by, and slowly but surely, Yuki was getting the hang of manipulating the two different qis at the same time. She had already formed two veins, one black, and one white, that branched off from their fate meridian. They were half the size of the meridian, but Yuki did not think it would pose too much of a problem. She quickly built up both meridian veins until finally….

*Bang!* *Bang!*

Like explosions going off, every completely connected, and Yuki finally felt a strong flow of spiritual qi and demonic qi flowing into her body. She just now had to finish up by completing the full circle, which was taking the two different qis and passing them through her meridian veins and down into her dantian. She could feel her entire body growing stronger by the second as the two qis began to fill up her dantian. Once it got to a certain point, a star formed in each dantian. One was black, and one was white, according to the two different cultivation methods. She had reached both the Fate Star realm and the Evil Star realm. One Spiritual and one Demonic.

And for the first time in a long time, Yuki finally opened her mouth and said: “I finally made it….”

Her voice was devoid of emotion and slightly cold, but they said all that needed to be said. Yuki had finally taken her first major step since she started her cultivation.