Wei Lin staggered backward from the dissolving pseudo-dragon, wiping sweat from his brow as the last wisps of death essence flowed into his cultivation base. The creature's massive skeletal form crumbled into ordinary sand, leaving behind only scattered fragments of bone that quickly began to fade.

"Is it complete?" I asked, pressing a hand to my still-aching side where the false dragon's tail had caught me earlier. "The death stall?"

Wei Lin closed his eyes for a moment, his spiritual sense turned inward to examine his inner world. When he opened them again, a satisfied smile spread across his face.

"Yes," he said, his voice carrying a note of triumph. "The tenth stall is formed. Death essence is now part of my marketplace."

I released a long sigh of relief, feeling tension I hadn't realized I'd been carrying flow out of my shoulders. "Finally. Maybe now we can actually focus on finding that exit instead of fighting for our lives every ten minutes."

It was true. Ever since we'd entered this realm, it felt like we'd been fighting a constant stream of ninth-stage creatures. While other teams were presumably searching for the exit or following successful groups to their destinations, we'd been locked in battle after battle.

The experience was valuable, and the death essence Wei Lin had collected would serve him well, but it was also exhausting.

"There's just one problem," Wei Lin said, settling into a cross-legged position on the sand. "I need time to properly integrate this breakthrough. The tenth stall is formed, but it's not stable yet. I need to consolidate my advancement before we can move on."

I glanced up at the number hanging in the sky. It had dropped to 21 while we fought the dragon. "How long?"

"An hour, maybe two," Wei Lin replied, his eyes already growing distant as he prepared to enter deep meditation. "I can't risk the stall collapsing from instability. Not after all the work it took to create it."

That was understandable, even if the timing was a little frustrating, the breakthrough was more significant than a tournament, perhaps more than most people would realize.

After reaching the ninth stage, cultivators typically gathered enough spiritual energy to attempt breakthrough to the Elemental Realm, where they would begin forming their elemental foundation and truly stepping onto the path of immortality.

Nine was the ultimate yang number, the highest single digit before returning to one in the next decimal place. It symbolized the cultivator reaching the absolute limit of mortal potential, the moment before they broke through to touch the powers of heaven and earth directly.

Which explained why some scholars described the nine stages of Qi Condensation like climbing a mountain, with the Elemental Realm being the first glimpse of the heavens beyond.

However, some cultivation methods allowed for extra stages: tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and even thirteenth. These weren't necessary for advancement, they were more like... optional floors in a building you could take the elevator past, which was why they were often seen as detours.

The reason was simple: while these additional stages could provide more power, more qi reserves, and deeper foundation, they also delayed breakthrough to the Elemental Realm where true power lay.

Most cultivators who reached the peak of the ninth stage chose to advance immediately rather than spend years perfecting these optional stages. After all, a newly advanced Elemental Realm cultivator would typically be stronger than even a thirteenth-stage Qi Condensation practitioner.

Also, some peak ninth-stage cultivators, those with exceptional talent or unique circumstances, could develop battle prowess that rivaled or even exceeded these theoretical extra stages. They might not technically advance beyond the ninth stage, but their techniques and spiritual pressure could match or surpass those who had.

However, there were compelling reasons why certain cultivators chose this unconventional path of pursuing these extra stages. The benefits were significant for those who could afford the time and had the right circumstances. But not all cultivation methods offered their users the chance to tackle the extra stages.

Each breakthrough beyond the ninth stage provided deeper dao comprehension, the repeated process of breaking through barriers that shouldn't exist forced cultivators to understand fundamental laws more profoundly.

A cultivator who reached the thirteenth stage would have experienced four additional breakthrough insights that their peers who advanced normally would never gain.

Some families and sects actively encouraged their most talented members to pursue extra stages, viewing them as investments in long-term potential. When a thirteenth stage cultivator entered the Elemental Realm, they usually progressed through the early stages at unprecedented speed.

As for pursuing stages beyond the thirteenth, the dangers were well-documented in cultivation theory. Thirteen represented the absolute limit of the mortal realm, to go beyond it while still in Qi Condensation was to court disaster.

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Ancient texts spoke of cultivators who pushed too far, who accumulated so much power in the mortal realm that they could never successfully transcend to the Elemental Realm. They became trapped, their own strength becoming a prison that prevented advancement.

It was a cautionary tale told in every sect: power without transcendence led to stagnation and eventual decline.

For my part, I didn't expect to enter these theoretical extra stages. The World Tree Sutra didn't follow traditional cultivation stages in the first place. The "ninth stage" designation was simply what my current qi level was equivalent to in terms of spiritual pressure and energy reserves. My advancement, like Life Realm cultivators, was not tied to conventional qi accumulation, but the development of life in my inner world.

"We need to find somewhere defensible," I said, scanning the endless white desert around us. The bone-white forest was visible in the distance. "If you're going to be in deep meditation for hours, we need a place where Lin Mei and I can hold off any attackers."

"There," Lin Mei pointed toward a rocky outcropping that hadn't been visible from our previous position. "Is that a cave?"

I squinted in the direction she indicated. Indeed, carved into what appeared to be a small hill of dark stone, I could make out the mouth of a cave. It wasn't particularly large, but it would provide shelter from observation and funnel any attackers into a narrow approach.

"Good eye," I said, gathering my remaining vines and checking my seed supply. "Let's move."

The journey to the cave took about ten minutes, during which the landscape gradually shifted around us. The endless white sand gave way to patches of dark earth, and strange crystalline formations began to sprout from the ground like geometric flowers. The air itself felt different here: heavier, more oppressive, saturated with death essence that made my skin crawl.

The cave was larger than it had appeared from a distance, extending back into the hillside for perhaps twenty feet before opening into a circular chamber. The walls were smooth, almost polished, and covered in faint markings that might have been natural formations or ancient script, it was impossible to tell in the dim light.

"This will do," Wei Lin said, settling himself in the center of the chamber. "The stone walls will help contain my spiritual fluctuations during the breakthrough. If any creatures are tracking energy signatures, this should help mask them."

"Take all the time you need," I replied, positioning myself near the cave mouth while Lin Mei took up a position where she could observe both the entrance and a side passage we'd discovered. "We'll keep watch."

Wei Lin nodded once, then closed his eyes and sank into the deep meditative state required for consolidating a major breakthrough. His breathing slowed, becoming so regular and quiet that within minutes it seemed like he wasn't breathing at all. The air around him began to shimmer slightly as his qi circulation accelerated.

With Wei Lin safely in meditation, I found myself with time to think, something that had been in short supply since entering this realm. The constant battles had kept us moving, reacting, surviving, but now I could actually consider our situation.

"Azure," I thought, reaching out to my inner world spirit. "Why do you think we keep getting targeted? This can't be coincidence."

"I've been considering several possibilities," Azure replied thoughtfully. "It could be that ninth-stage cultivators naturally attract ninth-stage entities. Like calls to like, after all."

"But we’ve been attacked by packs of eighth stage beasts too, and cultivators we’ve encountered didn’t seem to have anything chasing after them" I pointed out, thinking back to our encounters with other participants.

There was that seventh-stage cultivator who had crested the dune while I was fighting the wraith, he'd taken one look at the battle, gone pale with terror, and fled back the way he came. But he hadn't been running from anything when he arrived.

Then there was the team of three we'd spotted from a distance about an hour ago, moving through a valley of bone-white trees. They'd been walking calmly, even stopping to examine some of the strange fruits hanging from the branches, no enemy in sight.

When they noticed Wei Lin and me, two ninth-stage cultivators, they'd quickly changed direction and retreated. We'd considered pursuing them for elimination, but we were still recovering our qi from the previous battle and knew another realm inhabitant would inevitably find us soon. Better to conserve our strength.

"True,” Azure agreed, bringing me back to the present situation. “It could be Wei Lin's Black Market stall, the ability to absorb and convert death essence might make you both particularly attractive to beings composed of that energy."

I frowned, considering this. It would make sense from a spiritual perspective. Wei Lin's cultivation method was uniquely suited to processing foreign energies, and his Black Market stall in particular seemed designed to handle the kinds of forbidden or dangerous qi that most cultivators couldn't safely absorb.

Death essence would definitely fall into that category.

If the realm's inhabitants could somehow sense that capability, they might be drawn to him like moths to a flame, seeing him as either a threat to be eliminated or a resource to be exploited. And since we'd been traveling together, any creature tracking him would naturally encounter me as well.

But then I remembered our earlier conversation. "That would make sense, but when I asked Wei Lin if he'd encountered any beings before we all met up, he said no. He'd spent his time searching for Lin Mei while absorbing ambient death essence from the air without being bothered by a single creature.”

I considered another possibility - the Genesis Seed. I could still feel its subtle connection to this realm, the way it had tasted the death essence and established some kind of spiritual link. If the inhabitants could sense that connection, it might explain why they were drawn to me specifically.

But that timing didn't work either. "The Genesis Seed did create some kind of connection to this realm," I mused, "but that happened after the wraith had already found me. While it's possible that connection is making the targeting worse now, it can't be the original cause.

A long silence stretched between us as we both contemplated the implications. If it wasn't our cultivation levels, Wei Lin's abilities, and the Genesis Seed, then what could it be? I found myself mentally reviewing every encounter, looking for patterns I might have missed.

Azure was equally quiet, his presence in my mind thoughtful and increasingly troubled. I could feel him sifting through possibilities, discarding theories that didn't fit the evidence.

Finally, his voice returned, but it carried a weight that made my stomach clench with dread.

"Which brings me to a more concerning possibility," he said, his voice growing serious. "Master, what if the inhabitants of this realm can sense the Dao of Death on your soul?"