Spiritual Awareness is a form of extrasensory perception, based around mana-waves, instead of sound or electromagnetic waves.  Qi can be carried along light and be picked up by your eyes, if they’re sensitive enough.  It’s basically the same way with sound, touch, smell, taste, and everything else.  Even your sense of balance and hot or cold can be influenced by mana.

Innate Talent and the power of the person’s soul usually determine how sensitive they are to mana and Spirits.  If I really was some sort of ancient Eternal Deity somehow, then my soul would have already reached the peak.  However, it was also likely that the mysterious Goddess of Nudity had used my overpowered soul as a ‘sacrifice’ of sorts, in order to give me a super-OP Innate Talent.  Either that, or she really might have ‘eaten’ part of it somehow.  Who the fuck knows?

The point is that the method that I used to ‘see’ or ‘feel’ inside of my own body or Dantian, was called Spiritual Awareness.  As I was sitting cross-legged next to Mei’s curled up, sleeping body, I was looking into my Dantian and cultivating.

Although the organ itself is more like a chicken-egg shape on the outside, the internal space was actually a sphere.  The outermost layer was where most of the new Qi congregated and the place where the refining process actually happened.

There were all sorts of ‘impurities’, but in reality, that just meant that there was more than a single type of mana mixed together.  The process of refining was essentially sucking the stuff you want to keep, into the deeper parts of the Dantian, while pushing the rest of it out through the meridians.

What I normally did was separate the Nature Qi and then compress.  That was all I needed to do.  The muscles of the Dantian would clamp down and while the ‘good’ shit was being trapped inside, the other mana would be exhaled, sweated out, pissed out, or whatever.  I didn’t really need to think about it too much, ‘cause it was more of an instinctual thing.  Kind of like breathing… You’ll do it automatically, but if you need to hold your breath or breathe faster, you can consciously do that pretty easily.  No one needs to ‘teach’ you how to breathe, but you can learn breathing techniques to control your mood, heart rate, and other things.

Anyway, compared to the amount of Nature Qi that was trapped within my Dantian, everything else was insignificant.  For example, if the entire pocket of swirling green gas was Earth’s sun, then Xiaotong would be the size of Venus.  I could fit one and a half million Demonic Thunder Spirits within my Dantian.  Well, it doesn’t really work that way, but I’m just trying to say that it’s a huge difference in size.  Using the same metaphor, Legion, that giant swarm of Fiery Cockroach Spirits, would be spread out over a space the size of Neptune… So like seven-hundred and fifty thousand Legions could fit inside of there.  Then there was that enormous and incredibly dense crimson smog at the very center of my green orb.  That thing would only be Jupiter.  Yeah, it was tiny as fuck.  Now, there was a decent amount of Chaotic mana within that sphere, but at most, it was only about twice as dense as the Nature Qi.

As I was investigating my Dantian for the first time since I woke up, I noticed something lurking deep within that dark-red ball of shit.  It was ominous and cold, compressed way more than any of the other mana inside of my body.  I unconsciously muttered “Neat…” as I realized that it was a very thin liquid form of Darkness Qi.  It reminded me of that nasty inky crap I was vomiting out or the oily stuff I was standing in, when I was answering Jasmine’s stupid door riddles.

I’m not sure if you remember, but the key factor in reaching the Adept Stage is compressing your Qi until it becomes a thin liquid.  Of course, having a tiny bit of juicy mana didn’t mean I had broken into the Adept Stage.  It was still a pretty good sign though.

Out of curiousity, I decided to submerge my ethereal astral body down into the pitch-black ball of goop.  It felt like I was being frozen to death, but I continued diving, since there really wasn’t any way I could ‘die’ by losing a tiny sliver of my Spiritual Awareness.  What I found made me slightly surprised though.  

It eventually started getting hotter and then I smacked into a wall.  Although it was totally transparent, the consistency was closer to rubber than glass.  I’m not sure how or why, but it actually had a substance that could resist me to a certain extent.  In the end though, my body was just an illusion and I was able to force my way through.

Even before I went inside, I could clearly see what looked like a super-tiny star.  The heat was somewhat unbearable, but in the end, I was able to tune it out.  The blinding white light hurt my nonexistent eyes at first, though I quickly adjusted.

“What the fuck is that?” There were about ten golden gelatinous bubbles in front of me.  Well, there were seven or eight tiny ones that were slowly growing larger.  Each of them were about the size of my astral body.  Honestly, they looked like cells.  Okay, they were definitely cells of some sort, but I didn’t really understand how they were growing there or why.  I couldn’t help but grumble “This better not be some kinda weird cancer ghost…”

When I tried to go ‘deeper’, I simply couldn’t.  The densest core of my Dantian was that weird and ominous cluster of cells.  It was oddly ‘soothing’ though… Watching the bubbles grow.  However, at the moment when a new cell was about to form, I saw thousands of tendrils piercing in from outside the rubbery transparent barrier.  The inky liquid coalesced into a small black crystalline bead, then I felt as if my Spiritual Awareness was being sucked away and used to construct the stretchy golden walls of the newly forming cell.

Sure, it was a little disconcerting at first, but I was starting to realize what was happening.  It was an embryo.  What I didn’t understand was whether it was something that ‘everyone’ just had, or if it was a singular phenomenon that was happening to me specifically, because of all the weird shit that had happened to me lately.

Regardless, I felt a weird sense of accomplishment when I looked at that cluster of cells.  Not exactly the same as seeing a fetus on a sonogram… More like the enjoyment of cultivating and training your body to become stronger.  I guess I instinctively knew that it was a part of me.  Proof of my own strength and determination to better myself.

After loitering there for a few minutes, I decided to go back over to the outer edges of my Dantian again.  It was time to start my ‘Potentially Life-Threatening Qi Refinement Plan’!  Actually, the idea was based around the concept of having ‘Layers’ based on density, like in a cocktail or pretty much anything else in the entire universe.

Unfortunately, I immediately realized the biggest problem with that idea: efficiency.  Even if I could get everything all layered out, it would be super hard to utilize any of the mana.  I mean, if I’m totally unable to even use the shit, then what’s the point?

Thus, after an entire hour of planning, I finally devised a more effective method: Compartmentalization!  I came up with the idea by thinking about the embryo.  The question was whether or not I could really do it…