On a summer night in the depths of Nimmer Forest.
The air was clear, as the full moon shone on a beautiful green valley filled with silver and blue flowers. They shimmered mystically in the moonlight, and strange, yet faint, sounds of creatures were heard in the distance. Cricket-like chirps, roars that seemed unimaginable distances away, and the sound of unknown birds resounded in the valley.
It was a peaceful sight.
Yet, amid such peace, space seemed to be kneaded like dough as it distorted more and more before it ripped apart. A black rift was ripped into the very spacetime of this valley, spitting out an illusory black figure. Its power was terrifying, but it seemed to be waning with each passing moment as it slowly descended.
Instead of landing, the figure passed through the ground. As time passed, the spatial rift began to shrink and quiet before disappearing completely. The valley quickly returned to peace, leaving only the mystical, silver-blue flowers that swayed gently in the summer breeze.
---
Cely's consciousness slowly awakened as her senses were "returning". She tried to move but found herself unable to do so. Out of the blue, she was assaulted by a terrible headache, like her consciousness was being ripped apart, before the pain disappeared as abruptly as it appeared.
She "sighed", realizing what had happened.
She had died.
Melancholy, anger, and despair washed over her as the last pictures before her demise replayed in her mind.
She was Cely, the strongest expert of Earth and its protector since times long forgotten. Her death was a sacrifice. Her life, for Earth. She just hoped her husband Nicholas, or Nick for short, would not accidentally destroy it in anger. But she doubted he would do that.
He had changed a lot since she first met him, after all. He was the one person who had given her life stability and meaning. She knew it was the same for him.
Her parents, though far above her in terms of strength and status, were distant. Though they and she still held affection for each other, they were all too old to care about familial bonds too much. At least she thought that.
She shook herself out of her thoughts shortly after and tried to move her body, only to feel awkward as all her "limbs" seemed... different and far more numerous. The number seemed uncountable even to her. But, even though there were many, she could feel and control them all. Although very slowly.
As she moved her new appendages, she noticed resistance all around her, as if she were digging through something, likely soil or another malleable substance that wasn't air or water.
'I seem to be surrounded by something, yet I feel perfectly fine. I do not need oxygen, though I still desire it, but I feel a kind of thirst and hunger, although they seem slightly different from normal.'
'My body is made of an uncountable number of appendages that seem like tentacles, no, roots. What exactly did I reincarnate as?'
Cely thought for a moment. Going through plants and species in her memories. Finally, she came across something that stuck with her.
'Mycelium!'
It was like a lamp turned on in her "brain" as she thought about it. She felt that it made perfect sense.
Mycelia are the body of mushrooms, a long string of complicatedly entwined cells that can spread over kilometers.
And from what she felt from the soil around her, she seemed to have been reincarnated in an area rich in Life Energy, Mana, and Qi. In this Plane (short for "Plane of Existence"), many kinds of energy had different attributes and uses, but all were linked to the same source, Primordial Energy.
Primordial Energy is the basis of all matter and energy, which is also why it is sometimes called Origin. Only Primordial Gods could control this purest and most basic kind of energy, though even they cannot fully fathom its profundities.
Cely's killer was a Primordial God. Above the Primordial Gods seems to be the Creator of this Plain, who had disappeared countless years ago.
And now, Cely was at the bottom of the food chain again, in a world that was not hers, with dangers she did not know, and reincarnated as a mushroom.
---
After finally organizing her soul's memories, Cely thought about what to do. Her thoughts swirled a bit.
'Find civilization? Unrealistic.'
She thought for a bit longer before quickly making up her mind.
'Cultivation!'
In this Plane, there were many ways of acquiring power. Some use Qi to cultivate immortality, some use Mana to create Divine Cores, some use Life Energy to enhance their existence, some use Death Energy to cultivate undying bodies and souls to achieve greater power, and some use blood to cultivate Blood Cores to increase their bloodline and power, and many other ways, like transforming themself into monsters and half-monsters by cultivating demonic techniques.
The paths to the peak were seemingly endless; in fact, they technically were.
In her previous life, she was at the peak of the Transcendant God Tier, half a step into the Primordial God Tier. But that half a step is a chasm. Insurmountable by any normal standard. But even still, her power was enough to shred universes.
She had chosen the path of intentions in her previous life. Intent is a pretty broad term. But fundamentally, it is the idea of thoughts and self resonating with a concept on a fundamental level.
An important issue, though, with this method is that the concept might consume the self. The more you absorb and resonate with the concept, the higher the chance of losing your sense of self and becoming a physical manifestation of it.
So, safe to say, to reach as high a level as Cely has in her previous life, her sense of self and identity are as immutable as the rules governing reality.
She was a terrifying existence. And even though she was terrifying, in front of the Primordial Gods, she was but a speck of dust on their clothes that could be snipped away at any time.
But now, most of these things were further away than ever.
Thinking about this, her will grew firm as she finalized which methods to use to reach the peak.
She would use Qi to cultivate immortality this time around. In her last life, she found out that her aptitude in this ascension method was at a terrifying 998.
Aptitude in the different methods of ascension is, most of the time, determined by a number between 0 and 999. There is only one known being that has reached 1000 in any category: The One.
The One is the most talented existence in the plane, having reached the Primordial God Realm after only a million years. At that time, the most talented existences in its generation had reached the late stages of the Great God Realm. It was terrifying.
This is why, a year after ascending to the Primordial God Realm, The One was shattered into pieces by Void. One of the pieces, the main piece, was sealed and kept by Void, and the rest were scattered across the plane, with no traces of them being found, at least on the surface.
After her mind kept wandering and wandering more off track, thinking about these things that were so close to her mere moments ago, she finally managed to get back to the point.
The first step is the Body Tempering Realm!
Before stepping on the road of most cultivation methods, the body needs to be strengthened and tempered first to make it possible to hold other energies. For this, one often uses one's surrounding energy with Innate Life Energy to cleanse the cells. Innate Life Energy represents the inborn lifespan of a living being. Undead use the Death Energy that accumulates on them for this same process.
This is why it is important to start early in life, as beings with poor potential may not be able to balance the loss of lifespan by refining their Life Energy anymore.
Havíng thought about all of this, Cely adjusted her state and began concentrating. Having gone through countless years of cultivation in her previous life and being older than the Earth itself, sensing her Innate Life Energy was a piece of cake for her.
As her senses started manipulating the energy, it began flowing through her new form, illuminating her idea of it even more.
Her current body wasn't all that large by Mycelia standards, covering about a 5-meter radius. But each of her tendril-like roots was way thicker than normal mycelia, at multiple millimeters.
Catching herself trailing off, she felt slightly frustrated. Having to concentrate back on the one task she needed to do right now was new to her again. After all, she was used to the high parallel processing power of deities, and trying to limit her thoughts to one train again was not easy.
Finally getting her thoughts back on track, though, she felt her Innate Life Energy and started chipping away parts to enter her cells. Over and over and over. It was repetitive. But she could feel the progress with each moment.
It was the kind of elation you get when starting to learn a new skill.
Feeling how her body was now far easier to control and also far faster, she felt a sense of ecstasy and pride, but thinking of her enemy, it was quickly erased as her will became firm once again.
After the Body Tempering Realm comes the Qi Gathering Realm and the Qi Refinement Realm. There are different Tiers of Existence that one can reach by cultivating. A Tier 1 existence can normally only temper its body to advance.
Tier 2 is known as the Energy Tier, as here, beings begin to absorb and refine energies with their bodies. During this process, life Energy is continuously refined, leading to an increase in lifespan and a strengthening of the body and soul.
Each of these Tiers can be divided into multiple Realms depending on the path one chooses, and the difference between each Tier becomes greater the further one walks. Tiers represent a change in the quality of power, Realms represent a change in the method of advancement, and Small Realms represent progress on that method of advancement.
Cely stopped thinking about this shortly after and stabilized her mind before returning to cultivating. She truly missed being able to cultivate subconsciously and strategise at the same time.
It was time to step into the Qi Gathering Realm!