“I really shouldn’t have encouraged this.”
“What? Is my idea that bad?”
“No, it’s too good. Now I want to drag you away from your cultivation to start building this game of yours.” At this point Augus couldn’t accomplish much, he would need to advance his cultivation and study formations if he wanted to do something as complex as the seemingly simple game of invasion is to actually create.
The dread that had started to appear in Augus’s chest vanished and was replaced by anticipation, if instructor Dominic liked his idea despite all the past failures then it had to be a good one.
“Ha, I knew it. You got that look all World Makers get when presented with a new project. Your look gets all unfocused yet your eyes start sparkling like you are a kid with a new toy.” Augus wouldn’t deny the new project wasn’t exciting, even though cultivation was necessary and even a priority, the allure of creating was always there. Waiting anxiously for a new project to sink all his focus on, yet now Augus found himself unable to embark on it it was frustrating if better in the long run.
For now Augus had to focus on his cultivation and eventual advancement to Nascent Soul and he wouldn’t deny part of his current desire to do so was to get on with the new project.
“Alright, for now we keep the normal timeline. Classes start next month and the project too, unless you advance to Nascent Soul. Then I will try to speed things up so we can start as soon as possible.”
“Also, if you need any assistance from the other professions tell me then, before we present project it will be too hard to pass the request through HR.”
Augus just nodded to anything Dominic said, he was too immersed in the surging ideas about the project to engage in the conversation. Luckily Dominic seemed used to this type of reactions and didn’t take it to heart, he said goodbye to Augus and his parents and went back to the compound.
While he wanted to start preparing for the project right away all the relevant parties were either asleep, on watch or out in some mission, so he just filled the paperwork he needed to fill and went to sleep.
Meanwhile Augus couldn’t fall asleep, there were too many ideas being created and discarded in his head that he only stopped when he saw that the sun was already rising. Even then Augus didn’t mind much, as a Golden World cultivator advanced in the realm he was able to go a few days without sleep and not feel it.
What Augus really felt was excited, even a little giddy, he wanted to reach Nascent Soul now just to get started on the project and the world seemed aware of that as the news said weather news said that this weekend there would be a lightning storm.
Now all Augus had to do was cultivate, reach peak Golden World and use the lightning to ascend to Nascent Soul realm.
* * *
Because of this Augus focused for the next few days purely in cultivation, no intermissions for training nor going out to eat, pure unbreaking focus on cleaning his dantian with lightning. He even started to arrive later to his house to have more time in the day for cultivate, all this showed it’s effects when the day before the storm Augus was at 90% already.
This meant that Augus had to reach 99% before the night of the next day, when the storm would reach his cultivation chamber. Because of this he informed his parents that he would not be arriving at home today.
“Mom, sorry but I’m not gonna return for dinner, I’m trying to make the final sprint for Nascent Soul.”
“I know, we suspected as much, with you arriving late and all it was a matter of time. Just… take care honey, if you can’t breakthrough this time there will be another opportunity after. Don’t put your life or your cultivation in jeopardy just to save some money or a few weeks in time.”
This stopped Augus in his tracks, with his mom’s warning he realized the weight of what he was trying to do. He had accelerated to the extent that a process that would have taken at least 2 weeks to reach (if not more), to barely a week.
Such pace could lead to bad results in his breakthrough if kept. Augus promised his mom and himself that if anything seemed too dangerous during his breakthrough he would stop, project anticipation be damned.
The upcoming project wasn’t urgent enough to risk his life, he still had until next month to advance according to his talk with Dominic.
More calm and cautious Augus reached his tower, it looked the same as before, though maybe it was because of the accumulating clouds but he could swear that it looked more imposing. Next he entered his chamber and placed a cultivation mat his mom had gotten for him, apparently it would help him concentrate though Augus couldn’t feel much of an effect.
Before starting his session Augus got into a comfortable posture and started to relax, first his body; his muscles, his nerves, his extremities, everything. Then his mind, he let his (now used to) breathing exercise he learned from the cultivation manual relax his worries.
It had the secondary effect of accumulating static electricity around him, which he was about to disperse as usual as it sometimes interfered with his control training, but this time he didn’t.
He let it accumulate around him for a while but then sent it to the top of the tower, besides the lightning rod. This would ensure that any lightning present on the coming storm would target his tower first.
With all this preparations made Augus got to cultivate, which was the easiest it had ever been. With his now used to control of lightning and the abundant access to it he had on his tower he could clean impurities at a rapid pace. The hardness of the impurities his current progress involved were irrelevant to the power of the lightning.
The main limiting factor of rapid cultivation at this level was the power of the energy a cultivator needed to destroy the impurities. Besides that the only limiting factor was the cultivator, more specifically their control of the powerful energy.
Considering the ease with which Augus controlled lightning this was clearly not an issue, this meant that for as long as Augus could concentrate on the task at hand he could cultivate virtually uninterrupted.
All this advantages meant that by the time Augus needed a rest he was already at 94% of cleansing, this pace gave Augus the time for, instead of eating in his cultivation chamber like all the other time, to eat out, enjoy peoples presence and relax for the next bout in his cultivation.
After stepping out of his chamber he belatedly realized it was dark, without his notice he had skipped lunch and almost dinner. Augus had heard of stories like these, at moments of high concentration a cultivator would loose their sense of time, at higher realms it was said days and weeks could go by without notice.
At the highest realms it supposedly only got worse, months felt like hours and a cultivator could disappear for half a year in a “short” cultivation session.
Augus went out and arrived at a sushi restaurant, he had a craving for it, maybe he was pregnant? With such nonsense running through his head Augus ordered enough food for two people and looked around at the place.
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It appeared to be themed around a chess board; the tables were either black or white and the floor was chequered with the pattern of a chess board. If one put attention the tables weren’t randomly positioned, they tried to imitate a specific chess move. Augus couldn’t recognize which move it was, when it came to chess he could confidently (?) declare himself an ignorant. While Augus was looking at the decor his food arrived and with it a new client, who recognized Augus.
It seemed every time Augus ran into people he knew it involved him eating out, which considering it was the only reason he went out at all it wasn’t surprising at all. In Augus’s case a day felt like a few hours which explained why his stomach was complaining despite his reduced need for food.
This time the surprise guest was Sarah, the newest woman aiming for his friend Lu. Although Augus had maintained contact with her, the topic of the conversation was always around Lu, it was from this conversations that Augus figured the type of woman in love she was.
Because thanks to the many he had seen chasing Lu he had categorized them, and Sarah was one of the rare types, the ones who saw courting as defense to be breached. Her questions about Lu weren’t as much trying to get to know him as they were about breaching his AT field,
All this went quite against her honestly bubbly personality when not in front of Lu, which was quite jarring the first time Augus had a coffee with her.
“Heyyy! Augus! What a coincidence, did you also have a craving for sushi?”
While tilting his head in curiosity Augus answered. “Also? Are your pregnancy cravings also sushi?”
“Hahahahahah, damn Augus, I really can’t understand how Lu doesn’t laugh at your jokes.” It seemed either she was trying to curry favor with him or she was particularly happy today, because that joke wasn’t that funny.
“Did something good happen today? It’s like flowers are blooming around you.”
The grin that appeared on her face as she sat in front of him confirmed it was the second reason. “Lu actually asked me out on a date.”
“Cough! Cough! Cough!” Augus almost chocked with a piece of salmon, but he had to ask anyway. “Are we talking about the same Lu?”
“I was so surprised too, but he actually asked me out for dinner, on Monday, after work.”
“Damn, you might actually have a chance.”
“You didn’t think I had one?”
“Look, Lu is like those harem protagonists, you know the clueless dense guy.” After Sarah gave a nod of following Augus continued. “The main difference is that Lu isn’t clueless at all, he had a baffling number of women after him. By now he knows exactly when someone likes him, so this is the first time when I have seen him ask someone on a date.”
After Sarah’s order came up they continued chatting, now not only about Lu but of other topics. After Augus finished eating he paid his meal and said goodbye, despite the fun intermission he had a breakthrough to make.
Back at the cultivation chamber Augus carefully dealt with the remaining 5% of impurities, with how much cleaner his dantian was he couldn’t be sending less that perfectly controlled bolts at the impurities.
He made progress by the hour, though with how careful he had to be with each strike he only managed to reach 99% by the time the storm was only a few minutes away.
Instead of rushing out to catch the storm Augus remembered his mom’s warning and instead gave his dantian and his mind a rest.
For about an hour during which the storm arrived at Augus’s location he didn’t cultivate nor train his control of lightning, he just practiced his breathing exercises and fell into a meditation. By the time he felt ready lightning had been overflowing his tower, all the excess being rerouted into the earth to avoid damages.
Instead of using all the lightning around him Augus left the tower from the inside into the hatch just beside the lightning rod. He couldn’t absorb the controlled lightning that cycled his cultivation chamber because for his advancement he needed untamed lightning.
This was the reason behind Augus’s mom waring him and also the real reason why neither she nor his dad had advanced to Nascent soul despite being years since they cleansed their Golden Worlds. The fear of dying or being crippled by the sheer power needed to breakthrough to Nascent soul realm made them unable to try.
This fear was also the reason why despite almost everyone in the population being able to cultivate the amount of cultivators at Nascent soul realm and further wasn’t proportional. From Qi condensation to Golden core there wasn’t much in terms of risk when breaking through, but from Nascent Soul onward things changed.
From what Augus knew to reach Body reformation one needed to go through a Tribulation, which further deterred people from reaching this realm. As each further realm came with one, at least in theory, there weren’t many current cultivators at these realms to confirm.
From these stories the Tribulation sometimes was like what Augus was gonna do, being struck by lightning, just that in his case it was a “simple” Nascent Soul breakthrough.
After checking that no lightning would fall while he prepared Augus got on top of the lightning rod and adopted the lotus pose. Then he started his breathing meditation until lightning was seemingly attracted to the static electricity he released and struck at his position.
Having felt this Augus didn’t open his eyes but readied his spiritual energy to catch the lightning and control it. Which proved to be harder than expected, unlike the lightning he was used to manage, this one seemed to be alive.
It tried to escape his control but his practice gave him the edge necessary to immobilize it while he got down from the lightning rod and into the chamber. He didn’t want to be struck by another lightning while he was advancing.
After sitting in his cultivation mat Augus controlled the lightning to enter through all his apertures into his meridians, where he carefully avoided electrocuting himself from the inside. After reaching his dantian Augus directed the lightning to strike, not at any impurity but at the dantian itself.
Advancing to Nascent Soul involved destroying one’s hardened dantian with the help of an even stronger force than the one that hardened it (that’s why Augus needed “wild” lightning). Then with the aid of the remaining lightning, in Augus’s case, the cultivator needed to compress all the escaping energy and vitality that conformed a cultivator’s dantian into the remaining impurity.
The idea was to, with the wild lightning, open apertures mimicking the body’s apertures into the impurity ball and through these introduce the released energy giving it the form of a human.
Though as a World Maker Augus instead needed to do this process inside of his Inner World, to grab all this chaotic energies and introduce them in his now wide open Inner world. As blasting his Dantian had created a passage inside his body between his Golden World and the outside world. A successful advancement would mean that Augus would have a permanent passage between both worlds under his absolute control.
While all the steps were flying though his mind, Augus was struggling to control the energies, not to enter his Inner world, but from fucking things up.
The lightning only wanted to trash his body, the purified spiritual energy and vitality wanted, for some reason, to disperse. The only nice one between all the fuckers was, ironically, the impurity ball, which just stood there, not attempting anything.
Though this didn’t make it easy as it didn’t want to move in any direction. Augus had to juggle between the equivalent of a rock, a rabid dog and dispersing smoke and make it so all three entered his Inner World.
The next step for a successful breakthrough is to grab this silhouette of a human and give it definition, the goal is to make it as similar as the cultivator as possible, from the inside out with pure spiritual energy and vitality.
As a World Maker though not everything could be so easy, as the reason why he had to send all his components into his inner world in the first place was because he had to make this process two times, simultaneously.
One which would be his Nascent soul proper, the other which would be his new assistant. As Augus did all this he realized he had an astonishing level of control over these energies inside his Inner World, which meant this step would actually be the easiest yet.
He sent most of the energies from the dantian into one pocket of the impurity, while he sent the remaining part and the lightning into the other. Then he separated both, giving them his appearance with all the internals. Though one looked like him the other, the smaller one, looked like a small fairy version of him, product of the lesser amount of energies he sent into it.
As the next step, he had to connect the two, the Nascent Soul to his own soul while the spirit to his soul and the Inner World. Augus didn’t really know how it all worked, he just focused into wanting that until a white thread appeared from nowhere and, after dividing into two, connected to each one.
The easier part was connecting the Spirit to the Inner World, as Augus had absolute control over the space he easily took out a thread from what he considered the core of his Inner world and attached it to the spirit.
The core was a ball of something that glowed in a rainbow of colors which at the top of if seemed to bloom into the space that made his inner World, as such the thread that connected it to the spirit was also glowing in a rainbow of colors.
As soon as Augus finished connecting both he felt his Inner World “rumble”, the blooming ball seemed to grow bigger and other colors, outside of the rainbow, appeared too, though Augus couldn’t describe them as they escaped the visible spectrum of humans, they complemented the ends of the rainbow (red and purple).
After this change the space in his Inner World expanded to the point he could fit a small city inside, at the same time he seemed to get access to new skills inside his Inner World. As his control was apparently maxed out from the beginning he seemed to get new functions, though he would need to explore them later as his Nascent Soul needed to get out to complete his breakthrough.
As the Nascent soul appeared in the outside world it triggered a change as it changed from a standing position into the lotus position he had. After it overlapped with his body without gaps or extras it disappeared into his body which let Augus absorb so much more spiritual energy than he could before, it seemed that if before he was filling his dantian now he was filling his entire body. This caused a temporary vacuum of spiritual energy around Augus which was filled in the next second.
This filling of spiritual energy marked the ending of his breakthrough, Augus was now a Nascent Soul cultivator.
Chapter 16 – Finally, Nascent Soul
