Sect Leader Flame was the first to use the breakthrough box as it was being called. It was a small metal box, that a cultivator could sit in upon a cushion, while surrounded by arrays to keep the energy contained inside the box. It had built up a large amount of energy over the last year. By keeping it as small as possible, it was possible to exceed the background energy of the Mechanical Layer. After it had built up to about a quarter of what would be background energy on the continent and the Firmament, Sect Leader Flame entered in order to break through. There were always three other elders keeping vigil outside the box as the time the Sect Leader was inside continued to increase. First one day, then two days, now he had been inside for five days. The entire Flame Sect had a nervous level of energy. If the Sect Leader broke through, their own paths would be that much easier in the future. It was always easier when someone you knew managed to get past a cultivation barrier. Knowing it was possible was a huge mental block. It was something I struggled with my cultivation for long periods of time. But I had managed in the end. With Yang Heng’s advice, it was just a matter of getting enough energy and possibly some other resources to assist me. Cultivation was an apt name, since one had to cultivate sources of energy in order to grow. I didn’t bother keeping watch, since I was more focused on putting the final touches on my counter cube. It was almost done and had taken far too much work. The ground shook slightly, and I brought my hand up before I made a mistake on the plate I was working on. “What? How can there be an earthquake?” I muttered and left my workshop that the Flame Sect had reserved for me and went outside as another tremor shook the ground beneath me. I noted dark clouds gathering overhead from all directions. That was definitely not natural. I quickly rushed towards the nexus chamber as another tremor shook the land. I made my way underground as small amounts of dust and debris rained down from the ceiling. “Senior Yuan Zhou, what is going on? Sect Leader Flame is about to break through! He cannot be disturbed,” Vice Leader Tan said. The other elders looked at me. A glance at the breakthrough box showed a high density of energy. The ground shook again and it was much more violent than before. The nexus chamber developed several cracks in pillars and the walls. “Elders, there is a storm growing above this point. Dark clouds, but no rain!” A disciple rushed into the Nexus Chamber. These people had never experienced an earthquake. While they build in a solid manner, their construction wasn’t designed to handle earthquakes. There was no rebar in any of the buildings. “Any idea how it happened or why it occurred?” I asked. “I let my energy spread out and it became more in tune with the Great World. My mind began to see more and more. It is an experience I will never forget.” I listened to the answer and thought about it. “Perhaps some form of resonance. You interfaced with the formations managing the Great World to an extent, tapping into their monitoring function. That might be what triggered the tribulation,” I speculated. There could be countless other reasons, but I wanted to harness this tribulation next time. If I was prepared, I would suck out all the energy of the Great World, until the lightning gave up. What if it didn’t give up? Would it constantly follow me around forever, attempting to constantly strike me down. That would get difficult very quickly. I would need to give some thought to having a building made that could take such lightning strikes over and over again, while sucking up all the energy for myself. The tribulation was probably a defense mechanism of the Great World. If I got to the Great Desert and discovered something there, but wasn’t able to handle the lightning, then I would have a lot of trouble investigating anything of note. The lightning was clearly a defensive mechanism of some kind. Finding the right mindset, and aligning with the energy used to keep this place running, was probably a rare occurrence. But it might happen again, if I helped some of the Elders break through. “Well, I have broken through into the Soul Enlightenment Realm,” Sect Leader Flame said with a smile. Which was the starting point for me and a confusing name. I couldn’t tell if it was a convergence of terminology or just cultivator sensibilities to have similar names. These cultivators had a Nascent Soul stage and there was a Nascent Soul stage in the cultivation system of the Heavenly Alliance. That was the stage I was technically at. It was funny to think that we were all at the same stage based on the name alone, when in reality it was far different. My soul was new and needed to be built up. These people actually needed a soul to begin with. Both could be qualified as Nascent Soul, which made things confusing. I had no idea what Sect Leader Flame would do now. There were no motes of Qi or other resources to help him progress his cultivation further. While he had a strong control over his physical body, it would be a challenge to hold off death. I didn’t bring any of this up, since these cultivators knew and I didn’t want to spoil the celebratory mood. Having a Sect Leader who had progressed so far was a point of pride and hope for all the cultivators of the Flame Sect. It was like having an immortal be in charge of a sect back on the continent. It conferred a tremendous amount of prestige. I turned to my apartment to go rest, but the building had collapsed. Thankfully, I was given a room in one of the buildings still standing. It was nowhere as comfortable and luxurious as my former apartment, but it would do. Many of the cultivators would have to sleep on the ground for the next couple of days while the rubble was cleared, and buildings rebuilt. The people of the Great World were great at building quickly. They would put down wooden forms coated with oil on the inside, then fill up the space with concrete. They would repeat this over and over to build up their walls and foundations. The floors used wood with a layer of concrete on top to block sounds from traveling between floors. After I woke up, the rubble was already half cleared and new buildings were being rebuilt. The main sect building had already been rebuilt, but without the artwork. That would come later. The nexus chamber was in the process of being reconstructed to be much more durable as well. I was glad I put the metal machine away in my spatial storage along with everything else in the nexus chamber before the Sect Leader attempted to break through. The plate I had been working on was damaged beyond repair, but the rest of the counter cube was tucked away in my spatial storage. Since I had access to the nexus chamber, I was comfortable using my personal storage. While I didn’t think anything would get stolen, or the crazy tribulation would happen, I liked to keep my personal items with me for the most part. An ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure. I looked over the work being done on the nexus chamber. “You are adding metal reinforcement?” I said in surprise to Sect Leader Flame who was overlooking the rapid construction. “Indeed. I remembered your comments about including a metal structure inside the concrete in order to help negate the sheering force of the ground shaking and to build higher, tougher. We could use a lot more metal to strengthen the nexus chamber,” he said as a pointed question. “How much are we talking about exactly?” I asked. “Ten thousand bars,” he said, and I frowned at that amount. It was a huge contribution I would have to make to the Flame Sect. “I will need a building constructed to my specifications as well, in exchange for the metal,” I said. “Oh, what kind of building?” he asked. “One that can bleed off the electricity from the lighting bolts and draw in the energy from the tribulation. If it happens again, I would like to take advantage of the event to progress my own cultivation,” I replied. “That is interesting. It can be arranged. Perhaps on top of the main building itself right here,” he said. “That would be useful. A shame about the artwork,” I replied. “Bah, that stuff can be remade, but progressing one’s cultivation is far more important. Already the rest of the Elders are salivating about breaking through.” I could easily believe that. Old cultivators wanted to keep progressing. Now that a path had opened, they were all salivating like rapid dogs in order to be the next person to advance their cultivation. While the art was nice, it wasn’t important to a cultivator. Material goods would come and go, but cultivation was forever. There were certain aspects of a cultivation society that were ironclad, since if they changed it would no longer be a society of cultivators. The pursuit of immortality was a big one. “What about your personal cultivation? What has changed?” I asked. “I can sense my body and no longer need to hold everything just right in my mind. It is a much more natural and relaxed state of being,” Sect Leader Flame described. “May I inspect your body?” I asked. He held out a hand and I took it. I then sent a pulse of energy into his body. I had checked before his breakthrough and now I was checking after. I saw several changes that had occurred. The most notable change was that the definition between his body and the outside world was much more defined and natural. Natural from my perspective of having grown up on a continent. His physical body was much more structured, I noted. The changes were small, but imperfections that existed before had been corrected. Where a blood vessel was partially blocked was open. Where there was misalignment of the structure of a bone, that had been fixed. Very small almost unnoticeable defects. In my body these defects had been removed by the natural accumulation of energy long ago. That was why there was almost nothing left for me to fix. The subconscious use of energy had made me more of me than before. “Your opinion?” Sect Leader Flame asked me. “Your body has definitely improved and the boarder between your soul and the outside world has improved as well. Both things that were expected to happen when you broke through. Your body is at a much higher starting point than others I have seen at this stage of cultivation,” I replied. “I have been giving thought about future steps and what you have described as the Heavenly Alliance system of cultivation. It won’t work for me or anyone else here in the Great World,” he said and I nodded. “You plan to do something different?” I asked. “Refining my body to an even greater degree. You talked about how the body is composed of cells, and we knew such things. But there are smaller structures as well. Already a massive microscope will be built in the sect to observe such processes in greater detail to hone the refinement of my body.” That was a bold step to take, but it made sense. The cultivators of the Great World focused on controlling their body for ages as their path of cultivation. It wasn’t the body cultivation that I knew, where energy was still the fundamental component for improvement. Instead he wanted to keep going the path that he knew. To refine his control and use of energy to an even greater extent. To reverse cell death and aging. I had no idea how such an attempt would go. Already, cultivators of the Great World could live for a long time. He was hoping to do manually, what naturally occurred for myself and other cultivators using the system developed by the Heavenly Alliance. But this place had nowhere near enough energy to Discover more novels on NovelHub - your gateway to endless stories. There was also no Qi in the air. He would have to manually construct motes, which would be a slow process, if it even was possible. I didn’t know, but I suspected it would be with the minute control over energy these cultivators had shown they were capable of, even with their weak cultivation. He was taking an entirely different path. It made me wonder if the later bottlenecks would be different. I didn’t really know how other super-organizations advanced with their energy usage. That was the nice thing about cultivation, there were other people to share your frustrations with, even if it was a solitary endeavor. Sect Leader Flame would be paving the way for future cultivators of his sect. I considered how his cultivation would go. Yang Heng did not understand the physics behind energy. What was energy? Why was it so adaptable? Those were questions that would need to be answered the more focused one became with their energy usage. To focus on the micro, instead of the holistic. It made sense with the limited amount of energy. I would guess that the bottlenecks would come about due to something in relation to microbiology. It would get more and more complicated, eventually reaching a bottleneck. Where the person might infuse energy into their DNA or other cellular structures. I strongly suspected, with no proof whatsoever, that energy was a particle that was smaller than an electron, or other atomic particle. I suspected it was a quantum particle, or even one step further. Something so small, it would be impossible to observe using technology. It was much easier to deal with energy at a holistic level in my opinion. These people would struggle from the lack of technology. While the Sect Leader planned to build a massive microscope, they would only be able to observe things that were so small. Eventually the magnification would no longer work and one would have to use electron microscopy to observe things in greater detail. The problem was the technological base for the Great World wasn’t there for that kind of research. While the Flame Sect would get a lot of metal off of me, it would only go so far. The amount of metal they needed wasn’t going to be produced by my machine. They needed a far greater amount. They needed the collective resources of large groups of people. But perhaps, they would be inspired. To make a plant that would refine other elements into metallic ones. It would be hard to create something, but if the Flame Sect improved their control and research into biology they might be able to succeed with energy. Their path was not cut off anymore. I had opened things up for them. Perhaps that was why the tribulation had occurred. Since it didn’t want people advancing. Which made no sense in the larger context of this place as an experiment. Why would you kill off the people trying to advance? There just didn’t seem to be any logical reason for the Great World with tribulations present and their might not be any. It suddenly hit me. My second bottleneck had a high chance of being the same issue these cultivators were facing. The Heavenly Alliance system of cultivation would build up more and more energy along with understanding of the energy within themselves. This would lead to a breakthrough to immortality. Energy naturally improved one’s body through their subconscious. What if the natural improvement granted by energy crossed some sort of threshold at a microscopic or atomic level? What if both cultivation systems were parallel paths instead of branching? It was possible, while another guess that I had no proof for. It would be a massive leap in understanding of the cultivation process. It would be a way to immortality that wasn’t dependent on vast quantities of energy. While it would be, I could increase that efficiency. I could begin to investigate biology and make even more targeted improvements to my body at a cellular level and then at an even greater depth. In fact, if I observed the improvements in my body and Yang Heng’s body at a cellular level, and could work out the difference, that would give a shortcut in regards to cultivation.