I returned to the Core Region where my Core Palace stretched across the landscape in impossible grandeur. The spiritual energy here was so dense it felt like breathing liquid starlight. Time to get serious about this cultivation business before heading back to Earth.
The knowledge crystals from Jihasti's vault contained more cultivation techniques than I could process in a lifetime. Each one represented centuries of research, refinement, and often the life's work of entire sects. I spread them across the main hall of my palace, their surfaces glowing with contained wisdom.
The variety was staggering. There were techniques for every conceivable body physique, elemental affinity, and spiritual inclination. The "Ironbone Marrow Tempering Method" required practitioners to have bones with a specific mineral density found only in certain bloodlines. The "Phoenix Heart Circulation" demanded a rare fire constitution where the cultivator's core body temperature ran several degrees higher than normal humans. Another technique called "Void Walker's Paradox" was designed for people born with a natural resistance to spatial energy, allowing them to eventually step between dimensions.
Some techniques focused on mental cultivation. The "Thousand Thought Lotus" required practitioners to maintain multiple streams of consciousness simultaneously, something only possible for those born with specific neural pathway configurations. Others demanded physical attributes like the "Storm Dancer's Ascension," which needed practitioners with naturally flexible joints and lightning-fast reflexes.
I ignored the ones requiring body physiques I didn't possess. Trying to force incompatible cultivation methods would be like attempting to run diesel fuel through a gasoline engine. The results would be catastrophic, potentially crippling or killing me outright.
But then I consulted with the Heavenly Dao of the world bead about my own potential, and the answer changed everything.
The Heavenly Dao's presence brushed against my consciousness, conveying understanding through pure intention. My original elemental affinity had been water nature. But the integration of the Chaos World Bead into my soul and body had created unprecedented possibilities.
The understanding that flowed into my mind made my head spin. The laws that made up the world bead were essentially all the fundamental laws that comprised a complete world. Fire, water, earth, air, lightning, space, time, life, death, creation, destruction. Every force that governed reality existed within this pocket dimension.
The Heavenly Dao impressed another concept upon my awareness. Since I hadn't begun cultivation, my spiritual pathways remained unmolded. With the world bead's influence, I could shape my elemental affinity to whatever elements I wished to cultivate.
The implications hit me like a freight train. Most cultivators were locked into their natural affinities from birth. Fire cultivators stayed fire cultivators. Earth practitioners never touched lightning techniques. But I could choose my path based on what would be most effective, not what genetics had decided for me.
I thought to myself, even if Jihasti refined the world bead, he wouldn't get that benefit because he had already cultivated to Godhood. However, for me, a mortal without any cultivation, my body with the help of the world bead could be molded however I wanted. A very rare, possibly unique, benefit. Who else could possibly come across a situation where a world bead would willingly refine itself to a mortal that hasn't cultivated yet?
The rarity of my situation wasn't lost on me. Gods fought wars over world beads. Jihasti himself had died protecting this one. Yet here I was, a nobody software engineer from San Jose, handed the keys to a cultivation paradise through sheer cosmic accident.
However, the world bead also conveyed to me that cultivating more elements also made it harder to cultivate. If you have only one element, you only needed to focus on that element, but if you had two you had to cultivate both elements equally and that made things more difficult, often requiring multiple heavenly materials to keep the elements balanced.
The Heavenly Dao painted images in my mind of cultivators who had attempted dual or triple element cultivation. Many had failed spectacularly, their spiritual channels torn apart by conflicting energies. Others had spent decades gathering rare materials just to maintain harmony between two opposing forces like fire and water. The complexity increased exponentially with each additional element.
So my choice of cultivation technique and elemental affinities would affect my possible growth speed. However, more elements also meant much more versatility and higher strength. Two people with the same cultivation levels, if one had one element while the other had two, the person with two elements would most likely be almost twice the strength of the other. So while it was slower and more difficult to cultivate with more elements, it was also balanced by the person being far stronger within the same cultivation realms.
The mathematics were brutal but elegant. A single-element cultivator might reach the peak of a realm in five years, while a dual-element practitioner needed ten. But when they fought, the dual-element cultivator would demolish their opponent through sheer versatility and power output. More elements meant exponentially more possible combinations, techniques, and strategic options.
For me, there wasn't really a choice. I had never done anything half-assed, and I wasn't about to start now. Since I could choose all the elements, I would choose them all. I recalled Jihasti's memory of the "Chaos Genesis Body Art"—the only technique he knew of that cultivated all seventeen elements.
The technique was surprisingly common throughout the cultivation world. Though designed to cultivate all seventeen elements simultaneously, it could be practiced with just one or two elemental affinities. However, when used this way, it performed poorly compared to specialized techniques designed specifically for those individual elements.
The irony was staggering. This technique had been sitting in Jihasti's collection, dismissed by countless cultivators as mediocre. Jihasti's memories showed me sect masters laughing at disciples who suggested learning it. Cultivation forums across multiple worlds ridiculed it as "the beginner's mistake."
Since nobody was born with the affinity for all elements, it was unheard of for someone to cultivate the full Chaos Genesis Body Art, and since it was a commonly known technique everywhere, thought to be pretty much trash for anyone to cultivate only using one or two affinities, just about everyone knows this technique and favors others over it.
The technique's reputation had become its greatest protection. Like hiding a treasure in plain sight, the Chaos Genesis Body Art had been overlooked for millennia because no one possessed the prerequisites to unlock its true potential. Every cultivator who had attempted it with limited elemental affinities had found it lacking compared to specialized techniques designed for their specific elements.
But I wasn't limited. The world bead hummed with approval as I made my decision.
Drawing on Jihasti's cultivation memories, I settled into a lotus position on the polished stone floor of my palace. The spiritual energy here was so dense it felt like swimming through liquid light. At this early stage of cultivation, with spiritual energy this dense, I had no need to use spirit stones yet. I closed my eyes and began the Chaos Genesis Body Art, pulling the abundant energy into my skin according to the technique's instructions.
The process felt exactly as Jihasti's memories had shown me. Since I hadn't formed my meridians or core yet, the spiritual energy couldn't circulate through my body and be converted to vital energy. Instead, it absorbed directly into my skin like water soaking into a sponge. The sensation was warm, almost tingly, as if tiny sparks were dancing across every inch of my flesh.
According to the cultivation knowledge I'd inherited, all cultivation was broken into realms, each realm split into nine layers. Body Tempering was the first realm. The first two layers focused on Skin Refinement, toughening the epidermis and building resistance to cuts and punctures. Layers three and four were Muscle Forging, where density and explosive power developed alongside endurance. Layers five and six involved Bone Condensing, cleansing the marrow and strengthening the skeletal structure until bones became harder than steel. The final layers, seven through nine, concentrated on Organ Fortification, pushing the heart, lungs, liver, and other vital organs to peak efficiency.
The abundance of spiritual energy in the Core Region accelerated everything. Within half an hour, I felt the first breakthrough hit me like a gentle wave. My skin tightened across my entire body, the sensation spreading from my scalp down to my toes. When I opened my eyes and examined my arms, the change was immediately apparent. My skin looked exactly the same, but when I pressed my fingernail against my forearm, it barely made an indentation.
Layer one of the Body Tempering Realm complete. The toughness felt significant, like wearing invisible armor, but it didn't grant me any additional strength. The skin refinement layer was strictly defensive, making me resistant to cuts and scrapes without affecting my physical power.
Since the breakthrough had happened so quickly, I decided to continue. The spiritual energy here was too abundant to waste, and I had nowhere else I needed to be. No job to return to, no girlfriend waiting for me, and my rent was set up for automatic payments. Earth could wait.
Two hours later, the second breakthrough arrived with more intensity. The transformation felt deeper this time, as if my entire outer layer was being rebuilt from the ground up. When the process finished, I stood and examined myself in the reflection of a polished obsidian pillar.
My skin was covered in black spots, from my memory I knew these were the imperfections and impurities ejected out of my skin. After quickly washing myself in the nearby lake, I continued to inspect my body.
The change was remarkable. Every imperfection on my skin had vanished completely. The small scar on my chin from a childhood bicycle accident, gone. The cluster of freckles across my shoulders that had appeared after too many summers working construction, erased. A birthmark on my hip that I'd carried since birth, nowhere to be found. Even the rough patches on my elbows and the calluses on my palms had disappeared, leaving my skin incredibly smooth and soft to the touch.
Yet beneath that silky texture lay toughness that rivaled an alligator's hide. I could probably walk through a thorn bush without getting scratched.
Next came the muscle refinement layers, and the prospect of actual physical strength made my pulse quicken. I settled back into cultivation, drawing in the dense spiritual energy with renewed focus.
The muscle forging process took significantly longer. Where skin refinement had been like painting a surface, muscle development required the spiritual energy to penetrate far deeper into my body, working its way through tissue fibers and rebuilding them with supernatural density.
A full day passed before the third layer breakthrough finally hit me. The sensation was incredible, like every muscle fiber in my body suddenly snapping into perfect alignment. I flexed my bicep experimentally and heard an audible pop as the enhanced muscle contracted. The sound made me grin despite myself.
The strength difference was immediately apparent. When I gripped the edge of a stone table, my fingers left small indentations in the solid rock. I jumped into the lake a second time to wash off the newly caked black impurities that had been squeezed out—a far denser layer than before. The tar-like substance had a potent and disgusting smell.
It was now the night after receiving the world bead, with one layer of muscle refinement done, I felt confident with the strength I currently had. The enhanced muscle density gave me a sense of security I'd never experienced before. When I flexed my hand, the simple motion felt like I could crush a beer can without effort. Time to test how this new strength worked in the real world.
I borrowed the awareness of the world bead to see my surrounding area outside the bead on Earth. The Heavenly Dao's consciousness merged with mine, extending my perception beyond the dimensional barrier. Jeffrey Fontana Park lay in darkness, streetlights casting pools of yellow illumination across empty pathways. The storm had passed, leaving only damp pavement and the lingering smell of rain. Nobody was around the park, so I decided to exit the space.
The transition felt like stepping through an invisible doorway. One moment I stood in my palace surrounded by dense spiritual energy, the next I was back in the park where lightning had first struck me. The oak tree bore fresh scorch marks, its bark split and blackened from the electrical discharge that had changed my life forever.
The first breath of park air hit my lungs like a physical blow. I doubled over, coughing violently as my enhanced respiratory system rejected the pollution-laden atmosphere. After breathing the pristine, spiritually charged air of the world bead for an entire day, San Jose's smog felt like inhaling liquid concrete. Car exhaust, industrial chemicals, and a dozen other urban contaminants assaulted my newly refined senses. Even the lingering ozone from the storm couldn't mask the toxic cocktail that passed for breathable air in the city.
The world bead itself lived inside my body, though I had no idea how it worked exactly. Even when I was inside the world bead, the outer shell remained within my physical form. Jihasti's memories suggested the inner space existed in its own dimension, not really stored inside the bead itself. The physics made my brain hurt when I tried to understand it completely.
From what I could piece together, when I entered the bead, nothing was left outside. There was actually a tiny doorway in space that opened when I crossed over. Someone strong enough like a God or someone with an affinity for space could notice and possibly force their way into the doorway, but for most observers it would be like I completely disappeared. The thought of vanishing from reality without a trace was both thrilling and terrifying.
I walked through the empty streets of San Jose, testing my enhanced strength on small things. A loose brick from a crumbling wall crumbled to powder when I squeezed it. The metal handle on a broken shopping cart bent like soft clay under my grip. Each demonstration of power sent a thrill through me, but I kept the displays subtle. No point in attracting attention or damaging property that didn't belong to me.
My apartment building looked exactly the same as when I'd left it yesterday morning. The same flickering fluorescent light in the lobby, the same stain on the carpet near the mailboxes, the same broken elevator that had been "under repair" for three months. Nothing had changed except me.
Entering my apartment and turning on the lights, I sat down to think about what I would do next. The familiar surroundings felt strange now, like visiting a museum of my old life. The secondhand couch, the stack of programming books, the half-finished metalworking project on my kitchen table. Everything seemed smaller somehow, less significant.