"So that's why she didn't kill me," Nova said, the pieces falling into place. "The technique bound her to me. If she wants to continue advancing, she needs me alive and available for future... cultivation sessions."
The thought made his face heat slightly despite everything. But it also explained the cultivation manual and resources. Luna wasn't being generous—she was making an investment. She needed him to grow stronger so he could continue to be useful to her advancement.
Which meant, ironically, that the servant who'd been less than a dog in her eyes was now indispensable to her.
The situation would have been funny if it wasn't so complicated.
But Nova pushed those thoughts aside. He had more immediate concerns—like testing whether this technique actually suited him, and whether his newfound abilities could enhance it further.
He sat cross-legged on his sleeping mat, the jade scroll's knowledge flowing through his enhanced mind like water through perfectly crafted channels. With Infinite Comprehension active, he could see every aspect of the technique simultaneously, understanding how each piece connected to every other piece.
And with that understanding came inspiration.
The Primordial Yin-Yang Fusion Scripture was designed for general use, meant to be practiced by any cultivator with sufficient talent and the right partner. But Nova wasn't any cultivator anymore. His constitution, his meridians, his very existence operated on principles that transcended normal cultivation.
Why not modify the technique to suit his specific circumstances?
His enhanced mind went to work, analyzing and adjusting. The fundamental principles remained the same—that was the core of what made the technique Supreme tier. But the execution, the specific pathway the energy took through his meridians, the methods of absorption and refinement—all of those could be optimized.
He made the changes mentally, testing each modification in his mind before committing to it. Adjusting one pathway here, optimizing an energy circulation pattern there, restructuring the absorption method to take advantage of his Infinite Absorption & Refinement ability.
The process took perhaps ten minutes of focused work.
When he finished, Nova examined his creation with satisfaction.
The technique was still fundamentally the Primordial Yin-Yang Fusion Scripture. But it had been personalized, refined, perfected for his specific use. The changes increased its efficiency by approximately 1040%, improved the purity of absorbed energy by 4060%, and accelerated the cultivation speed by a factor of thirty.
The technique had evolved from Late Supreme tier to Early Primordial tier even when practiced solo.
"Now that's more like it," Nova murmured with satisfaction.
He reached for the storage ring Luna had given him, channeling a tiny thread of spiritual energy into it to examine the contents.
Spirit stones. Thousands of them, ranging from Low-Grade to Mid-Grade. Cultivation pills of various types—Qi Condensation Pills, Spirit Gathering Pills, Foundation Building Pills. Even some rare medicinal herbs that could be refined into more powerful elixirs.
For a normal cultivator advancing from first stage Qi Refining to ninth stage Foundation Building, these resources would be more than sufficient. They represented a small fortune by any standard.
But Nova's Perfect Foundation ability created a problem—or rather, a different set of requirements.
His foundation was flawless, diamond-hard, compressed to maximum density. To advance even one stage would require far more energy than normal because every advancement would maintain that same perfect density and purity.
He suspected these resources might not even get him past third stage Qi Refining.
"Well," Nova said, pulling out a handful of Low-Grade Spirit Stones. "Only one way to find out."
He arranged them in a circle around himself and began to cultivate using his newly perfected version of the Primordial Yin-Yang Fusion Scripture.
The moment he activated the technique, everything changed.
The spirit stones didn't just release their energy gradually the way they were supposed to. Instead, Nova's Infinite Absorption & Refinement ability grabbed hold of them and pulled, extracting every iota of spiritual energy in microseconds.
The stones crumbled to dust in his hands, their essence already absorbed and refined and distributed through his perfect meridian system.
Nova's eyes widened. "That was... fast."
Too fast. At this rate, the entire stockpile wouldn't last more than a few minutes.
He made a quick decision. If he was going to burn through resources this quickly anyway, he might as well go all-in.
Nova dumped the entire contents of the storage ring onto the floor of his cabin. Spirit stones scattered across the wooden boards like glittering stars. Pills rolled into corners. Medicinal herbs released their concentrated fragrances.
Then he sat in the middle of it all and began to cultivate in earnest.
His Infinite Absorption & Refinement, Perfect Foundation, and Infinite Stability worked in perfect synchronization. Energy flooded into his body from multiple sources simultaneously—the spirit stones dissolving into pure qi, the ambient spiritual energy of the surrounding area being drawn in like water down a drain.
His cabin, located far from the nearest disciple quarters, had always been isolated. Now that isolation served him well as a vortex of spiritual energy formed around him, pulling in qi from hundreds of meters in every direction.
In the Lotus Palace, Luna Ophelia sat in meditation, working to consolidate her breakthrough to True Self Realm.
She frowned, feeling a disturbance in the ambient spiritual energy. A draw, a pull, as if something was creating a localized area of low pressure in the sect's spiritual network.
And the direction... it was coming from outside her palace. From the direction of the servant quarters.
From Nova's cabin.
Luna's eyes snapped open. "What is he doing?"
A trash-tier servant with half a meridian shouldn't be able to create even a ripple in the spiritual energy, let alone a noticeable drain. How was he forming what felt like a genuine cultivation vortex?
She extended her spiritual sense, intending to investigate.
The moment her consciousness touched the area around Nova's cabin, it encountered resistance.
Not a barrier, exactly. But an aura—subtle yet unmistakable—that pushed back against her probe. It felt similar to... spiritual sense? As if Nova's own awareness was actively resisting her scan.
But that was impossible. A seventh stage Qi Refining cultivator shouldn't possess spiritual sense strong enough to even detect her scan, let alone resist it.
Luna withdrew her spiritual sense, her frown deepening.
"Interesting," she murmured. "Very interesting."
Whatever was happening in that cabin, she would get answers. But she could wait until he finished cultivating. Interrupting a cultivation session could cause deviation, and if he was bound to her through the devilish technique, his death would be... inconvenient.
So she settled back into meditation, making a mental note to summon him the moment he emerged.
Inside the cabin, Nova was oblivious to Luna's investigation.
His entire focus was on the cultivation process, on the massive influx of energy being refined and absorbed into his dantian. The spirit stones dissolved one after another, their essence flowing into him like rivers into an ocean.
He broke through to second stage Qi Refining within minutes.
Then third stage shortly after.
The spiritual energy vortex around his cabin intensified, pulling in qi so aggressively that cultivators on the far side of the sect grounds would probably notice their own cultivation slowing slightly.
But Nova's Perfect Foundation demanded it. Every advancement was maintaining that flawless density, that crystalline purity. He wasn't just filling his dantian—he was compressing each stage to its absolute limit before allowing breakthrough to the next.
When the spirit stones were finally exhausted, Nova immediately moved on to the pills.
Here, his Infinite Absorption & Refinement truly showed its worth.
Cultivation pills, by their nature, contained impurities. The refining process could never be perfect, and even the best alchemists left trace amounts of waste material in their products. Normal cultivators simply accepted this, allowing the impurities to be processed out slowly over time.
One of Nova's infinite ability stripped the impurities away instantly.
More than that, it extracted the pure essence from each pill—the concentrated spiritual energy that formed its core. What would have been a Low-Grade Qi Condensation Pill became, through perfect refinement, equivalent to a Perfect-Grade pill or even better.
And it didn't matter whether the pills were specifically for cultivation or had other purposes. His ability extracted the energy regardless, converting it into perfectly pure spiritual qi that integrated seamlessly into his cultivation base.