The paper door slid open with a soft, deliberate glide just as the morning light began to filter through the thin paper screens.
I was already standing. I had spent the last ten minutes organizing the information I had gathered over the night into mental folders, prioritizing the data based on immediate survival utility. My physical state was optimal. The White Room had conditioned my body to function at peak efficiency on minimal rest, meaning the lack of sleep did not compromise my cognitive processing.
Feng Jiu Ge stepped into the room. He wore the same flawless, relaxed posture as yesterday, dressed in pristine white robes. His gaze flicked briefly to the perfectly stacked bamboo scrolls on the low wooden table, then back to me.
"You did not sleep," he noted. It wasn't a question.
"I prefer to be prepared for practical exams," I replied evenly. "You said we would test my aptitude today."
A faint, genuine look of amusement crossed his face. He extended his right hand. From his wide sleeve, a small point of light emerged, drifting upward to hover exactly two inches above his palm. It looked like a beetle, no larger than a thumb, emitting a soft, pulsating white glow.
"This is a Hope Gu," Feng Jiu Ge said, his tone shifting into something more clinical. "It is a disposable tool. It will enter your body, seek out the center of your being, and forcefully carve out an aperture. The amount of primeval essence generated inside will determine your grade, and subsequently, your value. Stand still."
With a casual flick of his wrist, the beetle shot forward.
I tracked its trajectory, but I didn't flinch or attempt to step back. It struck the center of my chest and vanished. It didn't pierce the skin, nor did it leave a physical wound..it simply phased through solid matter.
Immediately, a dense, heavy sensation bloomed beneath my sternum, sinking rapidly toward my abdomen.
I closed my eyes, forcibly slowing my heart rate to analyze the internal shift. It felt as though a pressurized liquid was moving through my body, bypassing my blood vessels entirely and carving out a secondary circulatory network. The pressure pooled just below my navel, resting in a space that anatomically did not exist.
Then, something inside me tore open.
There was no physical pain, but the sensory feedback was incredibly jarring. It was the distinct sensation of empty space expanding within the confines of my own organs. Human anatomy does not allow for a vacuum. Yet, I could distinctly feel a sphere of empty volume forming inside me, completely defying the physical limits of my biology.
*Dimensional expansion,* I categorized the sensation immediately. *The Gu worm acted as a catalyst to fold space within a biological host. A localized pocket dimension.* Then, the void filled.
A sudden rush of cold, terrifying clarity flooded my mind. It was as if a thick layer of fog I hadn't even known was there had been instantly burned away. My thoughts, already accustomed to processing dozens of variables simultaneously from my time in the White Room, suddenly accelerated to a degree that bordered on overwhelming.
I opened my eyes and looked inward ,a mental reflex I somehow inherently understood the moment the internal space stabilized.
Inside the newly formed aperture, a sea of liquid was violently crashing against walls of pale white light. I observed the water level. According to the texts I had read last night, a normal human would possess a fraction of this space filled with essence. A C-grade aptitude would hover around the halfway mark. An A-grade, the mark of a genius, would reach eighty or ninety percent.
The liquid inside me completely filled the aperture. One hundred percent capacity. Not a single drop of empty space remained.
I opened my physical eyes and looked at Feng Jiu Ge.
He was perfectly still. The relaxed, absolute authority he had carried just moments ago was gone. He was staring at my abdomen with razor-sharp intensity, a micro-expression of absolute disbelief crossing his face before he quickly suppressed it. The ambient pressure in the room, previously absent, suddenly spiked, as if his body was instinctively preparing for a threat.
I processed his reaction instantly. He used a standard tool. My energy capacity reached an absolute maximum. His caution indicated that a capacity of one hundred percent was not just rare but dangerous.
"Fascinating," Feng Jiu Ge finally whispered, taking a slow, deliberate half-step back. The way he looked at me had fundamentally changed. I was no longer just a curious thing from another world. "An otherworldly demon. A pawn of Thieving Heaven. And now... a Ten Extreme Physique. The Carefree Wisdom Heart."
I didn't ask what that meant. Asking questions directly reveals the depths of your ignorance. Instead, I analyzed the name based on the texts I had just read.
*Wisdom Heart.* That explained the sudden, massive spike in my cognitive processing speed. The primeval essence inside me was directly linked to my neurological functions. It wasn't meant to fuel fire or lightning; it was fuel for the mind.
"It seems my capacity is quite high," I said smoothly, keeping my tone perfectly conversational, as if we were discussing a slightly above-average test score.
Feng Jiu Ge let out a low breath, his eyes narrowing. "High? It is absolute. A mortal aperture is meant to hold a fraction of primeval essence, leaving room for the walls to breathe. Yours is entirely full. It is a blessing of heaven that grants unmatched processing power for Wisdom Path cultivation. But it is also a fatal curse."
He looked me dead in the eye, dropping any pretense of polite observation. "Because human biology cannot contain absolute perfection. As your essence naturally recovers and cultivates, the pressure will build. The mortal walls of your aperture will stretch. If you do not reach the realm of a Gu Immortal before those walls collapse..."
"I will detonate," I finished for him.
It was simple thermodynamic logic. Infinite pressure in a finite space results in a structural breach. The texts had mentioned that cultivating required widening the aperture walls slowly over time. My walls were already pushed to their maximum limit on day one.
"Yes," Feng Jiu Ge said, his gaze turning calculating. "You are a ticking hourglass. You possess the greatest mind for calculation in this world, but your own body will destroy you if you do not advance fast enough. And to advance fast enough, you will require an immense, almost ruinous amount of resources."
I looked down at my hands. The situation had just grown infinitely more complex. I was no longer just trying to survive the politics of the Spirit Affinity House. I was now fighting a countdown.
A normal person would likely panic, despair, or beg the powerful immortal in front of them for a cure.
But as I felt the , clear energy of the Carefree Wisdom Heart pulsing in my abdomen, a different thought occurred to me. If this primeval essence was directly linked to cognitive processing, could I manipulate it like a muscle?
The pressure was building because the aperture was generating fuel with nowhere to put it. If I could isolate the energy and route it through different neural pathways, I might be able to manually override the natural pressure buildup by constantly burning the essence. I didn't need a cure. I needed an exhaust valve. I needed to keep my brain constantly overclocked, continuously calculating complex variables to burn away the excess primeval essence before it could shatter my aperture.
To survive my own body, I had to become a machine that never stopped thinking.
"Then I suppose," I said, looking back up at Feng Jiu Ge with a calm, flat expression, "we should begin my practical education immediately. I cannot be of use to you if I explode before unlocking the Venerable's inheritance."
Feng Jiu Ge stared at me for a long moment. He had just handed me a death sentence, and my only reaction was to ask for the next assignment. A dangerous, genuine smile slowly crossed his face.
"You truly are a creature from another world, Ayanokoji," he said softly. "Very well. If you wish to outrun your own death, you will need to understand the tools of this world intimately. Come with me. The Supreme Elders have agreed to your integration, though they would rather see you dissected. I will show you what it means to control the essence of Heaven and Earth."
He turned and walked out the sliding door. I followed him, maintaining a precise distance of two paces behind.
As we walked through the sprawling, jade-tiled corridors of the Spirit Affinity House, I began my first conscious experiment with my new biology.
I focused on the cold liquid in my aperture. I didn't try to move it,I just tried to observe it. I started counting the exact number of jade tiles on the floor, cross-referencing their dimensions with the architectural pillars, and simultaneously calculating the distance and angle of the floating light pearls above us.
It was a useless, overly complex string of mental arithmetic. But as my mind spun faster and faster, effortlessly juggling the numbers, I felt a microscopic drop of the primeval essence in my aperture vanish.
*Observation:* Cognitive exertion consumes Wisdom Path primeval essence.
*Result:* A fraction of internal pressure is relieved.
*Conclusion:* The theory is sound. I can manually vent the pressure. But simple arithmetic is too slow. The essence recovers faster than I can burn it by counting tiles. I need harder problems. I need massive, continuous streams of complex data to process.
I looked at Feng Jiu Ge's back as we approached a massive set of heavily guarded bronze doors.
To survive, I didn't just need to learn Gu cultivation. I needed to consume the entire informational database of the Spirit Affinity House.
---
The lower archives of the Spirit Affinity House were less a library and more a fortress of hoarded knowledge. Shelves carved from dark, fragrant wood stretched upward into vaulted ceilings, holding tens of thousands of jade slips, bamboo scrolls, and bound leather tomes.
Feng Jiu Ge brought me to a secluded reading pavilion near the center of the first floor. He did not hand me a Gu worm immediately. Instead, he pointed to a specific section of the shelves.
"Before you touch a Gu, you must understand what you are trying to touch," he said, pulling a jade slip from his robe and tossing it onto the table. "You possess a Ten Extreme Physique. That gives you an absolute advantage in primeval essence capacity, but an overwhelming disadvantage in time. You must choose a path to cultivate. Read."
He left without another word. The implicit order was clear: he was not going to hold my hand and explain the world to me. If I wanted to survive, I had to educate myself.
I picked up the jade slip. According to the texts from last night, reading these required a basic infusion of primeval essence. I focused on my aperture, pushing a minuscule thread of the cold, dense liquid upward through my chest and into my fingertips. The moment the essence made contact with the jade, information flooded directly into my mind—a massive download of text, diagrams, and historical data.
*Observation:* Jade slips are a highly efficient form of data storage, bypassing visual reading for direct neural transmission.
*Conclusion:* Information density in this world is massive. I can learn faster than I anticipated.
I sat down and began sorting through the different paths of Gu cultivation.
The paths were divided by fundamental concepts. Destructive paths like Fire, Water, Lightning, and Sword were the most common. They provided immediate, overwhelming lethality. The appeal was obvious. If you have a problem, burn it, freeze it, or cut it in half.
I discarded them immediately.
If I chose a destructive path, I would be forced into direct conflict. Even with absolute primeval essence capacity, I was fundamentally mortal. If I tried to fight a Gu Immortal with a Fire Gu, I would be crushed before I could blink. My goal wasn't to destroy mountains. My goal was to predict and manipulate the man who *could* destroy the mountain.
Next were the utility and support paths: Healing, Formation, Refinement, Enslavement, and Information.
Information Path was the currency of the world. It involved gathering intelligence, laying traps, and enforcing vows. It was incredibly useful, but it lacked the immediate, continuous energy drain required to vent the pressure building inside my aperture.
Enslavement Path was intriguing. Using Gu worms to overwrite the wills of beasts and humans, turning them into obedient tools. It resonated with my preferred method of operating—using others as shields while I remained hidden. However, Enslavement Path required massive external resources to feed the enslaved armies, and it painted a massive target on the cultivator's back.
That left Wisdom Path. The path I was destined for.
I pulled another jade slip containing the fundamental theories of Wisdom Path cultivation and fed it my essence.
Wisdom Path was entirely conceptual, broken down into three core elements: *Thoughts, Wills, and Emotions.* According to the text, a normal human generates thoughts naturally in their brain. But a Wisdom Path Gu Master uses primeval essence to generate specific, tangible 'thoughts' outside the confines of natural neurology. For example, a Gu Master could use a *Starlight Thought Gu* to generate thousands of literal, glowing thoughts in their mind, using them to calculate complex battle variables instantly. They could use *Malicious Thought Gu* to deduce a rival's worst intentions.
*Wills* were the next step up. A Will was an amalgamation of countless thoughts bound together by a singular purpose. A Gu Master could leave a 'Will' behind to guard a treasury, or plant a 'Will' inside someone's mind to slowly influence their decisions.
Finally, *Emotions*. These were the fuel and the byproduct of certain Wisdom Path killer moves. They could be weaponized to cause despair, induce rage, or completely pacify an enemy.
I leaned back, closing my eyes to process the data.
The Gu world treated "Thoughts" as physical, constructible resources. They were not abstract concepts; they were lines of code that could be mass-produced, programmed, and executed.
My problem was a buildup of internal pressure caused by an overproduction of primeval essence. My casing was too weak. But if I acquired a Gu worm that produced 'Thoughts,' I could constantly funnel my excess primeval essence into generating thousands, even millions of these thoughts.
I didn't just need to think. I needed to *externalize* my cognitive load.
If I constantly produced empty thoughts, I could use them as an active cooling system. I would burn my primeval essence to create the thoughts, then immediately expend those thoughts to analyze the structural integrity of the Spirit Affinity House, deduce the political hierarchy of the elders, and map the psychological profiles of everyone I met. The pressure in my aperture would constantly drop as I converted the dangerous liquid essence into pure, harmless data processing.
A closed, perfectly efficient loop of survival. I had found my path.
---
Several floors above the archives, in a pavilion overlooking the sprawling, cloud-wreathed mountains of the Central Continent, Elder Jin sat silently with her eyes closed.
The air around her was heavy with the scent of medicinal incense. She was circulating a Rank 6 Healing Gu to mend the micro-fractures in her soul.
"You look pale, Jin."
A younger man stepped into the pavilion, snapping a jade fan shut. It was Elder Mo, the one who had argued for the boy's use during the sect meeting. He took a seat across from her, his expression light but calculating.
"The Venerable's defense was more aggressive than we anticipated," Elder Jin replied coldly, opening her eyes. "It did not just repel my intrusion. It actively sought to cripple me. Thieving Heaven was a lunatic, and his failsafes are equally deranged."
"Yet Feng Jiu Ge brought the boy back from the brink," Elder Mo mused, pouring a cup of spiritual tea. "And now, he has awakened. I received the report from the lower halls. The boy possesses the Carefree Wisdom Heart."
Elder Jin's hand paused over her tea. Her eyes hardened. "A Ten Extreme Physique. An otherworldly demon. And Feng Jiu Ge wishes to hand him a knife and teach him how to use it."
"It is a risk," Elder Mo agreed, taking a slow sip. "But a calculated one. A Ten Extreme mortal is a ticking bomb. If he does not reach the Immortal realm, he dies. He will be desperate for our resources. We can control him through that"
"You did not look into his eyes, Mo," Elder Jin said, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. She stared down at the rippling surface of her tea. "When a mortal falls into a den of Immortals, they weep. They beg. They tremble. It is the natural response ."
She slowly looked up.
"That boy did not flinch. When my soul entered his mind, there was no panic. Just empty, endless observation. He looked at me not as a god, but as an obstacle. He is entirely hollow."
Elder Mo's smile faded slightly. "He is a child from a mortal world. The shock likely broke his mind."
"Do not mistake a lack of humanity for a broken mind," Elder Jin warned, standing up. "Feng Jiu Ge believes he can leash this demon with logic and resources. But a creature with no fear cannot be leashed. I will watch him. The moment he shows an ounce of defiance, I will shatter his aperture myself, Venerable inheritance be damned."
---
I spent the next three days in the archives. I did not leave the reading pavilion. Silent attendants brought me bowls of plain rice and water, which I consumed without breaking my focus from the jade slips.
I mapped out the entire theoretical framework of the Gu power system. I memorized the standard progression from Rank 1 to Rank 5, the qualitative changes in primeval essence (from green copper to red steel, silver, and gold), and the basic geography of the five regions.
On the morning of the fourth day, Feng Jiu Ge returned.
He did not ask what I had learned. He simply walked to the table and placed a small, translucent insect in front of me. It looked like a cicada carved from pure glass.
"Rank 1 Clear Thought Gu," Feng Jiu Ge said. "A foundational Wisdom Path Gu. It produces perfectly neutral, unaligned thoughts. Mortals use it to clear their minds of distractions or enhance their memory retention. For a Wisdom Path cultivator, it is the first building block."
He tapped the table. "You have read the theory. Let us see if you can apply it. Refine it."
To use a Gu, a master must refine it—imposing their will upon the insect to make it their tool. For a normal Rank 1 cultivator, refining a Gu was a long, painful process of slowly wearing down the insect's wild will with their meager drops of primeval essence.
I picked up the glass cicada. It felt cool to the touch.
I closed my eyes and focused on the massive, roiling sea of 100% capacity green copper essence in my aperture. I didn't push a single drop. Instead, I envisioned a massive, overwhelming wave.
I flooded the Gu worm.
The wild will inside the Clear Thought Gu barely had time to register resistance before my absolute volume of essence crushed it completely. It was not a battle of wills; it was a microscopic landslide.
In less than three seconds, the glass cicada dissolved into a beam of light and shot directly into my aperture, plunging into the sea of primeval essence.
I opened my eyes.
"Refinement complete," I stated.
Feng Jiu Ge didn't speak immediately. He just stared at the empty space on the table. A normal genius might take hours to refine their first Gu. I had done it in the time it takes to draw a breath, purely through brute-force volume.
"Activate it," he finally ordered, his voice tight.
I commanded the Gu. Inside my aperture, the glass cicada drank a fraction of my primeval essence.
Instantly, a physical sensation materialized in my mind. It was not a normal thought—fleeting and vague. It felt like a solid, glowing pearl hovering in my consciousness. I could examine it from all angles. I could hold it. I could program it.
I commanded the Gu again. And again. And again.
I rapidly pumped my primeval essence into the insect. Ten thoughts. Fifty thoughts. A hundred thoughts. My mind filled with perfect, crystalline orbs of pure processing power. The pressure in my lower abdomen began to ease fractionally. The exhaust valve was working.
I took the one hundred 'Clear Thoughts' and assigned them a single task: *Analyze Feng Jiu Ge's current emotional state based on micro-expressions, breathing rate, and posture.* The thoughts collided, shattering into sparks of pure logic, processing the variables instantly.
*Result: Surprise. Guarded anticipation. He views me as an unparalleled asset, but is actively re-evaluating my threat level.*
I looked up at him, my expression completely blank, as the pressure in my aperture slowly began to stabilize.
"The tool is highly efficient," I said calmly. "I will require more."
---