Adam Chongsheng was grounded.

...It was a bit nostalgic.

Anyway, the reason no one freaked out about a child going numb and robotic for a few weeks (Yikes!) was because his state was documented. It was a state of 'Enlightenment', a rare occurrence that allows Cultivators to advance quickly in unnatural ways as they commune with Heavenly spiritual energy.

Basically, before Adam received those jade slips from his (temporary?) teacher, he had been approaching each issue in his life with a scientific attitude. Select cells, modify them, duplicate them, etc etc.

AFTER he was exposed to so much CONCEPTUAL healing abilities from Healer Jin, something inside had clicked. He fell into a strange communication state with... something. Possibly the Plane he was on itself. And then exchanged information.

The massive external spiritual energy cultivation network out there absorbed his concepts, his method of thought, his experiments... and in return, Adam received conceptual versions of that same data, pushing his raw and dangerous 'Regrowth Technique' into the new, more abstract ability: 'Flesh of the Avatar'.

While the Regrowth Technique forced Adam to watch for cancer, nutrient levels, organ health, to individually handle each stage of progression, etc... 'Flesh of the Avatar' was a series of thoughts, expressed through cultivation techniques. At the highest level, the overall highest concept was this: 'Your body is an Avatar for your soul, such Flesh can be reformed.'

It was utilized by asking one's cultivation a series of questions using energy patterns: 'What is the Flesh?', 'What form should Flesh be?', 'How does Flesh regress?', 'How does Flesh move?', 'How does Flesh heal?' and 'How should Flesh progress?'.

Each question was a series of individual steps. The first line defines the area to be healed or designated, the second converts the body segment into Cultivation Cells, the third changes the state of those cells into 'storage mode', the fourth moves storage mode cells into the area or reforms the material, fifth determines what a healthy version of that body part should look like, and the last ('Flesh Progress?') forces the Cultivation Cells to evolve into the best possible NON-CULTIVATION version they can be for the examined target.

Instead of Adam having to do all kinds of checks and balances, these interesting energy patterns basically ASKED the body of the target itself what the correct answers SHOULD be... or maybe it asks this Realm's specific Plane instead. It asks SOMETHING anyway, and uses the answer to avoid issues like overgrowth of cells, cancer, cell decay, and so forth.

Upgrading Adam's many skills and cultivation techniques were just incidental benefits granted in the process of learning what he needed for the skill 'Flesh of the Avatar' to properly operate.

Of course, now that he WASN'T starving, thirsty, sleepy, and high on the energies of heaven and earth... slicing off his arm after going through so much EFFORT seemed stupid.

If he had been in his RIGHT mind, he would have only cut off a finger or something. No one would miss a pinky for a few weeks compared to losing their arm... AGAIN.

Back to his current situation, this version of 'grounding' was honestly a forced recovery period.

Both Healer (Teacher?) Jin and Sister Quan had put their foot down, insisting that he rest. And to be fair, Adam was so close to collapse at that point that he had been arguing to stay awake while facing the wrong direction entirely.

How embarrassing.

Right, focus on the good things.

While Adam couldn't easily use the conceptual abilities granted to him via Healer Jin's jade slips directly, 'Research' had instead quickly applied the many explained concepts involved to his own tricks and sensing methods. As a result, ALL of Adam's abilities now required less internal Battle Qi to operate, everything was more efficient, and he was able to cut out a lot of complexity as the strange 'Ask reality for answers' method was far less complicated than watching the vibration patterns of collapsing matrices of half controlled energy spirals.

Before, he needed direct contact with other people and Cultivators to examine their systems and watch changes... now? Adam was able to examine anyone within his domain of control. Which would be very convenient in the future when watching his test subjects, no doubt.

Oh, and the improved 'Houtian Realm First Order Essential Cultivation Method' had impressed a lot of Sect members upon review... but in a way it was too late.

All nine children had already reached and completed the creation of their Cultivation base, all nine reaching First Order Warrior. They would follow the new method and find it easier in the process, no doubt, but the huge impact of rapid advancement was already over. Ah well.

Little Tianshi wasn't a First Order yet, of course. Her progress slowed without Adam stopping by to provide more Binding energy to work with for her cultivation circle. At least she was able to take advantage of the improved 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique' (Version 2.0007! Success!) with what little energy was remaining while he had been busy slowly going mad communicating with other level entities. Or whoever/whatever it was.

He would have to stop by and fill her cultivation circle back up. Maybe make two... or design an emergency reservoir and supply method? Was that even possible?

Adam made a note so he wouldn't forget to check.

Right, another issue: During the weeks of 'Enlightenment' his body had apparently activated his Seven Pulse Cultivation method several times... and made stupidly advanced progress. Far more than his internal estimates had suggested even, although the legends say that fast cultivation during Enlightenment was a common experience. He was currently 83% on the path to Third Order Warrior, the eight impurity cleansing periods thankfully light considering his body has already undergone the 'Rebirth' process. Or at least, someone had cleaned the worst of the gunk off his body for him.

Again, embarrassing.

His massive improvement rate had ALSO freaked out the many, many people watching him. Meh, they needed to calm down a bit. At least he wasn't jumping straight to Forth Order or something crazy.

The entire situation in general felt strangely better now that Adam was focusing less on better Cell advancement tricks and more on the concepts involved behind everything. His previous progress wasn't a waste or anything, if it hadn't been so unusual Adam may have never attracted the attention of the Heavens in the first place, missing the enlightenment moment altogether! It was just... more fulfilling going the conceptual route, which was expected of beings in this Realm.

It was a fascinating experience though. With much effort, he was able to pose his OWN questions while cultivating, and the answers were... a bit hard to parse out but very interesting.

'What natural energy flows exist?', 'How do Warriors become more efficient when cultivating?', 'How to enhance spiritual stability?', these questions and more with some effort were actually answered by the spiritual energies being cultivated by Adam's method as the Binding energy vanished into his body.

...Though without being in the moment of Enlightenment, the answers were odd. 'Research' was overwhelmed with a mass of images, smells, noises, and odd patterns as a form of response, and Adam was spending most of this recovery process letting 'Research' try to tease it apart. Not a lot of progress yet, but at least it was something to do... entertainment was lacking here.

His face broke out in a grin as he HELD A PLATE in his left hand! His Left. Goddamn. Hand.

Right, better eat the food on it too.

As he enjoyed Sister Rong's cooking (Or one of her people's dishes, it wasn't clear who was actually involved), Adam made some mental notes and decisions.

First, learn how to use 'Flesh of the Avatar' on animals. Because he had no practice or 'Research' on using this new skill on someone or something else, and he didn't want to liquefy the test prisoners. It would be a waste of good data on morally acceptable targets if he did.

He also wanted to ensure that the step 'How should Flesh progress?' worked as expected. On someone like his Disciple or himself, it should leave the healed section as Cultivation Cells... or even let him choose! Otherwise, it should turn them back into healthy but somewhat normal body cells as the target's body would desire.

Because if he was going to regrow criminal limbs, he didn't want those crafted limbs to be super-powered, fast healing, advanced cultivation accelerating cells. If it was for Sect members, no problem. A pedo-rapist? Yeah, they don't get to have that. NONE of that.

So, animals first. Which would suck, because Adam found most of them cute. Not cute enough to go vegan or whatever (Which was good since in THIS realm plants can eventually become sexy people with sentient minds), but it would still be a depressing process trying to heal something that was going to be a delicious side dish later.

Glancing at his left arm, he wondered...

Would everyone he healed get awesome glowing blue tattoos and girly fingernail colors?

Most would probably be fine with that, getting an arm or leg back was worth looking strange... or maybe it was all a side effect of Blue and Binding energy. It would be interesting to find out!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The room was quiet.

Still in a meditation stance, the Patriarch of the Burning Sword Sect sent a spiritual message to his attendant.

Silence fell again.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Elder Cho felt... so exasperated. "The Patriarch is doing this to me on purpose. He has to be."

The fifty new Guards stayed knelt. The Elder was trying to ignore them. "The boy is going through a healing period, is held in a small recovery room and such... and he already has forty-nine guards. Which was ALREADY too much. Too excessive. Politics in action."

She grunted. "The brat can't even walk outside now without being surrounded by our people, and that old man wants me to basically double them!? Why! And we now know your hiding skills didn't even phase the child, so he can SEE ALL OF YOU. And NONE of you noticed! Why he hasn't questioned our Sect's sanity already is beyond me."

Apparently one of the original fifty, some Guard named Shu was sent back to camp to undergo retraining... and within moments, FIFTY. MORE. GUARDS.

She glared at the leader. "Are you all even cleared to know WHY your protection target is so damn important?"

More silence.

She fell back into her chair. "The list is too long, but a high level summary: You are all marked as protection detail for the Burning Sage."

THAT got some reactions. Rumors of boy Adam's odd actions had already spread over the rumor vines.

Her glare was intense. "I want to warn you: Anyone daring enough to enter the Sect and willing enough to attack our previously assigned forty-nine guards will likely be so strong that the addition of an additional fifty or hundred guards would mean nothing. Literally nothing. This task, for you, will likely be both boring AND pointless."

The glare fell away to weariness. "I have no doubt you are being brought close to the child in an attempt to bolster the odds of your social faction benefiting. Regardless of who supports your groups in the background, however, you WILL do your jobs to above expectations. Am I clear!?"

Loud sounds filled the room as the fifty guards pounded their chest twice.

She nodded. "Good. Now get to work and start being pointless wastes of resources like your Elder supporters ordered you to be."

...It was a bit of an awkward atmosphere as the group left the room.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The 'Houtian Realm First Order Essential Cultivation Method' research team was beyond fascinated.

If one examined meridian routes commonly followed to become a basic Cultivator, it would very apparent very soon that the various paths didn't need to visit your whole body. The spiritual network didn't directly connect to specific parts of the mortal body, and depending on the Cultivation Technique followed paths could even change over time. Even if a limb was ignored by your technique, it would still be exposed to your Battle Qi and improved.

But even compared to their many, many past examples... This new method was odd!

If one was to make a model of the body and show this new meridian route for progression... it was a simple circle within the torso. A bit squiggly, a tiny amount of wonky, but basically a boring circle.

What was very odd however, was how many meridian nodes that simple circle managed to touch and pass through! Far more than expected, especially for a route with no strange twists or complicated timings... after seeing what the children had been working with, none of the Sect researchers had been surprise at how easy it was for them to get started. To reach initial-First Order Warrior.

No, the shock was finding how rapidly these children were now advancing toward Second Order! Those with low grade talent were progressing with no issues, no setbacks, no strain as they gathered more and more power, stabilizing their spiritual network at an astounding rate. Those with near acceptable grade talents were progressing as if they were rare talents! An impressive rate!

The lack of complexity, the ease of directions and simplicity of the experience... it acted like an equalizer for the entire process. The daily sessions of 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique' advancement (Version 2.0007, whatever that meant) wasn't hurting anything either, as several children again surged ahead of estimations as they progressed further using the newly improved Gentle Rebirth Technique Adam had provided before nearly butchering his own limb.

...And hadn't THAT been a shock. Sheesh.

Their documentation process was interrupted by a hole opening up in the floor.

Everyone stared... as a series of wooden canes were shoved into the room. "Ah HA! I knew I was close!"

Some random Sect member's head popped up through the floor. And stared at the massive number of socially high standing Sect members.

Brother Hou had a blank face. "I don't suppose any of you are secret grandpas?"

...One Researcher raised a hand. "My son had a kid a few days ago?"

The odd man nodded. "These canes are for you."

The hole closed. One of the workers who was formerly from the Orphanage sighed... "I'll message Brother Zhanfei to make sure Brother Hou is taking the correct medications."

The Researcher was examining the strange objects. "...I kind of like them. Not sure why there are covered in oil though."

Another man hummed. "To improve the skin? My wife oils her hands before she goes to sleep."

His neighbor nudged him. "I'm sure she does, know what I mean? Right?" Everyone looked at him strangely. "Right, I will shut up now."

Department Lead Healer Jin walked in with purpose. "Everyone be careful walking around for a few days, please! A man outside smuggling thirty burning wood clubs was just tackled by almost a hundred guards. No clue how he got this close to our cave through security."

He held up a hand holding a jade slip like it was pure gold. "Now, who wants to see Adam's notes about his most recent modifications to his tests and methods? I warn you now, it is VERY fascinating."

The room slid into chaos.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Right, examine the patient.

...Yep, that is a pig. Damn it is a cute pig.

Focus.

Adam touched the animals missing leg.

'What is the Flesh?'

The back right leg of this animal, hip downwards. Adam's Battle Qi formed odd shapes over the surface.

'What form should Flesh be?'

Cultivation Cells. Memories of his own cultivation helped the process.

'How does Flesh regress?'

Storage mode. The stump and scar tissue brightened into glowing blue liquid, oddly not spilling from the stump.

'How does Flesh move?'

...Progress slowed, but the limb stretched... flowed... his energy began running low. This required cell duplication and rapid growth, very tiring. Best stop here than midway.

'How does Flesh heal?'

The fluid converged into structure, the Storage mode converting into Active mode as the flesh solidified. Stabilized. Compared to the power requirements for rapid growth, this was almost free in cost!

'How should Flesh progress?'

And the mass turned a healthy pink again, the stump now several inches longer and colored like the rest of the pig.

Now that Adam's abilities had advanced, he was even able to numb the area under construction... after the screams of the animal reminded him to do so.

All that time ignoring pain made Adam forget that he could block the stupid process. Fixed it now, and this particular pig was artificially asleep and shouldn't be feeling any issues at all... Probably.

Adam made a note to ask the future prisoner patients if it worked correctly. It would suck if pain was blocked but the area itched or something. Or worse, felt great and people started cutting parts off to get healed again. Because if the concept existed, there was kink for it out there somewhere.

Leaning away from the sleeping breakfast dish, Adam grinned as he kept doing stuff with his left hand. Sorting the paper work into piles, straightening his bed sheets, moving random things around.

Left hands were awesome, anyone who said otherwise should lose theirs for a few months and learn to appreciate them more.

Still couldn't write with it, but even before his memories returned he had been right handed, so that wasn't a big deal. Just being able to TRY and doodle with his returned part felt awesome!

He glanced back at Sir Bacon the Fifth.

It uh. It had been a good idea to test on animals first.

Sir Bacon the First had completely liquefied during stage 'How does Flesh regress?' when Adam reduced him into a liquid... then into a dry mound of storage cells piled up like sand. Fixing it didn't really work, he hadn't taken an initial scan having not expected such a big issue!

Sir Bacon the Second turned into a perfect sphere. Somehow. Bones and everything shifted, the animal could be rolled and whatnot with no issue. All while still alive, and oddly happy with the situation. It really threw Adam off his game for a while, and even after being shifted back into a pig like shape... well, Adam needed a new test subject. That breakfast item would look strange when cooked later, he was sure, since it wouldn't calm down till he turned the stupid pig back into a sphere. The servants found it cute... maybe it was an odd survival mechanism? Whatever.

Adam forced himself to forget Sir Bacon the Third. Life was better that way.

Sir Bacon the Fourth had healed perfectly fine! And was being kept alive and uncooked to see if there were any long term issues with his recovery. Thankfully the healed swine had no strange tattoos and its hair and trotters weren't blue, so that was a good sign! Assuming he doesn't explode, or try to turn into a cube or something.

Unlike the more lucky Sir Bacon the Fourth, the Fifth here would be subjected to 'Research' suggestions. Right now Adam was testing how to convert other limbs into repair material for critical wounds... Because if a Warrior survived the big battle long enough to reach Adam for treatment, he could finish the patch job! Theoretically.

Other tests included faster and safer methods to numb body parts and put the brain to sleep without long term issues, short term body modifications to cause the limb to act as its OWN cast and keep things still, hopefully without soul burning pain...

And lots of sensing improvements. So... so many!

At this point, his Shard domain was able to control all energy within six feet of his heart, where the crystal liked to hang out using 'Growth' when 'Research' wasn't being used. But even when not actively cultivating, the swirls of Binding Energy and Blue Energy flattened into discs and floating like a pair of stacked backpacks invisibly behind Adam's body kept gathering power over time. Low level, continuous improvement.

The structure of the energy Swirls just... encouraged loose energy to decay and reinforce the existing flavor of power now. To keep himself from being distracted all the time, Adam had commanded his Shard to drag that energy excess away and slowly fill the massive storage space within his Martial Spirit itself. With the most refined energy generated stored away safely, Adam managed to keep the overall power of the twin swirls from spiraling out of control or exploding into fire or something. So that was good.

While the effects were far, FAR stronger with 'Purification' or 'Growth' active, even when using 'Research' the Shard within his heart would slowly purify and grow the energies stored within itself, ready to be used later by Adam for cultivation techniques, methods, or abilities. The Shard's own nature of being a fragment of solidified energy helped improve powers that came into contact with it, being actually stored within had a much greatest effect really.

As his heart was part of Adam's spiritual network, minute improvements continued to grow over time even without active cultivation... even if at a vastly reduced rate. Point was, his body, spiritual meridian network, and Shard were connected. Closely.

This meant Adam's Battle Qi could interact through his Domain as if it was direct contact with other people, and anyone who entered his Domain could be targeted in very odd and hard to detect ways... being able to examine someone's cultivation base without detection was simple at this stage. In fact, he may even be able to apply the 'Sleep' trick from healing remotely, which would surprise an attacker or two at some point.

'Prepare to die, you handsome stranger you! Oh no, I suddenly feel woozy and tired! You win THIS time Adam Chongsheng, you attractive bastard!'

Yeah, just like that.

Adam hummed happily as the pig slowly shifted, 'Research' examining the changes and trying to find concepts strong enough to enhance the process but vague enough to be flexible. It was a relaxing process. And with his current level of control, no random blood balloons!

He shuddered, Yeah, Sir Bacon the Third never happened. At least it was mostly easy to clean.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Biggest benefit from the new 'Flesh of the Avatar' ability?

It only applied Adam's actions on the target, and didn't involve injecting his energy into the person directly. Sure, he still had to create powerful Cultivation Cells as a step in the final process, but those theoretically would vanish at the end.

So no using expensive and valuable Binding energy on some random killer.

He looked down at the man, fully restrained with a formation locking his cultivation ability. As he was missing an arm (His right one) from attempting to kill his way out from being captured after a mostly successful assassination mission, it should be good experience with no morality concerns.

Adam passed a jade slip to Sister Quan. She nodded. "Good afternoon. I, Sister Quan, will be speaking for Brother Adam, whom will be directing this experience today."

The man glared, silent.

She continued. "There is a series of notes for you to be aware of. First, the 'good' news: You will not be assaulted or tortured for the following hours or days it takes for the experiments to be completed."

Sister Quan took a breath. "Part of this experiment is dedicated to reducing or removing all painful parts and any potential side effects. In fact, if everything goes well, there will be no pain involved at any point!"

Seeing his disbelief, she continued. "Should the experiment take longer than a single day, meals will be provided at set intervals and the prisoner will be allowed to sleep in a separate room for a set duration."

Her face grew solemn. "Now for the bad news. You have been found guilty of rape, nine counts of murder, and abuse of a child. The evidence was sufficient for you to receive the Death Penalty, which will executed at the end of this experiment."

She sighed. "Young Brother Adam, whom will be directing the following steps, will attempt to ensure that your passing will be fully painless. We will now begin... please mention any pain or discomfort as we proceed, not informing the staff may result in unnecessary pain."

Adam ignored the man trying to curse through his gag. The general idea got across, and that was the point.

Removing his own eye-patch, he rested his left arm on the man's chest... and Pulsed. The flames in his left eye glowed bright, and he viewed the normally unseen data.

Hmm. It was obvious from seeing the children scans earlier, but symmetrical was NOT normal when it came to meridian nodes. Lacking the vital ones in the chest area was probably the reason why some could never awaken their Martial Spirits. Should find out later. Point was, THIS man's meridian nodes were mostly intact... should be a good reference point.

His right arm was really messed up, at least the remaining stump was. As probably was expected, it was burned away by an attack that he couldn't resist with his own Battle Qi or attacks. It WAS the Burning Sword Sect, after all.

With a few tests, he managed to numb the stump without forcing the man unconscious or asleep. 'Research' had recorded all the failures, so hopefully after a few more prisoners this step would be simple and easy to replicate.

'What is the Flesh?'

Just the bone in the stump. Leave the rest alone.

'What form should Flesh be?'

Cultivation Cells.

'How does Flesh regress?'

Storage Mode.

'How does Flesh move?'

The prisoner's arm twisted slightly even when restrained... Ah, the bone was not transmitting any signals, but the part still within the man's arm was rubbing against nerves there. Slight change, apply the numbing farther up... right, painless again.

Blue flesh goo swirled outward from the stump.

'How does Flesh heal?'

White, near bleached arm bone now protruded from the stump. Converting more Cultivation Cells from the guy's fat elsewhere in the system was a good plan, the cost had dropped significantly now that he wasn't growing everything from a thin layer. More mass meant less energy to duplicate more material.

'How should Flesh progress?'.

The bone flashed slightly, the Cultivation Cells converting into various healthy bone cells and settling.

No energy remnants? No formed energy matrices slowly mutating and (later) going to explode?

Good, it seemed to work. He glanced back at the guy, verifying he wasn't in pain still.

Adam blinked at the look of horror on the man's face.

Meh, some people are weird.

Now, let's see if Adam could use the killer's sealed Cultivation base as a fuel supply instead of wasting his OWN energy trying to heal the jerk.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sister Quan winced again. Even after verifying with her own skills that the murderer was not feeling any pain at this point, the noises... bones snapping and reforming, flesh flowing like water, muscles snapping into place alongside tendons... the squelching.

There SHOULD be blood everywhere, but whatever young Adam was doing kept the fluid within the patient the entire time, preventing any bleed-out or hemorrhaging. Clearly, even if it didn't hurt, the process was causing some mental trauma for the patient himself.

If SHE needed work done, she was going to ensure Adam made her sleep first. This was creepy.

The massive grin on the fourteen-year-old's face wasn't helping much. Bright blue hair, ice fire filled eye, and a near psychotic grin... yeah, not the best bedside manner.

She watched blankly, fully understanding the man's horror, as little Adam gestured idly as the murderer's whole chest cavity split open like a potato. Or like a sideways maw, as the bones slid apart like fangs as all the organs were exposed.

...It was a little messed up.

She internally nodded. REALLY good decision to have him work on prisoners first.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam wanted to whistle.

This was great! 'Research' had all kinds of tricks and ideas to work with, and now that the patient was paralyzed temporarily and certain chemicals were being produced to keep the body healthy and calm, he had freedom to work!

Large sections of the body converted to Cultivation Cells that Adam could Directly control! Organs and muscles unfolded like origami art flowers, skin shifted out of the way, and bones would mold and shift to better allow access. The attempts to extract the meridian nodes and spiritual network entirely had to be abandoned though...

He hadn't finished testing how to numb pain related to the Soul yet.

Still, while stuck working with the wet stuff, he was making great advancements! Many parts of the body were rarely if ever needed, and this little research trip was showing all sorts of bits and bobs that could be converted into Cultivation Cells for other work without causing immediate issues! At this rate he would be an amazing combat medic, if nothing else.

Absently sealing his chest cavity closed, he shifted toward the guy's head, skull spreading open. Even with chemicals, the brain was working overtime right now... probably from stress. Not direct nerve signals related to pain though, the 'Numbing' process was rock solid by this point... only five or six slip ups this entire operation!

This was going VERY well at this point! With care, Adam paralyzed the guys eyes for safety and had one orb slowly expand from the skull's eye socket and unravel into the air. As expected, as similar as they looked to a normal citizen, the meridian nodes had caused the flesh to change over the years.

'Flesh of the Avatar' really was working well at this point! Now, time to practice destroying body segments within other tissues and doing some selective healing. Test it on a few people and it should be safe enough to finally, FINALLY fix his throat.

He blinked. Oh, Sister Quan had to step out for a short break. Good, she was looking a bit tired... she shouldn't stress herself.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Healer Jin watched with... morbid fascination. "And he is documenting all this?"

Sister Quan tried to stabilize herself. "He has two Jade slips filled with notes already. From what little I skimmed, he already learned a method to use the patients cultivation base as an additional resource for healing... no idea how, it was a bit complicated. I just needed to get away from the smells and noises."

The grandfather figure blinked. "Smells?"

She snorted. "Yeah, the child rapist murdering bastard pissed himself early on, but really shit himself once his body started unfolding."

Jin nodded. "Ah. Yes, that would do it for me as well." He glanced at the observation mirror. "I'm... slightly concerned about reading what he is marking down right now."

Sister Quan sighed. "No, it should be professional. The REAL problem is that Adam doesn't think his current actions are scary or disturbing. If anything, this is him taking his time and trying to avoid bothering anyone... from what I heard, the first pig he got turned into dust for example."

They watched the boy grin with wild eyes as his 'patient' seemed to be losing sanity, legs opening wide like a meat umbrella.

...It was probably for the best that Adam keep trying to be 'not scary', the alternative was a fairly disquieting thought.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Soul Numbing worked, but caused damage Adam couldn't figure out how to repair yet.

So... Meridian node regrowth and repositioning, not that bad for either personal use or when applying 'Flesh of the Avatar' to a patient... THAT was fine.

Attempting to realign someone's previously stabilized and established spiritual network? Worse pain than torture apparently, and all attempts to numb the pain damaged their soul.

That whole concept of research was put on hold for now.

With a sigh, Adam pulled up a wooden stool and gazed at the (for the moment) whole and recovered prisoner test subject.

This was the sixth one. The first guy was most unlucky, but at least the process and accidents involved helped Adam learn how to safely apply local and total anesthetic effects to a patient and preemptively determine what chemicals and signals would cause pain based on scans of their brain. By the third prisoner, Adam had enough information about brains in general to no longer keep them awake, which made everything much quieter and improved the work environment. Fourth and Fifth prisoners had helped polish his tricks and techniques, while THIS woman was experiencing the 'final' designs and methods.

This particular woman was part of the same child smuggling ring as the others, but at least she was fully healed and medically fit now.

With a sigh, Adam tapped her shoulder.

Now that he had so much practice and 'Research' had so many more body scans and samples to work on, applying his new ability was near automatic. The 'question' answers acted like parameters to a program, and his mind was able to adapt to that quickly enough with some customized memories 'Research' help design. Just like with his previous 'Regrowth Technique' memory...

'Flesh of the Avatar.'

The woman's blood, nerves, and entire brain and brain stem all converted into Cultivation Cells... then shifted into storage mode.

And that was that.

Adam made sure her eyelids were closed, and moved back to his research desk to document his thoughts.

Working with materials surrounded by healthy body parts had turned out tricky like expected. This last prisoner was finally able to verify that the process was fully stabilized and safe, though Adam's unrestricted version to be used on his OWN body would be the raw and painful variation that would hopefully ensure all needed meridian nodes would be grown in the process.

After all, he only had one neck for comparison unlike with his arm problems. He wasn't sure how many nodes there were supposed to be, or what pattern they were to follow. Anyway.

The first issue his testing resolved was heat problems.

Removing a bone or organ and attempting to regrow it would burn the flesh around it (Not an issue for Adam, his whole BODY was now Blue energy infused Cultivation Cells, which loved that extra temperature), but more importantly in Adam's case... small explosions of steam could occur between the growing material and the healthy body surrounding it.

Nearly blew off that one guy's leg. Would have possibly taken Adam's head clear off his torso... so it was a good idea to test things first.

The second problem was finding all the unusual modifications to each person's nervous system to correctly block pain... easy enough to study and take care of, and Adam would have toughened it out if needed. Better to not have to suffer though, and it would make Sister Quan feel less worried.

The THIRD problem though is why he took so long till now. Why he was cautious NOW rather than back with his left arm.

Adam didn't have damaged vocal cords.

No, Adam had large amounts of his neck and upper respiratory system removed and mostly replaced to keep him alive while Healers stabilized his spine issues.

His wounds not only damaged his meridian network to some extent, but the attempts at fixing his spine had caused so much wreckage that breathing was all he could do right now.

Adam had to learn how to extract 'correct body forms' from the D.N.A. within a Cultivation Cell, as all his normal cells were long gone and converted by now. It turned out to be a very tricky experience... Cultivation Cells were tough, didn't like exposing the genetic info it carried, and was designed like a Stem Cell that could convert into any body cell needed... so getting partial or false output was easily possible. Frustrating.

He glanced at his notes and the modified 'Gentle Recovery Technique' so recently designed. Then destroyed before anyone could read said notes, and redesigned from scratch with more caution.

It was... heavily censored and modified now, especially compared to the near free-form flesh crafting that his own technique could do... and it seemed like the only morally correct action to do so.

The problem boiled down? His ability converted the body of SOMEONE ELSE into ADAM'S cell design.

True, it was the only way for the ability user to control the cells involved, get them in the right places, etc... but left unrestrained, assholes could just... take your cells. Consume humans to increase their own available material for advanced body modification techniques or to repair damage, and so on. Not to mention that torture could reach insane levels with this amount of body part recovery.

Hell, Adam himself may actually be tempted to USE that feature at some point: the satisfaction of an evil jerk 'contributing' to healing his or her victims seemed right in a way. But cannibalism in general was frowned upon, so it was best to add some built in difficulties and restrictions to the method.

This 'Gentle Recovery Technique' as redesigned COULD still be activated solo, on yourself or targeting others... but was rebuilt to work better and easier the more Cultivators that join in to assist while the technique was under use. Hard to pull evil crap unnoticed if four or five people are involved. Theoretically.

The target selection when picking a body part to repair or regrow was ALSO restricted based on the spiritual sensing ability of the initial user... so probably no full body rebuilding like Adam could so easily accomplish.

Most importantly, others couldn't just convert random selected cells into raw materials to reduce energy costs... only the scar tissue and material directly in the way of recovery could now be easily converted into Cultivation Cells with this restricted method, so a lot of power would be needed to let those cells procreate enough to get the job done.

It may mean someone taking a week or two to regrow a leg rather than seconds, but if an unknown group was doing nefarious stuff it would give more time for the Sect to find out and stop said actions.

As the room was cleared and Sister Quan walked in with Healer Jin, Adam held his hands up, both thumbs indicating it was time. FINALLY TIME!

Sister Quan shuffled. "Are you sure you are ready for this attempt?"

Healer (Teacher?) Jin nodded. "His listed tests all worked within given estimates, or resulted in better outcomes than predicted." He glanced at the boy. "Stop immediately if any odd feelings or sensations occur."

Adam nodded.

He wouldn't stop of course, because how could regrowing most of one's upper chest and throat NOT feel weird... but he appreciated the thoughts.

With (hopefully) a final focusing...

'Flesh of the Avatar.'

'What is the Flesh?'

Upper chest, lungs, throat, the entire area involved. No reason to allow hidden wounds by being too narrow in scope when selecting a work area.

'What form should Flesh be?'

All of the flesh was already Cultivation Cells, of course, so nothing happened really. Impurities were expelled from the area though.

'How does Flesh regress?'

Storage mode. Instantly, the upper portion of Adam's body transformed into bright blue, transparent fluid that stayed flowing in place. It felt BEYOND odd, as his body now had boundaries that transitioned between (mostly) normal flesh and this blue gel.

'How does Flesh move?'

Fill in the spaces. Realign the lungs and throat, the one suggested by Adam's D.N.A. was a bit wiggly looking and he could probably do better using 'Research' suggestions.

'How does Flesh heal?'

...Shit, should his vocal cords be glowing bright blue? And this was AFTER the 'Storage mode' cells had returned to normal. For whatever normal counted as. Thankfully the strange body parts were quickly covered by muscle, fat, and skin. An odd popping, both loud and not truly created with sound waves, made his neck tingle as meridian nodes were formed and structured.

'How should Flesh progress?'

With a near painful CRACK, his spiritual network expanded to include his repaired neck and upper chest. The established Seven Pulse Cultivation spiritual network damaged itself to include the new routes, then used a good portion of Blue energy to stabilize everything again.

And it somehow pushed his progression up from 83% to 87% towards Third Order Warrior. Shouldn't that damage had made his progress regress? Or hurt more?

Then again, this was an important section of his spiritual network, as one of his seven cultivation routes passed straight through that area to reach his brain. And his Seven Pulse Method was... somehow better in sync with itself, when Adam carefully ran a cycle or two of cultivation.

Reaching for his hand mirror (No, it was not paranoia to get one of these, his body kept getting strange changes damn it!) he glanced at his throat.

Glowing blue 'scar' tattoos? Check... but expected.

No strange colors otherwise. No odd scales or spikes or whatever.

Adam grinned, took a deep breath... and lost control, coughing like a lifetime smoker.

He waved the others off as the never used throat components freaked out a little, every breath attempting to set off even worse coughs as the air flow irritated his everything.

Maybe he should have seen this coming?

He blinked, eyes watering, as he felt something splash against his hand after a really hard cough racked his body.

Damn it, was he coughing up blood!? What the HELL did he screw up this time!

Healer Jin was there in a moment. "Careful, stand straight and try to keep your airflow unrestricted... let me view the discharge, it is probably just mucus, no reason to be... to be..."

Everyone stared at the pale blue goo coating Adam's hand.

Of course, it was on damn fire.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam carefully breathed in.

"Hello."

Blue sparks this time, but no smoke, no pure flames, and no globs of magical napalm.

Just... stay calm.

"My. Name. Is. Adam."

Yeah, this is workable. With some practice, even the sparks may go away, right? Right?

Sister Quan was just eager to see him 'healed', however odd it turned out. "GREAT! A bit of work and I am sure you will be right as rain in no time."

Adam nodded. "Thank. You." Crap, a flame that time. At least this didn't hurt, all this raw energy his lungs was sending through his throat only felt warm and comfortable... and if he attempted to generate more blue gel napalm, that stuff felt more like spitting out water rather than vomiting up goo, thank goodness.

Still strange though.

He held up the data slip. "Made. Gentle. Recovery."

She blinked. "Oh, is this your completed technique?"

Nod.

Sister Quan grinned as she carefully accepted the green jade slip. "May I look at it myself?"

Nod.

With a bright grin, she began reviewing the valuable data... and blinked. "Huh. It is energy intensive, but even my cauterization skill was more complicated." Her smile brightened the room. "This... this is amazing!"

He nodded. "Also. No. Longer. Easy. To. Eat. People."

She stared. "What?"

Adam waved her off, talking this carefully sucked enough as it was, he would explain it all later.

This prisoner experimentation process had taken time and was mentally exhausting. Not to mention Adam felt he should have more emotional issues with converting living people into useful spare parts, even if he didn't take advantage of the new supplies himself. Maybe if the dead people were less of a group of assholes?

He ignored Sister Quan's other questions as he went back to his room for some food, a bath, and a good long nap.

Then? Well, he had earned many more contribution points now. With numerous more being added all the time...

So, cultivate up to Third Order. Stabilize his spiritual network. THEN... head back over to the The Sect Repository of Knowledge Pagoda. It felt good to have a plan!

Adam reached into his carrying sash and paused mid step.

Right, he never replaced those burned prunes and that crazy guy hadn't showed up in some time.

He would ask someone where to buy a few. Based on how many fruits had seen so far Prunes were probably a popular snack here.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Time passed.

Adam's desire to progress his Cultivate base was met with surprisingly large amount of support: Apparently, his rapid advancements had created something of a paperwork nightmare.

People needed time to review, to test, to design security procedures and so forth to properly use the stuff.

His child subjects were all progressing towards Second Order, though most were unable to detect their own percentage of growth. Apparently that was ALSO an unusual ability, as strange as that seemed.

There were also (apparently) another ten initiates selected (Adam never met them) going through a duplication of Adam's experiments. A carefully selected and secured group of other Sect Members right now were controlling that situation, and similar such actions would probably occur with every new Martial Spirit Awakening Ceremony in the upcoming months and years.

Why? Because the Sect Patriarch wanted a large amount of documentation before making this 'Trash Transformation' process widespread and accepted.

The suggested name came from the kids, by the way... seriously, this society REALLY felt low Spirit talent rankings were worthless. Even the kids themselves felt their former situation was somehow THEIR fault and not a lack of options. At least things would improve for them from now on.

Point was, Adam wasn't involved with that mess... thank goodness. Doing the research himself was fun, doing it forever would be horrendous.

In addition to the children, a few trusted Sect members at near every Cultivation level (Fourth through Tenth Order Houtian, First through Tenth Order Xiantian) had also volunteered to undergo the physical transformation method 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique' (Recent Version, 2.0352). The differences in improvement however were lower with those having higher cultivation ranks, but still gave stronger results than many other options. Progression through the various levels of cultivation automatically enhanced the body naturally to some degree anyway, it made sense that the biggest advantages would seen by those with the worst bodies.

Adam thought the lower level of improvement would disappoint the various higher level Cultivators... but was a bit shocked to find otherwise. Apparently, at the highest levels of advancement, certain resources and pills just... stopped working. A resource free method to make your body more compatible with your Cultivation Technique was apparently quite appreciated even if it could only offer a few percentage points of betterment. The few Cultivators Adam directly talked to felt any risks of future issues caused by the new method was worth the dangers considering the rewards. Huh.

Right, speaking of the body cultivation technique... strange hair colors seem to be a side effect. Not one that caused much concern (Even if a few people complained that it clashed with their 'style'), but it WOULD make it a bit obvious who had fully completed the cultivation method in the future. When anyone besides Adam got that far, at least.

No one had experienced the other oddities that Adam had so far though. Breathing napalm, flame eye, magical scar tattoos, strange fingernail colors. And toenails too, apparently, as those were overly bright blue at this point. Sigh.

Even his student/disciple Tianshi Qianzai looked mostly normal. Her hair may be a shifting from blond to a similar blue (Sometimes green?) as his own, but her progress towards body conversion wasn't even above fifty percent yet... and no glowing tattoos or whatever had shown up so far. Lucky girl.

With a hum Adam ignored the light blue smog that drifted from his nose as he sat, meditated, and cultivated. Seven Pulse Method was pulling the massive amount of stored Blue energy from within his Shard, even as the Shard glowed white with 'Purification' and regenerated its contents by cleansing the two gathered swirls of energy that Adam dragged around everywhere. That gathered power was shoved into his routes, converted to Battle Qi, and so forth as usual.

The Binding Swirl Adam kept around was easy enough to maintain, by default it didn't quite interact normally with other energies. But the Blue Swirl? THAT took some effort to strip out odd Heat, Warmth, and Flare energies that came from... somewhere out in the world. Everything else slid off, but hot type energies were more icky and sticky.

With his Shard Martial Spirit Pulsing within these two swirls controlled outside his body, manipulating the energy within his domain was still simple enough at this point. And yes, he still extended his domain straight up as far as possible. Not really to avoid detection (That ship had sailed), but more to grab the energies swirling so far up in the sky... it tended to be less dense energy types than the mess down here on the surface.

Occasionally Adam would pause cultivation to examine some of the more odd energies his Domain would capture. A few even seemed to be related to Bloodline powers released by some attack somewhere that drifted until it fell under his control. Had to be a powerful creature though, the energies he detected being emitted by that spherical pig dissolved within moments of leaving its system into the air.

With a grimace, Adam felt his progress hit 90% towards Second Order Warrior... and the coating of Blue energy over his skin and inside his cultivation routes poured over the 'river banks' of his meridian paths, soaking his flesh, skin, and organs again.

More. Damn. Impurities.

At least it was only disgusting slime now, not thick sludge and muck. His Cultivation Cells purified many impurities automatically at this point by passing them through his Shard for processing... which made cleaning this gunk easier.

Still smelled horrible.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sister Tianshi was having trouble following the new 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique' due to pure excitement!

She was reaching a milestone, as according to the notes once she hit 33% conversion rate the process would accelerate to unreasonable levels! Because the more of her body converted, the more material was ready to grow and duplicate. She wasn't ENTIRELY sure what that meant, but as far as she was concerned that was great!

Absently wiping sweat from her brow, she focused.

Her Master had seen her previous failure to progress without his help, when her energy supplies ran out... and had not punished her in the slightest.

Now she had ten circles surrounding her Binding Formation, each one feeding stored power that her Master had generated, all of them secured and directly supplying energy into her own formation for use!

Even better, she got to hear Master Adam's voice too! He had finally fixed it somehow.

...Well, technically she got to TRY and hear it.

When the young man tried to say... something... the whole world had shook slightly and Tianshi may have fallen unconscious. As far as the healers could tell, there was some sort of resonance between his powers and her cultivation base, since she was using the same energy as HE was. Also, whatever odd stuff that Binding power counted as was being used to rebuild her Master's Throat, so that may be related.

So uh. They still couldn't have a direct conversation yet.

...She was studying his provided manuals and learning materials with the other children. The professional Teaching experience was going well, even if it was her first time as an official 'Student'. Much better than the one off 'lessons' from back in the orphanage anyway.

Hopefully she could read Master's jade slips too in the near future.

Her thoughts were thrown off track as her body seemed to pause... to breathe in...

'Pulse.'

In one wave, young Tianshi felt an OCEAN of power suddenly drain into her body from the reserves. Nearly cold energy that... vanished into somewhere as it flowed inward. Even as the rapid draining of power seemed to feed into her Martial Spirit, the black Betel Nut blazing bright blue fire as more and more Binding energy flowed forth, it all felt... empty. Hungry.

According to Master Adam, one couldn't fully advance in the 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique' using only Binding energy. It needed something to grip on, something to work with... and she realized that the previous instructions, to contact him when she felt anything odd, had fallen from her focus as she had struggled to advance. That she should have asked for help hours ago, but had missed the signs.

She couldn't move! Her system was nearly aching with spiritual hunger even as more Binding energy flooded her limbs, skin, her body open and searching for... something. The massive wave of Binding energy was moving too fast and with too much power provided to be absorbed fully by the body it flowed past, but even so Tianshi felt her system experience a purification, a cleansing.

Without a second energy to work with however... this cleaning was leaving her empty. Hungry. Needing.

As her panic started to grow, something within her Martial Spirit CRACKED.

To her shocked attention, the Burning Black Betel Nut... began to germinate. Black roots, the color of a moonless night and the soft shadows that hugged one safe at night, extended from the bottom of the rock-like nut even as raw, PURE HUNGER forced the Binding energy to continue to flow...

The solid black object ignored her paralyzed form, settled into her chest, and took root in her heart.

Near instantly, those strange black roots spread! From Meridian to meridian, artery to vein, directly into her flesh and organs! The ghostly roots rapidly formed a thick mesh that seemed to be searching, desperate and reaching...

And somehow, as the strange network of thin black mesh roots grew ever more dense and expansive... Binding energy was caught.

Her gaze was astonished as ever so slowly, Binding energy was collected from the vast ocean smothering the girl. Individual motes of energy passed up the solid black ghostly root network... and gathered into the seed within her heart. That Betel Nut Martial Spirit accepted the energy source rapidly, examining it, processing it...

And a bright green energy was released in her chest.

Most of it was burned away as fuel for the blue flame living on her Martial Spirit, but the rest was CONSUMED by the RAVAGING HUNGER of her Cultivation Cells! Her heart nearly tore itself apart, accepting the green mist and the many cells duplicating, spreading, strengthening!

As the thin layer in her heart became satiated, it caused her Martial Spirit to Pulse again... and suddenly all the roots that even now spread into her muscles, digging painlessly into her bones, the ones that were begining to reach into her skull... they started to somehow interact with more and more Binding Energy.

The black ghost mesh in her skin could now FEEL the Binding Energy, The cords in her eyes let her see the formally invisible power. The seed in her heart was now becoming the focus of the never ending tide of power her Master had provided... and that same Betel Nut was singing out waves of green Nature energy. The song of plants. The Sound of Life.

And as her Master had described, her Cell were forcing that Nature energy to change.

Even as the green mist was hunted by her own body, somehow the dense Binding energy was able to combine with the floating Nature energy her Martial Spirit was generating at the core of her being. The process just... ignored the Blue Fire glowing in heart altogether. It was reaching somewhere, making something.

The new energy was a dense, thick energy... Something that felt right to call 'Green energy', following in her master's footsteps.

While Nature energy was vanishing rapidly, the hunger in her Cells slowly lessening as more and more was created directly into her bloodstream thanks to her Martial Spirit, this new 'Green energy' was a richer color, a thicker mass, and seemed to be drawn into the 'Blue energy' flames over her Betel Nut.

A sudden SPIKE of pain!

If she could shift or move, Tianshi would have screamed!

Within her heart, the Burning Black Betel Nut Marital Spirit had shaken violently... as the bright Blue flame shifted. Dimmed. Changed.

And became a bright, Emerald Green.

Instantly her body seemed to double the Binding energy absorption rate. Power was being hurled down the root network into her now bright green glowing Martial Spirit, and from the Emerald flames a new, CLEAN Nature like energy flooded her body. Like some strange obstruction had finally found the true path, an impossible blockage cleared and reinforced, her Martial Spirit seemed to glow with pride as the root network expanded and explored her new system.

The raw hunger was still there, even as the Green energy began to flow and feed her desperate body... but if she could, Tianshi would smile.

The Binding energy was what her Martial Spirit needed to heal and recover, that was clear now... but this Green energy was what she needed to grow. Before, all that early Nature energy was being generated and sacrificed, desperate to generate even a thin wisp of blue Binding energy flame over her Martial Spirit for her body to gather... But now?

She could see her body in meditation form, her skin glowing as the GREEN energies began feeding the many starving Cultivation Cells. Converting the surrounding cells at astronomically faster rates than before, shifting and nurturing her progress and potential... it was beautiful. It was growth. Life.

As Tianshi tried to not wince from the many pains that even now were recovering, as she observed her body finishing its transformation process... she knew this had all been worth it. The doubt, the fear, the dangerous travel, the disdain... finding her Master had been an act of luck, chance, fate and destiny!

Her gaze grew serious as she slowly regained the ability to move.

She would eventually prove that his faith in HER was worth it as well.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam blinked as he felt a pulse of... something.

Huh... his disciple now felt like a tropical island instead of a smoldering volcano.

That was neat.

Right, focus. He was brushing against the upper edge of Second Order, 99% until finally reaching Third Order Warrior and (one day) the first bottleneck of Houtian Cultivation, the barrier between Third an Forth Order.

What was interesting was the shifting occurring with his spiritual network. The closer he came to starting the new meridian route and hitting Third Order, the closer the two existing spiritual networks twisted together.

He was stuffed with food, had a Cultivation Formation filled with Blue Energy, and was sitting on a disposable cloth to keep his meditation room mostly clean from any impurities.

Focus.

Adam felt his Seven Pulse Cultivation Method cycle frantically, somehow speeding up further as the Battle Qi in his second spiritual river began solidifying into a new series of tubes. The many meridian nodes, already expanded from his First Order advancement, began to swell once again as his Soul and flesh felt pressure, far too much pressure... the gas like Qi was hurtling along the cultivation routes, all seven paths hitting ridiculous speeds as the cycles completed ever more rapidly...

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!CRACK!CRACKCRACKCRACK!

Adam felt raw pain and accidentally spewed fire streams of blue liquid from his open jaws as the massive amount of flowing energy cracked away from the second enclosed meridian route, the final of three networks of new channels carved into his Soul, his flesh, his Cultivation directly!

There were now two Cultivation networks fully enclosed and filling with compressed Battle Qi energy, like bendable crystal tunnels sparkling in his body. The third new network was a raw wound, but still was managing to bind and twist between and around the existing two. A strange woven pattern emerged even as the three meridian routes continued to twist and twirl until the new product looked like a spiritual braid of cultivation foundations.

Three meridian paths, two sealed and growing in size, pressure, and stability as Blue energy rapidly converted into more Battle Qi and was rapidly stored away, the final meridian route an open river that was weak, tender, and oh... so dry.

Adam could actually WATCH his body begin to improve, the flesh consisting of Cultivation Cells being cleansed by the frantically supplied Binding energy, Blue energy, and his own Battle Qi. The massive reserves of energy swirling over his skin was now flowing inward like a hole had opened in the world, a baptism of heaven and earth spiritual energy cleansing his recently emptied system.

It hurt. The shifting of his existing cultivation networks was not a good feeling. Nearly felt like Soul damage.

It blessed. The new network forming around the two previous creations added stability. Structure. Support. Energy paths too weak and badly formed were straightened, redirected, enforced, improved!

Again, Blue energy and Battle Qi flooded the body and Soul as Adam tried to recover from the experience. The new impossible river (What stream could flow in something that could travel upside down and in a spiral?) was binding the entire mess into something MORE than just a spiritual construct. Just by existing some parts of his body would no longer UNDERSTAND the concept of decay or falling apart. The spiritual components of this slowly developing foundation acted like a conceptual anchor. A 'Foundation' indeed.

No wonder the next, future step was a bottle neck point during cultivation. The next level of progression would require breaking free of this three rope foundation, something so strong and self-reinforcing... it was not a surprise that others could fail at this. It also made sense that any failure at attempting to advance would drastically lower your chance at future success, as this cord of spiritual support would react to any damage by attempting to grow stronger and defend itself.

Adam nodded. Best to have 'Research' design a 'Houtian Realm Fourth Order Essential Cultivation Method' first, something to ensure a high success rate instead of hoping each person's Martial Spirit and energy gathering skills would be enough to brute force their advancement. This first foundation was probably strong enough to have no issues, but better safe than sorry.

A crackle had Adam summon his Shard... just as it shattered again, revealing it had grown ever so slightly once more.

It looked like a true physical object now, his energy crystal seemed to bend light itself when something got too close... and it felt heavy. Conceptually heavy, at this point.

Well, according to Healer Jin, growing more defined and larger was normal.

For Animal related Martial Spirits. Not Object-like ones.

Even so it was probably fine. Damn it, it better be fine.

...Were those tiny eyes? Did his damn Shard have tiny, cute, anime eyes!?

With determination, Adam released his Shard back into his heart.

Right, ignore that disturbing topic for now. How was his Domain range when not in use?

A quick examination... yep, as expected Adam could apply a new Domain covering a range of nine feet or three meters from his heart when not cultivating.

WHILE cultivating, his Domain was so large it was hard to tell... but in general, around three times initial volume maybe?

More importantly, he had guessed correctly on a different issue: The Shard could now easily store a hundred times the amount of energy internally than as a First Order Warrior, or in other words ten times the amount he could at Second Order. If the pattern held, every stage would vastly increase Adam's ability to save up power for dangerous experiments, or breaking through bottle necks, or to make refilling those damn circles less annoying.

A sharp sting made Adam wince. Couldn't USE that storage space yet, his body was devouring energy as fast as he could shift it around. Both 'swirls' he had carefully nurtured over the last few months were empty and had collapsed entirely, all three meridian routes (He was going to call it the spiritual cord network since the three twisted together so much) were dry of power, and his Shard seemed to have absorbed all the backup emergency energy reserves while it was improving itself.

Thankfully the cultivation formation was still half full of power, even as the Seven Pulse Method desperately dragged in more Blue energy for conversion and distribution to his thirsty Cultivation Cells and meridian routes.

With some caution, Adam risked a chance and opened one eye... Oh? Wonderful!

As the new meridian route was VERY close to the previous two before they all swirled up together, the amount of material the path had to carve through and purify was much less than the previous two advancements! Yes, he was covered in nasty smelling black slime, but it was WAY less than expected. Not much of a mess at all!

Adam tried to stand and go get the nearby bucket to clean himself, tripped because his legs had fallen asleep, nearly caught his clothing on fire because of his own cursing and bad language, and then just gave up and lay on the floor for a few minutes considering how frustrating life could occasionally be.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam tried not to grumble as he searched for better clothing options.

Because complaining could leave him nude if he wasn't careful.

Why. WHY had he worn his favorite outfit when breaking through to Third Order?

It was the closest thing to a basic 'shirt and pants' combo he had found so far, the official uniform was more robe-like and everything else was all strange feeling.

No industrialization meant no zippers, and elastic was mostly used for elite noble stuff, expensive and strange looking... So most outfits used buttons or tiny cloth strips for tying together sections of the various outfits.

Which would be fine, but everything Adam could find had odd sleeves, or lace, or those bizarre ruffles. Was this a fashion thing? He was terrible at fashion.

Eventually he gave up and wore the annoying official uniform. It fit well enough, and most importantly it was resistant to high heat... so if he coughed or something it should survive the experience. Hopefully.

With a sigh, Adam sat back on his (Now clean) meditation formation and got back to work.

Filling his three spiritual networks (one still open) was easy enough after a few hours of cultivation. Refilling the far larger meditation formation took the rest of the night.

Now? He had to fill the massive emptiness that was his Shard internal reserves.

It honestly may take weeks if he wanted to cultivate towards Forth Order as well. For now he wanted to at least get it 10% restored, so he would have the same energy levels available as he did before reaching this stage of advancement... maybe the improved 'Growth' effects could handle it from there.

Right, the three Shard modes ('Research', 'Growth', and 'Purification') did NOT count as Martial Spirit innate skills. They were just general effects caused by his Shard, and as such the improvement of his Martial Spirit had effects on those modes as well.

When not actively cultivating, a lesser version of 'Purification' automatically worked on Adam's blood and lungs. The Blue energy flames he breathed were formed from the breakdown of other types of heaven and earth energy that he randomly breathed in... theoretically the fumes, smog, flames and liquid fire were all helpful for other cultivators.

It seemed gross though, so Adam wasn't going to tell anyone. No, you can't collect my flame spit. Sickos.

'Research' passively augmented his brain, though at a slower and weaker rate than activating his Shard directly... and 'Growth' was internally directed, duplicating energies stored within Adam's Shard by grinding away weaker heaven and earth spiritual energies in a similar way that 'Purification' did.

At this point he was pretty sure that both 'Purification' and 'Growth' were somehow interacting with each other... that the odd bits that were cleansed via 'Purification' were then passed to 'Growth' to work with in his Shard. It was a bit tricky to tell though.

With a slight grumble, Adam buckled down and began cultivating more energy to fill up his Shard with what he could. Not having two processed and growing energy swirls really slowed this whole process down. At least the massive increase in Domain size allowed far more energy to be captured and processed.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sister Tianshi grinned at Sister Quan. "Do you think I can talk to Master now!?"

The woman seemed... unsure. "Maybe... if you truly don't share that strange energy type connection. Can you show me the new flame on your Martial Spirit?"

With a nod, Tianshi focused, holding up her hand... and her Betel Nut didn't appear.

With a slight sting, a black root surfaced from her hand. The thin vine glowed with Green energy flames.

They both stared at the thing.

Tianshi coughed. "Right, my Martial Spirit sort of planted itself in my heart and grew vines in my everything. This still counts, right?"

If anything, Sister Quan seemed MORE conflicted. "I... I don't know? Martial Spirits shouldn't evolve like this until you reach Forth Order I think, but then again you still HAVE your Betel Nut right? In your heart?"

Sister Tianshi was distracted, like most seven year olds would be. "Huh, what does this do?"

A bright BLUE root surfaced from her hand next to the black one. The bright Blue energy fires glowed. "Oh. That takes about the same amount of energy as my Green flames. What about this?"

Sister Quan was too late, but she tried. "STOP EXPERIMENTING! I need Department Lead Jin to make sure you're medically stable!"

Little Tianshi blinked, missing the yell, as a transparent root surfaced next to the two others. The Binding energy flame was invisible to everyone else except her, the black network filling her eyes letting her bask in the strange glow. "Huh. Making a Binding energy flame takes double the energy as my Emerald one. Guess that makes sense, normally half of that mix is some other power type."

She felt a gentle smack on the head as Quan glared. "Stop. Doing. Stuff."

Flinching slightly, Tianshi sighed. "Sorry Elder Sister Quan, I was just so curious and... and." She blinked, her hand half way through her hair. "Why can my spiritual Martial Spirit touch my physical hair?"

The roots continued poking her head unconcerned as Sister Quan groaned in frustration.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Third Elder Cho just... put the reports down.

And sighed.

At least all the tests done WITHOUT Adam or his strange disciple were going fine. No strange changes, no jumps in cultivation base, all expected estimates and theoretical improvement rates matched the data models. A few children were starting to have hair color changes, but that was expected in the jade slip notes.

Her hand gestured and her service staff offered a green drink. It was a favorite, fruity but with a hint of spiritual energy.

Of course, when one LOOKED at the boy or his young protege, then things went off course. In fact 'There were unexpected events' was damn close to his guard's catch phrase at this stage.

Surviving death, activating his Martial Spirit, repairing his body and generating a dozen unheard of methods and techniques along the way. Reaching Third Order in less than a year while cultivating... and setting up a method for others to do the same. Not to mention a thousand smaller, impossible things as well.

A snap of her fingers had the green drink replaced with an orange one, the raw energy within forcing it to bubble slightly. This one stung to drink, but the aftertaste was warm and settling. It had a constant burn, and normally she only enjoyed these on colder days.

And that little girl. Near trash level Martial Spirit, shared the ultra-rare connection of power with her future Master, and somehow mutated her OWN Martial Spirit into some sort of half spiritual half physical construct. No doubt those strange, observable black roots that now saturated her system would also infiltrate her cultivation routes in the future. Only little Adam would know if this was a boon or a crippling unfixable issue.

With defeat, she snapped again. This drink was blood red, hurt to even be near, and would consume the glass if she waited to long to finish it... But at this point she needed something this strong. Anyone below Third Order Xiantian Warrior would die pretty quickly if they could endure the suffering long enough to drink it. Elder Cho always felt that it tasted a bit like watermelon. But on fire.

Her painful drinking break was interrupted by a group trying to enter the office. HER office. AGAIN. She finished the most recent sip with a settled sigh. "If the people entering are MORE DAMN GUARDS for my protected Sect member, I will literally begin to cut off body parts. If your supporting Elders object, they are next."

She glared at the paused door. "The child has Ninety-Nine Guards. Number one hundred gets castrated."

...The door closed.

Good.

Back to the drink.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam blinked as he exited his room. "Are. There. More. Of. You?" Ooh, only a bit of blue fog! Not bad.

The dozens of guards shook their head. The one closest, a woman in tight heavy armor plating, made some hand signals.

He blinked. "Huh." Didn't know that 'Research' had translated the silent sign language at some point. Possibly while he was under that Enlightenment trance.

A few hand gestures of his own and they exchanged a bit of information.

These ninety-nine guards were mostly here for political reasons, but Third Elder Cho had managed to stop the flood. Otherwise there would have been more.

Adam hummed, blue smog floating away. "Will. Be. Following?"

A LOT of nods.

He shrugged. "Fine."

Now, off to see his fainting Disciple! SOMETHING Interesting must have happened.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam looked through the door.

Healer Jin and Sister Quan were trying to argue SOMETHING with his disciple.

Who was covered in thin black tentacles. Covered in green fire.

The energy being generated felt... lively? Maybe some variation of Nature.

Seeing a seven year old covered in flaming tentacles was a tad unusual though.

Adam coughed. "Hello?"

Oh good, his follower only flinched! As long as she didn't drop into a coma with every word he could work with this.

Might be best to stay calm though, no clue how she would react if he yelled or whatever. "Everything. Alright?"

Judging from the glares, no. Things were not alright.

His Disciple shuffled her feet. "Remember how the 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique' was supposed to safely fail to work when it needed another energy source? My Martial Spirit did something to keep it going instead."

A few quick explanations (rants) later from the two medical professionals, and Adam was pressing his right hand against little Tianshi's forehead.

Her Martial Spirit was previously unable to correctly interact with her, as expected. But when she had reached a high percentage of conversion, the hunger experienced DIDN'T cause the girl to lose focus and stop the process as expected.

Instead, it had awoken something in her Burning Black Betel Nut, the seed germinating and using the girl's cultivation potential and body as a rich planting bed. At this point her Martial Spirit was in a strange symbiotic relationship with his Disciple, unable to be summoned forth as it was partially physical, mostly conceptual.

Those strange black roots were not just feeding sources for the Betel Nut in her Heart, but a support network for both her body and spirit.

Some quick exploration... yes, the first three meridian routes described by the 'Houtian Realm First Order Essential Cultivation Method' were present, black roots following the future placement of her spiritual network.

Hmm. "Please. Practice. This." He handed over a finalized copy of the green jade slip containing 'Houtian Realm First Order Essential Cultivation Method'.

She blinked. "Uh." A blush. "I still can't read yet."

...Right, she was seven. "Sister. Quan. Please?"

The woman huffed. "Only if you confirm she is healthy FIRST. I have never HEARD of a Martial Spirit forming inside a Cultivator physically."

Adam chuckled. "Think. It. Is. Beneficial." He gestured. "Symbiotic. Relationship."

With an unconvinced glare... she sighed. "Very well. Come here, Sister Tianshi. I'll walk you through Adam's Essential Cultivation Method, it is easy enough to learn how to practice."

Adam nodded and walked over to Healer Jin. "I. Reached. Third. Order."

The grandfather like man nodded with a soft smile. "We heard! Congratulations are certainly in order."

He watched the woman teaching the girl how to absorb natural energy from the heavens. "I. Wish. To. Revisit. Knowledge. Repository."

Seeing the confusion, Adam continued. "To. Design. Fourth. Order. Essential. Method."

Well, THAT got some attention. Were these Sect Researchers always in the room? How were they harder to notice than those guards!?

Whatever. Adam had contribution points and he wanted to go spend some.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The Sect Store was both awesome and worthless.

Maybe Adam's attitude was a bit down because of the ninety-nine followers being 'subtle' and 'unnoticeable' as Adam moved around. At least Sister Quan didn't seem to notice them, so they were doing something right... Well, whatever.

Most of the stuff in the store was beyond worthless to Adam. He didn't need medical assistance improving his cultivation, these resources were mostly different spiritual energy type containers of varying quality. If other people could just rip out and store Spiritual Energy like Adam could, they would also find 80% or more of the products on sale to be worthless and lower quality.

That said, one of the more useful items was not only expensive but fairly rare: A Spiritual Stone. They varied by quality, but were natural occurring resources where stones were saturated by heavy flows of energy over long periods of time, conceptually modifying the rocky material into harder stuff that could save up that same power for Cultivators to use in formation arrays and while cultivating.

To Adam's eyes, it was different. Not quite Dust Crystals by any means, there were strange patterns and swirls of spiritual energy carved into the rock by the vast forces and pressures the material was exposed to underground. With approval from a higher up, the Sect Store actually revealed more powerful Spirit Stones to Adam for review, even if his low status in the Sect would normally require a lengthy proving period of loyalty first.

The more established this stone swirl was, the more powerful the energy. And the reason these stones vanished after use was how the power was released. When outside spiritual energy was applied to the stone, the edges would destabilize and release a portion of power by grinding away a section of spiral pattern.

Could he make these?

Maybe. Not at his current cultivation level though. Not without waiting hundreds of years while focusing his entire efforts and concentration on a small rock.

Lots of neat seeds though, which were far cheaper than the resulting plants and herbs because most cultivators didn't have the patience or ability to actually grow them. Some spiritual tree clippings were also available...

Well. He had to wait to get approval to access the second floor of the Sect Repository Pagoda anyway (BOO! DATA MUST BE FREED!)... and he hadn't had a chance to visit the Orphanage's protected garden either...

It should be fun!

Adam smiled as he began buying many various plants and handing them off to his massive goon squad of guards. Might as well make them carry this stuff and be useful.

Now, what memories did he have of Sect growing knowledge? Obviously 'Research' hadn't been focused on perfecting that data mess previously, so it would take a while to translate the goop of fancy gobbledygook into something usable. Like many careers, this branch of study had a whole lot of raw memorization due to how many plants were out there and how important their various handling methods were.

He hummed, ignored the blue smoke wafting away, and continued buying random things. Oh, a basic storage ring? Far smaller than the ones probably available on higher floors, and it cost a TON of points... why not. Things like this was probably why no one had pockets in their clothing. It was a few square feet of space (Cube) that... well, no idea how it worked really. Ooh, auto-resize for the user!? Why don't they put THAT on clothing?

He ignored the complaining eyes of his guards and continued to pass more purchase to their arms rather than stuff his new ring with random crap like that.

Maybe he could even buy some land to grow a bit of something for himself. A place to relax, if nothing else... yeah, that would be useful.

With a mental nod, he ensured 'Research' would cross reference the growing needs of the many plants with what Formation information and advancements he had gathered so far. If he was going to plant things, might as well add in some conceptual work to make the plants protect themselves and encourage growth, purification, blah blah blah. A bit of green life would also help his little Disciple in the future, based on what he could feel from her Martial Spirit.

Ooh, more plants!

He ignored the quiet groans of his guards as he bought more and more stuff. How fun!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

He leaned around the corner. "He's buying more stuff."

The sales assistant pouted. "I can't believe my shift ended RIGHT AS HE WALKED IN! The Burning Sage himself, spending points like they were worthless! Sister Zho's commission is going to be insane!"

Brother Chen hummed. "Oh... did he just buy a Sect Storage Ring?"

Her mouth dropped. "That... doesn't that cost 3,000,000 points?"

He shook his head. "That is the full model, with the ability to keep materials within preserved. Easily 13,000,000 contribution points."

The assistant frowned... and nodded. "We are making her buy drinks tonight. I know I've been forced to pay up on a big payday."

Brother Chen snorted. "We should be making her buy a bar or two, the boy is wandering over to the rare vegetation area. If he was allowed to the second purchasing floor, Sister Zho might have been able to retire at this rate."

Both fell quiet as the blue haired Sage casually picked up a dozen plants worth more than a year's paycheck without a pause, passing them to strange ghost-like guards that would vanish somewhere for some reason.

At least this was entertaining.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sister Tianshi tried to focus on the instructions provided by Sister Quan (Again) as she reinforced the method she was supposed to follow (again) to reach First Order Warrior level and establish a solid cultivation base (AGAIN). Again.

But... it seemed simple enough. Sure she couldn't read that jade slip herself yet, and that may cause problems eventually... but after seeing the images from the cultivation slip directly she realized that the needed paths were already outlined.

By her roots.

With an nod, she refocused. "Yes Sister, I will be careful."

Sister Quan looked at her... and sighed. "You zoned me out while I was talking, didn't you?"

CRAP! "Uh... No?"

Department Lead Jin chuckled, the nice old man patting her shoulder. "Let the girl try first before starting your explanation again. The other children had no issues, I'm sure little Tianshi will do just fine."

The older woman bit her lip... then pulled the child into a tight hug. "You be careful, Adam and I would feel terrible if anything goes wrong." She paused. "Well, I would feel terrible and Adam would probably ignore the problems and fix you by accident, but you know what I mean."

The girl gave a weak smile, warmth thick in her chest... and settled into a meditative form, sitting on the floor and focusing.

Her hungry cells had feasted for days up till now, her body nearly tripling in weight as the massive amount of material reinforced her bones, bulked up her muscles, and added structure to her organs. The 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique' WAS a body cultivation method after all, if would be STRANGE if she hadn't been enhanced far more than any normal seven year old.

Her Martial Spirit Pulsed... and bright Emerald Green energy began to flow along a circular path.

As her body tried to pull the energy off path, to be absorbed into her body and improve her abilities even further... the black roots on that same meridian route tugged the Green energy back on path.

Before she could blink a whole cycle was completed... then another, and another!

A green crystal like surface coated one of her many, many black roots. With those strange structures already established within her body, there was no stretching or straining, no pain or difficulties. Her cultivation route was already established, it just needed her Green energy to create the 'riverbed' that Adam had talked about... it almost fell into place automatically!

Before Tianshi could react, the Green energy compressed into thick Battle Qi mist and SMASHED into her black root filled meridian route, the stable and now established spiritual network path eager to accept both the freshly created Qi and the still flowing Green energy her Martial Spirit generated!

Her heart sped up as the excitement made her want to dance! Every cycle came more and more easy, even as she felt a different type of emptiness begin to ever so slowly fill up... she was a First Order Warrior now, and her energy was already trying to fill her meridian route with the needed energy to progress more!

A sharp CRACK made her look internally, seeing her Betel Nut... every so slightly open. As if to one day sprout... and the Green energy produced doubled!

Her limbs wanted to punch something.

She wanted to jump!

Sister Tianshi wanted to feel the sun! Activity! To feel Life!

A slight shift suddenly made the thick, stinky material coating her body crack slightly.

...Sister Tianshi wanted a bath.

Sister Quan and Healer Jin were both cheering. "Congratulations!" and "Well Done!", as if she wasn't a smelly dirty little person right now.

...Sister Tianshi wanted a hole to hide in.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam blinked.

Uh. "Garden. Is. Huge."

Sister Quan paused in fussing over a very embarrassed little Tianshi, who was not sure how to handle so much positive reinforcement. Apparently, while she still needed to save up Battle Qi to reach each new Order of advancement, cultivation advancement itself was no problem. There was no reason for confusion or mistakes, because her Martial Spirit Routes were even now exploring all the various paths her meridian routes may follow and were slowly consolidating into the correct ones.

Not by choice or whatever, but by the nature of how spiritual networks develop naturally. The cultivation routes were the most efficient and easy method for spiritual energy to flow in a way, so eventually roots would follow similar paths. Probably.

It all matched up to what Adam's 'Research' suggested, anyway. She couldn't skip ahead or try and build the various cultivation tubes out of order or whatever, but there would be no pain and no 'carving new paths' for HIS disciple. Her Betel Nut roots did that all at once, as far as he could tell.

How this would affect her Martial Spirit evolution stages? Or the innate skill unlocked at Forth Order? No clue, but apparently the Third Elder was very interested in knowing.

At some point Adam wanted to meet the woman, busy as she clearly was.

Right now though, all he could think about was... how large things were in this Realm.

This 'garden' was more like a massive plantation. In every direction there were strange formations, crop rows, trees planted in odd places, and so forth. The massive protective walls they had just passed through to reach this place just... went off into the distance, both directions.

Thin, near invisible cords were in a grid far up in the air, 'invisible' Orphanage Guards making their way on patrols. Security formations at the gate had been so thick it had an actual TASTE when walking through them... and the energy being absorbed and released inside this paradise was heart pounding.

Healer Jin was resting, leaning on a strange cane Adam hadn't seen before. Was it covered in oil?

The man spoke up. "We support the Orphanage for obvious reasons of course, but also to ensure the medical plants best suited for our needs get priority handling and planting each year. Obviously, with a Sect as large as ours, we need quite a bit of space for things to properly grow."

Disciple Tianshi had escaped the fussing of Sister Quan at some point and was now hiding behind Adam, causing the older woman to pout.

Hmm. "Could. I. Get. Area. To. Grow?"

The Healer nodded. "It won't be near the entrance, but we have numerous plots of land for Medical students and future Gardeners to learn how to maintain spiritual crops without wasting effort and resources when they inevitably make mistakes. If a Medical or Gardener fails enough attempts, their allocated plot becomes available for someone else... I think it is this way."

Adam followed with caution, making sure not to touch any of the glowing formations they passed. Sister Quan pointed. "These are the short term cultivation sections, each year the oldest row gets harvest and the next one is planted."

He waved to the left. "Parsnips?"

She grinned. "Normal food of course is grown outside the walls, those will reach 10th year quality grade before they get collected. Deeper in the garden are the areas that get harvested every decade, every century, and so forth. More security there of course."

Healer Jin hummed. "My personal garden is much smaller of course, but thanks to my ancestors hard work is still becoming more valuable by the day. And rumors imply that the Patriarch himself has access to a Sect Leader only area with herbs over 10,000 years old!"

Sister Quan shrugged. "Those are dangerous to work with anyway, they can begin to transform into creature-like forms and escape. I've even heard some heaven quality pills were once found that had aged for SO LONG they could transform into tiny people and talk. Stuff like that is far too dangerous for our orphanage to handle, obviously."

Huh. So if Adam wasn't careful, his relaxation garden might wander off. Or try to eat him.

Thank goodness he was warned, his experiments had a history of getting out of hand as it was without random trees running away. Better be careful 'enhancing' the various herbs too, even if he found a way to improve them a lot Adam didn't want to watch a field of screaming onions being harvested or something.

The environment so far was pretty normal, at least compared to a few more distant land plots. A few had strange formations (Thanks 'Research' for storing this memory for later review) that changed the light levels, modified the humidity, or even attracted certain categories of energy... at a terribly slow rate.

Eventually though, Adam realized that after four hours of walking... they were no where CLOSE to leaving the 'low quality' herb area.

Damn this place was big. The distant wall wasn't even visible... and that darker area may just be different plants, not the actual edge of the planting zones.

...Bet he could do something neat with such a large space.

With a grin, 'Research' began carefully adding observational data as the group passed these oh so interesting (and maybe restricted information) formations.

Since he hadn't been able to visit the Repository, this would have to do.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam really needed to update what he considered the size of this Sect to be. They were still in the garden. Still in the 'low quality' zone, having passed... oh so many fields at this point.

There were rest houses. That had supply trains to ensure the various Sect members that took care of each plot were supplied.

The wall wasn't even visible at this point, long since vanished into the distance.

It had been five. Damn. Days. of walking. Rest stops, sure. But still, a work week back on Earth Bet just to get to the unclaimed plots of land.

No wonder everyone was alright with Adam taking a spot, for an enemy to get THIS far undetected was near impossible.

Worst of all, there were apparently tamed Spirit Beasts used to either pull loads or fly directly available to Sect members to get in and out of the area quickly... but not available to Adam's group. Because it was a 'short walk'. Less than two weeks? Suck it up and get some exercise!

Apparently Grade 3 beasts would fly members into the middle to high grade growth areas, because otherwise it would be annoying to get supplies in and out. As it was, there were assigned servants including grounds keepers and chefs at every single field staying at the provided 'Sect Farm Housing'.

...And this massive stupid garden was WITHIN the Sect's protective walls. Walls that made this garden's protections seem pathetic in comparison.

Adam winced as he meditated, feeling another part of his body shift slightly as the Cells' moved a bit, reforming into a more efficient and healthy pattern.

He was now responsible for an entire plot, consisting of a hundred fields, thousands of assistants, and so many formations. His Disciple was staying in his facilities, as was Sister Quan. Healer Jin was picked up by a massive bird of some sort, as he had actual responsibilities apparently.

There were large quantities of metal supplied by Adam's request, along with all the formation information he was allowed to access at this time. 'Research' may or may not have supplemented the provided data, by using Adam's energy sensing ability to map out ALL the formations detected in the fields they passed on the way here... and it provided some interesting nuggets of wisdom.

First of all, the visible formation patterns were mostly pointless. Complicated, sort of useful, and all that... but obviously for a big field, the visible ring of metal couldn't easily effect the stuff within. Most of that surface crap was monitoring methods and alerts.

No, using his Shard Adam was able to map out the good stuff... a complicated grid of formations buried under the farming soil.

Mostly the pattern was basic and repeated, only a small section near the farm houses were really interesting... the stuff in the fields just applied effects and distributed energy, the 'control hub' handled variables. Soil moisture content levels, ambient heat, wind speed, allowed percentage of moisture during rainfall, so on and so forth. All controlled by that massive mess located near the various buildings.

Since Adam had access to dozens of fields, he had some room to work with and ideas to test!

Step one though... use his Shard to drain all that energy, get the servants to dig it all up, and gather those formation materials while 'Research' provides some testing and design thoughts.

Just shoving power into the plants may make them dangerous to others, but the current designs for one way energy circles and energy circles were annoying when scaled up. Lots of detailed bits needed to be added that would SUCK when made a certain size or larger, and the existing pattern would change with every inch increase with radius.

In comparison, the formations for the fields were 100% identical segment to segment if you ignored the control hub... large amounts of material could be smacked into shape with this design and deployed to OTHER fields if too much was created. Could be stored for later if the field was damaged and a section of formation needed replacement.

Adam relaxed in his room, having set up little Tianshi with her cultivation circle and filled up the energy reserves.

He had time to plan, the field workers would need weeks to clear out a single field of soil into various storage rings anyway... and having some time to relax, cultivate to fill up his Shard's internal energy reserves, and ensure his Disciple wasn't having issues with her OWN cultivation... it all sounded nice.

It was a LITTLE annoying that he was being 'put out to field' because the Sect needed time to duplicate his results, instruct more people in Adam's methods, and stop Adam from rebuilding MORE of their culture and history until things could settle down a lot... but whatever.

Now if he could just convince the 99 morons outside to do something useful besides stand around like statues. 'Guarding him', sure. THAT was a good use of time.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

...Relaxing free time sucked. God this was boring.

Adam eventually just sat at the edge of the nearest field, watching field hands dig up rich soil and vanish it into the various rings. Had to ask Sister Quan to send someone to the Sect Shop, since apparently no one ELSE used such expensive goods as fancy wheelbarrows before, but Adam had the points and it sped things up a lot.

So now instead of a slow, mind numbing crawl of progress... well, it was still that, but faster.

He took another sip of the provided drink.

Also, he couldn't talk again. Not without scaring all the low cultivation base workers here. 'Silent watcher' was less terrifying than 'nice napalm breath boy'. And there was FAR too much work to be done for Adam to do it himself.

...He had tried to move the dirt using the nature energy gathered within it, an it just stripped the power away for processing. Same issues with trying to apply Blue energy to melt soil into something usable for formations, at least so far.

With a massive wait still needed before Adam could even begin his 'Research' testing, he was basically wasting time and trying to duplicate Spirit Stones.

Side Note: Don't use normal rocks. The explosion only gave Adam mild wounds because most of it vaporized, and the few shards of rock removed from his hand weren't a problem because his Cells just... shifted back into place. Wound healed, yeah! Got a long rant from Sister Quan about it though.

Now, Adam was trying to duplicate the energy pattern FIRST, before injecting it into... anything. the few sample Spirit Stones he had bought were similar designs internally, but had enough difference that he could experiment a little and keep 'Research' busy while watching people dig up dirt and rocks and stuff.

Bit of an odd side effect, the normally invisible spiritual energy Adam gathered into that strange Spirit Stone pattern would end up glowing a visible light. The swirling patterns that circled Adam's left wrist each glowed certain colors depending on the type of energy gathered up into the pattern.

Not stable though. Otherwise Adam could gather some samples and have an 'Energy Type Detector' device to sell the Sect. Sure, 'Research' would figure it out eventually... but for now each energy seemed to require slightly different 'Spirit Stone' patterns and sizes to be stable.

Adam glanced back at the nearly nonexistent process as the massive field. At least this was more interesting than watching dirt get shoveled.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

An angry fist SLAMMED onto her desk. "You can't HIDE him from us!"

Third Elder Cho carefully hid a smirk as she took another sip of tea. "I'm not sure what you mean."

The other Elders in her office were mostly passive, but Sixth Elder Hawn was turning a terrible shade of red. "That brat can redevelop techniques in moments to be easier to learn and more powerful. Within a week we could revitalize massive sections of the Sect! Your selfish actions will not be tolerated!"

She hummed. "Again, I hear a lot of volume but no explanations. Can you attempt to sound less mentally handicapped and more like a respected Elder of our Sect?"

What a lovely expression. "Don't you try this shit. It was bad enough when you gave discounts on all that child's work to your own people, you can't just hide him away at your damn farm like a golden goose!"

Screw it. She let out a smile. "That is incorrect."

The man paused, confused. "What?"

Elder Cho snapped her fingers, her people passing out a report. "I did not grant myself or my people discounts on the many products and so forth produced by young Adam. Actually, I never met the child myself at any point."

She smirked as the documents were read. This probably didn't count as a trap, if Sixth Elder Hawn had reacted like someone not high on various substances. "Young Chongsheng Adam himself requested that anyone who supported him in his time of need would receive such discounts, and approved the final list after a report of who supported his recovery and who chose to focus their time and resources elsewhere."

She hummed. "I'm sure you remember my requests for assistance, I did notify everyone here and several others outside this group of the urgency involved. Young Adam even offered the same discount to those who provided protective services after his recovery."

She glanced at the crowd... and the few that didn't have enough emotion control to hide how angry they were at having aligned with Sixth Elder Hawn. Meanwhile, the few that had supported the boy out of spite against that stupid village were trying to not be TOO smug. THEIR people were benefiting at this point. "In fact, I believe you were noted to be a firm opponent to supporting the child back when he was heavily crippled. Something along the lines of 'Let trash rot as is its nature' or so I recall. You also gathered a consensus that I was not allowed to use Sect funds while attempting to heal the child until significant recovery progress could be determined."

And mustn't that smart, knowing that a random side job and attempt at attacking her position accidentally offended the new 'Burning Sage' prodigy. Adam didn't even KNOW about Sixth Elder at this point, and was already getting revenge just by wanting to play with some plants. Not that he knew that.

The man tried to wave all the facts away. "The child is WASTED in the mud out there, get him back to the Sect, send him to the Sect Repository of Knowledge Pagoda, and let him support the Sect that gave him so much already!"

Her eyes hardened slightly. "Ah, it is unfortunate he wasn't able to visit the Repository again. I believe someone had requested a meeting with the child before being allowed to access more information... and that the floors were full enough as it were, considering how many of your people happened to have visited that day." Ignoring his unhealthy look, she sipped her drink. "Thankfully, young Adam found another passion while busy that day and has decided that the 'mud' you hold with such contempt could be quite interesting."

The other Elders, mostly here for the show, perked up as she continued. "Young Adam has decided to put his astounding Formation Skills to use in improving the gardens themselves. We've allocated an entire plot to the child, a number of assistants, and a large amount of resources for him to use in his experiments."

Elder Hawn spat in rage. "Worthless! You DARE to decide on this without consulting us Elders first! And to allow a resource like this to spend time with non-cultivators and servants, to mingle with such lowlifes! Let the orphan wastes sludge through the filth, there are too many of those commoners out there already."

She did NOT look at the Sixth Elder. "As the new activities do not require the involvement of other Sect members as research targets and this recent interest will take much longer for the boy to show progress with, the Patriarch himself has decided to encourage the boy in an attempt to gain some time for our people, to better understand the many advancements granted to our Sect already, and to hide him from the many who would target such a valuable Sect. Member."

A glare. "Not. A. Resource."

Stunned at the Patriarch being involved, Sixth Elder Hawn lost a lot of his bluster. "Bah, an Outer Disciple should be happy to be our resource."

It was a weak argument, and everyone knew it. The reclusive Sect Patriarch being involved AT ALL was basically end of argument. Nothing could counter it, and failing so badly and so publicly would heavily impact Sixth Elder Hawn's pride and reputation.

She idly wondered how many favors and secret deals he had to spend and make to set up this meeting. Hopefully a large number.

A glance and her People began moving the paperwork back onto her desk. "Well, this was a lovely time Elder Hawn, but I am afraid I must call our time to an end. Unlike some people, I have useful and productive things to do with my time rather than scream like a drunken gang meat-shield about something that doesn't concern him."

She smiled. "Please be careful when leaving, I've heard incompetence makes it difficult to operate doors and such."

Let's see if he slams her office door on the way out NOW. Either way would be entertaining.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam made another pattern for 'Research' to use as a testing area, this one field would be split up into many small sections so Adam wouldn't have to wait forever for the NEXT field to be evacuated just to attempt a different set of tests.

The massive, repetitive sections of metallic formation patterns were... odd. 'Research' considered these things as... really really extended connection marks.

When making a three dimensional formation pattern, these connection marks were like power lines either connecting two networks together or being used to carry activation signals or whatever. The odd part though was the squiggly bits attached to this connection mark.

From what he could tell, this section here was trying to use a fragment of passing power to repair the structure or at least resist damage. It actively made the formation weaker, but far less likely to dissolve after having power run through this mess for many years. And this swirly part near the middle was a separate energy gathering array, used to ensure that the data provided by the central hub would be allowed to easily pass through without small amounts of energy being consumed in the process, which would drastically reduce the maximum distance these formations could be used.

Each strange node or section of ability tried to tie into the gathering array, but... well, it meant that a good part of this field was only 'Attracting' elemental spirit energy because it was PASSING THROUGH, being sucked up by the materials under the field to power the formation's environmental controls.

That was... so damn wasteful. And also explained why no one had cultivation circles in this Sect even if they had those 'Energy Attraction' Formations. Because that wasn't what they were.

These fields were so damn wasteful that the vacuum of power being pulled CAUSED a weak attraction of energy. The plants of course benefited, but... why would you try to fill a swimming pool while tossing out 99% of the water the entire time!?

Well, the most obvious cause was having no better option. At least the gathered power would roughly stay in the area as it finished its path through the formation. Having this incredibly large, very inefficient garden likely increased the total spiritual energy of the sect by two to three percent.

Hmm. What should Adam aim for then?

A fully sealed system like the Cultivation Circles would just explode eventually. So no.

After some thought, Adam set himself up with some goals.

First: The Formation must be composed of a control hub and an application network, like the other farms.

Second: A double barrier would be set up like a ring around the farm. Each ring segment would act as a wall, the spaces between segments as entrances and emergency energy release areas.

Third: Within those hollow circle barrier segments would be something to purify passing energy. Or just burn off the low level weak energy garbage. Whichever worked better. Over time, the purity of energy near the Sect should increase, while the risk of the same terrible energies being caught in a loop near the growing plants would go down.

Fourth: Fix that damn Control Hub.

Seriously, if the massive identical fragments of Formation in the field were horrible to look at, this Hub was a thousand times worse! Yes, energy waste. Yes, slow changes being applied, some modifications taking months to actually finish activation.

But most importantly? Any modifications to the settings of this entire Formation required draining the gathered energy and disabling it FIRST. Even worse, only a Formations Master was likely to be able to actually modify any of these variables. A very talented one.

The few controls available were not organized, and made no sense logically. Why would the segments related to temperature be near the area controlling sound distortion? No clue. Maybe there was a reason known by someone somewhere, but these things weren't even labeled.

Adam wasn't SURE what he could come up with, but some sort of method to ensure changes to the fields shouldn't be THAT hard. Add some labels, a few physical objects that could safely change the formations sections being activated, a few dozen (thousand) safety additions to the pattern... and theoretically a competent Sect member at any cultivation level could get the environmental setting adjustments done in the future.

He paused... and gawked as 'Research' documented the many patterns displayed of this so called 'Control Hub'.

WHY would the amount of hydration in the soil control the local wind speed!? Why... no, WHO would connect these two sections together in the first place!? And that whole control node was literally connected to nothing, but segments of it was used as some sort of energy overflow buffer to prevent pattern damage. Probably by accident, if 'Research' was correct, since it seemed to be there to hide damage to the air manipulation array instead. Like someone smashed a hole in the wall and thought 'I can hide this with a potted plant!' What the hell.

Looking at the 99 other farms to be excavated, Adam had a sinking suspicion that more such bizarre choices and quick 'repairs' would be found in the next few days.

Right, design something better FIRST, THEN try and determine why a Sect member would attempt to repair a work of art with duct tape and gum. Over the course of years. Sheesh.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

"No."

Another large metallic fragment was tossed aside. The next, near identical section was presented.

"No."

Toss. At least Adam had gotten all the way up to five words in a row with no fire or smoke or whatever.

"No."

Toss. Made communication easier. Well, when calm. At the moment a light blue smoke trail was drifting with each growing word of frustration.

"No... Wait."

Closer look was needed. Matches the theoretical optimal pattern deciphered by 'Research' by over 80%, around 84% maybe. This one was not using lower quality metal, it seemed to have been cooled correctly or at least not shocked into brittle uselessness.

Adam's eye twitched.

The asshole had accidentally flipped one of the near identical formations when applying it. HOW!? Didn't the Sect use a template when making these things!?

"Hell No."

Toss. After considering natural wear and tear from being submerged in soil saturated with random spiritual energy flows, one would think the most intact sections of this grid would be of fairly high quality. Instead, the sheer AMOUNT of formation sections needed for a single land plot alone clearly lowered quality control at some point.

"No."

Toss. Sections of this massive formation had clearly been replaced over the years, the older stuff was both hand forged and somehow better quality than the new, more mass produced stuff.

"No... Huh. Bring it closer."

Hmm. This one was obviously, clearly wrong... but 'Research' detected a different method of connecting two existing segments using this formation. It might lead to an improvement during later design stages.

"Separate odd sections like this." They would need double checking.

The slightly shivering worker gave a frantic nod, and moved away from the growing mound of trash segments to be smelted.

The next field worker moved forward. More mass produced trash, damaged and only useful for scrap.

"No."

Sigh, wasn't this the easy part? Collecting the top soil had required ages just to uncover this aging mass of junk.

Adam continued judging section by section, his attention distracted as he attempted to cultivate while getting stuff done.

There was a reason people separated from others and focused alone in quiet areas to advance their Cultivation base. For most people, distraction is death. The idea of doing ANYTHING while Cultivating was horrifying to most.

But this was so. Damn. Boring.

Over the last week or so his Shard had finally filled up with enough Binding and Blue energy for 'Growth' to easily work with, especially after a few sessions of 'Purification' ensured his Shard internal power storage was cleansed of all that random energy goop. Progress towards the Third Order Barrier or to Fourth was slowly advancing, around 21% already as having a massive and pure supply of energy to work with really helped out a lot.

Anyway, even with the good inputs, 'Research' was using this current, ill-advised series of experiments to see if there was a slower form of Seven Pulse Cultivation Method that would be simple enough to use in the background while Adam was busy with other things.

Thus far? No. Occasionally 'Hell No.' So far this was all just wasted energy and a few near critical issues that 'Research' prevented.

Still, not as boring as doing nothing but this.

"No."

Toss.

A good chunk of progress filling his Shard had been granted by using his powers to rip all spiritual energy out of the Formation. Which uh... really caught Sister Quan's attention. Because the ability to depower a Formation without setting it off was a dream for both the Sect and treasure hunters in general. This culture revolved around finding rare and trapped secrets of the past in various tombs and hidden realms after all, passing on the works of a lifetime to those who can survive your post-death tests.

Not that Adam cared that much, he was just glad he didn't have to wait eight months for the Formation to slowly drain. This was painful enough as it was.

Glancing back at the plot's residence... yeah, Sister Quan was still Cultivating with little Tianshi. The two didn't find Adam's work as interesting, and the little one needed quite a lot of time to build up enough energy to reach Second Order Warrior.

The 'Houtian Realm First Order Essential Cultivation Method' may allow people to reach First Order within a week or less sure, but it didn't reduce the massive time it took to build up enough energy for advancing to the next stage of progress. Though hopefully the Method would make every advancement more easy and less painful than most people suffered through.

Either way, the girls were treating this like a vacation. Adam's work was massively slowed, he didn't need a lot of assistance, and it was boring to watch. Little Tianshi was mostly fine though, since the concept of growing more powerful daily was a big motivating force for his Disciple.

Right, the farmland.

Turns out the soil sucked. Near impossible to tell until someone (Adam) sucked all the spiritual juice out of the dirt first, but this stuff was WAY overworked. Just replacing the surface stuff with fresh non-spirit-saturated tainted soil would give an initial boost to herb growth. Didn't matter over time though, any weaknesses in the soil was handled by the river of spiritual energy that flowed through it daily.

Seeing how rough the materials were under that dead soil was the motivation to just... rip it all up, learn what he could, and design something somewhat useful to replace it with.

The small scale tests were interesting. Too much purified energy actually KILLED these low quality plants. Smothered them, like flooding a field with water when planting the wrong crop. After that 'Research' had Adam designing a custom-ratio spiritual-energy-substitute for the area, to join with 'Research' designing new formation layouts and fertilizer recipes.

Adam didn't really expect the many random animal documents from the bottom of the Knowledge Pagoda to contain so much information relevant to poop in general, but it did provide what he needed when trying to fix the terrible soil quality he was stuck with. Theoretically, in the future, the plant related Martial Spirit of his Disciple could offer some benefits as well...

Eventually. Maybe if she unlocked an innate talent at Fourth Grade that was growth related... but even then, those abilities tend to suck until a few more evolutions of your Martial Spirit. So... years from now? At that point, this whole topic would be fairly well handled most likely, with Adam gnawing on the issue like a dog-bone.

Adam glared. "No. Man, that's a lot of damage." Was this metal not resistant to water damage!? This one Formation Segment was almost all rust!

The Toss was hesitant... Crud, too much talking while frustrated, that was a lot of fire. Calm. Center.

A quick breath out getting the smoke out of his system and he waved the next worker forward.

From the 'quality' of these pieces, would he even be able to trust the smelters and smiths being able to actually build his future designs?

...Shit, was HE going to have to make the parts himself!? That would be so ANNOYING. And a waste of time that could be spent looking at fun stuff instead. Maybe he could... no, that was a lot of work too.

Oh! Right, after getting the designs done he could request some jade slips covering all metal working related techniques the Sect was willing to share. A few refined abilities to manipulate metal and it would be someone else's problem. Maybe going with "I'm just a Third Order Warrior, I can't make all this stuff myself!" Yeah, that would totally work. Brilliant!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Elder Cho frowned. "How went the effort? Allowing that farce of a meeting with Elder Hawn seemed to go as planned."

Her people stayed knelt. "Estimates are still being gathered of what resources he burned to get the Elder Council to gather so quickly and quietly, but at minimum he will suffer three to six years of progress loss from that failure alone. A larger percentage of his staff than expected was attempting to watch his territory... so his outside agents were unguarded."

Her smile slowly grew. "Attrition rate?"

A nod. "A terminal loss of 73%, 24% of other known agents are now firmly under watch and monitored. Other targets are out on missions."

MUCH better than the original estimates. "He must have had high estimations of how that group meeting would have gone. Will he not be an active actor from now on?"

The shadow hummed. "Low chance estimated, and any such attempts should fully destabilize his ability to be a threat in the future. May even lose his position entirely, depending on which scenario he follows."

Well, that was some concern out of the way. "The brat is staying mostly quiet?"

Silently another report was passed over.

...Why metallurgy? Whatever, as long as he is kept busy. "Purchase the needed data from the Repository Pagoda, but use our proxies. I don't want the Sixth Elder trying to interfere with the child any further with his schemes."

The room was empty again, and Elder Cho had to face her greatest foe, paperwork.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Watching the off-duty field workers all sitting in cultivation circles, Adam paused.

Was he NOT supposed to teach this to everyone?

...Well it was probably fine. The important part was that his helpers would become more useful, as advancements in cultivation meant they could lift more, move faster, and get tired more slowly.

That and things were a bit boring right now. Even after getting the requested metal working data.

Adam had torn apart one field and dug deep, but hadn't finalized any designs. No completed ideas.

Because as annoying as it may be, there WAS a good reason to use the old crappy method: Plant Type Environment Enhancement.

Take those terrible 'Absorb all heavenly energy through the soil' Formations, turn them upside down? They become 'Absorb all earthly energies through the soil.'

One pattern, two totally different final growing products. And Adam refused to finish fiddling with stuff until his new design outperformed both, hopefully in a more simple way that was easier to reproduce without his skills by other Sect members. Because he wasn't stupid enough to make himself a required step in a process that may take decades to implement.

So his workers were now handling the other farms in his area plot while Adam fiddled with schematics and randomly corrected the dozen or so off clock farmhands. Little Tianshi might have complained, but she had her roadmap laid out: Keep cultivating using the 'Houtian Realm First Order Essential Cultivation Method'.

Sister Quan had ended up spending some time with the kitchen staff, as she apparently knew the apprentice of Sister Rong that was sent over to handle food for the plot's housing. Wonderful but quiet woman, Adam overheard a massive number of quiet compliments and so forth from the workers here, it was apparently an upgrade to the local cuisine.

He sighed, looking at the pattern. Make something better? Easy. Make something Simple? Easy! Make something with more features? No problem!

All three?

It was taking some time.

With a snort of frustration (Which spewed twin flames of fire that thankfully MISSED his papers), Adam got up to stretch a little.

His muscles may be getting more fit and powerful now that he had more Cultivation Cells to allocate to them, but it wasn't like he had any reflexes or whatever. Not useful ones for a fight. And while he wasn't going to dedicate his life to martial arts, he HAD designed those new Sect Martial Styles... And researched others...

Time to practice the footwork. From what he read, everything relied on those basics.

But... well, his Martial Spirit was a Crystal. Basically a rock. Learning fast footwork or quick attacks really went against his fundamental nature.

From the long list of martial arts he had reviewed (Considered basic and free information because why bother learning something so 'useless'), Adam gravitated toward something called Hung Ga, also called Hung Kuen or Hung Ga Kuen. Translated, it would literally be the 'Immense Fist' style.

It focused on deep, low stances and strong hand techniques like the bridge hand and the tiger claw... from the core, this fighting style was considered basic and focused on brute force. On raw power and stability. Only the advanced levels of the arts progressed towards internal focus, on the Battle Qi that this society thrived on. It was considered worthless for that reason.

Adam just found that it was focused on being stable. Solid.

It resonated with his Spirit in a way, as while rocks may slide and roll and tumble, they did so with force.

...Anyway, it was easier for Adam to adapt to thanks to his 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique' (Version 2.1211). A few meals and some manipulation, and his muscles were easily redistributed to better support the new fighting method. He wasn't a master yet by any means, but it gave focus on what areas needed to be tougher and more reinforced when it came to body sculpting.

And it was soothing in a way. Focusing on each strike, trying to force the body to accelerate and instantly stop, it kept his mind clear and his body from fidgeting.

Adam paused. Again.

Was he allowed to share all those refined martial art methods as well? It was derived from various Sect practices after all.

Glancing at the small group of field workers nearby in the local training area, doing a variety of stances according to the dozen or so martial arts he had already refined and distributed...

...The Sect MAY be giving him too much leeway.

Well, not his problem.

An hour or so later, a much more relaxed and tired Adam sat back at his work area and with a flaming sigh got back to prototyping new field designs.

Who knew this farming thing would take so much time? He hadn't even finished returning the soil back yet (Which would take forever), and Adam was already bored out of his mind!

If this wasted another week of his time, he would just give up and make SEVERAL Formation designs instead of trying to be all fancy with one. It would be much simpler, but the failure would leave a bitter taste in his mouth.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sister Quan entered the meditation room, a jade slip in her hand. "I got it!"

Little Tianshi jumped to her feet! "Let me see!"

She snorted. "Sure, but you still can't read this stuff yet. This is the advanced version of the language used for technical manuals."

The older woman was mostly ignored as the child dove in and grabbed the slip. "The headers and summery never are though, Master wants people to know what they are getting into..."

Sister Quan hummed. "It is an interesting list of martial arts. I recognize some of the forms... but the stances have been organized, and what few things I know are explained much better here."

Tianshi smirked. "Of course! My master is a prodigy after all!" She glared at the slip and carefully used her new cultivation base to access the data. "Still... there are a lot of options here."

Quan herself was considering changing her own training schedule to include one of the listed options that was very close to her own attack style, since this one didn't provide the same headaches and annoyances to work with like the terrible material she first started with back in the day. Clear steps, explanations, massive wording and careful deconstructive cross-examinations...

Well, there was a reason she had already passed a copy up the Sect chain. This was similar to Adam's first review and rebuilding of the 'standard fighting style' provided by the Sect, but expanded with more details about each style, rather than attempting to only show enhanced versions of the Sect's basics. It included some refined information about a lot of styles from the First Floor of the Sect Repository of Knowledge Pagoda, stuff that was normally too dense and useless to work with and thus unpopular.

Here though? Well, Sister Quan quickly recognized how simple the new arts were to teach the local farm workers and asked Adam to document what he was teaching. Since the boy was still waiting for smithy information (Why?), he was happy enough to help out when she got his attention.

Not that the child needed more resources. His contribution points were refilled constantly from his various advancements donated to the Sect, his social pull was growing at an astounding rate (The Burning Sage? Wow.), and his needs were... near nothing. She wasn't sure the boy even remembered what he was giving various funds for at this point.

For Example, the child passed a MASSIVE chunk of contribution points to the Orphanage so that Sister Rong would continue to provide him high quality food and drinks... and that was basically it. Over paid by a stupid margin, didn't care at all and ignored everyone's opinion. The only other cost was the various items he wished to research (Partially subsidized by the Sect, as they loved the results) and the constant supply of jade slips for storing his thoughts and results.

SHE needed more supplies than that. Pills? Spiritually empowered rare dishes? Unknown treasured herbs? Adam was happy with a rich soup and some nice bread. So cheap it was near negligible really, and his cultivation progress hadn't been delayed in the slightest.

Sister Tianshi pulled her from her wanderings. "Sister Quan, I wanna learn this one!"

She blinked. "T'ai chi ch'uan? What an odd name."

The small child was bouncing. "It says that there are variants that can assist when manipulating ice, blood or plant life!"

Huh. Looking at the slips, she decided taking a much more in-depth look herself was a wise choice.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Glaring at his notes... Adam had to give up.

Holding back a tense desire to just KICK THIS WHOLE MESS AND BURN IT, he focused on softer thoughts.

After a week and a HALF of failures, it turned out that it would be best, if he couldn't smush all his desires into one amazing Formation, to split it into FOUR Formations. How frustrating.

One that circled the field, acting as a filter and purification process to make internal manipulation easier. As he wasn't cheating (Lazy past Cultivators) and shoving raw power through the dirt all the time, he needed to separate the field into a bubble of controlled space. This outer boundary acted as a warning system, an area designation method for further modifications, and a storage system that should take unwanted energies for later use.

One Formation focused only on soil modification. Moisture percentage and distribution, mineral and nutrient percentage and distribution, and energy injection from the designated energy reserves. Forcing energy into the plants ABOVE the soil (At least at THESE concentration levels) would just kill everything. Better to let roots do their damn job for once.

Next, the biggest and stupidest Formation, Energy Management. The power supplied by the outside Formation ring was compared to samples stored by Adam in the pattern, those powers needed for the 'Heaven and Earth Spiritual Energy Mix' (Patent pending!) were separated, purified, and ready for the soil Formation to call when needed. The rest of the mixed energies were processed (Hopefully getting some freed energy to shove back into the needed storage areas), stored into a reservoir for potential use, then when that storage area was full released back into nature.

The bulky parts were his pathetic attempts at filtration and purification, as well at 'processing'. Both the filtration and purification patterns were related, and were experimental successes so far after 'Research' studied his personal abilities and the harder to understand Formations from the really old metal farm formation segments. Massively worse at the job than Adam himself unfortunately, it didn't require his input, so... good enough. For now.

Processing however was pathetic. Just smashing the energy flows together and hoping some useful stuff was knocked loose. It was a bit embarrassing to show others, but at least it would work. Probably.

Finally, and least distressing, a Formation for the Control Hub. Compared to everything else, this was simple and easy to use. Some notes above each dial or lever, organized to show the controls for each of the other three Formations, and a few preset 'Default' options so if something goes wrong the whole mess can be brought back to a known 'good' state so others can try and find out what messed up.

All four formations were TEN TIMES larger than need to be, and his finished jade notes showed the nice, small version he had originally designed, that he had wanted to build... but this big bulky mess would be far easier to produce and easier to maintain, possibly even expand in the future.

Which was important, because the new forging and metallurgy abilities he crafted were... well. Both overpowered and almost worthless.

ADAM could now easily smelt massive amounts of material, pour it into molds supported by his Battle Qi as an energy source, and accelerate heating and cooling without damaging the metal's properties (No idea how, physics is odd here). HE could make himself heat proof (No point), enhanced his strength for smithing (Overkill really, and he had no real world skill with hammering or whatever), all these tricks and stuff were simple!

Everyone else didn't have the required level of Qi control, at least according to Sister Quan.

So the final version of the 'Metallurgy Art Techniques' jade slip offered the advanced (impossible) abilities, able to manipulate metal at will and apply high precision techniques... as well as a bunch of inefficient, inelegant, and far less useful variant options. Crappier versions of the skills that could actually be operated by someone with a fire natured Martial Spirit, as Sister Quan showed after some begging by Adam for her to help him test several unstable and experimental abilities.

The healer could now safely melt down a chest sized piece of metal, extract impurities, shift it roughly into a blob shape, and cool it.

Woo.

Meanwhile, his dreams of having Sect Members tap the fields, reforming the entire metallic framework underground without shifting the soil, and letting Adam move on to more interesting jobs was a bit dashed. At least metal workers could use the failed abilities to easily undo mistakes, or use the heat resistant skills and strengthening tricks to just hold the burning metal with their hands while working and not get overheated or sweaty.

That should increase production quality, right? RIGHT?

Sigh.

Adam moved to the massive scrap pile, a tap of his feet allowing his 'Metallurgy Art Techniques' to be primed for use with his prepared blue Battle Qi mist.

His Shard established his Domain over the local area while dozens of mental processes aligned.

"Heat Modification."

The mound of rust and mistakes began softening into a glowing red pile that started to spread. Right, next time move this off the dirt.

A foot tap.

"Refinement."

Eugh, a mound of rust and dirt and terrible metal fillers that someone in the past had added in to 'save money' or whatever began surfacing and falling off the mound. The color of the mess became more uniform as the heat generated had less materials to glow with. At least that went well.

If he hadn't gone through the 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique', he would likely need to apply the 'Heat Resistance' and 'Body Reinforcement' tricks... but his cells loved the high temperatures even if his clothes were starting to smoke a little. Better hurry along.

Stepping back slightly, he tapped once more as his mind continued to apply the tricky 'Heat Modification' skill while many MORE thought processes attempted the next step forward.

"Qi Forms."

Adam winced. DAMN that stung. Even abusing the 'store Qi patterns into memory' trick didn't make operating both skills simultaneously much easier. This was pushing his boundaries quite a bit... maybe Sister Quan had a point about how tricky this would be if not dumbed down.

Then again, most people didn't have his Domain allowing raw information of the materials and the area to be absorbed and processed by 'Research', which helped ensure his skills didn't destabilize and evaporate his lung or something. And Adam's Shard made energy manipulation almost instinctual at this point, so that probably helped too.

Point was, now the mass of metal was flowing into the dozens and dozens of Qi Casting Molds that were forming WITHIN the mound of molten material, ingots of refined material staying liquid in the new containers thanks to the forced temperature levels by 'Heat Manipulation'. Speaking of which.

"Heat Manipulation."

OWW. Oww. Damn that stung.

Note to self, do NOT try to force ingots to cool while surrounded by liquid metal you are forcing to stay hot. The Qi Molds did not restrict the flow of heat from one side to the other at ALL.

That... that had actually hurt to accomplish. The temperatures were fighting each other in a way.

Damn it, he needed some form of telekinesis to get those bricks out of that mess, otherwise they would just stay submerged in that mound of slowly spreading metal. At least he could force the thinnest outer layer to stay solid so it wasn't turning into a flat puddle.

A twinge, and 'Research' made a quick connection... And suggested that Adam change the 'Qi Forms' previously established shape, lengthen a support from below, escape the mound of metal, tilt...

Dozens of ingots fell free onto the nearby grass, 'Heat Manipulation' forcing them to remain only warm to the touch... and allowing Adam to drop that entire Qi matrix.

Instantly his head stopped stinging, the blood from his nose and eyes transforming back into storage mode and returning to his body. Wounds across his body, more than he had originally noticed, shifted back into a healthy formation as the many Cultivation Cells moved back to proper areas or replaced damaged material.

With a relaxed sigh, Adam released all the other skills, a metal shell filled with liquid heat and a mound of refined ingots left over. Also that pile of slag, odd metal additions and dirt and rust and who knows what that made a mess over to the side. Forget attempting to make his own Metal Formation Sections himself, just refining the metal into ingots was annoying. Let others handle that.

As for his new abilities, it would take... practice. Lots of it, to use these newly designed skills without causing his body to decompose while getting stuff done.

Then again, considering that these Qi powered skills would normally require a Shard power to operate at all in his home Realm though, he felt pretty damn proud of his progress right now.

He blinked as Sister Quan walked outside. "Adam, I heard some strange noises out... Why are you naked?"

Right, HE was heat absorbent, his clothing was not. At least his jade slips and storage ring handled the situation with no difficulty.

Adam nodded. "Need stronger clothes."

She sighed. "I would try and get closer but you feel like a furnace."

Right, he should modify the 'toned down' version of these skills to both protect clothing AND not accidentally leave the Sect Warriors utilizing them as walking bonfires after use. Things to note.

...And he should get pants.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Third Elder Cho sighed. "No, you can't move your department there."

The older man grumbled. "Have you even SEEN this thing?" The jade slip was waved. "These 'Metallurgy Art Techniques' change everything!"

She glared at him. "I. Do. Not. Care. The Forging Department is numerous, the hardware requirements are monstrous, and I am being OVERLY GENEROUS letting you visit the boy at all."

Elder Gu glowered up at the woman, his shorter stature offset by his massive muscles and wide frame. "Just... the combat enhancements alone. 'Qi Forms' allows temporary constructs, everything from tool creation to barriers. 'Heat Resistance' can no sell some Sect attacks. And don't get me started on 'Body Reinforcement', I nearly crushed my own anvil testing it!"

She shrugged. "And what will bothering me do for you? That boy creates world shattering treasures and generates mind blowing advancements by ACCIDENT, you need to talk to HIM, not me. You even have permission to visit the lad." With a sigh. "I'll let you bring... SOME materials with you. After review."

She saw him turn towards the piles of crates. "NOT WITH THAT JUNK. I am NOT having you build a massive thousand person forge in the middle of the Sect's garden."

...Was he trying the puppy dog look? "No."

Yeah, that was pouting. "NO."

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

"HELLO THE HOUSE!"

Adam blinked. "Hi?"

The massive pile of things shifted, showing a man with a well trimmed beard and twelve people's worth of muscles. "Are you this Burning Sage then?"

Again. What? "I guess?"

A huge manly hand shook most of Adam's arm as the guy grinned. "I be Eighth Elder Gu, call me Gu! Head the Forging Department, saw your 'Metallurgy Art Techniques', here I be!"

His hand was numb. "That... is nice?"

Loud laughter and a massive arm pulled Adam back towards the farm housing. "It is! I got my people here..." He glared to the right. "Set em up already boys, you need a carved invitation!? Stop slacking!"

Several men (AND women) snapped to attention. "SIR!"

...And now there was a mess outside his temporary housing. The muscled man focused. "Right, my people and I were amazed by this work ye done, wanted to see more. No one has passionate fires in the Burning Sword Sect like our Forging Department! And thanks to ye 'Metallurgy Art Techniques', we be improving even further!"

Adam was starting to feel nauseous as he was spun around again. "NOW! I be told you have designs for me to work with, some Formation nonsense that needs smacking together out here."

Stop the world, he wanted to get off... "Y... Yes? Over at my work area..."

A huge grin. "RIGHT! Just let me adjust my own timetable a bit." And the smile was gone. "MOVE IT SLAG THROWERS! I could'a put dis together hours ago! While asleep! Get the lead out and put in an honest day's work."

The many people seemed used to this. "SIR, YES SIR!"

Adam... mostly fell into a chair. Sister Quan and Disciple Tianshi were also a bit surprised by the... very loud and active Elder.

...This WAS less of a hassle than building it all himself, right?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Say what you want, but these craftsmen (Craftswomen? Craftspeople?) moved quick.

The ingots Adam had already harvested were organized, the residue mostly recovered, the slag mostly moved out, the pit of a farm area surveyed.

Multiple machines were set up and smoking away as a massive chair was smashed next to Adam's seat, and Elder Gu was critiquing the jade slip designs.

He waved. "No, too close. These two areas of the Control Hub gotta be further away or all kinds of trouble gonna pop up."

Adam hummed. "I am already double the needed tolerance distance wise, what is the issue?" Look to the side... stupid fire.

The Elder grunted. "Element resonance, too many sections of the controls are overly close. Can cause false activation signals. Best to increase the distance more since those two areas control separate Formations. If it was all in one pattern, it wouldn't even matter because the Formation would handle such basic power balancing itself by default. Not bad otherwise, the rest checks out."

Adam shrugged and handed over the other jade slips. "Then could you please review my other plans? I can make some Formations to simplify the 'Qi Form' shapes needed once the schematics are settled. My assistant, Sister Quan, had issues with the more complicated shapes... I can just hard-set the pattern into a Formation design to match the shape needed, your people can pour raw power into the thing instead of focusing on all the fiddly bits, then we just have to make sure the design was poured correctly, clean up the edges, and..."

Elder Gu had launched from his chair and kept backing up. "I GOT YE! PLEASE STOP WITH THE FIRE AND THE BURNING!"

Adam blinked. Ah. "Sorry."

Right, can't talk too much too fast. At least nothing important was destroyed this time.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

In the end, Adam had to make a separate jade slip showing how to configure and deploy a formation to establish more complicated 'Qi Form' designs so that Elder Gu and his people could make the parts without Adam having to get involved. Sister Quan, as usual, passed a copy up the chain. Based on how... slow progress was, it was looking like Adam would have to produce something physical for them to use, maybe a board version? The pipe designs had turned out to be useful after all.

But it would all still take time. Even with the revised designs for the farm Formation segments, it took several tries to get the castings right. Sometimes the metal would not correctly fill out all the squiggles, other times there would be too little or too much material. Some were salvageable by having Gu's people use custom tools to rasp away materials or refine edges and such, but the entire process took time.

At least the failures were far easier to handle. Adam had made a massive Formation that created a Qi Form Crucible, a melting bucket that failures could be hurled into that had a spout near the base for easy follow-up casting attempts. He sat near the thing and occasionally cast 'Refinement' on the mess, having the slag float to the top and out of the way of the pour spout.

That still left him a lot of time, so Adam was focusing on cultivation these last few days.

For both him and little Tianshi, the process was simpler than one would expect. Having finished at least one pass of the 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique' (Version 2.1352 currently), his body was attuned to Blue energy at this point. Unless he found a more pure form of power (Other than Binding energy, that stuff acted odd), attempting to apply the Technique again only acted as a method of healing oneself. Expelling non-cultivator material as impurities, basically.

That said, it didn't explore the secrets of his own Cultivation Cells themselves. If he had a bloodline or something, this didn't 'awaken' it or activate some hidden abilities... just made sure his Cells were adaptable, able to revert into a storage form or replace damaged parts, and attuned to his own energy source. The advanced medical information that Healer Jin had provided lightly touched on the concepts of examining dormant bloodlines, but not enough for 'Research' to get a good foothold in.

So after all this time Adam had nothing to really focus on but filling his Shard's internal energy space and cultivating.

His Shard was now pulsing with Binding and Blue energy, the nature of his Martial Spirit slowly applying 'Growth' to the power within the crystal material and his body applying 'Purification' when energy passes through his body. Over time, the energy he had to work with was eventually fully supplied by his Shard alone, with 'Growth' able to tear apart the mess of heaven and earth energy into something suitable for storage.

Cultivating now used this preprocessed and stored power from his own Martial Spirit alone, the energy flowing through the seven meridian routes with ease and blending smoothly into mist like Battle Qi for Adam's future use.

His other nine former research projects, those children? It may take a few years for them to reach Third Order. His disciple? This year at the latest. Especially after her Martial Spirit had fully recovered from 'starvation'.

As for Adam's progress?

He focused within, as his power approached 78% completion towards the wall of Forth Order warrior.

Given a full year? Maybe low level Fifth order was possible. It got progressively harder to advance after all.

But from all evidence available, other Fourth Order Warriors would have... issues... fighting him. Even without his various advantages, like energy control and so forth... well.

Adam idly picked up some of the leftover slag from his previous purification, the solidified metal components crunching easily under his grip.

Yeah, his body was reinforced on a conceptual level. As if reality itself told his body 'Just ignore reality, it is fine.' And this was just the start, Adam wasn't sure what it would be like when he advanced to the Xiantian Realm of cultivation. Some silly level of force for sure.

A rough voice came from over Adam's shoulder. "Ah, that's where it went."

He blinked, looking back at Elder Gu, who was examining the dross. "What?"

The material was carefully shifted in the man's hands. "Several mystical treasures and rare metals were missing from the ingots you provided that we expected from the ancient Formation Segments you melted down." He let the mess drift to the ground as dust. "At least we know where it went."

Adam hummed. "That stuff was useless when I pulled all the energy out." Pause, wait for the blue smoke to clear. Good. "Those ingots were the metals that worked best after refinement, built my design around them."

The older man was examining more of the dross with interest. "Really? I thought most of those ingots were rare materials provided by Elder Cho. Stuff has the most pure and untouched energy signatures I've ever seen."

He shrugged. "Drain all the energy out, and the metal will work with any power provided." Because the ore in the ground was exposed to all sorts of spiritual energy, of course the metals would act oddly when collected.

Adam blinked at the eager looks being thrown his way. "...Was that not common knowledge?"

A whole lot of 'no' head shakes.

Adam frowned. "Am I going to have to document this?"

All the heads nodded yes.

Damn it.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sister Quan held the ingot of... something metallic. "Qi Forms."

The ingot rested on the invisible plate. She could feel it, form it freely, move it... but the invisible structure was unnoticeable to others.

A thought had it folded as a bowl under the metal. "Heat Resistance. Body Reinforcement."

These 'introductory' versions of the 'Metallurgy Art Techniques' were basically just set and forget versions of Adam's masterworks... they still got the job done, just over minutes or hours rather than instantaneously.

Now safe from fire damage and strong enough to handle the weighty metal, she grinned. "Heat Modification."

The metal slowly glowed red... and began to drip into the invisible bowl.

...She poked it.

A grin covered her face as she just... poked the glowing mass as it melted. Felt like really warm dough or something.

Two pokes for eyes. A bit of molding for a nose, even as the metal began dripping into the bowl at a faster rate and started to make her artistic talents look a bit scary as the features melted.

This was HER metal, and she had used 'Refinement' on it a dozen times already... so the texture was uniform and fun to mess with. Depending on the temperature she applied to the stuff, it could even be twisted and pulled like taffy candy.

Theoretically she could do all kinds of useful things with this new ability so freely given and so easy to activate... but then she would have less metal to work with. She gripped the mass with both hands and slowly used her enhanced strength to twist the stuff, ignoring the goo spreading in the invisible bowl below.

It was a good workout too, depending on how hot the metal was. And fun!

Curiosity had her swirling her finger through the bowl of liquid material.

It was... sludgy. Like pudding or something, though her finger marks slowly filled in as the material eventually flowed back.

This was honestly more cool to her than all the other (More important) cultivation advancements. Because she didn't really like the idea of fighting other Cultivators for resources or whatever, but being able to play with metal like this was just neat!

Idly she conceded that it was also a powerful method of attack as well. Because this blob of iron in her hand was about 1,500 degrees Celsius, as Adam had claimed. Or in her own words, 'Holy crap this is hot' levels of 'Ow my face is burning'.

A ball of this stuff to someone's crotch would make ONE HELL of a deterrent, at least for low level Cultivators. Stronger Warriors would just dodge or whatever.

She carefully molded the last of the metal into a ball, allowing Heat Modification to slowly cool the material so she could keep it from flowing between her fingers. Eventually her Qi would run out and she would have to let it cool down, but for now this was a fairly good way to relax and relieve stress.

It felt odd, to not be working multiple shifts and many hours to support her old home, the Orphanage. Then again, it felt odd to know that the child she helped was doing more to achieve her goals and supporting her friends just by doing random things to keep himself busy. The fraction of resources he had provided to the children already was more than several previous years of donations combined, and that was just to have delicious meals produced!

Maybe she should show this off to little Tianshi... she had been a bit pouty that these abilities only worked with fire based Martial Spirits. Then again, her Green flame was a fire too... maybe she should suggest it to the little one?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam blinked at his Disciple. And turned to look at her 'Qi Form'.

It was roughly the right shape, but instead of invisible force-fields of energy as designed, her Green energy had turned it into a wooden box formed from vines, vines that came out of the soil below with no seeds or water provided.

He hummed. "Fascinating. I hadn't bothered using my own Qi as a source, just ambient fire energy." It was the target audience after all.

She didn't even flinch at his voice now, which was either a sign of his new self control or her own advancement at handling the shock.

Adam reached forth.

"Qi Form."

Now supplied by his energy directly, rather than the 'Burning energy' pulled from the air...

A floating blue fog of rolling flames formed into the box. "Huh. Thought it may burn the ground below it, like how your vines rooted themselves."

This form was HOT though. The glowing blue outline was way too hot for metal or whatever. Would probably evaporate the stuff. He released the ability and smiled. "Well done Disciple! I didn't consider how removing all those energy alignment steps would allow the properties of the Martial Spirit to influence the ability outcome."

Adam held his hand out.

"Qi Form."

Fold here, twist... there we go.

The handle was... odd to the touch. The blade connected to it was impossibly thin, if made from any real metal it would bend instantly on impact and destroy the edge.

His hand gripped the short sword... and just pulled uselessly. "Ah... right, without direct manipulation of the forms it just... floats there."

Could be used for air platforms or something though. Well, not HIS since the heat being generated by Blue energy was stupid powerful. "Oh, but maybe..."

The form shifted from a sword shape to a flat circle, a new Formation pattern that evaporated the grass and began melting the surface of the earth below even as the dirt around began to sizzle and crack as the water evaporated explosively. "Maybe I can set up Formation templates faster like this."

Disciple Tianshi had a blank look as she watched the multilayered Formation pattern being played with... and turned back to her own casting form vine box, that had taken literal hours of practice just to keep it looking professional. "I... I may need to practice more."

A pocket of SOMETHING suddenly exploded. Adam held up an arm from his new hole in the ground. "I'm OK!"

A pause.

"I am stuck, but I am still OK!"

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Elder Gu laughed over the new plans. "Brilliant! In fact, with the support of these new boards, we can probably produce this more difficult design you worked out over here, the ones with the reduced tolerance levels."

Adam sighed. "No, I've looked at it. The larger version will have fewer issues and require less talent and materials to repair... just. Just use the fatter, more embarrassing design." He was reviewing the new 'Qi Formations Adjustable Board', which was a tiny version of a 'Control Hub' that could be locked down connected directly to a pattern that could project a designed casting form.

Basically, all the stuff Adam had to do in his mind with HIS version of the technique, but simplified and easily powered by others.

Not as flexible, not as powerful, and required around three people to operate... but most importantly, Adam wouldn't be stuck doing the boring work.

He nodded. "Right, activate it now."

Elder Gu waved four of his followers forward, who touched the 'input' circle. A pale silver shape formed... and settled into the air like rock.

Adam nodded. "That looks stable."

A massive arm powered by absurd muscles smashed into the shape with no effect. "I'd say so! Enough for a cast or two I'd say."

What?... "I meant stable to support the weight of liquid metal, not an attack by a powerful Cultivator."

The man blinked. "What? It worked, didn't it?"

Adam pointed to the right... and the three, now unconscious minions of the Elder. The fourth one just looked... drunk. No, he fell over too.

The man blinked. "Oops. Well, life happens. BOYS! Shift change!"

With four new minions in position, Adam nodded. "Right, fill it with the metal and then we can spend a few days grinding and polishing until the casting fits specifications."

Sister Quan was watching the organized chaos with fascination. "Do you have any abilities to speed that along? Some sort of polishing skill or whatever?"

Adam wobbled a hand in the air. "Sort of? I can manipulate some Qi Forms into some useful shapes that may work..." Pause. "But I wasn't provided nearly as much material from the Forging Department as I had hoped." Pause, wait for the flames to vanish. "Most of the abilities I designed had to rely on my own experimentation and the open source stuff from the bottom floor of the Sect Repository Pagoda."

The massive man directing the process paused as well. "You did all that astounding work without having access to my people's learning documents? None of our training material?"

Adam blinked... but nodded.

Elder Gu grinned with glee. "Oh really?" He clapped loudly, a nondescript man appearing from nowhere now kneeling to his right. "Bring my reference library jade slips, I suddenly feel like having a study break for no apparent reason."

His grin was a tad manic. "Brother Adam, I am an old man who easily gets distracted, would you be willing to spend some time with me while I DON'T fall asleep, surrounded by restricted material that someone of your status CERTAINLY SHOULDN'T read and make notes of and so forth?"

Adam paused... but 'Research' was a hungry god. "Of course. Showing respect for one's elder is only just and honorable." Sister Quan was holding back giggles as they moved away from the outdoor works and towards the house. "Should I provide tea?"

The man snorted. "Hell no, if my drinks can't melt through wood what's the point of trying to get drunk?" He blinked. "Uh, I mean, what's the point of trying to... quietly review my notes and educational documents."

He frowned. "Fuck it, I am getting drunk AND doing a review on my stuff, anyone who disagrees can fight me." He glared at the ninety-nine 'hidden' body guards. "I don't think certain people would have any chance if they tried though, so they should stay out of my private drinking slash careful studying habits of my personal reference library slips completely alone with maybe a little help from people who are going to provide me tea."

Those eyes drifted to Adam. "Said tea must be at least 120 proof or better."

Adam nodded. "Of course!"

...Wonder what would happen if he filled the 'tea' with Binding energy? Should be interesting.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Little Tianshi and Elder Gu were doing SCIENCE!

Sort of. Not that the two ever heard of the scientific method or anything, Adam just suggested using her multiple flame producing ability to try and taint the local wine.

Side note, wine drinking is VERY culturally important, partially because (unlike the local water supply) it was hygienic and safe to drink... most of the time.

The only wine really available in this farming plot however was the 'Seasonal Blend' wine supplied by the Orphanage for the local Sect members and farmhands. So the massive man and tiny girl were working with that stuff.

Wine plus Blue energy? Stronger alcoholic content! Probably because it increased the conceptual 'Burning' of the liquid.

Wine plus Green energy? Increased volume of liquid. Something related to the growing nature of those flames.

But what the pair were testing now was Binding Energy... which for SOME stupid reason was able to easily stick to the wine when it ignored almost everything else. The pair's current goal was to find how little could be added to the Wine before it instantly boiled away into steam.

Because Elder Gu was VERY interested in getting to taste that enhanced drink... then see if he could combine it with the other two flame types to get a massive quantity of spiritually infused wine with near poisonous levels of alcoholic content. It might encourage or enhance cultivation, but more importantly: It might taste good.

Frankly, Adam was glad he was being ignored, as it allowed him more time to study these newly provided jade slips. Eventually.

Hundreds of them, each jade slip stuffed with massive amounts of compressed data.

Forget study or enhancement, the 'Burning Sage' was frantically using 'Research' to store all that data into his memory for later review first... Even if Elder Gu seemed 100% ready to sit around drinking for a week or two.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sister Tianshi carefully tapped the last glass, her Binding flame root barely coming in contact. "Right, ready Sister Quan?"

The Assistant Healer nodded, hands glowing while she monitored Elder Gu. "Yes. You may begin drinking sir, please wait two minutes or more between glasses."

With a grin, the old man slammed back an entire shot of modified alcohol like it was water. "BAH! This Binding stuff makes the drink really stick to ya! Normally stuff this weak wouldn't even catch my notice, but honestly it now has a bit'o kick to it!"

Quan nodded. "It is entering your system far more rapidly than expected. I'm detecting no problems so far though... even people with lower cultivation levels should be able to safely drink this batch. It just effects people more easily, not increase the potency of the brew."

He grunted. "Hey now, I gotta drink the other thirty glasses to be sure first! Can't shorten the first step, safety first and all that." He placed the glass back on the counter. "Girl, fill me up again." He paused. "For better testing and whatever."

The young girl sniffed. If drinking made you smell THIS bad maybe she wouldn't do it later herself. The small sip she secretly tried earlier didn't taste THAT amazing either. "After you finish this test batch. At least now I can charge liquid without it exploding into fumes or whatever."

Though she was curious if she could learn how to make other flames with her roots and how that would affect these drinks in the future.

He frowned. "Bah, fine I guess." Glancing back at the office, he paused picking up the next drink. "Still surprised the lad read those slips so quickly." He blinked. "The unrelated slips he brought in himself, not the stuff I was carefully studying." He glared at... something the girls couldn't see. "INNOCENT. AND. LEGAL. STUDYING. SESSION."

A nod. "That'll show them. Mind your own business you damn Sect spooks. Sheesh."

Sister Quan coughed lightly. "Brother Adam is well known for his information gathering speed. I'm sure he will have all sorts of ideas by now."

He grinned. "I'm just glad my lazy followers can continue duplicating those Formation patterns for later work outside. If testing holds up, the Sect will be giving us a massive contract to begin retrofitting most of the fields for decades. Can't touch some of the plots for years until the current crop is harvested, after all."

Gu chugged the next glass, burping a blue fireball. "Marvelous. This is a far better use of my time, really."

Though he WAS interested at what Adam would make of that mess.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Even at the high rate of memorization it took three days to store all those jade slips into memory, and Adam had 'Research' processing the mess now. He absently rubbed away a slight sting in his side as he moved to the next to-be-filed memory.

Not even trying to work with the data provided, just... just sorting it all, stripping out the stupid languages and junk language, translating stupid instructions into more basic phrases. Another round of analysis would be needed once this process finished before he could see what his real winnings were.

Even as meals were brought in by his servants and the sunlight came and went, Adam was just... very focused. No idea when the Elder or the girls left, no idea who exactly brought in the meals or took away the dishes... just. So. Much. Information.

Most of it? Worthless.

There were a dozen or so abilities that did the same general effect of 'Heat Modification' but... worse. More steps, more restrictions, harder to use, requiring more Qi, or that had physical side effects. Many had several of those issues. Anther batch of skills had similar problems, being more pathetic in ability, limited in scope, and dangerous during use when compared to 'Refinement', 'Heat Resistance', and 'Body Reinforcement'.

And NOTHING was similar to 'Qi Forms', which was interesting and opened up a lot of abilities to design.

However, even while one had to ignore a lot of the various abilities and tricks plus how they related to each other, they DID provide 'Research' with many enhancements to the previously mentioned skills belonging to the 'Metallurgy Art Techniques'.

All the skills were a bit more efficient now, required less mental focus to operate, were slightly more flexible, and, most significantly, all the abilities could be operated in tandem now. Group casting would be far more stable and less dangerous thanks to all the useful examples, as well as easier to use and more accurate to the user's wishes!

Most significant though, was two side notes discovered in a couple of esoteric technique examples. Near useless tricks that were there to serve as examples for other projects that 'Research' latched onto with a passion.

First, a skin hardening and vibration ability. Theoretically used for preventing the hands from acquiring splinters when one worked on handles and such for other projects. 'Research' had torn that into segments, the half for increasing skin durability being used for enhancing 'Body Reinforcement', theoretically preventing the body from being sliced, stabbed, or crushed instead of simply improving body strength (Useful in a dangerous work environment)... and probably other scenarios as well, really.

The second half, the body vibration trick? It was used as a foundation for the new skill 'Polish', a sub-skill to 'Body Reinforcement'. When activated, the skin would gain an absurdly durable texture and begin to vibrate at intense speeds... allowing one to grind or polish metallic or wooden surfaces. It generated a lot of dust from whatever was being ground down, but that was expected.

The other skill though had Adam overly excited: A method for controlling lubricant. The industrial kind, not the fun stuff.

While drilling metal, thin streams of lubricant were required to keep the drill bits cool during the process or the metal bits could snap and damage the tools, the product, or the worker. This... very badly designed ability was able to apply the needed liquid without getting too close to moving parts.

More importantly though, 'Research' was able to rebuild the concept from manipulating lubricant to a generic 'Fluid Manipulation' ability, though Adam's version of this skill was FAR better than the crippled near useless version other people would be able to use. Being able to control fluid and fluid like materials would be handy.

Why did that matter during metal work?

Liquid metal counted as a fluid. True, he still had to heat the stuff to stupid levels... but suddenly, moving that annoying mass from a 'Qi Forms' crucible into a 'Qi Forms' mold for casting? Super easy!

Well, Adam could just force the liquid material into the final form with this skill and then cool it, but if he told everyone that then he might get forced to do all that annoying detail work that those people outside were being forced to do. So he would emphasize that a group of Cultivators could now easily move fluid metal around and just... not go into detail about his OWN abilities.

He eagerly kept searching the jade slip memories 'Research' stored, who knew what else he could find in there?

Uh. Well, one of the slips was apparently full of adult material. Very explicit pornographic content mostly focused on muscled women working various heavy machinery.

It CAN'T be safe to wear so little around those things.

...This jade slip was probably not supposed to be included. Unless Elder Gu had tried to hide it in his 'personal collection' and his assistant just grabbed... all of it.

Which said things about Elder Gu.

...Shit, this was stored permanently in his memories now. The girls back home were going to find this hilarious.

Ah. Right, he had been trying not to think about them... and how long it would be until his next hug.

Sniff. Damn it.

Better get back to work. It may not address some of the emotional stuff Adam was so bad at handling, but it would keep him busy.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sister Quan sighed. "No, you should just start testing without Adam. He has no doubt this will work, so getting it done and starting work on the next farm in the plot will only make him happier."

Young Tianshi nodded, her (slowly transforming) green hair bobbing. "If work stops because of a ceremony or something, Master will be grumpy."

Elder Gu frowned. "Well, he has been a bit busy in that room. Saw a dozen jade slips being worked on simultaneously, no idea when he will finish... I guess we should get started then." He grinned at his people. "GET BACK! We bout to pop this system into FULL ACTIVATION!"

A pull of a large lever... and the air CRACKLED.

Near invisible shapes formed and slowly faded away even as the Control Hub began to light up, levers and dials glowing and the settings being activated in the three Formations placed around and in the field itself. For a moment, the air was a bit thin, the sounds slightly dim, the light ever so gray...

Then life returned, and the dirt filled field was... pulsing. A heartbeat of nature, hungry for seeds.

Everyone turned towards Sister Quan, who gave orders when Master Adam was distracted by... almost everything. She smiled at the farmhands. "Time to seed the fields! If you feel anything odd, any strange pains or unexpected sensations, please stop immediately and leave the field so I can verify you are alright!"

Elder Gu grunted. "Ah have you know I be the one that verifies these plans. Ain't nothing going to happen to them."

She shrugged. "Just in case. Unknowns are called that for a reason."

The first farmhand dug into the soil with his hoe... and paused as a short flare of colorful fire flared up and vanished.

Everyone froze.

Sister Quan coughed. "I... I think that is expected?"

Hopefully.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Cooling down metal safely was sometimes not wanted, as certain structural changes occurred during the quenching process (Dumping hot metal into cool or cold water or oil), so the new 'Quench' ability was developed. A variation sub-skill of 'Qi Forms' was developed easily enough called 'Vice' that would hold stuff steady in mid air to be worked on safely. After a LOT of reading, the sub-skills of 'Qi Forms' called 'Press' and 'Strike' were simple enough to design.

With 'Qi Forms' able to replace an anvil and the skills (while tricky to apply correctly) could replace a hammer or mechanical press... well, hopefully a skilled user could get rid of most equipment required for crafting.

Because Adam didn't want to carry that kind of crap around if he needed to do metal work in the future. For... some reason.

...Was he overthinking this? The subset 'Qi Forms' skills 'Pierce' and 'Weld' had been more or less crafted to fill out the tool set, not because he needed it for any of his own projects. Hell, he only designed the 'Crucible' subset of 'Qi Forms' because he got tired having to design the damn thing over and over again during testing.

Know what?

No, he wouldn't make a 'Smelting Forge' skill. All people had to do was use 'Heat Modification' on a sideways 'Crucible' and be done with it.

How long had he been crouched over, endlessly testing idea after idea, using 'Research' with cultivation breaks to refill his energy reserves...

Adam winced, a sharp sting in his neck... and another sharp sting in the lower half of his right leg.

OW. That... that really stung!

Looking at his filthy clothing, Adam sighed and moved to the side of the room. Everyone had cleared out a while ago anyway, and he felt too crappy to try and get back to his room or try and take a traditional bath.

Also, at some point the metal he had been testing had really piled up. With a groan and some stinging in his left arm, Adam waved a hand.

After all the upgrades and tricks gained, all of the new 'Metallurgy Art Techniques', at least the advanced version he could use, no longer required chanting or memory tricks. He could just activate the skills subconsciously at a whim.

Right now? His whim was wanting to be clean.

Even as he painfully took off his dirty clothing, he created a 'Qi Forms' combination of chair and tub, began using other structures to toss the many odd metal objects into the new structure, and ratcheted up the temperature with 'Heat Modification'.

Not that it would be easy to get INTO his bath. For example, salt water could make you float just because of all the heavy minerals in it... this quickly liquefying metal slurry would require some serious manipulation if he didn't want to pop up and down like a cork. Which would be embarrassing.

Ignoring a sting near his waist, Adam cheated with some 'Qi Forms' steps and gently moved onto the flaming hot metal liquid, using 'Fluid Manipulation' to shove the mass out of the way and slowly submerge into the mess.

Oh... oh yeah. It was like a super heavy thick blanket, raw heat soaking into his hungry Cells.

...Something was wrong.

The stinging hadn't stopped. A quick check of his own body... and he grew concerned.

He wasn't wounded.

Nothing should sting right now.

Adam quickly activated his 'Seven Pulse Cultivation Method' just in case there was some sort of conceptual issue with his body he couldn't detect.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!CRACKCRACKCRACK!

A surge of pain nearly had him losing focus! All limbs were flinching, only held down by the heavy metal heating his body. His teeth were clenched, his skin opened wounds... but the Cultivation Cells quickly slid back into place, the blood returning to his system.

His senses dove into his spiritual network... And the seven independent cultivation meridian routes, each path a trio of (now solid) meridian paths formerly filled with Battle Qi... were all now damaged. In multiple areas.

The seven loops, so stable and reliable, now had a strange new meridian route binding them... one that 'Research' was frantically examining, forcing his various new energy flows to change patterns and speed.

His previous networks were basically seven loops that were entangled, each line a trio of meridian routes intertwined... Now, those empty gaps in the middle of those loops had a weak, torn open cultivation route connecting them. Binding the preexisting loops, creating a structure that would theoretically support Adam's spiritual network firmly in the future.

But right now, the new path was weak. Even as new energy flowed from Adam's Shard, 'Research' was drastically changing the seven individual cultivation routes that were fresh carved into his soul, into his flesh... energy flowing faster... slower... wait...

PULSE.

The pressure vanished, as the seven NEW paths settled and began to stabilize.

The multitude of new loops slowly began to tighten, slightly moving the preexisting spiritual network into a tighter configuration, something stronger...

Another sting... from his Shard!?

Adam's spiritual senses flared in panic as he examined his Martial Spirit.

...That didn't seem right.

Cute though.

Huh. Well, now that the rock had eyes and... yes, that was a mouth. Shit.

What would people say when they saw it?

The rock glared at him. Somehow. Without moving.

...Sorry.

What would people say when they saw her?

Did this count as a Martial Spirit evolution!? It was a big change... The thin crystal Shard was now a clump of Shards.

With eyes. And a mouth.

You have no damn lungs. WHY have a mouth!? Do you eat!? ANSWER ME!

'Ding!'

...Well at least her voice was pretty.

This wasn't Squishy. She was literally born from his new soul and his old Shard, a new existence.

And she was eagerly sucking down energy into her internal power storage pocket. While mostly ignoring him.

Then again, she was a rock. What else did he expect from her? She couldn't even move. Her MOUTH couldn't move. Eyes could somehow focus on different things, but they didn't rotate and the pupils were not shifting form.

Wait, he was supposed to have an innate talent now, right? He had somehow stumbled into Forth Order after a few hours of research!

'Ding!'

...A few weeks of research. Oops.

With a mental sigh, he examined the changes. The new meridian routes would need time to heal, as the damage was spiritual... his body on the other hand had already recovered without issue thanks to his unique cells.

First of all, he could see why these new steps were considered the 'Tendon Refining Stages'. Because the first 'Corded network' strengthened his muscles conceptually, focusing on increased power... but the second, 'Loop network' focused on making that strength usable. Flexibility, accuracy, dexterity. It restrained the previous power focused spiritual patterns and prepared for the eventual next step, enforcing durability to be enhanced eventually during the 'Bone Tempering Stages'.

These new routes were longer (because they looped everywhere around the existing patterns), and so would take much longer to stabilize and progress... but would also provide far more power than one would expect compared to the previous three stages at the same time. More room for power storage, really.

Honestly though, thanks to his Cultivation Cells Adam had been sure that his body would be fine in the first place... he was far more worried about changes to his Shard.

...Who wanted a name. Crystal? OUCH! Fine, too lazy. How about... uh. Rockette?

'Ding.'

Fine. He was worried about the changes to Rockette. Any idea what you can do now?

'Ding.'

...Holy shit.

He was honestly expecting the same boosts as previous Order advancements... but the 'jump' past the 'barrier' was significant, conceptually.

According to Rockette, Adam's new Domain range had stretched from around 9 feet from his heart... to 29.5 feet.

Or to be more accurate, his domain was now 9 meters in radius. Because for SOME REASON his new crystal friend used metric instead of the imperial system or... some internal Shard distance measurement Adam had never heard of. It explained why the numbers had been so fuzzy previously, as the first stages went one, two, three meters... but now?

According to Rocket, reaching the Fourth Order squared his maximum radius range. The same thing would happen after the NEXT barrier breach at Seventh Order... until which, his range will 'only' extend by nine meters for his next couple of advancements. Damn.

The 'Square previous amount' rule apparently ALSO applied to the volume of space within Rockette used for energy storage.

That space had gone from base amount, 10x, and then 100x... but now? Her storage had lept to 10,000 times more than her original base storage amount. At Fifth and Sixth Order it would be multiplied by 100x, but the amount would be squared AGAIN at Seventh. As if he NEEDED that much energy stored away for use. What would he NEED that much power for!?

...Well, he would probably find SOME use for it, eventually. If he could save up enough to even try and fill that storage up.

His Shard wasn't empty right now as he had guessed... No, the storage space was simply so DAMN BIG that the 'Full' amount previously tucked away was basically a rounding error now.

Like... good god. It wasn't like Adam's required daily energy expenditures had gone up by the same rate as his storage quantity. if he ever managed to fill that entire void it would last him... a damn long time. Ignoring any future increases, the time range was in the century range easily. Or power a Sect all on his own for decades.

'Ding.'

Yes, yes, good job Rockette. Now, what is our awakened martial spirit ability?

Hopefully it wouldn't be something lame like 'Research' or whatever being split off for special use or whatever.

'Ding.'

...Oh.

With a mental flex... Adam activated 'Recursion.'

It had... a negligible maintenance energy cost. So low that it was a bit concerning.

Then his body flashed a dim blue... and he felt MORE. Far... far more.

Carefully examining his own arm, Adam could feel... the layers. Below this fragile body illusion of Adam Adventure Burns, currently known as Adam Chongsheng, was another layer of Adam Chongsheng. If Adam was attacked and wounded, excess damage would pass on to another, stronger layer of Adam Chongsheng. If that wound was too extreme to survive, excess damage would pass on to another, more compact layer of Adam Chongsheng. And so on. And so forth.

The energy cost was literally negligible to activate and almost nothing to KEEP this ability activated.

The main drawback? The amount of Battle Qi required to repair damage suffered by his conceptual layers went up exponentially the further down the chain Adam had to heal... probably because the density and the structural integrity went up as well when someone tried to pierce the layers. His Cells would help his uppermost self easily enough, but at this early stage of advancement his lower conceptual layers could not use the same trick. Yet.

Miss Rockette's awakened ability was to grant Adam Endbringer flesh without Shards, Dimensional shenanigans, or odd (Impossible?) biology.

Holy. Crap.

These innate abilities came from the Martial Spirit herself... so at some point, far in the past, some rock like creature had this ability if he was understanding this situation correctly. Considering how few earth elemental like creatures existed TODAY, it must have been VERY far back in said past.

When he would eventually learn how to merge with his Martial Spirit, would he turn into a rock man? What would THAT do to his durability!? Goodness gracious.

...Focus.

Right, so... what happened.

Well, every time someone gives massive amount of Data to Adam, 'Research' goes through a major evolution... and he seems to go through a heavy session of enlightenment. Which helps his cultivation ability progress heavily.

It was a good thing he activated the 'Seven Pulse Cultivation Method'... those spikes of pain were his own meridian routes about to explode trying to reach the next stage. He... should be able to survive that? Probably?

Opening his eyes, Adam realized a few things.

First, he was clean. The overheated metal evaporated all the gunk produced while reaching the next stage.

Second, Adam had lost control of 'Metallurgy Art Techniques' entirely. Thankfully his 'bath' had solidified enough to only mildly melt through the floor, before the heat had been sucked into Adam's body for recovery purposes.

Third, the metal was cold, hard, and perfectly molded to his body. He was stuck in a massive blob of iron up to his neck.

Finally... he had an audience.

He blinked at the Elder, Sister Quan, his Disciple, several members of staff (And those 99 security morons, but no one seemed to care about them), and his cute little Martial Spirit, Rockette. Who was sitting on the blob of metal, a few inches from his face.

Adam tried to smile. "Hi?"

Elder Gu grinned. "He smelted himself into a statue mold! I'M NEXT!"

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Over five hours had passed, and Adam was really tired of being stuck in this blob of metal.

He had been overruled by Elder Gu though, who wanted to take this chance to teach his people the new and refined abilities Adam had designed with the 'Metallurgy Art Techniques'. They were now tasked with removing the metal WITHOUT destroying the pattern within... And Adam was one of the few people in the Sect who wouldn't get burned by their attempts.

His attempt at getting emotional support from his friends fell through... Little Tianshi and Sister Quan had eventually (Almost instantly) discovered Rockette's existence and took her off to somewhere, happy that the Martial Spirit could be touched. And carried.

Which... wasn't normal. But they all seemed happy enough, and Adam was sealed in a large amount of iron, so whatever.

He looked down and to the left. "You need to fix the energy pattern in your left hand. That is why the heat isn't targeted and thin."

The woman nodded, and started another attempt at 'Heat Modification'. The simplified, easier to use version rather than his own skill... but using it was clearly not so simple for everyone as he had expected. Still, she was making good progress.

In other news, hitting Forth Order Warrior had a wonderful quality of life adjustment moment for Adam: Instead of spewing smoke and fire when talking, his throat just... ominously glowed bright blue. And... maybe made his teeth a bit sharper. But that was ignorable. Mostly.

He also traded in the ability to spew liquid fire! In return, he could now launch a blob of unnatural blue magma. THAT had almost been a disaster, but the various students of Elder Gu had managed to duck it easily enough as it wasn't exactly hurled at high speed or with a specific target. It wasn't even a conscious decision, they were just trained to dodge random attacks.

...After all that excitement though, Adam had just been growing ever more bored being stuck here.

Still, he felt he should be MORE annoyed than he actually felt. Somehow, being stuck unable to move or fidget... was a bit calming.

Maybe because of his closer connection with his Martial Spirit? Rocks tend to be pretty zen-like. Or he was into bondage. Either one or the other.

Anyway, the reason everyone initially knew he had advanced to Forth Order?

While he himself was distracted by his almost-problems and the pain, his body had uh... expelled energy during the process. And since only his head was exposed in the metal cup thing, that energy had no where to go but up.

So... massive pillar of blue fire.

Burned a hole right up through the roof, scared the hell out of the guards, and over the next hour or so brought out the curiosity of all the bystanders who eventually gathered to watch the 'Adam Chongsheng, Magical Torch' show. The heat was so powerful and directed that it was actively pulling some of the heat from the room in the process while shooting upwards, making the area strangely cold as blue fire surged into the heavens.

That energy wasn't lost either, after it flew up in the air high enough it spiraled back down and was cycled through Adam himself... which was also an impressive sight, or so he was told. It was, according to 'Research', an ad hoc method of energy purification: Using the extra waste powers to launch Blue energy upwards when it couldn't be converted directly into more fuel.

So uh... next barrier breakthrough, don't embed himself in raw metal.

He glanced left. "You cut through the metal five minutes ago, you are trying to melt my leg."

The guy jerked back. "SORRY! Oh god!"

Adam couldn't shrug. "Meh, I'm just glad you are making process. Just... melt further down? This is slightly frustrating."

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sister Tianshi hiccuped. "I... I grabbed the wrong glass."

Elder Gu snorted. "I should say, this is nothing but water!"

She... slid to the side. "N... no, I *hic*" Why was everything moving? Moving was hard, stay still everything. "I glass drank."

The older man blinked as the seven year old fell over, snoring loudly... and glanced back at his own cup. "Ah. We should have marked these to keep them separate."

Sister Quan was just... staring in shock. "Little Tianshi?"

"*hic*"

Elder Gu sighed. "Best send her to bed, I guess these experiments will have to be put on hold until she sobers up." Glancing at his notes, he frowned. "May be a few days, this stuff was strong."

Sister Quan had already started scanning the child. "...Her Cells are slowly processing the alcoholic content, so there is no health risk... but it will take a long time for this to work its way out of her body." She quickly worked an ability used to hydrate patients unable to drink liquids normally. "...I better keep her under observation though, I'm not sure how these drinks will affect her."

The older man waved her off with a sigh. "Take care of de lass, I shoulda gone outside to make my people hop to it hours ago. And after those advancements young Adam made to the 'Metallurgy Art Techniques', they be having even less of excuses."

He left the two drinking buddies to go ensure Adam's designs weren't getting disrespected. Not that he could blame his people, he himself was likely to spend most of the day practicing the new skills designed by the boy.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

"FINALLY!"

With loud SNAPS Adam finally cracked free of his cage! Balancing on his shoulder, Rockette 'Dinged' in support!

MOVEMENT! GLORIOUS MOVEMENT!

He paused in his arm waving and hip thrusts when he heard an embarrassed squeak fill the quiet room.

Hands on his hips, he looked left... at the multiple blushing men and women.

And down.

Right, he had been nude when getting in the metal 'bath'.

This happened fairly often... He should probably just carry spare pants around in the future.

He nodded. "Right, who has some pants I can borrow?"

Adam tried to ignore the few women that seem disappointed, for he had THINGS TO DO!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam sagged into his chair. "I can't believe there is nothing for me to do."

Elder Gu was resting at his side. "Can't make more changes until we test the old stuff. These Formations can act oddly at the best of times... at least we got your people digging up the next Farm area while we wait for this one to progress."

He snorted. "It'll take them a week easy before I can even start gathering the old junk in the new area. And THIS farm area is operational! I did the math!"

Gu grumbled. "Sect rules, gotta wait for results. Trust me, this part of the process sucks for me too lad. Can't tell ya how often my experimental products have to wait for verification it won't drink blood or something."

Adam absently summoned Rockette and began tossing her in the air and catching her... she was easy enough to entertain. "I may end up cultivating further just to waste some time. Keep busy." 'Ding!'

The old man hummed. "Well... you got some time and nothing much planned. Why not learn how to use your 'Metallurgy Art Techniques' officially? Sharing a few tips or teaching a few lessons should keep you occupied I've no doubt."

Adam watched... literally herbs growing. Slowly. "Screw it, why not? Has to be better than this mind numbing process. Mind if I include little Tianshi? She's been experimenting using her Green energy flame to activate my metallurgy abilities, created some interesting plant based results."

The man's gaze turned toward the house. "Oh does it now?"

He nodded. "Some of the messy stuff that I removed to simplify the abilities previously forced users to only apply a specific type of energy... but the unrestricted versions of the skills I produced can accept any power type, even if the results can be unexpected. Should be fun."

Gu's face split into a grin. "Indeed."

...This should be fine, right?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam looked at the nearly asleep little girl. "Why is my Disciple drunk?"

Elder Gu was trying to whistle.

No. "I am... very serious. Why is my adorable, seven year old Disciple unable to stand straight?"

A bit of uncomfortable silence... Elder Gu sighed. "She may have drunk my cup instead of hers. It was an honest accident though!"

...The Drinking experiments? "That was two weeks ago." Hadn't she been cultivating!? Why hadn't anyone called him!?

He nodded. "It was strong stuff. Good thing Sister Quan was able to dilute the effects with water after, or she would still be asleep."

Adam blinked. "What? No really, I've seen children younger than her drink wine here with no issue." It was a major part of the culture!

He shrugged. "Stuff strong enough to get me, a Saint, tipsy is more than powerful enough to make a little girl pass out forever. Sister Quan said the only reason she isn't having worse consequences is because this was a normal wine, the enhancement was very compatible with her Cells, and her body was converted by your 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique'... otherwise it could have been quite dangerous."

Adam squinted his eyes. "Then... where is Sister Quan?"

Elder Gu shifted. "She spent several days ensuring the little one stayed healthy, hydrated, and clean. She's taking a bit of a nap."

The seven year old fell to the grass, sleeping.

...Adam nodded. "If my Disciple has issues like this under your watch again, there will be consequences. We will attempt this teaching thing later after I take some time to cool down and ensure her safety."

'Ding?'

No. This... this was not a good time nor reason to see if his 'Absolute' energy control could rip someone's cultivation out of their spiritual network. Not to mention that Elder Gu was TWO Cultivation Realms above his own... if he failed (Likely), it would be bad, if he succeeded (Possible) it would be worse.

But it was tempting.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sister Tianshi felt the clouds clear a little. "Da?"

A warm hand stroke her head, a soft humming soothed her. "Sleep. Things will be better in the morning."

She tried to force her arms up. "Don... don't leave me da."

Someone held her hand even as a cool cloth was gently placed on her forehead. "Sleep."

Dad would take care of her. Dad could do anything.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam asked Sister Quan to watch over the girl as he left.

She... she probably wouldn't remember this. But it was surprisingly adorable, if she hadn't been drugged with Qi enhanced wine it would have been pretty heartwarming.

Best get back to work though... Adam's advancements now meant less pain and effort for his Disciple later.

And his work WAS progressing well, now that he had experienced the so called 'barrier' himself. The newly redesigned 'Houtian Realm Fourth Order Essential Cultivation Method' now had two sections: A preparation Cultivation Method and then the expected pattern for after reaching Fourth Order.

The largest benefit however came from discovering how the second set of three meridian routes got initially established, via a massive amount of damage to the previous foundation allowing for the new Qi cultivation path to be torn open.

So the new method enhanced the sturdiness of the entire Essential Cultivation Method... except for a small section right near the heart. That area is deliberately weakened, so that it is easier to 'break through', the 'breakage' would be very close to the metaphorically powerful heart, and less power would be wasted attempting to establish the new spiritual network path. The followup pattern would focus on reinforcing and sustaining the new path, allowing the old spiritual network time to heal itself... and any leaked power would enhance the body close to the opening, which included the important inner organs.

To be honest, Adam's progress was paused deliberately by himself a few times... trying to design an enhanced ability to safely detox a patient, an more reliable trick to externally provide nutrients, or even a method to absorb negative materials directly from someone else's body, blood, or spiritual network.

After all, Adam was positive HE could survive the deadly and unusual... but not his little Disciple.

Regrettably, without test subjects or a willingness to experiment on his own Student, progress was negligible... but it was a welcome break from focusing only on dry Cultivation junk and Adam needed that once in a while. And he now had an... interesting list of attacks to try the next time a moron ambushed him.

It wasn't a likely thing to occur though, he was just becoming too valuable to the Sect as a whole at this point.

For example: The Sect was VERY interested in the 'excess heaven/earth energy circle' with Adam's new farm Formation.

To be fair, they were frantically in love with EVERYTHING Adam had provided so far... but the ability to store and compress raw spiritual energy safely was apparently a bigger deal than Adam had expected. Well, not so much the gathering portion of the process, but the cheap (Basically disposable) formation enhanced jugs Adam designed to make it easier to collect the power for transit. A few Formation patterns and some cheap, nearly free drinking gourds found all over the place, and Bam! You had something much more valuable than most heavenly treasures!

Because easily stored and portable spiritual energy was a new thing... and made it possible for the Sect to gather and then SELL heaven and earth spiritual energy that wasn't useful to their followers outside the clan. Not only did this create a stable (useful) power vacuum, drawing in possibly more valuable energy types towards the Sect itself... it was a new product for future sales! A new pillar of support for the Sect!

Such a product, cheap to produce and basically used like a spiritual trash can, would be desperately desired by others outside these walls, where spiritual energy was even harder to gather and work with... It was a guaranteed money maker! A lifetime of fame, fortune, and greatness!

...Adam instantly threw the design to the Sect for a tiny percentage of future sales.

He did NOT want to be stuck with that mess, it sounded like an annoying hassle for years to come. Especially since the more garden plots converted to his Formations, the more work would need to be done to gather that power, process it, and who knew what. And that was not even considering the future assassins, potential mother-in-laws, gold digging women (And men), and worst of all: Rabid fans. Male or female, both would be infuriating!

Not. His. Problem. Keep his identity away from that filth. Maybe blame the whole idea on Elder Gu without telling him.

'Ding.'

Adam blinked... as Rockette focused a massive amount of internal 'Blue energy' mist... into a liquid drop.

And glared. "No. This will make me have to do MORE work." He touched the drop... and felt his Cultivation Cells freak out over how happy they were.

...Fine. "Here." One of the new energy gourds, he only sold the methods of production, not the materials he already made as prototypes. Opening the container and modifying the formation covered cork slightly, the new jug would allow spiritual energy to pass through... but only through a complicated method. Rockette wouldn't have trouble with it. "Fill it up when you got spare energy and I will see about making us a drink or something when you are able to move your mouth."

He grumbled and went to get materials for a larger, more stable gourd. This small one would eventually be consumed and then filled up again with liquid Binding energy, after he got a larger jug for holding this Blue energy juice for himself. Adam would then pass this fist sized jug of (future) Binding energy to little Tianshi for emergency use, since he couldn't make Green energy himself and it wasn't naturally produced in this environment.

A glare towards the door... better not tell many about it though, not until he could replicate the procedure without Rockette's help. Hopefully through Formations. "This... this is exactly the kind of stuff I was trying to avoid getting involved with."

'Ding!'

You don't have to sound so smug.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Trying to learn how to work metal in person... well, it made several flaws with Adam's designed abilities show up pretty quickly. Maybe not flaws, but certainly some oversights.

Using hands as tools, for grinding down metal and sandpaper effects and polishing? Only worked if there were no hard to reach places. If you weren't careful, it was easy to leave 'fingerprints' etched into the material as well... it could get annoying. And if you slipped, you could easily smash whatever you were working on due to the body enhancement tricks.

In addition, several times one needed a good stable surface to work on. Existing forges would normally handle the issue with heavy logs or anvils... but if Adam wanted something truly portable, he needed a more flexible solution. Using 'Vice' directly on the object wasn't good enough.

Both problems were eventually fixed pretty easily by adjusting how 'Qi Forms' operated.

First step, was to make the structures formed by 'Qi Forms' to NOT be fixed in place. Now you could move them by hand. With practice, it was easy for various tools to be designed and crafted this way, which also provided thin picks, hole punching tools, wrenches, screw drivers, hammers, engraving picks, and so on and so forth.

Instead of all those things being frozen in air, useless for hands on work... now one had to apply the sub-skill 'Vice' to one of your 'Qi forms' first to keep it stationary.

So a grinding surface could be designed as a thin and flexible cord for reaching hard to access areas, and thin balls of Qi could be targeted by 'Vice' to stay in place while the workers would move material over it... very useful when you had a metallic bottle or something, as the orb inside would allow you to hammer the outside back into shape. Customized anvil shape? No problem! Adjusting the height and angle was also easy with the new tricks.

Unfortunately, finding and fixing these various issues only made Elder Gu more excited... and Adam's time was therefor consumed as if it was free.

The only times Adam could take a rest from learning how to work metal, carve wood, reforge bones, and so forth... where when he forced breaks so he could come back to the farm house and help Sister Quan take care of little Tianshi. Give the Sister time to rest and take care of herself while Adam made sure nothing went wrong with the little one.

She was getting better.

Adam could theoretically stuff the child with energy, or buy and use expensive medicines (He had the points, after all)... but the child's situation was so unusual and undocumented, there was no proof that supplying MORE energy wouldn't make things worse. He couldn't risk something going wrong.

So... he just sat by her side, kept her comfortable and cool, and let her know he was nearby.

Being able to smash metal was very therapeutic, a good outlet from the internal rage he kept generating seeing a little girl near comatose because a very powerful man was ignoring others while trying to get drunk. As a Saint, Elder Gu could see for miles, hear farther, sense spiritual energy... for him to not catch the difference between drinking glasses was negligent. The old man could move faster than a bullet, bend space, fly... how he could sit less than a few feet away while an innocent actively trying to help him POSSIBLY POISONED HERSELF...

No. Stay. Calm.

Right, at least the stuff Adam was learning at the moment was useful. Got quite a few lessons on the proper methods to harvest various Spirit Beasts for parts and what plants could be refined for item creation. And aside from the physical changes to beware when one is deeply involved with advanced metal work, there were a number of spiritual methods and abilities used by Cultivators to convert weapons, armor, and tools into more conceptual creations. Something beyond earthly tools and products.

Swords that would transform into body tattoos, houses or Pagodas that could change size externally, fly, and hide within one's soul... Obviously the few known legends of such came from more powerful Realms than this one, but a small sample had been created using rare and powerful items HERE to overcome the lack of knowledge and ability available locally to get the desired results. Legendary treasures that were accepted by the Plane, and could even be born anew in the world after the previous owner passed away and the object was lost.

Adam ruthlessly exploited Elder Gu's internal conflict about his disabled Disciple to extract all the data possible, little as it may be. Every fact learned now may help his little follower in the future. It was valuable.

It was also repetitive and frustrating. More and more, Adam was practicing his own 'Hung Ga' or 'Immense Fist' style to try and calm down. It required some muscle redeployment to speed things along, but the horse stance (A deep squat that gave rigid support during combat) was now second nature. The claw attacks and punching motions were slowly becoming an automatic response, even if it was mostly being used as a frustration outlet rather than preparation for future fights. He took stances with passion and attacked with internal rage.

Twist, palm THRUST, turn, twist... it was mind numbing and soothing.

STOMP! A wave of pressure flattened the rock slightly more, compression firming up the area. A vague sense of the area around him filtered through 'Research' as the vibrations calmed.

Yeah, this process was at least a little cathartic...

But Adam was getting close to a breaking point. He wouldn't be allowed to update his own Formation patterns until after a growing season. A whole. Damn. Growing season. A full year. Watching spiritual herbs grow.

Wasn't even permitted to mess with the designs for the rest of the plot farms. And the field workers already had the updating procedure documented and tested, Adam didn't need to BE here now. It felt like a time waste.

In fact? Screw it.

With a heavy breath out, he turned on his heal and walked with purpose towards the house, ignoring his many bodyguards.

He was stupid strong physically at this point, and he had materials... he could build a comfortable chair/sleeping seat for little Tianshi to rest in that doubled as a back pack. Sister Quan could walk as SHE wasn't drugged with enhanced alcohol. As for the guards, he had no emotional investment when it came to their comfort, and they seemed 'happy' enough to stand around all day as it was. SOME sort of shift change occurred, but it was hard to track exactly when.

Adam used Qi Forms in the distance to hurl his many test iron sculptures and objects out of the various windows and remote yard corners, the mass of metal tossed into a new Qi crucible for melting. "Sister Quan! Pack your things, we're heading back."

Now, where was that spirit beast skin? He needed something leather-like for straps... and some cushions for the metal 'vehicle' as well. Otherwise little Tianshi would get knocked around and hurt when he ran. Some curtains wouldn't go amiss as well. Not sure where the original idea came from, but it should work alright.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Elder Cho blinked. "I'm sorry, what?"

Her minion stayed knelt. "Young sir has redesigned the various arts of the Forging Department, developed methods of enhancing wine, created a nude casting of himself for future statues, rediscovered the ancient formations of growth developed by our Sect Leaders and improved them while writing detailed documentation of the process, has taken his Disciple and Assistant on his way back to the Sect, and has broken through to Forth Order Houtian Warrior."

...No, what?

He was fourteen, why would he want a statue?

No, more important issues there. Priorities. "When is he estimated to return from the Garden?"

The man glanced at his notes. "As his Disciple is currently drunk, his progress has been delayed while caring her. Estimated one week until arrival."

Disciple Tianshi? "Drunk?"

A nod. "Elder Gu, Sister Quan, and Disciple Tianshi were testing a wine enhancement experiment and the little one consumed from the wrong cup."

Leaning back in her chair, she just... sighed. "Move on. Did you bring the new jade slips for review?"

A pile fell on the desk, and she started checking them. She had more questions of course, and certain... WORDS to have with Elder Gu. But it was best to review these first rather than waste time asking pointless things that may be already answered here in the jade slip notes. The freely provided farm thing had mostly been a protection method, the child actually discovering and ENHANCING the ancient methods for herb growth had not been in the plans. Maybe she should have seen this coming though.

This... this was supposed to be a way to keep the boy out of the political theater. Accomplishing even MORE legendary feats was the OPPOSITE of what she had planned.

Another report was delivered, and she snapped it up.

Right, of course her sending people to make the boy's Formation plans a reality would somehow end up with him gaining access to restricted Sect information. Elder Gu was always a man-child, why she expected him to act with dignity and poise she would never know. At least nothing terrible came of it, eventually the Patriarch would have granted the boy access to all that mess at some point.

But where could she guide him to stay out of the way? To give time for the mass of curiosity (Stupidity) to wear off?

Her eyes glanced towards her desk inbox. And the various out-of-Sect missions that needed approval or modification by the medical department.

...That may do it. And with ninety-nine guards, it wasn't exactly a dangerous option.

She began sorting through the various tasks. The old, avoided ones.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sister Quan hummed. "It looks like not adding more spiritual energy to little Tianshi's situation was wise."

Adam sighed, the heavy metal structure on his back not slowing him down. "Maybe I could drain off the excess power?"

She shook her head. "No, I can feel her cultivation progressing quickly thanks to that unfortunate drink... no idea what removing that power while it is being processed would do."

He glanced over his shoulder, watching little Tianshi absently try to grab clouds drifting by. "She just... seems so out of it."

The little girl's other arm was hugging Rockette, the Shard enjoying the cuddles and the girl loving how warm the rock was.

Sister Quan sighed. "I'm not sure it is due to the alcohol, it may be due to power saturation. If that enhanced drink wasn't so accepted by her body, that level of power would have been very dangerous... having it enhance her energy reserves is truly a lucky benefit."

The small girl pointed. "Da! Da there's clouds!"

Sigh. "Shh girl, the clouds will be there later. See? They are just drifting around. Go back to sleep."

A half nod. "Clouds Da."

...If he forced compatible energy onto his foes, could he force them into this drunken state? Or force their spiritual network to go wonky like this?

Good luck fighting if you fall over and fall asleep. They wouldn't be as cute as his little girl, though.

Uh... Disciple.

...Whatever.

The walk was mostly peaceful, though Elder Gu had probably noticed he had ran off by now. Or was still drunk. Crazy old man.

The trio (Plus the mass of 'hidden' guards) stopped at various rest houses, took care of the dizzy little girl, and generally treated the experience as a relaxing walk through nature, such as it was. As the path was different than the one they used to get out here initially, Adam also managed to pick up a few more real world examples of Formations as they passed along. It was much easier this time since Rockette was being held by Tianshi like a pet rock. The Shard's scan of the local energy patterns at least gave 'Research' information to gnaw on, and being hugged kept his Martial Spirit happy.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Elder Gu looked around. His people were making more Formation segments, the farm hands were clearing out the fourth farm area in the plot...

But... but where was the extra wine? And the nice woman who kept him topped off, and the (possibly still drunk) little girl who initially made the good stuff!?

After a few hours wandering around, he blinked. And where was the little Sage!?

Somewhat sober, be stumbled forward. "Waugh... where is everyone?"

A cleared throat made him pause and turn around. "Elder Cho?"

The woman gave a wry smile. "Oh don't mind me, I'm not here because someone almost killed a youngling through his drinking excesses or because a certain old man almost made a mortal enemy out of our Sect's Burning Sage."

The man winced. His fellow Elder may only be a Tenth Order Xiantian, but she had political pull. "Ah... about that..."

She smiled more. "No need to explain anything! I'm sure it was all fully understandable once the facts are known."

A light in the sky! His smile grew. "OF COURSE! I... I had it all under control!"

Elder Cho nodded. "Very good, very good." She turned to leave. "As I said, I am not here for those odd rumors."

A leap had her resting on the back of a flying Spirit Beast, the Ignited Eagle. She glanced over. "That said, I was a bit curious about some of the details... but I am sure the paperwork I left in your room will cover all the odds and ends. Have a lovely day."

The large man's body flinched. "Paperwork?"

She nodded, absently petting the bird preparing to leave. "I had to request one or so of the Patriarch's document rings, wouldn't want my poor ride to get tired on her brief flight over here." Her gaze was cold. "I expect all six copies to be filed within eight hours."

Gulp. The man nodded. If the Patriarch allowed his personal document rings to be used, this was serious... shit. Shit shit.

Another smile. "Good, as I said before... I'm sure it was all fully understandable once the facts are known." The Eagle launched in the air. "I'll look forward to that."

...And she was gone.

Triple shit. Elder Gu dashed to his room... and there were THREE rings.

Each with hundreds of folders FULL of paperwork.

...He was going to have to exploit his higher cultivation base to have these done in time. Hours of intense, mentally stressful activity with no room for error. On materials that MIGHT get instantly tossed aside or MIGHT be handed directly to the current leader of the whole. Damn. Sect.

Yeah, she was pissed.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The duo walkers paused, little Tianshi having fallen asleep hours ago while cuddling Rockette, as a massive fire bird landed on the path.

...Alright.

Sister Quan caught up first. "Elder Cho!" She bowed. "It is good to see you are doing well!"

Oh. So, NOT an asshole. What a nice change of pace from Muscles McGee.

Adam glanced at the metal framework he was supporting. "I would bow as well, Elder Cho, but it would throw my Disciple about if I tried at the moment."

The woman... Uh. Weren't 'Elder`s' supposed to be old!? She laughed. "Don't bother, I just needed to have a bit of a talk while you are still out here, away from curious ears and so such."

...Right, all Cultivators looked like fashion models unless they followed odd or evil Cultivation Paths. "How may we be of service, Elder Cho?"

She sighed, waving her fire bird to fly off a bit as she gestured them to continue walking. "I'm sure you've noticed your excessive security?"

Glancing at the massive number of 'hidden' experts, he nodded.

She stepped lightly over the soil. "That mess was partially for political reasons, to gain support and stability when it comes to your issues. I've made enough progress that no other Elders are sending more guards at this point, even if it took longer than I hoped. The few main detractors are mostly distracted, and as far as I know those who wish you harm are either outside the city, imprisoned, or handled."

Her gaze was serious. "But you are too bright a target right now. It is all positive news, all glowing reports... but too much light can draw predators in the forest. I need you to live long enough for your methods to be proven... and I have some suggestions."

Adam internally sighed. Maybe he should have done things more subtly? "Right, please advise me Elder."

A nod. "First, you may stay in the Sect if you can avoid any further discoveries or advancements for at least two years. Even so, it will need to be spent mostly in protected areas with heavy guards... you've already drawn much attention, even with our efforts to ensure otherwise."

Seeing the discontent, she nodded. "I didn't think so, it would feel chafing within hours I am sure." They continued walking. "Second is to give up on stealth and just advance as quickly as possible, become an Inner Disciple of the Sect, and just generally make a mess of things." She raised an eyebrow at the boy. "It would be annoying but acceptable, yet the risks would go up as well... might even pull attention from external Ancestors or worse. You would also have difficulty leaving the sect, which could fundamentally damage your ability to advance... Cultivation needs real world experiences to develop successfully."

She passed over some documents. "Finally, there are some exploratory Sect Missions that may appeal to you. Take young Tianshi and Sister Quan, and explore the world a bit even if you are surrounded by more than a few guards. These missions require a time investment, which hopefully will give you space to wait out your fame or let the attention of others drift, and are mostly off to rare and distant places... hopefully lands with lower risk of being ambushed by old masters that may sneak near the Sect to claim your future."

Adam paused and considered what exactly Rockette herself would do if some powerful being actually tried to abduct him.

'Ding.'

He blinked. Yuck. Still, sounded effective. "I can look through these missions first?"

She nodded. "I would insist. Outer Disciples of course have a quota of missions to accomplish per month as it is, simple things like basic work around the city or resource acquirement. You fulfilled more than your share mostly by accident, and technically the Patriarch has waived your need to waste time on them. These advance missions however are more risky, count for more than a single mission when completed, and can sometimes allow our members to find rare inheritances or valuable herbs or items. The ones you hold are all lengthy time commitments, several are older because of how inconvenient it is to stay away from the Sect so long."

He hummed. "Which wouldn't be an issue since I made a few too many waves. Time away becomes time well spent."

Let's see here... hmm. Monster subjugation, ruin investigations, map creation missions, resource discovery tasks... while distant from the more civilized land there were more than a few options here! Adam could feel his left eye glow slightly as his interest grew. "Would I have to take the guards?"

She chuckled. "Only ten, the heads of the various groups following you."

A glance to the side and ten people of indiscernible gender raised their hands. "...I won't be coddled the whole time, will I? Going to far off and exotic places just to see someone ELSE get to enjoy it sounds... very sad and frustrating."

Elder Cho snorted. "Sect Rules forbid it, unless actual death is likely. Conflict is needed for growth, especially when you are impassioned on some personal mission. Fighting for your own goals is an important part of maturing in the Sect, and the Guards will NOT compromise that, don't fear."

Good, because Adam was having trouble holding back a sharp grin as he paged through the many options.

Stupid enhanced teeth.