Goosebumps littered Tianyi's body as he stood with his back straight like a steel rod in front of his mother. Yet, his gaze was anywhere but forward, landing everywhere but his mother. He was unable to hold his head up like a child who knew he had committed a wrong. Tianyi had to fight every instinct in his body not to bend his neck and fidget with his hands.
This was the second time.
The second time his mansion was destroyed. The first was when he tested out the nuclear self-detonation technique, and now it was the second time.
"Yi'er," Mengfei started as she started stroking Tianyi's head. The feeling of Tianyi's hair at her touch felt especially soothing. "It's only a mansion. But this is the second time already. You should move into Jade Peak Palace permanently."
"I don't want to impose. In addition, I feel that it might be dangerous..." Tianyi trailed off.
"You've already destroyed two mansions now," Mengfei said, causing Tianyi to feel as if she stabbed a dull knife into his heart. "Your realm does not allow the sect to construct an immortal rank abode for you. Rather than build another mansion for you that will be destroyed, it will be better for you to live in Jade Peak Palace."
"What if I accidentally destroy Jade Peak Palace as well...?" Tianyi said.
"The Jade Peak Palace combined with the Jade Peak Seal is able to fight off immortal emperors for a short period of time and immortal monarchs indefinitely. You aren't even a true immortal yet, so there is no possibility of that occurring." Mengfei patiently explained with no hints of doubt in her voice at all.
Tianyi had no rebuttal for that. In the end, he could only nod his head and agree to Mengfei's demands. He was already over thirty physically and fifty mentally, so he felt shame still mooching off his mother. Not that he wasn't still mooching off of her, but living apart gave an illusion that he wasn't completing mooching off of her.
When Tianyi left, Mengfei found a smiling growing on her lips as she laid back on the couch of the main hall. She had attempted to get Tianyi to move back into Jade Peak Palace after his mansion was destroyed, but Tianyi refused. More than once, Mengfei regretted allowing Tianyi to live on his own. She regretted even more that she allowed him to move out at a young age.
Did Tianyi resent her? Is that why he didn't want to move back in? Mengfei pondered. She had read that a child needed their mother's attention the most when they were young, but due to her immature emotions at the time, she allowed Tianyi to move out and could even be said to have neglected him. At the time she had no understanding of raising a child and so followed what she knew. Namely, pushing the duty to a servant, like her emperor-father and consort-mother had done to her.
Maybe Tianyi secretly resented or had misgivings due to his experience when he was young, and that's why he didn't want to live with her. Mengfei had concluded. But now, it all changed.
Mengfei had successfully tricked Tianyi into living with her again!
With her prestige, as long as she paid the price, she could easily build an immortal-rank mansion for Tianyi. But that would mean living separately, so she convinced Tianyi not to. And now, they would have more time to interact. Mengfei held her chin in her fingers. She had read that mother's often tucked in their child when they slept at night. Since she didn't before, should she start doing it now?
Or maybe she could help feed Tianyi. She recalled that she only needed to place the food in front of the infant Tianyi, and he would eat by himself. The book said the process of personally feeding the baby was an essential ritual in establishing feelings between mother and child.
Unaware of Mengfei's thoughts, Tianyi returned to the room that he frequently lived in before he moved out to his first mansion and the time he was still in the Core Formation Realm. To take his mind off of how he wasted his mother's resources (again), Tianyi began to focus on his cultivation... unsuccessfully.
Ugh, I don't even want to calculate how much I destroyed in spirit stones. Even with the amount I made with the formation cards and newly released Xiyi formations, I would be in major debt. Stop thinking about it Tianyi, just focus on your cultivation!
After calming his mind, Tianyi could finally focus on inspecting his new cultivation.
With him ascending into the Soul Nourishing Realm from the Acupoint Opening Realm, Tianyi no longer felt like there was any difference in his spiritual and martial cultivation methods as if they were one. His soul method and spiritual method had already combined as he merged the Lotus Soul Ascension Art with his five nascent souls.
It could be said that he truly created a perfect merger of all three types of cultivation methods.
But the requirements were simply too high. The user needed to enter both the Core Formation Realm and Acupoint Opening Realm within a short period of time. Otherwise, they would not be able to combat the deficiency of either method. It would be best to enter both realms at the same time, but that was practically impossible.
To enter the Sole Extreme Yin, Eight Trigrams Yang Core Revolution Formation, the user would need a dragon pearl elixir and form nine spiritual cores. And to enter the Acupoint Opening Realm of the unnamed martial method, the cultivator had to have a certain comprehension of spacetime. One needed extreme wealth, while the other required comprehension that only those in the Unity Realm and above possessed. Aside from Tianyi, who else possessed them?
Actually, Tianyi himself was surprised by how lucky he was. If he wasn't talented in the dao of spacetime, he would have had to stay in the Core Formation Realm much longer. Perhaps he would discover another martial body that complimented his nine spiritual cores, or perhaps he would have had to destroy one or eight of his spirituals.
So as a cultivation method, it was a complete failure.
Incorporating the soul method only happened at the Nascent Soul Realm. To merge the Soul Nourishing Realm martial method, it required the Heavenly Rivier Stellar Avatar that only Tianyi possessed. And it came with a devastating issue. After Tianyi merged all three cultivation methods, he discovered that he could no longer detect the spiritual qi of heaven and earth. Not only that, whenever he released his spiritual sense, it felt as if it was being restricted by something.
The only good news was that merging all three methods drastically increased the upper limits of his current realm. Tianyi wasn't sure if he could be considered a Nascent Soul or Soul Nourishing Realm cultivator anymore. Although he couldn't absorb the spiritual qi anymore, his cultivation would still increase without his purposeful control. Eventually, he would hit the peak of his new realm, but that issue is what came next.
Tianyi created his current method using the orthodox cultivation methods, but now he couldn't use the Unity Realm or World Merging Realm as references and had to grope in the dark to discover a new method. Tianyi estimated he had the power of a unity venerable, but that was nothing compared to the fatal issue of not being able to advance to the next realm.
He cultivated to attain immortality. If his method couldn't accomplish that, then it would be worthless.
Calm down. Since my cultivation is built using the Ten Heavenly Scriptures as a foundation, it should be an orthodox method. Thinking back, every time I had an issue, it was solved when I merged a Heavenly Scripture into it. And it doesn't need to be the original. Anything derived would be fine, like the Spring Autumn Scripture or the Thirty-Six Heavenly Constellation Art. In fact, the sect's Five Element Method that was rumored to be derived from the Five Phases Heavenly Scripture was also helpful. If I hadn't perused it, I would not have been able to create my spiritual Core Formation Realm method or my martial method.
Tianyi's eyes flashed as he thought of the True Pure True Self Visualization Technique but quickly shook his head.
I haven't reached a dead end, no need to resort to desperate measures just yet. I'll try to gather enough contribution during the Demon Slaying Expedition to see if I can exchange for another derivative of a Heavenly Scripture. But I shouldn't just place my hope on that. Perhaps it's simply that my cultivation method is not complete enough, so I can't see the path ahead. I need to strengthen my foundations even more. Even if it doesn't illuminate my next step, there is no harm in doing so. I will revise my current method into a mixed cultivation method that anyone can cultivate as long as they have the talent. Who knows, maybe it will even surpass the Taiji Fist as the greatest cultivation method?
With that goal in mind, Tianyi began to study his body and soul. He was using himself as the base to create a new merged method that anyone could cultivate. Compared to Zhang Sanfeng's Taiji Fist that merged spiritual and martial methods, Tianyi planned to incorporate soul methods from the very beginning and not introduce it only at the Nascent Soul Realm.
To help facilitate this, Tianyi often used the stars in his cosmos to form temporary clones to test out his newly created methods. The Thirty-Six Heavenly Constellation Art had a technique that allowed the cultivator to replicate other cultivation methods. Tianyi simply modified it to form a pseudo clone. The pseudo clone was created from Tianyi from a constellation from several stars and bringing out of his body. It was not a true clone because it did not have its own thoughts and was an empty husk. To control it, Tianyi needed to use his spiritual sense. As such, Tianyi named it the Constellation Incarnation Technique.
Most of them just collapsed into themselves or exploded, some even imploded. After the first one exploded, Tianyi decided to move his experiments to where the rubble of his mansion lay. Although he was confident in the Jade Peak Palace's sturdiness, he couldn't calm himself down emotionally.
After a year of experimentation, Tianyi felt as if he created a skeleton for his new cultivation method. It had taken many failures before he was finally confident enough to create a clone to cultivate it, but there were several requirements. For simplicity's sake, Tianyi temporarily based the individual names of the realms on spiritual cultivation.
In the Qi Gathering Realm, the cultivator will absorb qi and create tiny stars in their body. Using these stars, they would discover open twelve meridians and temper their body in preparation for creating a martial body. At the same time, the souls would be enlightened by the starlight. At this stage, the cultivator wouldn't understand the method's complexity, and all they could do was follow the instructions. Thinking about it, Tianyi felt that his cultivation method was still of mysteries that he himself did not fully understand as if operated on some primordial law.
Opening the twelve meridians and preparing the body as a vessel was the only first step in this realm. The most crucial aspect was to open the eight extraordinary meridians. The number of extraordinary meridians opened would decide which grade the cultivator could cultivate.
The first grade would be the weakest grade that allowed the cultivator to form one spiritual core and one nascent soul.
The second grade allowed the cultivator to form two spiritual cores and one nascent soul.
The third grade allowed the cultivator to form three spiritual cores and two nascent souls.
The fourth grade allowed the cultivator to form four spiritual cores and two nascent souls.
The fifth grade allowed the cultivator to form five spiritual cores and three nascent souls, which Tianyi dubbed the Five Emperor Cores, Three Sovereign Souls.
The sixth grade allowed the cultivator to form eight spiritual cores and four nascent souls. Tianyi named this one the Eight Symbolic Cores, Four Direction Souls.
As for the seventh grade, that was Tianyi's current grade with nine spiritual cores and five nascent souls, the supreme grade. Since it could no longer be merely called the Sole Extreme Yin, Eight Trigrams Yang Core Revolution Formation, Tianyi renamed it to the Nine Mandate Cores, Five Heaven Souls.
Ignoring the Foundation Establishment Realm, what is achieved in the Qi Gathering Realm is what decides the cultivator's future in the cultivated Tianyi's method. Of course, even if a cultivator opened all eight extraordinary meridians, they would not necessarily be able to cultivate the fifth, sixth, or seventh grade. The best a cultivator could cultivate without treasures was the fourth grade, but Tianyi had a bad feeling about it, maybe because it had double fours, which symbolized double death.
The fifth form was still okay. As long as the cultivator had a master or a force backing them up, the price wasn't too much. Tianyi took inspiration from the famed three sovereigns and five emperors of mankind for the fifth grade. According to his calculation, the fifth grade should have numerous variants. But right now, it only had Sovereign Suiren as inspiration with his Endless Ember Scripture. The most famous of them was the Yellow Emperor, who created the Xuanyuan Scripture and the Spring Autumn Scripture.
It was only after the sixth grade that it got nearly impossible. The resources devoted to a Foundation Establishment Realm disciple to ascend to Core Formation Realm would be ridiculous. From what Tianyi calculate, it would cost immortal rank or near-immortal rank materials.
And the seventh grade was even more ridiculous. Just the price of the dragon pearl would eclipse the sixth grade's cost by severalfold, not to mention the scarcity of dragons in contemporary times. Not even Tianyi could create another seventh-grade Nine Mandate Core, Five Heaven Soul clone. Well, he could if he asked his mother, but he felt it would be too shameless just so he could create a clone with the same cultivation. Not that he wasn't reaching into the resources available to him due to his mother currently.
After that, the cultivator wouldn't need to invest in any more resources. But that was a poor comfort at best. Both the sixth and seventh grade were huge drains of resources that no sane person you would have to do. Spending all the resources on a Qi Gathering Realm pupil on an off chance to create a powerful immortal wasn't worth it. But Tianyi was a wastrel, and it was time to prove it once and for all. Tianyi planned to create a new clone to cultivate his newly devised cultivation method and form the sixth-grade Eight Symbolic Cores, Four Direction Souls.
As for the name of this cultivation method? Tianyi named it the Nine-Five Scripture after the supreme seventh grade.
Goosebumps littered Tianyi's body as he stood with his back straight like a steel rod in front of his mother. Yet, his gaze was anywhere but forward, landing everywhere but his mother. He was unable to hold his head up like a child who knew he had committed a wrong. Tianyi had to fight every instinct in his body not to bend his neck and fidget with his hands.
This was the second time.
The second time his mansion was destroyed. The first was when he tested out the nuclear self-detonation technique, and now it was the second time.
"Yi'er," Mengfei started as she started stroking Tianyi's head. The feeling of Tianyi's hair at her touch felt especially soothing. "It's only a mansion. But this is the second time already. You should move into Jade Peak Palace permanently."
"I don't want to impose. In addition, I feel that it might be dangerous..." Tianyi trailed off.
"You've already destroyed two mansions now," Mengfei said, causing Tianyi to feel as if she stabbed a dull knife into his heart. "Your realm does not allow the sect to construct an immortal rank abode for you. Rather than build another mansion for you that will be destroyed, it will be better for you to live in Jade Peak Palace."
"What if I accidentally destroy Jade Peak Palace as well...?" Tianyi said.
"The Jade Peak Palace combined with the Jade Peak Seal is able to fight off immortal emperors for a short period of time and immortal monarchs indefinitely. You aren't even a true immortal yet, so there is no possibility of that occurring." Mengfei patiently explained with no hints of doubt in her voice at all.
Tianyi had no rebuttal for that. In the end, he could only nod his head and agree to Mengfei's demands. He was already over thirty physically and fifty mentally, so he felt shame still mooching off his mother. Not that he wasn't still mooching off of her, but living apart gave an illusion that he wasn't completing mooching off of her.
When Tianyi left, Mengfei found a smiling growing on her lips as she laid back on the couch of the main hall. She had attempted to get Tianyi to move back into Jade Peak Palace after his mansion was destroyed, but Tianyi refused. More than once, Mengfei regretted allowing Tianyi to live on his own. She regretted even more that she allowed him to move out at a young age.
Did Tianyi resent her? Is that why he didn't want to move back in? Mengfei pondered. She had read that a child needed their mother's attention the most when they were young, but due to her immature emotions at the time, she allowed Tianyi to move out and could even be said to have neglected him. At the time she had no understanding of raising a child and so followed what she knew. Namely, pushing the duty to a servant, like her emperor-father and consort-mother had done to her.
Maybe Tianyi secretly resented or had misgivings due to his experience when he was young, and that's why he didn't want to live with her. Mengfei had concluded. But now, it all changed.
Mengfei had successfully tricked Tianyi into living with her again!
With her prestige, as long as she paid the price, she could easily build an immortal-rank mansion for Tianyi. But that would mean living separately, so she convinced Tianyi not to. And now, they would have more time to interact. Mengfei held her chin in her fingers. She had read that mother's often tucked in their child when they slept at night. Since she didn't before, should she start doing it now?
Or maybe she could help feed Tianyi. She recalled that she only needed to place the food in front of the infant Tianyi, and he would eat by himself. The book said the process of personally feeding the baby was an essential ritual in establishing feelings between mother and child.
Unaware of Mengfei's thoughts, Tianyi returned to the room that he frequently lived in before he moved out to his first mansion and the time he was still in the Core Formation Realm. To take his mind off of how he wasted his mother's resources (again), Tianyi began to focus on his cultivation... unsuccessfully.
Ugh, I don't even want to calculate how much I destroyed in spirit stones. Even with the amount I made with the formation cards and newly released Xiyi formations, I would be in major debt. Stop thinking about it Tianyi, just focus on your cultivation!
After calming his mind, Tianyi could finally focus on inspecting his new cultivation.
With him ascending into the Soul Nourishing Realm from the Acupoint Opening Realm, Tianyi no longer felt like there was any difference in his spiritual and martial cultivation methods as if they were one. His soul method and spiritual method had already combined as he merged the Lotus Soul Ascension Art with his five nascent souls.
It could be said that he truly created a perfect merger of all three types of cultivation methods.
But the requirements were simply too high. The user needed to enter both the Core Formation Realm and Acupoint Opening Realm within a short period of time. Otherwise, they would not be able to combat the deficiency of either method. It would be best to enter both realms at the same time, but that was practically impossible.
To enter the Sole Extreme Yin, Eight Trigrams Yang Core Revolution Formation, the user would need a dragon pearl elixir and form nine spiritual cores. And to enter the Acupoint Opening Realm of the unnamed martial method, the cultivator had to have a certain comprehension of spacetime. One needed extreme wealth, while the other required comprehension that only those in the Unity Realm and above possessed. Aside from Tianyi, who else possessed them?
Actually, Tianyi himself was surprised by how lucky he was. If he wasn't talented in the dao of spacetime, he would have had to stay in the Core Formation Realm much longer. Perhaps he would discover another martial body that complimented his nine spiritual cores, or perhaps he would have had to destroy one or eight of his spirituals.
So as a cultivation method, it was a complete failure.
Incorporating the soul method only happened at the Nascent Soul Realm. To merge the Soul Nourishing Realm martial method, it required the Heavenly Rivier Stellar Avatar that only Tianyi possessed. And it came with a devastating issue. After Tianyi merged all three cultivation methods, he discovered that he could no longer detect the spiritual qi of heaven and earth. Not only that, whenever he released his spiritual sense, it felt as if it was being restricted by something.
The only good news was that merging all three methods drastically increased the upper limits of his current realm. Tianyi wasn't sure if he could be considered a Nascent Soul or Soul Nourishing Realm cultivator anymore. Although he couldn't absorb the spiritual qi anymore, his cultivation would still increase without his purposeful control. Eventually, he would hit the peak of his new realm, but that issue is what came next.
Tianyi created his current method using the orthodox cultivation methods, but now he couldn't use the Unity Realm or World Merging Realm as references and had to grope in the dark to discover a new method. Tianyi estimated he had the power of a unity venerable, but that was nothing compared to the fatal issue of not being able to advance to the next realm.
He cultivated to attain immortality. If his method couldn't accomplish that, then it would be worthless.
Calm down. Since my cultivation is built using the Ten Heavenly Scriptures as a foundation, it should be an orthodox method. Thinking back, every time I had an issue, it was solved when I merged a Heavenly Scripture into it. And it doesn't need to be the original. Anything derived would be fine, like the Spring Autumn Scripture or the Thirty-Six Heavenly Constellation Art. In fact, the sect's Five Element Method that was rumored to be derived from the Five Phases Heavenly Scripture was also helpful. If I hadn't perused it, I would not have been able to create my spiritual Core Formation Realm method or my martial method.
Tianyi's eyes flashed as he thought of the True Pure True Self Visualization Technique but quickly shook his head.
I haven't reached a dead end, no need to resort to desperate measures just yet. I'll try to gather enough contribution during the Demon Slaying Expedition to see if I can exchange for another derivative of a Heavenly Scripture. But I shouldn't just place my hope on that. Perhaps it's simply that my cultivation method is not complete enough, so I can't see the path ahead. I need to strengthen my foundations even more. Even if it doesn't illuminate my next step, there is no harm in doing so. I will revise my current method into a mixed cultivation method that anyone can cultivate as long as they have the talent. Who knows, maybe it will even surpass the Taiji Fist as the greatest cultivation method?
With that goal in mind, Tianyi began to study his body and soul. He was using himself as the base to create a new merged method that anyone could cultivate. Compared to Zhang Sanfeng's Taiji Fist that merged spiritual and martial methods, Tianyi planned to incorporate soul methods from the very beginning and not introduce it only at the Nascent Soul Realm.
To help facilitate this, Tianyi often used the stars in his cosmos to form temporary clones to test out his newly created methods. The Thirty-Six Heavenly Constellation Art had a technique that allowed the cultivator to replicate other cultivation methods. Tianyi simply modified it to form a pseudo clone. The pseudo clone was created from Tianyi from a constellation from several stars and bringing out of his body. It was not a true clone because it did not have its own thoughts and was an empty husk. To control it, Tianyi needed to use his spiritual sense. As such, Tianyi named it the Constellation Incarnation Technique.
Most of them just collapsed into themselves or exploded, some even imploded. After the first one exploded, Tianyi decided to move his experiments to where the rubble of his mansion lay. Although he was confident in the Jade Peak Palace's sturdiness, he couldn't calm himself down emotionally.
After a year of experimentation, Tianyi felt as if he created a skeleton for his new cultivation method. It had taken many failures before he was finally confident enough to create a clone to cultivate it, but there were several requirements. For simplicity's sake, Tianyi temporarily based the individual names of the realms on spiritual cultivation.
In the Qi Gathering Realm, the cultivator will absorb qi and create tiny stars in their body. Using these stars, they would discover open twelve meridians and temper their body in preparation for creating a martial body. At the same time, the souls would be enlightened by the starlight. At this stage, the cultivator wouldn't understand the method's complexity, and all they could do was follow the instructions. Thinking about it, Tianyi felt that his cultivation method was still of mysteries that he himself did not fully understand as if operated on some primordial law.
Opening the twelve meridians and preparing the body as a vessel was the only first step in this realm. The most crucial aspect was to open the eight extraordinary meridians. The number of extraordinary meridians opened would decide which grade the cultivator could cultivate.
The first grade would be the weakest grade that allowed the cultivator to form one spiritual core and one nascent soul.
The second grade allowed the cultivator to form two spiritual cores and one nascent soul.
The third grade allowed the cultivator to form three spiritual cores and two nascent souls.
The fourth grade allowed the cultivator to form four spiritual cores and two nascent souls.
The fifth grade allowed the cultivator to form five spiritual cores and three nascent souls, which Tianyi dubbed the Five Emperor Cores, Three Sovereign Souls.
The sixth grade allowed the cultivator to form eight spiritual cores and four nascent souls. Tianyi named this one the Eight Symbolic Cores, Four Direction Souls.
As for the seventh grade, that was Tianyi's current grade with nine spiritual cores and five nascent souls, the supreme grade. Since it could no longer be merely called the Sole Extreme Yin, Eight Trigrams Yang Core Revolution Formation, Tianyi renamed it to the Nine Mandate Cores, Five Heaven Souls.
Ignoring the Foundation Establishment Realm, what is achieved in the Qi Gathering Realm is what decides the cultivator's future in the cultivated Tianyi's method. Of course, even if a cultivator opened all eight extraordinary meridians, they would not necessarily be able to cultivate the fifth, sixth, or seventh grade. The best a cultivator could cultivate without treasures was the fourth grade, but Tianyi had a bad feeling about it, maybe because it had double fours, which symbolized double death.
The fifth form was still okay. As long as the cultivator had a master or a force backing them up, the price wasn't too much. Tianyi took inspiration from the famed three sovereigns and five emperors of mankind for the fifth grade. According to his calculation, the fifth grade should have numerous variants. But right now, it only had Sovereign Suiren as inspiration with his Endless Ember Scripture. The most famous of them was the Yellow Emperor, who created the Xuanyuan Scripture and the Spring Autumn Scripture.
It was only after the sixth grade that it got nearly impossible. The resources devoted to a Foundation Establishment Realm disciple to ascend to Core Formation Realm would be ridiculous. From what Tianyi calculate, it would cost immortal rank or near-immortal rank materials.
And the seventh grade was even more ridiculous. Just the price of the dragon pearl would eclipse the sixth grade's cost by severalfold, not to mention the scarcity of dragons in contemporary times. Not even Tianyi could create another seventh-grade Nine Mandate Core, Five Heaven Soul clone. Well, he could if he asked his mother, but he felt it would be too shameless just so he could create a clone with the same cultivation. Not that he wasn't reaching into the resources available to him due to his mother currently.
After that, the cultivator wouldn't need to invest in any more resources. But that was a poor comfort at best. Both the sixth and seventh grade were huge drains of resources that no sane person you would have to do. Spending all the resources on a Qi Gathering Realm pupil on an off chance to create a powerful immortal wasn't worth it. But Tianyi was a wastrel, and it was time to prove it once and for all. Tianyi planned to create a new clone to cultivate his newly devised cultivation method and form the sixth-grade Eight Symbolic Cores, Four Direction Souls.
As for the name of this cultivation method? Tianyi named it the Nine-Five Scripture after the supreme seventh grade.
