The Mech Touch

Ves estimated that in the last half hour, he turned from a Novice into a... Journeyman in cultivation science.

His understanding of many of the fundamental theories related to deliberate cultivation had improved by leaps and bounds!

He managed to overcome one of his greatest shortcomings and blindspots in record time merely by ingesting a series of enlightenment fruits.

He felt a lot more confident about his ability to survive the coming troubles of the Age of Dawn.

Now that he along with the rest of red humanity was stuck in a dwarf galaxy that became flooded with exotic radiation, any relevant knowledge on how to make the most out of E energy radiation became incomparably precious.

His head happened to be stuffed with precious secrets on how to leverage spiritual energy in all kinds of fantastic and powerful ways!

His spiritual engineering capabilities had undergone an explosive rebirth.

No longer did he have to rely on shaky and incomplete homebrew theoretical frameworks to develop his products.

He could rely on much more mature and detailed theories to form deeper interactions with more promising phenomena.

Ves already secured the essentials he needed to upgrade all of his design spirits, his companion spirits, his living mechs and a lot of other powerful works!

He quickly checked his remaining balance.

"I still have 385 Ascension Points at my disposal."

This granted him room to obtain one more decent enlightenment fruit.

Although he already obtained all of the basics, Ves wanted to obtain an extra package of theories related to harnessing different spiritual attributes.

The cultivation methods that he obtained from the Tree of Possibilities did not go in depth in this particular direction. They were all fixated on other concepts and goals to spare any room for superfluous elements.

"Let's see."

The Tree of Possibilities still offered hundreds of unplucked enlightenment fruits. Ves had no idea where the System obtained all of this secret knowledge and inheritances, but he did not feel like looking a gift horse in the mouth.

He quickly scanned through several viable options before his sight settled on the most attractive choice.

[Beginner Five Elements Spells Manual]

Price: 250 Ascension Points

Imparts a moderate selection of basic qi spells along with their associated theories based on the five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, water. These qi-based techniques are organized by difficulty, complexity and other requirements and can be practiced in sequence to form a systematic repertoire of solutions.

This beginner manual offers methods to activate and make effective use of the advantages of each of the five elements. It does not contain more advanced techniques that cover the rich and varied methods to combine multiple elements to produce compound effects such as strengthening, weakening, regulation or transformation.

The price of this enlightenment fruit was greater than he was comfortable with. His balance would drop to a concerning level if he exchanged for the Beginner Five Elements Spells Manual, leaving him with an inadequate buffer against emergencies.

"It's really difficult to earn so many Ascension Points again!"

The Mission Hall demanded a lot of crazy and impractical actions from Ves in order to earn additional AP. It drove Ves crazy as he did not want to engage in work that went against his own nature.

He shook his head. He could think about earning Ascension Points and building up a healthy reserve once again at a later date.

"Buy."

Different from the enlightenment fruits that Ves bought before, this one did not come with any cultivation methods.

This was a benefit rather than a shortcoming. It meant that it was devoid of a lot of unnecessary and superstitious associations. It simply did what it said. It imparted a general theoretical framework on the five elements. It also taught a whole bunch of simple qi manipulation techniques that were directly based on this framework.

Ves deduced that the manual was originally designed with a broad and varied target audience in mind.

All kinds of cultivators could read through the manual and pick and choose which spells they wanted to learn.

The expectation was that most of them would settle for learning a selection of spells that aligned with their most dominant and compatible elements.

It was not necessary for a cultivator to master the full repertoire of spells, especially if they were based on incompatible elements!

Only a tiny proportion of talented cultivators had any need or desire to explore all five elements.

Due to the working mechanisms of the enlightenment fruit, Ves not only familiarized himself with the full range of spells contained within the Beginner Five Elements Spells Manual, but also gained at least a basic degree of proficiency in all of them! He felt he could manipulate his own spiritual energy as well as the ambient spiritual energy around him to produce all kinds of interesting effects!

He raised his hand and recited a mantra in his mind while at the same time shaping spiritual energy in a specific pattern.

The ambient spiritual energy around him eventually formed into a small fireball, which he subsequently threw onto the ground next to the Tree of Possibilities!

Pfff.

"That's it? How useless."

While Ves was impressed by the mechanisms that effectively converted spiritual energy into a real physical fireball, he did not take the spell itself too seriously!

If he wanted to cause harm, he was better off materializing the Amastendira and pulling the trigger on his target.

"Humans are tool users. My technological products can easily outdo any of the spells that I have learned."

Ves tried out a few other spells in order to confirm how powerful they were under the current circumstances.

He managed to levitate his Hammer of Melody above his palm, but couldn't lift anything heavier.

He managed to condense the moisture in the air into enough drops of water to quench his thirst.

"From this day onwards, I can rightfully regard myself as a spiritual sorcerer!"

Of course, this was just a useless flight of fancy. Why the hell would Ves waste his time on these useless magic tricks? Human civilization was primarily based around technology, and its development in this area vastly exceeded the results produced by primitive and outdated 'spells'!

What he truly valued was acquiring the foundational theories and the underlying mechanisms of all of these spells.

The five elements no longer sounded as mysterious and inscrutable to him as before.

"I kind of understand now why the Sacred Scrolls come in five different editions."

Each element possessed a lot of versatility and potential, and that was when they were used by themselves.

Once combined, they could produce vastly greater results!

A lot of new elements and effects could be produced by combining the five elements in different ways!

It was a pity that the fruit did not go into detail in these more advanced theories.

"I probably won't be able to afford it anyway." He muttered.

He took a brief look at his remaining balance and winced.

"Damn. There is only 135 AP left!"

That was a pathetic sum compared to what he had before. Under normal circumstances, Ves could only earn a single Ascension Point per completed mech design.

He would have to work for a long time in order to break past the 1000 AP barrier again!

"I need to go on another Mission spree if I want to buy another batch of enlightenment fruits." He frowned.

He had almost completely exhausted this opportunity to take advantage of the System and quickly absorb a huge amount of rare and valuable knowledge.

It would probably take a long time before he could do this again!

Still, he felt really good about his choices today. Each of the enlightenment fruits he plucked from the Tree of Possibilities had been worth the Ascension Points he spent on them and more.

Now that his head was filled with multiple different theoretical frameworks related to cultivation science, Ves became more eager than ever to formulate his own cultivation methods!

When he looked back at the Imaginary Universe Method he derived for Blinky, he gained a completely different impression of his own work.

It was as if he had graduated from a third-class mech designer to a second-class mech designer all of a sudden.

Whenever a second-class mech designer examined a relatively crude and simple third-class mech design, they would always be able to spot many shortcomings and missed opportunities!

"It's too primitive!"

Although he felt that the method should still be able to work, it possessed so many holes that all kinds of unpredictable and unexpected accidents might occur if Blinky truly tried to form an internal universe!

For better or worse, Ves had to proactively address all of these holes before they could ever become a problem.

Several hours went by as Ves continually drew onto a lot of scattered theories to expand on the model of the imaginary universe.

He not only incorporated his recently obtained Urvenk Obelisk more deeply into the fabric of the imaginary universe, but also defined a lot of natural rules and phenomena with the help of the other theories that he had learned.

For example, he invested a lot of extra time into integrating the five elements into the basic operation of the imaginary universe.

Ves knew it was unrealistic to expect his imaginary universe to function exactly as the universe he lived in, but the closer it mimicked physical reality, the more comprehensive and multi-faceted it would become!

"This is the best I can do." He sighed as he completed the second iteration of his first genuine cultivation method.

He still felt a strong desire to start developing a bunch of other cultivation methods for his living mechs and so on, but all of that could wait.

What he desired the most right now was to present his work to his mother and obtain validation from her feedback!

He exited the System Space, causing him to fully reconnect with reality.

He shifted his focus to the Milky Way and immediately directed Veronica to enter Cynthia's meditation room again.

Strangely enough, Veronica was able to pick up on a lot more details than before!

Her much greater comprehension of cultivation science as well as her considerably greater familiarity of the five elements allowed her to pierce through the fog that surrounded her mother!

A strong atmosphere of wood surrounded the Oblivion Empress.

The meditation room was made with natural materials that had been processed in a way that effectively contained and isolated the potent energies to prevent them from contaminating the rest of the Throne of Light!

He could make so many more observations and even learn a few useful insights about his mother, but this was not his goal at the moment.

"Mother?"

"Yes, my child?" The glowing woman opened her eyes and smiled at the approaching cyborg cat.

"I used the cultivation method you gifted to me and modified it based on what I have learned from you as well as the System. Can you take a look at my work and point out its shortcomings?"

"Sure."

Cynthia quickly skimmed through all of the pages of the virtual document projected by Veronica.

Her expression was a lot more serious as she evaluated all of the cultivation processes that had been mixed and matched together.

"This... is far more detailed and complex than I expected from you." She said. "I can see clear influences from several advanced cultivation methods and cultural inheritances. The way you have carelessly mixed them together with no thought about their historical contradictions is... interesting. I can clearly tell you treated this as an engineering project. There is a surprising amount of science underpinning much of the steps, and the way you have structured them is logical, transparent and difficult to misinterpret."

Veronica proudly nodded. "I see no reason to deliberately obfuscate my method and mix it with all kinds of vague and superstitious nonsense. Cultivation can be treated as a science as far as I am concerned. You can tell me if I am wrong."

"You are not wrong per se. You are merely flying against tradition. This is good, so long as you remember that there may be good reasons why cultivators of the past have formed different assumptions and beliefs."

"Can you tell me if I overlooked anything important in my cultivation method?"

"Ah. I can do that." Cynthia said. "Your intention to form an entire universe that initially consists of the power of heaven and earth is truly bold and ambitious. I can observe that you have tried your best to address many flaws and make it as viable as possible. While you have done a good job at that, you have missed a few vulnerabilities that are immediately obvious to other cultivators such as myself."

"What did I do wrong, mother?"

The resurrected woman smirked. "The way in which Blinky is supposed to grow his imaginary universe is to indiscriminately absorb large quantities of qi, or spiritual energy as you call it. Have you ever considered what would happen if some of that absorbed qi isn't as harmless as you think? What if it is a parasite or a destructive element? How will you be able to cope if a virus or a hostile force has infiltrated your precious little universe?"

"Uhh... I guess I didn't think about that." Veronica admitted.