Spirit Realm

Clearly, Yang Ning was not a local.

When he had first transmigrated here, he had thought this was merely an unremarkable ancient era. He had been born into a tenant farmer's family, with bare walls on all four sides. Worse still, in order to treat his mother's illness, his old father had borrowed three taels of silver from the landlord.

Three taels of silver seemed like very little, but tenant farmers like them relied on farming the landlord's land and receiving only twenty percent of the harvest. They could barely save any money in a year. Those three taels had been enough to make his father consider selling his son.

Fortunately, Yang Ning had been precocious. He could speak at two months, walk after half a month, and at six months old, he had actually guided his father in building a Curved Shaft Plow!

The moment this farming tool appeared, it caused an immediate sensation throughout the countryside. The name of the prodigy spread without wings, and even the County Lord specially summoned Yang Ning, bestowing gold, silver, and property upon him. She also arranged for him to enter the county school, lest he be born into a farming household and waste his talent.

The Yue Kingdom had stood for four hundred years, yet showed none of the signs of a dynasty nearing its end. Rebellion was naturally out of the question.

Yang Ning's plan had been to study hard, earn the title of Top Scholar, and casually spread knowledge of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and the like. He did not need to drag this ancient world into modernity, but getting his name printed in elementary school textbooks a century later and being crowned the ancestor of science should not have been difficult, right?

His plan had proceeded smoothly as well. He passed the scholar examination at five, became a provincial graduate at six, earned the title of Top Scholar at seven and became famous throughout the capital, then became Minister of Works at ten.

While making great strides in the humanities, he had also invented water wheels, improved the loom, invented Yang Ning's Numbers, Yang's Geometry, Yang's Algebra, and Yang's Functions, and founded Truth, the first scientific journal in the history of the Yue Kingdom—and indeed, the world.

Yet when he was eleven, he made a hot air balloon. Only when he released it did he discover that an invisible barrier hung above the capital!

Yang Ning would never forget that day.

A White-Robed Immortal stood upon a bell in midair, studying the hot air balloon with a curious expression. He had even asked Yang Ning how this thing could fly when it contained no spiritual energy.

That was how he discovered a brand-new world. He then decisively abandoned his official position, became an Immortal Seedling's pageboy, and entered this world.

With a thought from Yang Ning, though his eyes remained closed, the world around him lit up.

This was an enormous room spanning nearly ten thousand square meters. The room had been partitioned into many smaller suites, each serving a different function.

There was a bedroom, a leisure area, a reading area, an experimental area, and the cultivation area he had recently opened up.

Every area contained the equipment and tools it needed. The reading room had tables, chairs, benches, computers, and desks. The laboratory had microscopes, centrifuges, Machine Tools, Forging Presses, and Blast Furnaces.

At the edge of the laboratory stood a Curved Shaft Plow, Flap Water Wheel, Bucket Water Wheel, High-Rotation Water Wheel, Spinning Machine, Steam Engine, hot air balloon, as well as modern technological creations such as Sniper Rifles, rifles, artillery, tanks, and helicopters.

This was the Golden Finger Yang Ning had brought with him when he transmigrated. It was somewhat like a Lucid Dream, where everything was under Yang Ning's control. Altering heaven and earth with a single thought was commonplace.

Yet it was not a dream either, because if Yang Ning did not deliberately interfere, the laws within this world were exactly the same as those outside.

Water flowed downhill, light reflected, and so on. The airflow, sunlight, and warmth he experienced here were no different from the outside world.

He could also scan outside objects into this place—a ship, a lamp, a sword—and guarantee that their materials were exactly identical to those outside.

Best of all was scanning books. Books scanned here could not only be recorded word for word without the slightest error, but could also be extracted, analyzed, researched, and calculated for Yang Ning.

That was why Yang Ning had become Top Scholar at seven. He had not merely crammed books with the help of a cheat; he could apply what he learned flexibly as well.

This was still a Virtual Universe, after all, so it could not contain physical objects.

However, the space here was infinite. Yang Ning had built this house only because he was accustomed to conducting research indoors. In fact, if he wished, he could create a small island, a city, or even replicate the Earth from his previous life.

For a scientific researcher, this Golden Finger was simply something of dreams. He could conduct research on Nuclear Fusion or particle colliders here, or build ships, airplanes, and rockets. With a thought, he could construct all kinds of materials and shapes. So long as his mind worked quickly enough, he could produce results within one or two months—and it was cheap, too, costing only five steamed buns a day.

After recently coming into contact with cultivation, he had discovered that even Breathing Techniques could be brought in, and cultivating here was equally effective. Moreover, because this was not his real body, he did not need to fear injury no matter how hard he pushed himself. Most importantly, the sensations he developed here could be brought back into reality.

That was why he had cultivated the Breathing Technique to this extent in eleven days. He certainly had talent, but more than that, he had activated a cheat.

From the perspective of assisting cultivation, this Golden Finger was also like the Virtual Universe from Swallowed Star.

However, given that this was a cultivation world, Yang Ning had ultimately named this world the Spirit Realm.

Yang Ning was the only living person in the Spirit Realm, but he had also created an AI named Deep Blue, as a way of commemorating Blue Planet from his previous life.

He also hoped that one day, cultivation would no longer require thought—that he could simply shout, "Deep Blue, add points!" and be done with it.

"Deep Blue, can't you still detect the existence of spiritual energy?"

[Insufficient information. Unable to simulate completely.]

"That makes sense. Spiritual energy can neither be seen nor touched, and only Qi Refining Stage cultivators can come into contact with it. Even if we construct a concept similar to spiritual energy now, it would be as far apart from real spiritual energy as north and south. Set it aside for now. How is the analysis of the Breathing Technique's principles coming along?"

[Please look at the screen.]

As Deep Blue explained, Yang Ning began gaining a deeper understanding of the Breathing Technique.

As the foundation of cultivation, the principles behind the Breathing Technique were naturally not complicated. It controlled the frequency and rhythm of breathing, causing inhaled air to generate regular vibrations in the trachea and lungs. Those vibrations then triggered resonance in spiritual energy particles—assuming for now that spiritual energy existed in particle form—causing the spiritual energy to surge within the body.

"Body Refinement Realm cultivators cannot absorb spiritual energy, but spiritual energy is everywhere. It usually remains dormant, possessing the ability to stimulate qi and blood and activate cells without fully expressing those effects. Under this muscular resonance, the effects of spiritual energy are amplified, thereby strengthening the body."

"However, because it only affects the trachea and lungs, the Amber Breathing Technique has excellent effects on the lungs and qi and blood, but almost no effect on organs such as the bones, brain, and kidneys. It must rely on strengthened blood to transport energy throughout the body, and the effect is somewhat poorer. If we want to strengthen every cell in the body, we need to research new Breathing Techniques specifically for those organs!"

"Deep Blue, model the heart, liver, spleen, stomach, kidneys, bones, and brain separately. Calculate their frequencies!"

"The modeling is complete!" Deep Blue replied.

If even swords and blades could be scanned, then his own body was even less of a problem.

Yang Ning scanned himself almost every day to update his data in real time and monitor his progress. Thus, within this space, he could manifest every inch of his skin, every strand of hair, and even every cell.

Anything deeper was impossible. The scale of his modeling depended on the scale of his observations. He understood the principles of microscopes, so he could create microscopes and observe cells, organelles, and even Gene Chains, but that was as far as he could go.

He did not understand the principles of a scanning tunneling microscope, so he could not see his own Gene Fragments, nor could he observe things at the molecular or atomic level.

Sun Tzu had once said: know the enemy and know yourself, and you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles.

Applied to cultivation, that meant only by understanding himself could he know how to improve himself with precision.

With the lungs, Red Blood Cells, White Blood Cells, and Liver Cells as samples, Yang Ning conducted several rounds of testing and soon developed the breathing frequency and rate ranges needed to strengthen his other internal organs.

Breathing alone found it difficult to affect those organs. After all, oxygen did not pass through the heart. So Yang Ning increased the frequency of his breathing, first vibrating the trachea, then using the trachea to trigger vibrations in cellular fluid, which in turn vibrated the other organs. Using this method, Yang Ning created seven Breathing Techniques for strengthening other organs, collectively called the Seven-Day Breathing Technique.

The newly created Breathing Techniques were completely different from the Amber Breathing Technique. The Amber Breathing Technique was so quiet it was nearly inaudible, while the newly created techniques nearly made him cough his lungs out. If word got out, who knew whether people would mistake them for some demonic Outer Dao?

Wei Daocheng's teaching style was a typical Daoist style. He had lectured; whether they listened or not was none of his concern. In any case, he had fulfilled his responsibility.

Want after-class tutoring? Want to ask more questions about something you did not understand? No chance!

Although he knew Wei Daocheng probably did not care about his cultivation, Yang Ning still felt it was best not to cultivate right under his nose.

After all, reaching the Sleep Breath Realm in eleven days could be attributed to astonishing talent. Creating a Breathing Technique on the same level as the Amber Breathing Technique in eleven days, however, would be truly outrageous.

But based on his experience cultivating the Amber Breathing Technique, the limit for one Breathing Technique per day was only forty minutes. The Seven-Day Breathing Technique was seven in one, so it required only two hundred and eighty minutes. He could practice it once in a single night.

He had tested it over the past few days. No matter what he did in his bedroom, no one came to check on him. Clearly, the cultivators aboard the ship were quite proper and did not have the habit of scanning little children while they slept.

After letting his body begin trying the Seven-Day Breathing Technique, Yang Ning opened another book, Vast Wilderness Records.

Vast Wilderness Records was a book distributed after they boarded the ship. Everyone had one. It recorded the mountains, rivers, geography, peoples, and sects of the Taiheng Realm, meant to broaden the horizons of Immortal Seedlings. Most of its contents came from records left behind by senior members of their sect while traveling abroad.

Its contents could be called vast beyond measure, yet they were also exceptionally chaotic. The compiler had not even categorized the classic. He simply wrote down one entry after another and added them in, writing wherever his thoughts happened to wander.

Yang Ning had been busy these past few days. During the day, he scanned the ship, recorded every kind of bird flying past in the sky, observed astronomical phenomena and the stars, and cultivated the Breathing Technique.

At night, he categorized, organized, and studied this massive tome.

The book appeared to be only one centimeter thick, but it had been made with immortal arts. In reality, it contained more than one hundred and seventy thousand pages, with an enormous number of words on each unfolded page. Some illustrations could even move, lasting four or five hours—comparable to a documentary.

With Deep Blue around, categorization itself was easy. The difficult part was establishing the categories. Once those were set, the remaining work could be handed over to Deep Blue.

Because the contents were so chaotic, Yang Ning had spent seven or eight days merely establishing the categories. The actual classification had taken only two seconds.

This showed that not only was the Spirit Realm vast, its computational speed was astonishing as well, no worse than the supercomputers of his previous life.

"Vast Wilderness Records records the geography of the Vast Wilderness in travelogue form. Based on the different directions from which the seniors set out, it can be divided into the Taihua East Classic, Taihua West Classic, Taihua South Classic, Taihua North Classic, Southeast Classic, Southwest Classic, Northeast Classic, and Northwest Classic."

"There are also records from other sects whose directions are unclear. Confirm them through comparison with the available materials. Anything that truly cannot be confirmed should be listed separately!"

"There are also a great many mountains, rivers, and natural histories. Those need to be categorized separately as well."

Though the Vast Wilderness Records was disordered, the immortals had a clear view of the world, and their formats were highly consistent. They generally recorded which direction they had gone, how far they had traveled, what was there, what the place produced, what effects those things had, whether there were unusual animals, and how they tasted.

For example:

Travel east from Taihua, then east again for eight thousand li, and there is Nether Marsh Lake. Its waters are dark and yellow. Strange snakes live there, with two horns upon their heads and golden scales. They move like the wind and do not sink when swimming in the lake. People of the time called them False Dragons. Eating them nourishes essence and boosts qi. Taking their essence blood can refine the Mortal Pill "Dragon Marrow Pill."

(It really said "then east again"; that was how the original text of the Classic of Mountains and Seas put it.)

Once categorized, they could simply be divided into plants, terrestrial creatures, aquatic creatures, birds, Demon Beasts, Fierce Beasts, spirit beasts, metallic materials, stone materials, gaseous materials, and many other categories.

Occasionally, some passages also contained bits of common cultivation knowledge.

For example, pills were divided into Mortal Pills, Qi Pills, Spirit Pills, Treasure Pills, Dao Pills, and Immortal Pills.

Magic Artifacts were divided into mortal artifacts, Magic Artifacts, Spirit Artifacts, treasure artifacts, Dao artifacts, and immortal artifacts.

There were also talismans and formations, though they were relatively rare. Cultivators in the Taiheng Realm seemingly did not like using those two things.

The book also described the combat strength of immortals, but many immortals enjoyed exaggerating, and their descriptions of the power of techniques were a complete mess. One moment it was a sword severing mountains and rivers; the next, devastation stretching tens of thousands of li.

Whether they were being factual or exaggerating, Yang Ning did not know, having never seen immortals fight. He could only use it as a reference and not treat it as truth.

It was worth mentioning that the Taiheng Realm was the name of this world, the Taiheng Sect was the name of Yang Ning's sect, and Taiheng Heaven was the fifth heaven among the five layers of the atmosphere, as well as the name of the highest heaven. All three names originated from the Taiheng Sect, once the foremost sect in Taiheng.

The Ascension Academy Yang Ning belonged to was a pre-cultivation school established under the Taiheng Sect. Generally, one had to finish learning writing and all kinds of cultivation knowledge at the Ascension Academy before entering the Taiheng Sect.

Thus, Yang Ning was not even an elementary school student on the path of cultivation. At most, he was a kindergartener.