Spirit Realm

Obviously, Yang Ning was not a local.

When he first crossed over, he thought this was just an ordinary ancient world. He was born into a tenant farmer's family, with nothing but bare walls. To make matters worse, his father had borrowed three taels of silver from the landlord to treat his mother's illness.

Three taels seemed like a small amount, but their tenant family relied on the two-tenths share of the harvest from farming the landlord's land to earn a living. In a year, they could barely save any money. Those three taels drove his father to consider selling his son.

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

As soon as this farming tool appeared, it caused a sensation in the countryside. The reputation of a child prodigy spread like wildfire. Even the County Lord personally summoned Yang Ning, bestowed gold, silver, and property, and arranged for him to enter the county school, lest he waste his talent in a farmer's home.

The Yue Kingdom had stood for four hundred years, yet showed no signs of dynastic decline. Rebellion was naturally out of the question.

Yang Ning's plan was to study hard, earn the title of Top Scholar, and casually popularize knowledge of mathematics, physics, and chemistry. He didn't expect to drag this ancient world into modernization, but a hundred years later, being featured in elementary school textbooks and posthumously honored as the Father of Technology shouldn't be too hard.

His plan went smoothly. At five, he became a Xiucai; at six, a Juren; at seven, he became the Top Scholar, his name known throughout the capital; and at ten, he became the Minister of Works.

While advancing rapidly in the humanities, he also invented the water wheel, improved the loom, created Yang Ning's Numbers, Yang's Geometry, Yang's Algebra, and Yang's Functions, and founded the first scientific journal in the history of the Yue Kingdom and the world: Truth.

However, at the age of eleven, when he built a Hot Air Balloon and launched it, he discovered an invisible barrier above the capital!

Yang Ning would never forget that day.

A White-Robed Immortal stood in the void on a ringing bell, curiously studying the hot air balloon, and asked him how it could fly without spiritual energy.

And so, he discovered a brand new world. He promptly abandoned his official position, became a book boy for an Immortal Seedling, and entered this world.

Yang Ning's mind stirred. His eyes remained closed, but the world around him lit up.

This was a massive room covering nearly ten thousand square meters, divided into several suites with different functional zones.

For example, the bedroom, leisure area, reading area, experimental area, and the recently added cultivation area.

Each zone had its necessary equipment and tools. The reading room had tables, chairs, and computer desks. The laboratory had microscopes, centrifuges, machine tools, forging presses, and a blast furnace.

At the edge of the laboratory sat a Curved Shaft Plow, a Flap Water Wheel, a Bucket Water Wheel, a High-Rotation Water Wheel, a Spinning Machine, a Steam Engine, a Hot Air Balloon, and modern technological creations like sniper rifles, rifles, cannons, tanks, and helicopters.

This was the Golden Finger Yang Ning brought with him when he crossed over. It was somewhat like a Lucid Dream—everything inside was under his control, and reshaping heaven and earth with a single thought was ordinary.

But it wasn't a dream, because if Yang Ning didn't deliberately interfere, the laws of this world were exactly the same as the outside.

Water flowed downhill, light reflected, and the airflow, sunlight, and warmth felt here were identical to the outside world.

He could also scan external objects into this space—a ship, a lamp, a sword—ensuring their materials were exactly the same as outside.

The most useful feature was scanning books. Books scanned here were not only recorded word for word but also had functions to help Yang Ning extract, analyze, research, and calculate.

This was why Yang Ning could become the Top Scholar at seven. He didn't just study mechanically with his cheat; he could apply it flexibly.

Still, since this was a Virtual Universe, it couldn't hold physical objects.

However, the space here was infinite. Yang Ning built this room out of habit from researching in rooms. In truth, if he wanted, he could create an island, a city, or even replicate his past life's Earth.

This Golden Finger was a dream come true for a scientific researcher. He could conduct research on Nuclear Fusion, particle colliders, or build ships, planes, and rockets. Since he could construct all kinds of materials and shapes with a thought, as long as his mind worked fast, he could produce results in a month or two, and it was cheap—costing just five steamed buns a day.

Recently, after delving into cultivation, he discovered that even breathing techniques could be brought in here. Cultivating here was effective too, and since it wasn't his real body, he could experiment recklessly without fear of injury. Most importantly, the sensations he mastered here could be transferred to reality.

That was why he could train the breathing technique to this level in eleven days. He certainly had talent, but more than that, he was cheating.

From the perspective of aiding cultivation, this Golden Finger resembled the Virtual Universe from Swallowed Star.

But since this was a cultivation world, Yang Ning ultimately named this space: Spirit Realm.

Yang Ning was the only living person in the Spirit Realm, but he also created an AI, naming it Deep Blue, as a tribute to his past life's Blue Planet.

He also looked forward to the day when cultivation wouldn't require thinking—just shouting, "Deep Blue, add points," and it would be done.

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

[Insufficient information, unable to fully simulate]

"Fair enough. Spiritual energy is invisible and intangible; only Qi Refining Stage cultivators can touch it. Even if I construct a concept similar to spiritual energy now, it would be completely off from real spiritual energy. Let's set it aside for now! How's the construction of the breathing technique's principles coming along?"

[Please look at the screen]

Accompanied by Deep Blue's explanation, Yang Ning began to gain a deeper understanding of the breathing technique.

After all, it was the foundation of cultivation. The principle of the breathing technique wasn't complicated: control the frequency and rhythm of breathing so that the inhaled air creates regular vibrations in the trachea and lungs. These vibrations trigger resonance with spiritual energy particles—assuming spiritual energy exists in particle form—and then stir the spiritual energy within the body.

"Body Refinement Realm cultivators can't absorb spiritual energy, but spiritual energy is everywhere. It's usually inert, with the ability to stimulate blood and activate cells not fully expressed. Under this muscle resonance, the effects of spiritual energy are amplified, thereby strengthening the body."

"However, since it only affects the trachea and lungs, the Amber Breathing Technique is excellent for the lungs and blood but has almost no effect on organs like bones, the brain, and kidneys. It relies on the strengthened blood to transport energy throughout the body, which is less efficient. To strengthen every cell in the body, I need to research new breathing techniques targeting these organs!"

"Deep Blue, create separate models for the heart, liver, spleen, stomach, kidneys, bones, and brain, and calculate their frequencies!"

"Modeling complete!" Deep Blue responded.

If even swords could be scanned, then himself was no exception.

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

Deeper levels were beyond him. The scale of his modeling depended on his observation scale. He knew the principles of a microscope, so he could build one to observe cells, organelles, and even Gene Chains, but that was the limit.

He didn't know the principles of a scanning tunneling microscope, so he couldn't see his own Gene Fragments or observe molecules or atoms.

Sun Tzu once said: Know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never be defeated.

Applied to cultivation, it meant that only by understanding yourself could you know how to improve yourself specifically.

With samples from the lungs, Red Blood Cells, White Blood Cells, and Liver Cells, Yang Ning, after several tests, deduced the breathing frequencies and rate ranges needed to strengthen other organs.

Relying solely on breathing made it difficult to affect these organs—after all, oxygen doesn't pass through the heart. Yang Ning increased his breathing frequency, first vibrating the trachea, then using the trachea to trigger vibrations in cellular fluid, thereby vibrating other organs. Using this method, Yang Ning created seven breathing techniques to strengthen other organs, collectively called the Seven-Day Breathing Technique.

The newly created breathing technique was completely different from the Amber Breathing Technique. The Amber Breathing Technique produced a faint sound, almost inaudible, but the newly created breathing technique nearly made him cough up his lungs. If this got out, he didn't know if it would be mistaken for some kind of demonic practice.

Wei Daocheng's teaching style was a typical Daoist style: I'll lecture, you can listen or not, it doesn't matter—I've done my part.

Want after-class tutoring? Want to ask more questions about things you don't understand? No way!

Although he knew Wei Daocheng probably didn't 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 considered astonishing talent, but creating a breathing technique on par with the Amber Breathing Technique in eleven days would be truly absurd.

However, based on his experience cultivating the Amber Breathing Technique, a single breathing technique could only be practiced for a maximum of 40 minutes per day. The Seven-Day Breathing Technique was seven techniques combined, requiring only 280 minutes—he could practice it once in a single night.

He had experimented over the past few days; no matter what he did in his room, no one came to check on him. Clearly, the cultivators on the ship were proper and had no hobby of spying on a kid sleeping.

Letting his body begin attempting the Seven-Day Breathing Technique, Yang Ning opened another book, Vast Wilderness Records.

Vast Wilderness Records was a book distributed to everyone after boarding the ship. It recorded the geography, mountains, rivers, and human sect conditions of the Taiheng Realm, meant to broaden the horizons of Immortal Seedlings. Most of its content came from records left by senior sect members during their travels.

Its content could be described as vast beyond measure, yet extremely chaotic, because the compiler hadn't bothered to categorize the records. They simply wrote down whatever came to mind and added it in, as if writing wherever their thoughts led.

Yang Ning had been busy these days. During the day, he scanned the ship, recorded the various birds flying through the sky, observed astronomical phenomena and constellations, and practiced his breathing technique.

At night, he organized and studied this massive tome.

The book appeared to be only 1 centimeter thick, but it was made using immortal techniques. In reality, it contained over 170,000 pages, each page with a large amount of text. Some pages even had moving illustrations that lasted four to five hours, comparable to a documentary.

With Deep Blue around, categorization was actually very easy. The hard part was establishing the classification entries. Once those were set, the remaining work could be handed over to Deep Blue.

Because the content was so chaotic, Yang Ning spent seven or eight days just establishing the entries, but categorization itself took only two seconds.

Clearly, the Spirit Realm not only had vast capacity but also astonishing computational speed, no worse than the supercomputers of his previous life.

"Vast Wilderness Records records the geography of the Vast Wilderness in the form of travelogues. Based on the different directions the seniors set out in, 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 without clear directions—those can be cross-referenced with other data to confirm. Those that absolutely cannot be confirmed will be set aside separately!"

"There are also a large number of mountains, rivers, and natural history records—these also need their own categories."

Although the Vast Wilderness Records was chaotic, the immortals' perspective on understanding the world was very clear, and the format was consistent. Generally, they recorded which direction they went, how far, what was there, what it produced, what effects it had, whether there were special animals, and how they tasted.

For example:

"Leaving Taihua, heading east again, east again for eight thousand li, there is Nether Marsh Lake. The lake water is dark yellow, and it produces strange snakes with two horns on their heads, golden scales, moving like the wind, swimming across the lake without sinking. People of the time call them False Dragons. Eating them nourishes essence and increases qi. Taking their essence and blood can refine the Mortal Pill 'Dragon Marrow Pill.'"

(That's the "east again" format—the original Shan Hai Jing text is like this.)

After categorization, it could be simply divided into plants, land creatures, aquatic creatures, birds, Demon Beasts, Fierce Beasts, Spirit Beasts, metal materials, stone materials, qi-type materials, and many other categories.

Occasionally, some sentences were mixed with 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.

Talismans and formations also existed but were relatively rare—cultivators in the Taiheng Realm didn't seem to favor these two things.

The combat power of immortals was also described in the book, but many immortals liked to exaggerate, and their descriptions of technique power were all over the place. One moment they'd say "sword cleaves mountains and rivers," the next they'd say "devastates tens of thousands of li."

Whether they were being factual or exaggerating, Yang Ning, having never seen immortals fight, couldn't know. He could only treat it as a reference, not as Truth.

It was worth noting that Taiheng Realm was the name of this world, Taiheng Sect was the name of Yang Ning's sect, and Taiheng Heaven was the fifth and highest of the five atmospheric heavens. All three names derived from the former number-one sect of Taiheng, the Taiheng Sect.

The Ascension Academy Yang Ning belonged to was a cultivation preschool under the Taiheng Sect. Generally, one had to finish learning writing and common cultivation knowledge at the Ascension Academy before entering the Taiheng Sect.

So Yang Ning wasn't even an elementary school student on the path of cultivation—at best, he was in kindergarten.