Chen Yu trudged up the stairs to his room, each step sending fresh jolts through his battered ribs. The inn's hallway was quiet, most patrons either out for the evening or already asleep. He unlocked his door and stepped inside, finally allowing himself to show the exhaustion he'd been hiding all evening.
His armor came off first. The leather was torn in several places, deep claw marks scoring through the protective layers. He'd need to get it repaired or just buy new armor entirely. The sword followed, placed carefully on the desk. Despite everything, the blade was still in good condition. He'd maintained it properly during the fight.
Chen Yu retrieved a small clay jar from his belongings, a simple medical paste he'd purchased weeks ago. Cheap, but effective enough for surface wounds. He peeled off his blood-stained shirt and examined the damage in the small mirror mounted on the wall.
Three parallel gashes ran across his ribs, already crusting over but still angry and red. Bruises bloomed across his torso in shades of purple and yellow. He'd been lucky. A few inches to the left and those claws would have opened his stomach.
He scooped out a generous amount of the paste and began rubbing it into his injuries, wincing as the medicine burned on contact. The paste was cold at first, then gradually warmed, numbing the worst of the pain. It wouldn't heal him overnight, but it would prevent infection and speed recovery.
Once he'd treated all visible wounds, Chen Yu sat cross-legged on his bed and closed his eyes. His body ached, but his mind was worse. Frayed from the constant alertness during the fight, from maintaining composure around Xie Jun, from nearly dying twice in one day.
He needed to rest. To center himself.
Chen Yu slowed his breathing and reached inward, connecting to his clone in the mindscape. The familiar presence waited there, eternally cultivating with that same steady progress. He began drawing that cultivation progress into himself, feeling the day's accumulated energy flow through the connection.
His brow furrowed.
The progress was the same as before his breakthrough. Same rate, same quantity, as if jumping from first layer to fourth had changed nothing about how quickly his clone could cultivate.
That didn't make sense. Higher cultivation realms should be harder to progress through, requiring more time and energy to advance. But the opposite hadn't happened either. The speed hadn't increased just because he'd advanced multiple layers.
Maybe it was because he hadn't crossed a major stage yet? Body Refinement to Qi Gathering would be a significant threshold. Perhaps the rate would only change then.
Chen Yu filed the observation away and continued his meditation, letting the day's stress slowly drain from his mind. His thoughts drifted, consciousness hovering in that space between waking and sleeping where awareness became fluid.
Then something occurred to him. A question so obvious he couldn't believe he'd never considered it before.
Where was the spiritual energy in the mindscape coming from?
The void was separate from reality. Isolated. Yet his clone had been cultivating there continuously for over a month, absorbing spiritual energy without any external source visible. That energy had to come from somewhere.
And if there was spiritual energy in that space, energy his clone was already using, why couldn't he harness it directly to accelerate time instead of burning through expensive spirit stones?
Chen Yu's eyes snapped open. His exhaustion forgotten completely, he dove his consciousness fully into the mindscape.
The white void materialized around him. His clone sat in meditation nearby, but Chen Yu ignored it, focusing instead on the space itself. He'd created this place, yet he'd never truly examined it. Never questioned its nature or origins.
He looked around, trying to perceive what he'd always taken for granted.
The void was white. But not white like snow or paper or paint. It was the white of absolute absence, of color that existed by not existing. Yet simultaneously it was black, not the black of darkness but of infinite depth, of everything compressed into nothing.
The more Chen Yu observed, the less sense it made. The space seemed to be there and not there at the same time. A mixture of nothings and things, presence and absence, reality and void all tangled together.
His perception began to shift. The longer he stared into that impossible white-black emptiness, the more he felt himself merging with it. His sense of separation, of being distinct from the space, started to dissolve like sugar in water.
Chen Yu's vision faded. He could no longer see in any conventional sense. But something else emerged to replace sight, a deeper awareness, a consciousness that extended beyond the limitations of eyes and perspective.
He sensed the space directly now. Felt its contours and dimensions in ways that had no physical analog. And within that formless perception, he finally detected what he'd been searching for.
Energy.
It wasn't calm. It wasn't violent either. It was both and neither simultaneously. The calmness of the storm's eye and the fury of the hurricane surrounding it. A breath that could destroy and create at the same time. A conflict of opposing forces that somehow existed in perfect balance.
But how could there be opposing forces in nothingness? What could conflict within absolute void?
Chen Yu's awareness expanded further, and understanding crystallized like ice forming on water.
This energy wasn't spiritual energy at all.
It was similar in function. His body processed it the same way, his cultivation advanced through absorbing it. But the essence was fundamentally different. Not purer or stronger, just other. Operating on a different dimension of existence entirely.
Chen Yu's consciousness snapped back to a more focused state, his mind racing. This changed everything. Or did it? The energy seemed to function identically to spiritual energy in practice. His cultivation hadn't shown any unusual properties. His techniques worked normally.
So what was the difference?
He needed to experiment. This could be another aspect of his golden finger, another advantage he hadn't discovered yet.
His awareness turned toward his clone, still cultivating peacefully. Why hadn't the clone shown any different effects? It had been absorbing this strange energy for over a month, yet it behaved exactly like any cultivator using normal spiritual energy.
The answer came to him immediately.
The cultivation method.
He'd been using a standard Body Refinement technique, one designed for spiritual energy. Of course it would process this different energy the same way. It was like using a water wheel whether you placed it in a river or an ocean. The mechanism remained the same regardless of the source.
But what if he could create a method specifically designed for this energy? One that leveraged its unique properties?
Chen Yu made a decision. He entered his clone fully, taking direct control of its body. Since breaking through to fourth layer, his tolerance for possessing the clone had increased significantly. He could maintain control for much longer now before mental fatigue set in.
Through the clone's body, Chen Yu began circulating the energy according to the standard cultivation method, but slowly, paying attention to every detail. He felt the energy flow through meridians, temper muscles and bones, gradually strengthen his physical form.
The method was elegant. Efficient. Refined over thousands of years by countless cultivators. Each circulation pathway had a purpose, each energy node carefully positioned for optimal effect.
Which meant modifying it would be incredibly difficult.
Chen Yu gritted his teeth. He was a Body Refinement cultivator, barely even considered to have entered the true cultivation path. Who was he to think he could improve techniques that ancient masters had perfected?
"I wish my mind could run faster," he thought in frustration.
The energy within the clone suddenly surged.
Every trace of that strange void-energy in the clone's body abandoned its circulation pathways and rushed toward Chen Yu's consciousness. It poured into his mind like a dam bursting, flooding his thoughts with raw power.
Chen Yu's awareness exploded.
His mind expanded. Not metaphorically, but in actual processing capacity. Thoughts that should have taken minutes resolved in seconds. Memories that had been vague crystallized into perfect clarity. His consciousness seemed to split and multiply, each fragment capable of independent reasoning.
He felt as if he'd been living his entire life with a fraction of his brain active, and now suddenly all of it had come online at once.
The cultivation method appeared in his enhanced perception like a three-dimensional map. He could see every pathway, understand every principle, trace every connection simultaneously. His multiplied consciousness began analyzing it from hundreds of angles at once.
Simulations spawned in his mind. Theoretical modifications tested against imaginary scenarios. Failed versions were discarded instantly. Promising variations were refined further. His thoughts moved so fast that subjective hours seemed to pass in what must have been seconds of real time.
He wasn't trying to improve the method for spiritual energy. That would be impossible. Instead he was adapting it for this void-energy, redirecting flows away from physical tempering and toward mental enhancement. Creating new circulation patterns that emphasized consciousness over corporeal strength.
The knowledge crystallized. A complete cultivation method designed specifically for the mind, built on principles he now understood with perfect clarity. It would sacrifice physical advancement for mental capacity, trading bodily strength for processing speed and memory.
The energy sustaining his expanded consciousness depleted.
Chen Yu's mind collapsed like a star imploding. That vast awareness compressed back down to its normal, limited state. The sensation was nauseating, like going from seeing in full color to suddenly being colorblind, from hearing a symphony to being plunged into silence.
He gasped, the clone's body shuddering with the shock of transition.
But even as his consciousness shrunk, even as that terrible sense of limitation closed around his thoughts, Chen Yu held onto what he'd created. The cultivation method, complete and functional and revolutionary, remained clear in his memory.
He commanded the clone to begin practicing it immediately, forcing the energy to circulate according to the new patterns even as exhaustion dragged at his awareness.
The clone's body moved on its own now, maintaining the technique. Chen Yu felt his control slipping, his consciousness unable to sustain possession any longer.
The last thing he registered before unconsciousness claimed him was the sensation of void's energy flowing through entirely new pathways, gathering in the clone's mind rather than its body, beginning to transform something fundamental about his cultivation path.
Then darkness took him, and Chen Yu knew nothing more.