"Let's call it 'The Myriad Paths Scripture'."
Jin said, and prepared to start practicing the technique.
*"You're going to run it now,"* Lin said. Not a question.
"Yes."
*"You haven't tested it yet."*
"That's why I'm testing it now."
*"What if the synthesis has errors you can't feel at the construct level?"*
"Then I'll find out when I run it." He looked at the eastern terrain spreading ahead — old mana, less shaped, the kind that gave honest feedback. "The only way to know if the circuit holds is to run the circuit."
Lin was quiet for a moment. The tail — slowly moving.
*"I want it noted,"* Lin said, *"that I find your relationship with personal risk deeply irresponsible."*
"Noted."
*"And that if something goes wrong, I will be extremely unhappy."*
"Also noted."
*"And that 'extremely unhappy' is a significant understatement."*
"Lin."
*"Yes."*
"I've been running experimental mana circuits on myself for three thousand years. I know what an error feels like. I know how to stop." He looked at his companion. "Trust me."
A pause.
*"Fine,"* Lin said. *"But I'm watching everything."*
"You always are."
---
He sat with his back against a stone in an isolated corner and closed his eyes.
The synthesis scripture was not a passive framework — it had to be run, the way circulation had to be run, actively sustained until the pathways learned their new shape and could hold without attention. He had done this with every major change to the patchwork over thirty years. Each time was different. Each time the body had to negotiate with the new pattern before accepting it.
He opened the synthesis framework in his awareness.
The first thing he noticed: the sections drawn from the ancient records seated differently now. Before the scripture, they had held cleanly but in isolation — each one a functioning piece with nothing connecting it to the next. The synthesis provided the connective tissue. The consolidation points the old man's scroll had described — the ones removed from the standardized version — functioned exactly as they were supposed to, linking the isolated sections into something that could circulate rather than just execute.
*There,* he thought. *That's what was missing. Not the sections themselves. The infrastructure between them.*
He ran a test circuit. Slow. Careful. Watching every point where the synthesis connected ancient material to the scripture's framework.
The first junction held.
The second held with a slight roughness — not a failure, an adjustment point, the new pattern and the old material negotiating. He eased through it rather than pushing.
The third junction was where the largest patch had been.
He stopped.
Felt it.
The patch was gone. Not replaced by the ancient section — replaced by the synthesis's version of the principle, which was neither the ancient path's language nor the scripture's language but the thing both of them had been trying to describe. The mana moved through it without translation. Without delay.
*That,* he thought, *is what fluency feels like.*
He held the circuit steady and let it run.
The mana started circulating slowly,passing through the 'nodes', but after the first full cicle, instead of slowing down, it sped up. The meridians, where the mana was passing in, started to heart. Jin looked inward and decided that it is safe to continue.
----
Few minutes later, the pain become so imberable that it started to show in Jin's face. But instead of stopping ,Jin decided that it is not enough, the theory is holding up, the body is hurting but adapting and nothing is outside of his calculations.
Suddenly, The pain spiked for a second than vanished in the next, accompagnied with the system notification.
*⟡ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION*
*cultivation attempt: Success*
*Scripture used: 'The Myriad Paths Scripture'(SSS)*
*Result: Major refinement*
*Completion rate: 90%*
*calculating effect:....*
*Effect: You aquired the passive skill:'Mana Enhancement'(S)*
*Effect: You aquired the Passive skill:'Mana circulation'(s)*
*Effect: You aquired The passive skill:'Overlord physique'(s)*
'Oh,... ' Jin was impressed by aquiring 3 passives after only one cultivation session.
"Hey stop that expression,and go do something about that smell, it is disgusting".Lin cried while covering his nose.
"What do you mea---"Jin stopped mid sentence when the smell launched its attack on his nose, and without even changing his expression he started walking to the resting room in the training area.
Intersetingly though , nobody even attempted to come close. And that's how the 'reeking monster of the training ground' legend was born.
------
The hunting grounds east of the gate. Far enough from other players. Quiet enough to feel anything that went wrong before it became a problem.
"Far enough."
Twenty minutes in, he fouced his eyes and reached.
Not a test construct. A full application — the synthesis framework active underneath, the circuit running, the threading mechanism engaged. He built Force Impact from the foundation rather than from the skill the system had already assigned.
The difference was immediate.
The active skills the system had given him were good. It worked from the outside in — the system had observed his method and translated it into a learnable form. This was the method itself, operating from the inside out. Less translation. More precision.Fully synergised with the Passives.
He applied it to a stone formation thirty meters away.
The stone cracked along a specific internal fault line — not the surface, not the bulk, the exact structural weakness the mana had identified in the threading phase. He hadn't aimed for the fault. The synthesis framework had found it automatically.
*That's new,* he noted.
The system processed.
---
*⟡ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION*
*Force Impact — upgraded *
*Previous: Rank I · Mastery Level 4*
*Current: Rank I · Mastery Level 7 · Threading Variant unlocked*
*Threading Variant: Force Impact now identifies structural compression points automatically during the threading phase.*
---
*"The skill upgraded,"* Lin said, reading over his shoulder. *"The scripture changed how you use something you already had."*
"Yes." He looked at the cracked stone. "The threading mechanism in the removed section — it doesn't just improve efficiency. It changes the character of everything built on top of it."
*"Everything."*
"Every construct that i can use the synthesis framework on will have the threading variant. Whatever that does for each skill will be different." He reached for the next test. "Let's find out what it does."
---
The second experiment: he wanted to test the removed section about sustained application.
Standard fire constructs produced an effect and terminated. Clean, efficient, the principle applied and satisfied. The removed section described a different mode — not instantaneous, continuous, the principle maintained rather than released. A thread of fire rather than a point of fire.
He had tried to build this before. With the patch, the sustained application always degraded — the mana channel couldn't hold the principle in active mode, the approximation couldn't sustain itself under the load.
He built the construct with the synthesis framework.
It held.
Not effortlessly — he could feel the maintenance cost, the MP draining at a steady rate rather than in a single expenditure. But it held cleanly, the principle sustained, the thread burning with the quality of something that had found its correct expression.
He directed it along the ground between two stone formations, watching how it moved.
*Tracing,* he noted. *It traces the path of least mana resistance. That's the threading mechanism at work — it doesn't just apply, it navigates.*
He released it. Checked the cost. Acceptable — higher than a standard construct, significantly lower than what the patched version would have cost for the same duration.
---
*
*
*⟡ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — SKILL ACHIEVEMENT*
*Sustained Application: Thread Construct*
*Method: Unassisted ·
*Completion Rate: 93%*
*Rewards:*
*· Flame Thread mastery +2 levels*
*· Achievement bonus: 3 Silver coins*
---
*"Flame Thread,"* Lin read. *"The system named it before you did."*
"It usually does." He looked at the skill entry. "93% — the sustained mode has a slightly lower completion rate than the instantaneous constructs. The threading mechanism has more variables to hold when the application is continuous."
*"Is that fixable?"*
"With practice." He reached for the third experiment. "And probably with what's in the next removed section."
---
The third experiment: the consolidation point principle.
The standardized scripture had described nodes as simple relay points — mana passed through them but was not changed by them. The removed section described the consolidation function — nodes that didn't just relay mana but compressed and refined it, increasing the quality of what came out relative to what went in.
Jin had theorized this principle existed. His ancient path research had pointed toward it. But without the correct architectural framework, every attempt had either produced no effect or had collapsed the construct entirely.
He built the framework carefully. Applied the consolidation function to a small point in the air ahead of him. Directed a mana construct through it.
What came out the other side was not stronger. It was more accurate — refined in the specific way that concentration refined things, the same amount of mana expressing its principle more completely. A construct that would have produced a roughly-shaped effect instead produced a precisely-shaped one.
He tested it on a stone. The effect was smaller than a standard construct at the same MP cost.
It was also exact. Every edge clean. Every dimension what he had intended rather than what he could manage.
*Application,* he thought. *This is how the ancient path achieved effects that shouldn't have been possible at its power level. Not by being stronger. By being precise enough that nothing was wasted.*
He filed this with the growing collection of things that were recontextualizing everything he had believed about his original cultivation.
---
*
*
*⟡ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — SKILL ACHIEVEMENT*
*Consolidation Construct: First Application*
*Method: Unassisted *
*Completion Rate: 96%*
*Rewards:*
*· Pressure Seal mastery +2 levels*
*· Achievement bonus: 3 Silver coins*
---
Lin was very quiet. the specific quality of Lin processing something significant and deciding how to hold it.
*"The ancient path,"* Lin said finally. *"The reason it was called a path above all paths — it wasn't because it was more powerful. It was because it wasted nothing."*
"Yes," Jin said.
*"And you've been patching it with modern-path knowledge for thirty years. Which is more powerful and less precise."*
"Yes."
*"So every time you thought you were compensating for the ancient path's incompleteness—"*
"I was replacing precision with force," he said. "The gaps weren't where the power was missing. They were where the precision was."
Lin was quiet again.
*"That changes how we should think about the patchwork,"* Lin said.
"Yes." He checked his MP. Down to 140 from 220 — three experiments, the circuit still running. "One more test. Then I want to find the old man."
---
The fourth experiment: the most ambitious removed section.
The others had described infrastructure. This one described application — specifically, the application of the consolidated, threaded mana to a target's own internal structure. Not an external effect. A direct engagement with the mana inside something else.
He had a name for this in the ancient records. *Mana Pierce.* He had never been able to build it correctly because it required the consolidation and threading functions to work in concert — each one was a prerequisite for the next. Without both, the attempt collapsed.
With both now active in the synthesis framework, the prerequisites existed.
He built carefully. Applied consolidation. Applied threading. Directed the result toward a stone formation — not at the surface, at the mana structure inside it, at the accumulated ancient compression the hunting ground's stones had been absorbing for however long this world had existed.
Contact.
The mana inside the stone responded — not with resistance, with recognition. The construct found the same compression points the stones had been developing and applied the consolidation function to them, briefly, precisely.
The stone exhaled.
That was the only word for it. A small displacement of something not physical — the accumulated mana releasing cleanly, the stone settling into a slightly different quality without changing shape, without cracking, without any visible effect at all.
He sat with this for a moment.
*"What did you do,"* Lin said. Very quietly.
"I released about thirty years of accumulated mana pressure from the stone's internal structure," Jin said. "Harmlessly. Without contact. Without the stone breaking."
*"That's—"* Lin stopped.
Jin looked at his companion.
*"The principle you used on Kisan Yel,"* Lin said. *"The one you said you arrived at by instinct. It was this."*
"Yes," he said. "I think so." He looked at the stone. "I had the intuition but not the mechanism. Now I have the mechanism."
*"You had already used it before you knew what it was."*
"That happens, sometimes," he said. "With principles you've been studying long enough without recognizing."
---
*
*
*⟡ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION — SKILL ACHIEVEMENT*
*Direct Mana Interaction: First Application*
*Method: Unassisted *
*Completion Rate: 89%*
*Exceptional application detected — foundational technique.*
*Rewards:*
*· Mana Pierce mastery +3 levels*
*· Achievement bonus: 8 Silver coins*
---
*"89%,"* Lin noted. *"Lower than the others."*
"It's the most complex of the four. The consolidation and threading functions have to operate simultaneously in a coordinated mode rather than sequentially." He looked at the stone — unchanged on the surface, different underneath. "89% on first application with three prerequisites. That's better than I expected."
Jin looked at his companion.
*"The folder,"* Lin said, with the tone of something that had been making this comment so frequently it had become a running notation on the state of their situation.
"Yes," he said. "Still getting fuller."
He released the circuit — slowly, the way you set down something carried a long distance, letting the synthesis framework settle back to standby rather than terminating it. It held. The new pathways had taken shape. The next time he activated it would be faster.
He checked his MP. 98 remaining.
He checked his four new active skills. Looked at the mastery levels from the synthesis scripture's bonuses. Looked at the notifications still sitting in the corner of his display.
Then he looked at the Passives.
*Mana Enhancement*
*Description: Your mana has changed the sensitivity of your body to mana and its reaction to it. The more mana you have , the stronger is your body. AGI+2 , STR+2 , VIT+2 *
*Mana circulation*
*Description: Your mana now circulated in your body passively. Each level up strenghtens your body. On level up: +1 to all stats.*
*Overlord physique*
*Description: Your physique was influenced by your mana circulation method and become capable of handling a lot more than it used to.*
---------
Jin looked toward the city gate.
The old man had said: *come back when you've read it.*
He had read it.
*"We're going to see him again,"* Lin said.
"Yes."
*"What do you think he has?"*
Jin looked at the scroll case in his belt. At the SSS rating sitting quietly in his notification log. At the stone that had just exhaled thirty years of accumulated compression without breaking.
"I think he has been waiting for someone to do what I just did with the scripture," he said. "And I think he knows what comes next."
*"That's either very good or very concerning."*
"Yes," Jin said. "It's one of those."
He walked toward the gate.
---