The stone pulled by the gravitational force, landed on a mountain, without any light show or phenomenon

This planet was just one of a plethora of planets owned by humans.

It was a small, isolated planet.

It was colonized by people who desired to be a power themselves rather than being ruled by powerful organizations.

The planet had a fairly average martial culture, with several sects, kingdoms, and Families with equal power competing for a limited amount of resources without fear of a power monopolizing it.

But they were out of luck!

A stone that had fallen from space was continuously absorbing spiritual energy.

A planet's spiritual energy could not be infinite; it had to obey the law of conservation of energy.

And it didn't take long for the planet's higher powers to notice; at first, they mistook the drop in spiritual energy concentration for someone refining a very powerful treasure!

They later discovered that this was not the case, as the spiritual energy continued to fall with no sign of stopping!

That's when they realized there was another, more ominous possibility.

The dying planet phenomenon.

There are two kinds of planets in the universe: "living" planets and "dead" planets, with the latter vastly outnumbering the former.

The dead planets are planets that cannot support life and lack spiritual energy. On the other hand, living planets can absorb cosmic energy from outer space and use it to sustain an atmosphere while converting the excess into spiritual energy for the planet's life.

The dying planet phenomenon occurs when a "living" planet, for whatever reason, is unable to absorb cosmic energy, and thus lacks the energy to preserve the atmosphere, resulting in holes that leak spiritual energy.

When the number of holes reaches a critical level, the atmosphere will fracture and dissipate, ending the civilization living on the planet.

The planet's powers were just well-off people who had decided to colonize a distant remote planet; they lacked the technical skills to determine whether the planet was dying or if something else was wrong.

They had assumed this because of the striking resemblance to the phenomenon.

Disappointed, anxious, and angry at their misfortune, the descendants of the original powers emptied their vaults, gathered their important cadres and families, and then hopped on their starships and got away.

Commoners and organizations with no starships or the technical skills to build one were the only ones left on the "dying" planet.

People were thrown into chaos at first after hearing about the impending disaster, and they tried everything, from trying to build starships to plundering resources on a large scale in order to break through into a high enough realm to be able to traverse space with their bodies.

But no matter what they tried, it was in vain.

They had no choice but to wait for their doom, but the disaster never came.

The atmosphere, which was supposed to fracture and dissipate in a hundred years, remained intact.

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Surely, it was a fortunate circumstance, but people were not overjoyed; the spiritual energy concentration was still slowly but steadily declining.

Generations passed, and the impending disaster faded into legend.

And as energy concentration decreased, the highest cultivation realm one could achieve on the planet became lower and lower.

The cultivation Civilization declined dramatically.

After thousands of years, the highest achievable realm had fallen to stage 9 of the Body tempering realm.

The cultivators couldn't use their spiritual energy fires for their furnaces because they didn't have access to spiritual energy anymore.

As a result, they were forced to use regular fires in their improvised mortal furnaces, which could only produce enough heat to forge bronzeware.

Historians refer to this period as the "bronze age."

The bronze age lasted a while, and civilizations continued to improve the furnace until it could forge iron.

This period was known as the Iron Age.

Humans on the planet had unknowingly taken a different path than the rest of their species, a path of science.

Because of the severe drop in spiritual energy, nutrients in plants declined over time, and as a result, nutrients in herbivores declined, reducing the nutrient intake of carnivores and omnivores such as humans.

With fewer nutrients, humans' ability to temper their bodies was limited.

It continued to fall throughout the iron age, classical era, and medieval era, until there were almost no stage 3 body tempering realm cultivators left in the world by the early modern era.

And now, in the year 2023, people are unable to even reach the first level of body tempering realm, effectively putting an end to cultivation-civilization on the planet.

...

Zachariah was a lapidarist.

He was born in Afghanistan and orphaned at the age of seven after his parents were killed in a terrorist attack.

His eccentric uncle then took him in.

His uncle lived in his lapidary workshop, working there during the day and sleeping there at night.

He wouldn't leave his workshop for days at a time, constantly working on precious stones.

He would buy rough precious stones in bulk and use various types of equipment to create display pieces, sculptures, and jewelry.

After being taken in by his uncle, he was sent to school in the morning and English classes near the workshop in the afternoon; when he returned, his uncle would then teach him grinding, polishing, and other lapidary-related skills in his spare time.

"Learn English, this country has no future, who knows, we might end up as refugees in a random country, and that's when English will help," Zaki's uncle has always said.

He began reading more to improve his English, from educational books to web novels on the internet.

Though before he could put his English to use, fate seemed to have other plans for him.

This routine continued until Zaki was 20 years old, at which point he had already become a skilled lapidarist with his own, albeit small, workshop.

One night, he was cutting a new batch of rocks with the stone cutter, preparing them for the next day.

There was one stone among the others that stood out, not visually, but by giving Zaki a certain vibe.

It just felt different.

Zaki leaned down and picked up the first-sized stone with his gloved hand, then rubbed the gravel and dust off the stone as he walked toward a nearby chair.

He left the barely clean stone on the table next to the chair and removed his protective gloves and helmet.

Sitting on the chair, Zaki was horrified when he picked up the stone again, because his right hand was stuck to it.

He couldn't get his fingers off the stone; it was as if an entire bottle of superglue had been used to affix his hand to the stone.

"what the fuck!?"

Zaki panicked and began rapidly waving his hand as if trying to fling something frightening away.

After failing in his attempt, Zaki overcame his initial panic and began to calm down.

"What on earth is this thing?"

Zaki said this while staring at the stone in his hand.

"Perhaps I should try removing it with soap."

The stone in Zaki's hand began to heat up as he moved towards the toilet to try the soap, and when Zaki looked at his hand, he saw the stone melting, and within a second, before he could react, the liquid was absorbed in his palm!

Zaki stood there dumbfounded by the events, staring at his palm like a statue.

When he awoke from his trance, he noticed that everything in his workshop was vibrating, and then everything blurred and zaki vanished, leaving a half-destroyed workshop in his wake.

The next day, the local news reported that "a lapidary workshop was robbed last night, with the owner, as well as precious ores and jewelry, missing."