Despite all his discoveries, Avery wasn’t saving that much time. While he drew slightly faster, he also had to allocate a considerable amount of time to conjure up an image beforehand and analyse the results afterward. While the speed at which he was gaining points remaining constant, it was a much more interesting way to craft, so his boredom and depression were greatly alleviated.

  He had taken to visualizing a black hole, devouring everything and absorbing the entire universe into a minuscule singularity. It wasn't perfectly aligned with the true meaning of the rune, but the deep feeling of awe, mystery and fear he associated it with more than made up for it. He found picturing a battery while thinking of spiritual energy worked just as well, but it just wasn't inspiring enough compared to a terrifying celestial phenomenon extreme enough to bend the laws of physics.

  Picturing a mundane object was not only boring, it also hindered his progress. It was evident that the higher level of inscribing was closely related to feeling and exploring the mysteries of the runes.

  This was what pleased Avery the most. There was no end to his accumulation of points in sight, and he was doing all he could not to dwell on the possibility that the immortal items capable of saving him might never appear to him as a shopping option.

  He had no other choice than to hold on and trek towards an uncertain future, but the confirmation of the existence and power of intent made another theory of his seem a lot more plausible.

  The runes obviously were not random shapes, but rather profound symbols deeply connected with the laws of this world. If they were so powerful, Avery hoped researching them was the equivalent of cultivators studying the Tao. They would be his ladder to enlightenment, cultivating his understanding and accompanying him to delve into the mysteries of the universe, until he would one day attain detachment and eternity.

  This was why visualizing a black hole worked so well, as one of the most powerful cosmic entities in the universe certainly felt much closer to the heavenly truth than a banal household item.

  He was currently having fun, but that would not last forever. His new discovery was a breath of fresh air to his stale existence, but the novelty would one day wear thin, and he would eventually be back leading his tedious and repetitive life.

  Now however, if his conjecture was correct, and he was right and each rune represented a Tao law, perhaps when he had studied them in depth, he could use them to directly prove the Tao. He would then ascend and become immortal in one instant, skipping all the previous cultivation steps and bypassing the restriction imposed by the dragon power.

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  As far as he knew, there were no other requirements to becoming an immortal except comprehension. That was why stories of grass becoming enlightened and flying to heaven existed. This didn't mean cultivation was meaningless, as it acted as a ladder helping to reach the sky. With the average comprehension of a mortal, it would take a million years of non-stop work to comprehend a Tao law, while the average Transforming God cultivator, having been transformed and becoming closer to the Tao, could do the same in about 500 years.

  Avery was hoping that by using the infinite time exploit granted by his system and with the runes as guides and mentors, he could bridge the gap to ascension.

  The second advantage of traditional cultivation was strength. All the stories he heard recounted immortals facing devastating tribulations, and leveraging their powerful martial arts to surpass it, while he would only be a very weak immortal with no martial arts foundation or Qi reserves. Avery wasn't sure what he would do about this, but he figured he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

  Going back to work, he soon fell into a rhythm again, carving runes continuously, each time trying to channel a little bit more emotion and passion. Every ten or so runes he would slightly alter the mental image, adding a background, making it a weapon of mass destruction in the mouth of an immortal dragon, or even giving it life.

  Some worked, like adding an immeasurable starry sky as the background to establish a massive sense of scale. Others, like making it devour the earth, were ineffective or even detrimental, as it made it too grounded and it lost some of its heavenly majesty.

  Since he noticed he got better results when he elevated the runes and treated them as sacred truths, especially when he associated them with heaven, he reaffirmed his conclusion that they were a part of the Tao. He guessed there might be 3000 runes, one for each of the 3000 Tao laws he had heard about, and what he was currently doing was the equivalent to an immortal cultivating the Tao of storage or containment.

  Giddy with excitement, Avery plunged into a frenzy of rune inscribing, stimulating his creativity to the maximum to test all kinds of theories. He was no longer only after speed, but also exploring the intricacies of the rune, archiving and comparing how different concepts resonated with and affected the rune creation.

  Progress was slow, but every improvement was now enough to make him laugh out loud. He was no longer mindlessly repeating the same motions again and again, wishing for anything to deviate from his lifeless and perpetually desolate existence, he was now wholly invested in his craft, racking his brain for inspiration, experimenting and analyzing with unprecedented fervor.

  It was during this time that he figured out something else the rune shards were doing. When the rune broke and its fragments got absorbed by his body, he would get a small boost to his spirit, making his visualizations much clearer and faster. The effect would wear off in a few seconds, but it was enough to elevate his mental image to another level. Wanting to take advantage of this, he stopped resting between attempts, and simply focused on improving his craft.

  His life had already become much more interesting, as he kept combining different ideas to see how the mysterious energy reacted, eager to improve himself, and confident he had found his surefire path to freedom.