Whoosh.

I moved my hand over the outer end of the circuit… Only to then bring it back, pushing my fingers through the strangely dense air near the output formation of the whole thing.

"This is so ugly," I muttered to myself as I looked down upon my creation.

The soldering was far from perfect. The Qi gathering array that fed the spiritual energy into the Spricur crystal was attached to the stone with two-sided tape while said stone sat upon the throne made with a simple blob of hot glue.

No matter how warped one's artistic sense would be, this creation of mine was anything but nice to the eye.

But who gives a fuck?

'I'm a craftsman, not an artist,' I thought to myself, excusing the poor looks of the device by focusing on its utility instead.

And in that regard…

'Jackpot!'

I didn't allow this single word to leave my mouth. It felt as if I dared to do so… it would raise some sort of flag and push the world's narrative to punish me for my arrogance.

And so, while rejoicing in my soul, I continued to wave my hand to and fro by the discharging end of the circuit, making it seem as if I was wanking some invisible cock.

An impression only further reinforced by the strangely slowed-down movements of my hand, the effect that served as the greatest proof that this damned circuit was working!

After all, what else could create this invisible sense of resistance if not the thick Qi outputted by the formation?

What's more…

"It seems that putting so many pairs of capacitors and resistors was a good idea," I muttered to myself while still wanking the air's cock… Not for the sake of practicing the move that I've long since ingrained deep into the memory of my muscles.

No.

By waving my hand, now that I've obtained this slight amount of mana, I could sense how this circuit outputted it. And just by waving my hand to and fro, I've realized that this resistance… Was by no means constant.

Sure, it was repetetive and just stopping my waving for a moment would restore this sensation… But, if I swung my hand fast enough, the circuit would orga… No, the circuit wouldn't be able to output the condensed Qi at a rate quick enough to match the frequency of my movements.

Or, in simpler words, by swinging my hand fast enough, some of those swings would happen at the moment when all of the capacitors were charging while the last discharge of electricity that the Spricur crystal could transform was already dispersed by my previous swing.

After no less than ten whole minutes of this rudimentary testing, I finally brought my tired hand back to its place by my side as I distanced myself from the circuit, both mentally and physically, before taking a look at it again.

'For it to be so damn easy… It feels outright wrong…'

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Sure, there were some obstacles that I had to overcome when it came to the skills necessary to put this thing together… But I wasn't the only one in the world with those skills. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it was far easier to find someone better at this level of crafting than me than it would be to find someone who could do even worse!

And yet, with the world crawling with people capable of creating this kind of circuit…

How come I've never seen it displayed or even stoved away anywhere?

With how cheap its parts were and how easy it was to put them together, why wasn't this one of the most rudimentary products one could find in every electrical shop?

'Wouldn't it make for one hell of a great green source of energy?' I thought, recalling all the craze about saving the world's climate by moving away from fossil fuels I've often encountered while surfing the web in my spare time.

And here it was.

Right within everyone's reach.

A tool that allowed to gather spiritual… and thus pollution-free energy directly from the air before turning it into electricity! And yet…

And yet, I never heard of a single power plant powered solely by that type of contraption! In fact, now that I thought about it…

'I don't think there's even a single power plant in the world that connects the technology of the modern age with the wonders of spirituality…'

Pushed by some strange feeling, I turned my eyes over to the very manual that while not directly, still dabbled into the topics related to my current question.

'How is the world of science and world of cultivation detached so much?'

The more I thought about it, the less sense it made.

"Maybe there are some considerations? Something that's plain obvious to anyone who's deep into the topic enough, while an amateur like me simply has no chance to notice?'

In an instant, I recalled how my father once came in and crushed my dreams about going back into the past to become the richest man in the world by spreading technology… Not by laughing over how time travel was simply impossible and futile to dream about, not at all.

He did so by pointing out the flaws in my thinking that I simply lacked the proper education to even notice.

'Perpetum mobile cannot exist because of the conservation of energy law.'

'If you want to make umbrellas, how will you make their sprints or their ribs?'

'How do you rifle the insides of a barrel?'

One question after the other, he revealed the sides of the topics that I've dreamed about… but never paid proper attention to study and properly learn about first.

And in all honesty, the feeling of shock… felt exactly the same as what I felt back then, when the reality of the world dawned upon my dreams, leaving behind nothing but a solid and valuable lesson to focus on reality rather than my dreams.

A lesson that I never managed to fully absorb, given just how long I was stuck on my dream of becoming a proper cultivator in the first place!

"Still, now that I think about it…"

As reluctant as I was to forgo the joy of my discovery and creation and focus on its potential flaws… It only took pretty much a glance to realize the first few points of fault that likely greatly limited the potential of my circuit.

By connecting the Qi gathering array with tape, I introduced an element that didn't really conduct the spiritual energy well. So, in order to overcome this problem, I just splashed the tape with a fistful of the spiritual powder first before using it to connect the two parts.

That solution, while allowing the energy to flow through… Was far from efficient. And it was merely the first chokepoint within my creation that contributed to its… slightly lackluster results!

"Now then…" taking another step to the back, I allowed the edge of my bed's frame to press against the inner side of my knees, cutting me off and forcing me to fall down on the bed, directing my eyes to the plain ceiling of the room.

'What if I use tape to attach the formation plate, then coat some wire in glue and evenly cover it in the spiritual powder so that I can get a bit better connection to the spricur stone?'

'Maybe using hot glue rather than tape would be even better? But wouldn't it make the entire thing too fragile, prone to break apart?'

Bit by bit, ideas on how to improve my design continued to appear in my head.

And so, in the heat of the moment… I ignored all of those ideas and reached for the manual instead.

What was the point of trying to improve on my already flawed design if I could simply make it better during my next attempt? And if that was the path I was going to take… Then wouldn't it make sense to learn a bit more first?'