Recently, strange books popped up around the country. The village chief ordered intelligence agencies to investigate, and the results were unexpected.
The books were most likely spread by UPWC.
The book was about a villain in the clothes of a hero. It happened in a fictional world where a man believed to be a hero was actually a villain who committed crimes in the name of doing good. It was well-written. Many people who knew how to read bought the book, and those unable to read heard it from storytellers.
The protagonist in the book was clearly inspired by Jack; it wouldn't take a genius to realize that. It was a clear attempt by UPWC to destabilize the republic by turning the people against him even more than they already were. The village chief considered it an act of war; he brought the books to Jack and asked for approval to declare war on UPWC.
After reading the book, Jack sighed and shook his head.
"No need! We'll conquer them later anyway; no need to start a war over a book."
After thinking for a second, Jack ordered, "Ban the book from circulation; don’t specifically target it; do a general ban on 'immoral' books," Jack ordered. Even though Jack doesn't care much about his popularity, it's better to be a hero than become a villain; the book exposes him, so he would not allow it to circulate.
He continued, "Also, devise an appropriate response; I don’t want a full-on invasion, but we should hit back. When someone hits, it becomes necessary to hit back."
The village chief bowed and left.
...
The congress has been and remained in the hands of the opposition; the last time, Jack only called for a new presidential election; the congress resulted from the first election in which Kashu won.
Because he didn’t have control of Congress in the last few years, all laws were executive agencies' rules; the executive basically ignored Congress entirely and did everything by itself.
The village chief implemented Jack's order by executive lawmaking; the Ministry of Art, in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Intelligence, announced a new rule that banned all literature against the 'public good' and those which contained 'immoral' material.
Those standards were subjective. To determine them, they formed a committee comprised of three people from those ministries. Anything that the committee determined to be against the 'public good' or containing 'immoral' material would be banned throughout the entire republic. Anyone having a copy would be sent to a forced labor camp.
The committee soon began evaluating book after book; among the banned books, of course, was the one that UPWC was spreading. To cover it up, they also banned thousands of other books; any book with a protagonist who was an anti-hero or villain was banned.
The only books allowed were those with a generic Knight in Shining Armor-type protagonist, the type the normies like.
Saving beauties, helping the weak, and, of course, defeating the one-dimensional bad guy.
In the real world, the bad guys usually win, but in the republic books, the imaginary 'good' guys always win.
In this medieval-like era, books were the only way to disseminate information through generations. With control over the content of fiction books, he could control people's minds, basically brainwashing them.
Then, with the collaboration of the Ministry of Art, the Ministry of Talents, and the Ministry of the State, they formed a committee called the 'Heroes' Committee. The Heroes Committee was responsible for writing 'good' books; its books were full of propaganda. It was an alternative universe where the hero was fighting evil, helping the people, defeating demons, and saving beautiful girls left and right. And yes, the hero's name was Jack.
After a few months, the committee, which has hired thousands of talented authors, has written hundreds of books with similar plots, all of which were to glorify Jack, the hero. They sold the books with discounts in all government buildings; they gave at least one of the books to all children who were wealthy enough to go to school and also sent government-paid storytellers who read them to crowds.
With this, the UPWC's tactic of turning people against Jack by books failed.
...
In response to UPWC's actions, the village chief, with Jack's approval, started manipulating UPWC's stock market.
Using the Ministry of Intelligence and connections of ninjas and the intelligence agency Gabriel designed, they started pouring money into failing companies; the shares began going up like there was no tomorrow. Just when they peaked, Jack's agents dumped their shares, crashing them into nothingness and destroying the lifelong wealth of many people.
Seeing the situation, UPWC's leadership stepped in and tightened the rules for who can buy and sell and how much they can do so.
UPWC's stock market was set up in the last 30 years; its rules were not robust, so the village chief could use it to harm them.
The UPWC began investigating the village chief's agents who caused the crash, but before they could, the agents were already gone.
It wasn’t the end; the agents began buying gold, increasing the price to an unrealistically expensive level. People saw this and panicked, starting to buy supplies, food, daily necessities, etc., all of which began getting more expensive.
Again, the government stepped in, injecting hundreds of thousands of gold coins and lowering prices. By now, it was obvious to the leadership of UPWC that these were actions of the republic.
For now, the village chief ordered his agents to stop messing with the UPWC. This was a warning: if the UPWC tried anything again, the republic wouldn't just stop messing with markets a little. This is the message the village chief wanted to send and what he believes UPWC's leaders understood.
He didn't want to escalate it into a war, so he stopped at that.
...
Sitting in a room, Jack was concentrating.
He doesn't care about what happened in the mortal world; the things he cares about are his cultivation.
He can finally break through core formation!
The core formation is the realm after energy gathering; once one reaches core formation, one can fly just as one can walk; one's mana would be purer than at the peak of energy gathering.
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Jack has already created the core formation realm of the Heaven's Way cultivation technique. If it were anyone else, they would have had to test it, maybe even letting other people break through as guinea pigs, to see if their cultivation technique works or has some issues.
However, Jack, who created this world, knew the general direction; he could not create the best cultivation technique, as that would have greatly reduced the dao collection of the world. Using his knowledge to deduce the correct direction inevitably harmed the world's Dao collection to some degree, but he was careful not to overdo it; the Dao collection may be reduced by 1 to 2%, but no more.
This is the best way; if he is to test cultivation techniques slowly, he may get stuck in core formation for decades and lose his chance of a nascent soul. After all, without cheating, creating a cultivation technique that works perfectly is unimaginably difficult.
Immortal techniques are accumulations of many trials and errors; no matter how genius one is, as long as one is not a god or omnipotent, it's impossible to predict everything perfectly. Furthermore, this way, Jack would get a head start and maybe reach a nascent soul before anyone breaks through the core formation.
Using core formation, it's really not possible to conquer the entire world; even though the core formation stage is powerful, it's not to the level of crushing everyone below; technically, it would be possible for 20 peak energy gathering stage cultivators to kill a core formation cultivator.
But, if he manages to reach a nascent soul before anyone reaches core formation, he would be able to conquer the entire world quickly and easily; after all, nascent soul cultivators can fly with extremely fast speed and even teleport; the energy gathering stage cultivators are nothing in front of nascent soul.
The chances of him reaching a nascent soul before anyone reaches core formation are low. After all, many forces have already noticed the abnormality and may be exploring the immortal way. With so many people exploring the way, some lucky ones will inevitably break through core formation. But if he gets lucky, it's still possible to reach a nascent soul before they reach the core formation.
Nascent soul cultivators are strong; still, if 100 peak core formation cultivators combine their efforts, it's barely possible to resist a nascent soul cultivator.
"Let's Break Through!" Jack stopped thinking about the future and concentrated on reaching the core formation.
He was already sitting in an isolated room with 1,000 energy stones arranged neatly in a formation.
Clapping his hands, the formation was activated.
The spirit stones began spewing energy, which was unable to leave the isolated room; the formation was keeping it in.
The concentration of the energy increased by the second; after 1 minute, energy began to condense, forming pure energy crystals.
By this point, Jack was sweating profusely; tolerating this energy level with just one's body was draining.
Energy-gathering cultivators's energy is always circulating in their bodies. Only in the core formation stage will cultivators have a center of energy, their core, which was in their dantian.
After two minutes, the room became unbearable, and the formation was on the verge of breaking.
Jack was red from the pressure, barely still sitting.
"It's Time!" Jack thought.
The most important factor in creating a perfect core is the purity of energy. A perfect core has a 100% chance of breaking into a nascent soul; however, if the core has any impurity, it would reduce the chance of core nascent soul. Because of this, most core formation cultivators who try breaking into a nascent soul would die in the process; it's like a roll of dice.
The issue with pure energy is that it doesn't naturally exist; pure energy crystals only form under extreme pressures, which doesn’t happen naturally. Also, at least for now, storing energy crystals is impossible; they would evaporate as soon as the pressure decreased; one must use them immediately after they are formed.
By this point, Jack had already consumed 35% of his mana while resisting the pressure; once his mana ran out, he would be crushed under the pressure.
Slowly moving his hand, Jack began harvesting sky-blue energy crystals, which are the purest form of energy. The other energy crystals, such as deep blue, red, or black, have impurities; Jack won't use those to form his core. Only sky blue energy crystals are pure energy. There may still be a little impurity, but this is already the best he can do; his lack of equipment doesn't allow him to purify it anymore.
The pressure in the room stabilized by this point; the energy stones were still spewing more energy into the room, but it was in harmony, as a lot of it was condensing into energy crystals.
This balance was what Jack was hoping for. The formation, with 1,000 big spirit stones, could last for 1 hour. This was his time to get as many blue energy crystals as possible and breakthrough. But that is only theory. He had already consumed 50% of his mana, so he would have to hurry; he may have 10 minutes at most.
He could have broken through with ordinary, impure energy, but that would have resulted in an impure core, which would be a disaster for his future.
He spent 2 more minutes until he was left with 40% of mana.
Sitting cross-legged again, Jack looked at all the blue crystals; it was a handful, enough to take him straight to the 1st stage of core formation; he hoped to reach the 2nd stage in one go, but delaying it further would risk his life; he decided to be content with the 1st stage.
Holding them all in his hand, he began allowing the pure energy to enter his meridians and lead them directly to his dantian. Everyone has a dantian; it's just that for mortals and energy-gathering stage cultivators, their dantian is empty and of no use.
Pure energy entered Jack's dantian and started filling it. After two minutes, all the pure energy entered his dantian and took a round shape, shining with a blue-gold color.
At this point, he can be considered a core formation cultivator!
The core took its initial shape but wasn’t condensed yet. By now, Jack had consumed 90% of his mana; his energy-gathering mana was almost used up; he still couldn't use his core formation mana, as it wasn’t condensed yet.
He took out a strange-looking flower; it was pure white and covered in frozen droplets. As soon as he took it out of a box made of black wood, the entire room's temperature dropped; even the energy pressure began decreasing, and the energy began turning into crystals much quicker.
The flower itself began melting; it wouldn’t last long at this rate.
The flower is called Immortal Ice Flower; this is the name Jack gave it. It was found above a tall mountain; he was very lucky to find it, as it would be of great help now.
He directly pressed it to the area where his dantian was. The extreme cold burned his skin and penetrated his dantian.
The cold energy covered his dantian; it wanted to freeze his dantian entirely, but it couldn’t; the energy inside was resisting it. After a few seconds, the cold energy was consumed and dissipated; it failed to freeze Jack's dantian.
But even though it didn’t freeze it, it still greatly decreased its liquidity; the core was finally more or less condensed. He had to be careful for a while, but other than that, he could finally use his core formation energy.
Jack didn’t have time to smile; his energy-gathering energy was almost consumed, so he drew a little energy from his core.
Core formation energy is much purer; it's at least 10 times stronger than the mana of the energy-gathering stage. For Jack, who has exceptionally pure mana, it should be tens of times stronger than before. With a bit of energy, Jack stabilized his situation; in this state, he could resist this pressure without much issue.
His Core was shining with golden blue light in his dantian. If he had released his mana now, it would have completely destroyed the formation. So, he kept in and didn't let his mana out of his body; he would later go out in the first to test it out; now was not the time.
"A pity!" Jack sighed; there is still a lot of energy crystal left, but he cannot cultivate now; his core barely condensed, and is not yet stable, if he cultivates now, he risks his life.
That means all of the energy crystals, many of which are sky-blue, will be wasted.
He stopped the energy stones from spewing out more energy. They were still mostly full, only being consumed by 40%.
"This breakthrough cost 400 big spirit stones!" He thought this cost was not really that much.
The room was still filled with energy crystals; if Jack suddenly opened the formation, it would act like a bomb, blowing up the entire mountain.
So he didn't do that.
He gathered all the crystals and crushed them; soon, they turned into energy powder. He took out a box; in it was black soil.
"After combining the immortal black soil with energy powder, the soil would most likely be promoted to rank 2 immortal black soil," Jack thought; he already knew he would have extra, so he was prepared to use it to promote his black soil to rank 2.
After it is combined with the soil, it would no longer be useful for humans, but it can be used to grow rank 2 spiritual plants.
Jack combined the black soil with the energy powder; after a while, the two completely mixed; now, even under normal pressure, the energy crystals would no longer go away; they were attached to the soil.
Then, Jack started to slowly lift the formation; after a few minutes, the extra energy was ejected, and the room returned to its ordinary state.
Jack finally smiled and closed his eyes; he must consolidate his core now...