They eventually made it to the sea, but they continued to travel deep into it.
They parked the flying artifact in the air above the ocean.
John and everyone left the flying artifact and went deep into the ocean.
Because everyone was core formation and above. They were able to get Qi from the environment. Nobody was drowning.
They used their spiritual sense to communicate. A function only those at core formation were able to pull off.
"John. Use your runic vision to find the entrance of the inheritances."
"Right."
John infused Qi from his forbidden dao pillar into his eyes.
Instantly he was surrounded by the logs and programs of thousands of inheritances. He was truly shocked. When the others saw his reaction they nodded knowingly.
"This is an ancient cultivation battlefield. The battlefield of true immortals! Back when they were far more common."
John signaled everyone to follow him.
He noticed right away something he was familiar with. When he had created the anti space stabilizer, he had created infinite space in a single point.
His runic vision was able to make out logic of a similar line.
He stopped at a console of one of the ancient formations and began to unencrypt it. Nobody else in the world would have been able to pull this off, but within an hour. He had cracked it!
A portal opened up! Everyone was shocked. They were hopeful he would be able to unencrypt it, but none of them had seen his skills in person. To understand an ancient runic library. It was asking a bit too much right?
"Let's go!"
He swam into the portal and found himself falling. There was an island below him, and he was floating through the effect of the creator of this pocket dimension.
He looked up and saw his guards falling slowly as well.
After a few minutes they had landed on the island.
Looking around, it seemed as if they had entered an entirely new world. They were on a single island surrounded by an ocean.
A hologram appeared.
"If you are seeing this message. I likely have been killed in the war between true immortals. Judging by the fact you were able to crack my formation without triggering my self destruct. This means you are extremely talented in formations. I ask for you to help me get my revenge! I'm not talking about revenge towards a living person. I am extremely petty. I didn't have much time to create this inheritance before I died. So there are only two things you'll find."
"This relates to my revenge, so memorize this. Near my inheritance is my enemies inheritance. I just hope you crack his inheritance and edit the variables to troll the future inheritor of his legacy. Haha, he was quite picky and spent like a decade designing a complex trial for someone worthy to inherit. I want you to take his image, here it is:"
A picture of an old man with grey hair was shown.
"Make his inheritance look extremely lazy, have the trials be silly and pointless and remove all rewards. I can feel him rolling in his grave already! Hahahaha. This is all a pre-recorded message, so I can't tell if you agreed or not. So I'll use the honor system. I have a technique to give you as payment. It is called 'Devil Transformation'. It multiplies your strength, speed, and reaction by a hundred times. But I warn you, it completely overtaxes your muscles tearing them along with your internal organs. It only last for a single minute before you crash."
"The coordinates of my enemy's inheritance is here:"
John was disappointed that there was no info on breaking into nascent soul faster. But he planned to go through every single inheritance here!
It only took him an hour to crack it. There were over a thousand of these inheritances. All of them weren't obviously true immortals. That many true immortals can't exist at once. Most of them were spirit severing cultivators.
This one happened to be from a true immortal though.
John and everyone left this inheritance after memorizing 'Devil Transformation'.
John then decided to go to the coordinates of that true immortals enemy. He easily cracked into the formation and opened up a portal. Everyone entered and were greeted by a fantastic looking temple. This time there wasn't a pre-recorded message. But an A.I!"
"Congratulations, you have found my inheritance. I have 9 main trials and 13 minor trials to pass. If you can-"
John immediately began to edit the program. Deleting the trials and have the rewards presented in an instant.
"Hey! That's cheating! What are you doing!"
John spoke:
"Another true immortals inheritance said to ruin your inheritance..."
"NOOOOO!!! NOT AGAIN! EVEN IN DEATH YOU MESS UP MY PLANS!"
John ignored his cries. He collected 100 high grade spiritual stones, another spatial ring that he gave to one of the core formation cultivators guarding him that lacked one.
He also got a true immortals cultivation technique called 'Star Gazer'.
"You can't do this! It's unethic-"
John and his crew left the A.I alone.
One of his guards couldn't help but start laughing as they were leaving.
"That's the most efficient looting of an inheritance I've ever seen. I've never even thought it was possible to skip the trials and steal the rewards."
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John spoke:
"It's just switching a few variables here and there. It isn't that hard to trick it."
John spent a few months cracking every single inheritance. Most of them were put together in a rush and didn't have much besides offering a few techniques. Some asked the person viewing their dying moments to protect their family. But millions of years had passed, John couldn't help honor these peoples dying wishes.
Their families likely no longer existed.
It wasn't until the 1027th inheritance that John found what he was looking for.
"An ancient nascent soul raising method!"
John memorized this technique in glee and continued to crack every single inheritance.
Not all of them were friendly though. Some were cursed and trapped.
Five of the core formations with him had protected him and died. But the loot the sect gained from looting all of these inheritances was at a godly level.
It would more then make up for it.
After a few months of work and with full spatial rings. Everyone made their way back to the sect.
John was surprised with a banquet when he arrived at the sect. They had prepared in advanced and knew he was coming back after a successful looting session.
The sect had become incredibly wealthy from the techniques and spiritual stones brought back. John kept a share of it, and had become far more rich then he already was.
500 low grade spiritual stones he made a year was now nothing to him.
John told his teacher that he was going to go into closed door cultivation and break through to nascent soul!
The Patriarch knew that John had received a lot in this trip and had probably found a method to speed up his cultivation. He didn't care though, he was just happy for his student and looking forward to gaining another elder in the sect.
John returned to his lab and began to study the ancient nascent soul technique. He optimized it himself and made sure there were no problems.
John estimated, that instead of a century to break into a nascent soul. With his new modified technique, his soul field would become a nascent soul in a single year!
Right when he was about to get into cultivation, his communication talisman was alerted by the Patriarch!
"Sorry to disturb you, but we need you NOW! The Sect is under attack!"
"We don't need you to fight, but we need you to activate your experimental attack formation. Remember, the one you said could fight a spirit severing cultivator with? I'm under attack by three of them right now. The rest of the sect is fighting, things are not going well."
John calmed down. He then spoke:
"What are their numbers?"
"Three spirit severing cultivators. 50 nascent soul cultivators, 100 core formations, and 1000 foundation establishment cultivators! Hurry!"
John's sect only had a single spirit severing cultivator. It had around 12 nascent soul cultivators. 200 core formation cultivators, 500 foundation establishment cultivators. Over a thousand people in the outer sect were in Qi Condensation, but they were too weak.
John had felt like this day would come.
He had prepared beforehand!
Remember when he made the artificial spiritual roots?
Well he had presented a schematic to the sect he called the 'Ultimate Empowerment Formation'. This formation could boost someone's combat power by a hundred times!
It was unstable though. It could kill or seriously injure the person using it, since their body couldn't handle the stress.
John teleported to the empowerment formation and activated it.
The sect began to shake as a bright white light covered his entire body.
Over ten thousand high grade spiritual stones were burned in making this film around his body.
He was now in an empowered state!
His spiritual sense could cover 10,000 meters in this state. He immediately saw the battle unfolding and saw his teacher getting suppressed by three spirit severing cultivators.
He flew over in an instant and punched one of them into paste.
The punch was with 100,000 tons of force.
John's arm disintegrated from the punch.
The other spirit severing cultivators looked at John in shock.
"He has another spirit severing cultivator, and he's a strong o-"
John ripped off the head of the one talking with his other hand that hadn't been turned into nothing.
The light on John's body faded as the empowerment formation broke from getting overclocked.
His internal organs turned into mush and he coughed up blood as his consciousness became muddled.
John fell down to the ground.
But he had saved the Patriarch. Now it was a one on one battle. He managed to win and use his higher level of cultivation to even out the numbers.
Once nobody was paying attention to his 'unconscious' body on the ground. He was restored to peak health as he ignored the fighting around him.
He went back to the empowerment formation.
"Hmm... mortal materials can't handle the strain of the buff. The body also can't endure the raw force of the multiplier. If I had combined it with devil transformation. My whole body probably would have burned into a crisp."
John began to work on the formation ignoring everyone else.
Once the battle was over and the sect was safe the patriarch looked for John hoping he hadn't died from his injuries.
He then found him at the empowerment formation working on improving it.
"Weren't you injured? What happened to your arm?"
John threw a pill over that he had looted from an ancient inheritance.
"I used a heavenly tonic."
The confusion on his teachers face disappeared.
"So how did the attack formation perform?"
"Terribly, it almost completely crippled me. I only used it for a few seconds before it broke."
"What if we replaced the base materials with immortal grade ones?"
John was surprised.
"That'll be quite expensive."
"We need to be prepared in case other sects think we are too weak. It was actually the news of you cracking ancient inheritances that leaked out. It is why we were attacked. Before, we didn't have such wealth in comparison to our strength. Now... people see us as a piece of meat on the chopping board."
"I see... I will continue to develop this formation then. But I'll need large amounts of immortal grade materials if we are to have a working formation."
"I'll develop another empowerment formation. But I need time to myself. I plan to break through to nascent soul in a year."
"In a single year!? Just what sort of technique did you find?"
John shared the unmodified version of the technique.
"I see... this is indeed revolutionary. But a year still seems too fast even with this technique."
"Trust me, I believe I can do it. Won't having another nascent soul elder boost our strength?"
"Yes..."
"I'll rebuild the empowerment formation, then I'll go into closed door cultivation."
John created a new formation for empowerment and showed his teacher how to use it.
"Do not use this under any circumstances. I was lucky to not be crippled. If we lose the only spirit severing cultivator in the sect. That will be quite a loss of strength. Then we will be in deep shit."
"I won't use it..."
The Patriarch couldn't help but wonder why only John could use the formation. If he recovered using a pill, couldn't he do the same?
In truth. John just didn't want his teacher to become a cripple.
John went back to his cultivation cave and teleported to his lab.
He then followed the steps in the ancient nascent soul birthing method.
The first step was to soak oneself in liquid Qi.
John teleported into his pocket dimension and had a capsule made. He then went inside of the capsule and had a few extra bodies generate Qi in the form of liquid. Filling up the capsule.
He closed his eyes as he focused on his soul field.
It was time to breakthrough to nascent soul!
He began to rotate this ancient technique as the liquid Qi was absorbed into his perfect golden core.
Over the course of a year:
20% -> 30% -> 40% -> 50% -> 60% -> 70% -> 80% ->90% -> 99%.
He then stopped cultivating and left his pocket dimension teleporting to the wilderness.
He began to condense his nascent soul as wind started to pick up. This time multiple lightning strikes were hitting around him. Almost like a warning. But he crossed that line.
99.9%!
BOOM!
A lightning strike 3 meters thick struck him, it also had a delay.
BOOM!
It wasn't over yet.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
He wasn't given any time to rest between strikes as he was hit constantly with new strikes. His eyes were fried, one of his eyes was hanging out of its socket. His muscles were charred. His spine had shattered from the force.
He was in quite bad condition.
But he simply laughed and stood up. As he was restored to peak state!
He breathed in a huge breath of air. and spoke:
"I've finally done it! I've formed my nascent soul!"
He was only 51 years old. He was one of the youngest nascent soul cultivators in history! Even true immortals would have trouble reaching nascent soul at this age. Only a few in history could keep up with him.
It was now time to use the basic functions of 'Soul Domain'!