Even the plant at the center, despite being a lone pillar extending into the sky, has been hooked into this cycle. For while the fields can provide the foundation, it takes the plant to provide the finishing touch. Like a toy car, the walls are the body and the fields are the batteries. But the controller is needed to truly bring it to life. A single will to pull the various parts together and give order.

While Jason can’t quite see it yet, this small peak has allowed him to feel the vast undercurrent. All of the potential connections, just beyond his reach. It is just a feeling, but he suspects he could sit in this spot till the sun dies and still have more things to learn. And while that might be an exaggeration, the potential was certainly expansive.

Still, he needed the next step. For the moment, if he had to label his current achievements it would be the peak of mortality. Even in his past it had more than enough names. Things such as the mortal stage, the body development, and fancier phrases like Houtian.

Areas with few cultivators would split the realm into steps, but the reality of it is just to advance a core characteristic into the superhuman. Whether this is the literal body, the dantian, or even specific body parts like the eyes. Of course, that was under conditions that allowed a being to just use whatever power is in the air without a care.

Even if Jason had wanted to go another path, the dantian is likely the only way forward at the moment until the chaos can be cleared up. Now, though, he needs to take that one step beyond. Anyone with exercise and normal supplements can gain what he has gotten so far. Some lucky ones might even absorb some of the power into their muscles, refining their body some.

What comes next goes into the realm of super human. Not impossible, but strange occurrences or purposeful and invasive measures would need to be taken to do so. For all of that, the path remains hidden. Jason pauses and focuses on that idea. The path remains hidden.

Paths! He had just discovered the gate in his walls and any proper gate should have a path leading to it. While not analogous to what he had known, the stories of this world had enough examples. Spirit roots, meridians, and more. Even his cultivation in NeoRealm is following this course. The idea of the body having innate paths for special powers to flow through.

Now the question of the hour. Does his body have said hidden paths? In NeoRealm, the lines had originally been a natural phenomena before the System had usurped them. Here though, there was no System and if the meridians do exist, they aren’t physically present in any way.

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Jason however had a cheat, a shortcut, an in that others wouldn’t. His dantian has a gate. While a gate doesn’t require there to be a path connected to it, chances are it does. So focused on the wall, Jason opens the gate. Half training, half sensing to see what happens. Nothing.

He tries again and still nothing. Another angle and still he lacks results. Five more tests, still negative. Over and over, Jason does his best to suss out a path, even just the edge of one. And it is there. Instead of being any one particular technique or test that revealed it, this was all familiarity.

There is a large path leading upwards. Where upwards? Jason still can’t tell, even if he suspects the region around or in his heart. This is enough, though. If the mortal stage involved gathering, the next was discovery. To seek out all the meridians his body contained and opening up roads from his dantian out into the rest of his body.

While Jason was strong, his body wasn’t tough enough as he couldn’t put any true effort into tempering it. Now these meridians, and he was definitely going with that term for them, would be his path towards fixing that deficiency. Maybe he wasn’t going to have sword wielding bandits jumping out at him, but if anything the physical dangers were worse as machines had an uncaring strength. Even with all the safeguards, you can only do so much to correct for happenstance. Nevermind how ridiculous firearms are.

So, with a new way forward, Jason begins to explore it. From his dantian, Jason rallied his power and sent it out into the meridian he had discovered. Then everything fell into place and it lit up, is what Jason would have liked to happen. Instead, it was like he had rounded up a bar’s worth of drunken adventurers and told them all to walk in a straight line.

By chance, a few might start going the right direction, but that didn’t last. At least, this helped illuminate more of the meridian’s path. Beyond that, Jason could even feel that minor muscles across his body seemed to have been toned. This is both wonderful as it means the lost power didn’t go to waste. On the other hand, it meant that the meridians were even less physical than the dantian.

While the dantian was centralized on the gut, Jason could feel from just this little experiment that the meridians likely managed to cover the entire body in their own special way. This called into question his use of the word meridian to refer to them but he decided to stay the course, at least for the moment. It wouldn’t be too late to change it later if he tells others.

Then he felt another round of small improvements across his body, despite not having tried again. Before today, it would have taken Jason long hours to figure out. Now, though, he already had the beginning of it figured out and his test basically unlocked the gate.

What was happening was that as the field supplied the wall with power and the plant guided it, the excess was sent out into the meridian he had just tested. It wasn’t quite automatic cultivation as the path didn’t seem to be advancing, but his body was tempering itself. If he had to compare it to something, it would be like a town sending out patrols along a road. The patrol isn’t going to go off the map after all. That is the job of a scout, while the patrol is just to secure what the town already controls.