Sorin opened his eyes to a multilayered reality. Olympia was suddenly perfectly clear to him, including the fierce lightning that rumbled overhead, the demigods that patrolled the outer spheres, and even the frightening deities that formed a protective halo around Olympia and the Infinite Dungeon.
As he gazed upon these frightening existences, they gazed back upon him.
The shocking experience nearly tore apart his soul and forced his spirit back into his body.
“You fool!” Grand Elder Kepler suddenly appeared in Sorin’s cultivation chamber and clamped down on his spiritual senses. “I can understand why you’d want to break through somewhere private given the number of grudges you’d accumulated, but you should have at least informed me.”
“It… hurts…” gasped Sorin as he tried piecing himself together. Everything burned like white hot fire that licked every ounce of his being.
“I’d be surprised if it didn’t hurt,” snapped the Grand Elder. “What were you thinking opening your Gate of Expanse so suddenly and without warning? If you were a normal God Seed, everything would have occurred naturally the moment you broke through to the Flesh-Sanctification Realm. Your spirit would have been much weaker initially and would have therefore had far more time to acclimatize.”
A few minutes passed, and the burning sensation in Sorin’s spirit receded. He had heavy soul damage that would take weeks if not months to repair, but his breakthrough had been successful.
“You knew?” asked Sorin, analyzing the changes taking place inside his body. His sanctification slowly climbed until it reached 40 percent, confirming his guess that he’d need at least a thousand poison to reach 100 percent sanctification.
“How could I not know?” muttered Grand Elder Kepler. “I’ve been watching you since you first accepted the inheritance of Asclepius.
“I knew from the first day that you were lacking in some respects compared to other God Seeds, but that this was slowly rectified as you unlocked your potential and further tarnished your divinity.”
Sorin’s body tensed when he heard these words.
“Relax,” said Grand Elder Kepler. “Lord Hope might have been shielding you, but it was impossible for even that wily fox to completely hide the changes occurring within you.
“I noticed because I’ve interacted with many God Seeds of Asclepius. A few demigods also noticed and brought it to my attention. In the end, we were forced to pay a visit to the Divine Clans and the Temple of Hope, who informed us to maintain our silence and cover up the truth of your existence.”
Sorin pursed his lips. “Who?”
“Grand Elder Hargrave, Grand Elder Pollen, and that scheming bastard, Grand Elder Riss,” answered Grand Elder Kepler. “And I have no doubt that Aaron Zeiss and Ratten Hyde know exactly what you are.”
Sorin frowned. “But they’re Flesh-Sanctification cultivators.”
Grand Elder Kepler rolled his eyes. “They’re the inheritors of the Zeiss and Hyde Clans. Common logic does not apply to them. Now are you going to keep smashing against my spiritual senses or are you going to assert control over your newfound powers?”
Only then did Sorin notice that his spirit had been acting up according to his emotional fluctuations. Everything spiritual about him had been enhanced.
He first focused on containing his spirituality and locking it into his body before letting it out as a controlled trickle.
It washed over everyone in the building, including, to his surprise, Fineas, who was unaware, and Gabriella, who was not. She looked back at him from her bed in the infirmary and smiled.
Sorin did not return the sentiment, because thanks to his enhanced senses, he could detect a huge amount of death-aligned mana pouring into her through an iron-clad connection. Fineas, along with Chief Elder Ignis and Clan Leader Reeves, were operating a life-aligned formation to support her. Surprisingly, neither of these two individuals reacted to his intrusive scan.
Next, Sorin’s senses expanded past the hospital and into the city proper. He took care not to force his perception onto any specific individual, and even spotted a few others senses probing back at him.
A few of them were familiar to him, as they belonged to the various God Seeds at the Flesh-Sanctification Realm inside the city.
It was the same for the God Seeds form the Divine Clans, though Sorin noted that there was something quite different about them. Their energies weren’t pure gold like those of the other God Seeds but had a faint white sheen to them.
He sensed the demigods next. These, he noted, had hefty spirits filled withs strength. They all had their own territories of sorts that delimited certain areas and prevented intrusion.
“Your spiritual senses have now caught up to the other God Seeds,” came Grand Elder Kepler’s voice. “You’ll need to get used to the spiritual etiquette involved and map out your own boundaries. Pick and choose who you communicate with spiritually, but I recommend that you at least send greetings to everyone who can sense you for future diplomacy.
“Most rules aren’t fixed; they evolve with time, and it’s generally considered rude to intrude upon someone’s spiritual curtain. That said, there are certain maxims I heavily advise you to follow.
“Firstly, do not under any circumstance intrude upon the spiritual curtains of those belonging to the Divine Clans or their affiliated clans.
“Secondly, do note intrude upon the Temple of Hope or its Agents.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“And thirdly, and this is perhaps the most important point, do not under any circumstance use your spirit to probe the members of the Zeiss Clan, the Hyde Clan, Mount Olympus, or the Herald of any of the Seven Evils. That applies tenfold to the Evils themselves, the five guardian deities of Olympia, who just showed you mercy, and finally, the two Gates of the Underworld, the first being located in Olympia, and the second being anchored in Mattapan.
Sorin pulled his attention back to the Grand Elder. “Are some of the rules more important than others?”
“The first two have some leeway,” confessed the Grand Elder. “But the third point is a cardinal rule. If you break it, I won’t be able to protect you from the fallout.”
“Noted,” said Sorin, putting a hand to his head. “This is going to take some getting used to.”
Grand Elder Kepler nodded. “Refrain from doing anything strenuous for the next week and focus on healing you spirit. You’ll then need quite a bit of time to refamiliarize yourself with your techniques, your professions, and combat.”
Sorin found himself in much better condition three days later, but he followed the Grand Elder’s advice and remained in seclusion. As he recovered, he explored the boundaries of his spiritual senses and sent greetings to everyone that could sense him back.
Gabriella’s condition was a concern, but she soon stabilized with the help of Fineas, his father, and Chief Elder Ignis. Her condition was poor, but she was in good spirits and would be recovering from the foreseeable future.
After the week was up, Sorin resumed his research. Blending poisons was both easier and more difficult, and it took some time to adapt.
He then moved onto some light sparring with his friends before treating patients in his clinic. Word of his breakthrough had clearly been passed down from the demigods as soon, he found himself with a steady trickle of influential and wealthy clients.
Sorin treated many complex cases that he would have been unable to solve without his newfound spirituality. He’d been a blind man, plodding around in a dark cave and somehow always missing the exit.
After completing several dozen cases, Sorin was able to afford most of the public poisons in the Kepler Clan’s reward system. After reproducing them, he had Mordecai distill their equivalent spell frameworks so that he could start on incorporating his next poison.
Finally, Sorin was sufficiently confident in helping his friends break through. He first purified the divine crystals they had remaining from the advanced dungeon and had each of his companions increase their cultivation to 30 percent sanctification before opening individual Gates of Expanse with his new and improved tincture.
One by one, his companions smashed open the doors sealing away their spirit. Their senses expanded into the city, though not with the fanfare that had accompanied his own breakthrough.
For the most part, these breakthroughs were uneventful and greatly improved their capabilities, but Sorin noted some anomalies in their conditions.
“Stephan and Daphne, I’m afraid to say that you’ve both been poisoned,” said Sorin with a frown.
“Poisoned?” asked Stephan curiously. “But I’ve never felt better.”
“It’s not a normal poison. It’s a spiritual one.” said Sorin. “It resembles corruption, and it’s merged with your spirits.” He held out a standard divine crystal. “The poison stems from these standard divine crystals. The two of you used too many of these, while the others did not.” He turned to Astley. “You received quite a few crystals from your order, but you refrained form taking additional crystals when I warned you and therefore aren’t as heavily contaminated. Lawrence and Gareth, on the other hand, have nearly no contamination.”
Astley didn’t seem too surprised by this. “They say that Olympia changes people. The divine crystals must have a lot to do with it. Can the taint be cleansed?”
Sorin shook his head. “Not with my current capabilities. Not without maiming your spirits.”
“I’m more concerned about what exactly this poison is,” said Gareth. “Either the higher ups have no idea it exists or are aware of it and are pretending that it doesn’t. Whatever it is, the Temple of Hope hasn’t managed to scrub it out.”
Sorin had some speculations about possible reasons. “There are three forms of energy inside a rough, corrupted crystal: divinity, corruption, and a foreign energy that both the corruption and the divine want to extinguish. The corruption is a strange mixed corruption. According to what I can tell, it does not align with any specific form of corruption.”
He then took out a divine crystal processed by the Temple of Hope. “This divine crystal has been purged of at least five types of corruption. I do not sense Violence, Madness, Jealousy, Hatred, or Strife from it. It’s highly possible that part of the corruption can’t be cleansed by the usual process and instead binds itself to the divine crystals.”
Sorin also had another suspicion, but he didn’t voice it. His answer also seemed to satisfy his companions, so he was able to deflect to another interesting point. “Gareth, do you sense it? You’re close to a breakthrough.”
Gareth cleared his throat. “I wasn’t sure about it, as it feels pretty deep. It’s not a gate, so I have no idea what to do.”
“Relax,” said Sorin, placing his hand on the archer’s head. He used his spirit to delve deep into a portion of the man’s body not normally accessible and pushed a blend of poison into a phantom point in space. The point shattered, and a golden light erupted.
Sorin didn’t stop there. He moved on to Gareth’s silver bones, which had fully stabilized since he’d broken into the Flesh Sanctification Realm.
Normally, a cultivator’s bones couldn’t be changed, but now that Sorin’s spirit had evolved to the next level, he could see a superimposed spirit body interacting with the bones.
He worked away at the silver runes in Gareth’s body, gradually weakening him to the point that his own divinity and sanctified flesh were starting to become harmful to him.
As soon as the last silver rune was worn away, white faded to gold to produce golden bones. Just as Lawrence had done before him.
“This… shouldn’t be possible,” Daphne finally said once Gareth’s breakthrough was finished. “It’s a well-known fact that you can’t retroactively open meridians or unseal bones.”
“That’s what you’re worried about?” exclaimed Stephan. “What about the fact that he’s got divinity at the Flesh-Sanctification Realm? And without a divine-tier cultivation art. That’s very different than Lawrence’s freakish situation.”
Sorin frowned as he inspected Gareth’s cultivation. “I think it’s theoretically possible for a demigod or someone with an equivalent spiritual strength to spur a retroactive unsealing or meridian opening, assuming the patient’s foundation is sufficient. It’s just not normally done due to demigods lacking the expertise and not wanting to spend the energy. Does that address your concerns, Daphne?”
“So, you’re saying this is perfectly normal?” asked Daphne.
Sorin shook his head. “Not at all. Stephan’s right. Unsealing that final meridian and the final bone unsealing shouldn’t be possible. Not for Gareth. And not for Lawrence, for that matter.”
His spiritual senses reached out into the city and intrusively probed individuals at various cultivation levels. Blood-Thickening, Bone-Forging, Flesh-Sanctification, and mortal— no cultivation realm was spared.
“Was it always like this?” Sorin muttered as he inspected another batch of cultivators. “Was I just not able to sense it before?” He confirmed the situation with the general population before turning his attention the Kepler Clan, where he encountered stiff resistance. It was the Grand Elder who was using his spirituality to defend the members of the Kepler Clan.
Sorin pushed back insistently, and the Grand Elder relented and allowed Sorin to scan their cultivations. He confirmed that the divine ‘locks’ on their cultivation were still present and in place.
That said, he discovered some interesting facts. The locks on each of his clansmen varied greatly in strength. The purer the bloodline, the greater the restriction. It’s the only answer that makes sense.
“Well?” asked Stephan. “What did you figure out?”
Sorin looked at the individual members of his team before announcing his verdict. “I can’t be sure, but I think I broke something.”