"How do I go about this?"
Zero then got a great idea.
Why not just scan the body of the 'celestial emperor'?
"He can't be stronger then the god's can he?"
As Zero was creating a plan to find the 'celestial emperor'.
He felt a fluctuation from his cosmic artifact.
"Somebody is looking at me?"
Just like when he was dreaming and looked at the entity that created his dreams.
He turned his head and stared at the being watching him.
"Found you!"
The being didn't react.
Zero couldn't trace back his location.
He was likely in a higher realm.
"Where exactly are you?"
The persons expression changed.
"I'm talking to you! Are you the celestial emperor?"
"Forget it... I'll find you. Give me a few days."
Zero felt the gaze disappear.
"Hmm... first I'll saturate this realm with nanites."
Zero was no longer on a clock.
His cultivation wasn't rejected by the world.
But the spiritual energy around him was extremely thin.
Due to it trying to support his massive cultivation.
As Zero was saturating the world with nanites.
He got a fantastic idea.
"If I go back to my first save point. My cosmic artifact should return with me. But all my other progress should restart."
"This may be able to be abused."
First Zero saved this moment so he could return.
'Save Point 1'.
'Reload 0'.
Zero found himself in constant time once more.
All of the progress he had made was reset.
He now looked into his independent consciousness.
It was time for the moment of truth.
He checked his artifact.
Had it reverted back to just being a soul artifact?
It had not!
It stayed as a cosmic artifact.
Why was this huge?
He had his other consciousness's back.
He had his crystals back.
He had all eight of his spiritual artifacts back.
He was rank 4 again.
His progress may have reset... but his artifact had not.
It was a constant.
Zero had to make sure he could switch back first though.
'Reload 1'.
He found himself back in the world of cultivation.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
He had his cultivation back.
All of his progress wasn't lost.
"Interesting."
'Reload 0'.
He went back to constant time.
He tried to cultivate.
His plan was abuse the save slots and infinitely make his cosmic artifact more powerful.
But he noticed a problem.
There was no tribulation in constant time.
He wasn't able to really cultivate.
So he entered the same cultivation world.
He created a dantian.
Made his crystals meridians.
Then repeated the process of cultivation.
He sped through it.
He already had the templates... there was nothing stopping him.
He abused the same glitch and severed his spirit 100 times.
Once he broke through to transcendent body.
Everything fused together.
His crystals dissolved.
He combined all the artifacts together.
Then combined the combined artifacts with his cosmic artifact.
It was still a cosmic artifact.
But his connection with his body had increased slightly.
It was minor.
But it was an improvement!
This was HUGE!
'Reload 0'.
He lost all his cultivation and progress.
But his cosmic artifact was growing in complexity.
He repeated the process.
'Reload 0'.
Repeat.
'Reload 0'.
Repeat
'Reload 0'.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
After a hundred recursions.
He was starting to have fun.
His cultivation on each attempt was getting faster and faster.
He was able to become a transcendent body cultivator in 10 minutes.
His soul regenerated so fast now that his cosmic artifact was getting stronger.
Five hundred recursions went by.
It now took him two minutes to breakthrough all of the cultivation realms.
And the first minute of those two minutes was spent making his dantian and spiritual roots.
He was becoming quite proficient in cultivation.
On the 1000th run... his cosmic artifact began to shake.
It had stepped beyond the realm of cosmic.
Zero didn't even know there was a higher level.
It had become a 'sublime artifact'.
An example for reference to a sublime ability.
Is Gaia's shatter and manifest.
At this point.
Zero had 14 slots he could use.
But he didn't gain any new abilities.
Until it became sublime.
He then gained a special ability.
Not a single ability.
But a set of abilities.
All of them fit under a special ability.
'Temporal Manipulation'.
There were various abilities.
Like 'immunity', he wouldn't be able to be sealed or trapped. Unable to be moved to another location against his will.
Also, 'travel'. Similar to his ability to walk through space and time in his main body.
There was also 'edit', which allowed him to manipulate the time of other entities and beings.
An example of this would be reversing the state of a corpse and bringing someone back to life.
But his control was far better then just that.
He could reverse their entire existence.
Bringing their soul back from the abyss or pulling it back from wherever it might of gone.
He could manipulate their memories as well.
He could reverse the clock for the soul.
Or he could just reverse the physical and leave the person with their memories.
He could cherry pick what aspect he manipulated.
This means he could cause someone to rapidly age.
Or he could cause the person's soul to experience their entire future.
There was 'cloak' where he could disguise his soul and aura fluctuations easily.
Another ability is 'transformation'.
He could tap into his rank 9 existence.
Briefly transforming his existence into a quasi-rank 9.
This would heavily drain the energy of his sublime artifact though.
So he could only maintain it for a few seconds.
But these few seconds... he would be nearly omnipotent.
His connection with his main body will weaken after using his 'temporal transformation'.
It also had a cool down that wasn't linked to time, but was linked to the constant.
This means that using it too much could cause his artifact to drop back to cosmic.
It was extremely stressful for the artifact.
He would then lose these new abilities.
But this was easy to fix.
He simply needed to build a buffer!
Did you think that he would simply stop at 1000 recursions?
He continued.
1500.
2000.
3000.
5000!
His sublime artifact was extremely complex at this point.
It was then that he unlocked a new function.
He called this ability 'temporal energy'.
He was now able to see how much temporal energy he had built up.
[ECHO]: {TE:4765}
He gained around 1 TE every time he combined the eight artifacts.
His sublime abilities required TE.
His cosmic abilities didn't require any TE.
So 'reload', 'save point', 'save slot' required 0 TE
But using them would affect the stability of the artifact slightly.
'Heating' it up.
'Transformation' for instance needs the artifact to be balanced in order to open up a connection with the main body. So using a cosmic ability would shake the artifact. Causing it to overheat.
In other words, you wouldn't be able to transform into a quasi rank 9 until the artifact had stopped shaking and cooled down.
Using any functions of the artifact would cause it to shake.
So it was impossible to transform.
Then 'save point'.
Farm TE.
Then load the save.
Seemingly being rank 9 permanently.
Because the artifact would be shaking and unstable.
It is however possible to transform... lose the transformation and turn it back on once the artifact had cooled down.
Think of it like overclocking the artifact in order to have access to rank 9 power.
The transformation is completely linked to the artifact.
So using 'save point' while transformed will not mean you will still be transformed upon using reload.
Just like how TE is linked to the artifact and not linked to the loop.
But you also won't stay transformed after using 'reload'.
'immunity' cost depended on how long Zero refused the manipulation.
'travel' cost depended on the location and distance.
'edit' cost depended on how much the entity was manipulated.
'transformation' cost about 2000 TE every second.
Once you drop below 0 TE in storage.
You lose access at least temporarily to your sublime abilities.
The artifact will also downgrade and become a cosmic one.
So Zero had to make sure he always kept at least 1 TE at all times.
He planned to build up a healthy buffer though.
Things were getting repetitive.
But repetition was something he was great at!