The Sea of Quanta.
After hanging the "Accursed Moon" over the sixth world bubble, it was already about evening.
Among these six world bubbles, aside from the fourth one, all the others contained life. The total population added up to roughly three hundred million.
Most of them had a need to obtain supernatural power.
With the opportunity to cultivate the "Power of the Accursed Moon" and gain supernatural abilities placed before them, the overwhelming majority chose to cultivate without hesitation.
As a result, Nolan's cultivation progress remained in a constant state of explosive growth.
At the beginning, there was a burst phase—tens of thousands of points per second. This was likely because people who, for various reasons, absolutely needed supernatural power to change their fate and didn't care about the consequences rushed in first.
After that, the growth gradually slowed, stabilizing at around six to seven thousand per second.
Basically, every time the Accursed Moon moved to a new densely populated area, there would be an initial burst, followed by a gradual slowdown.
Across several world bubbles, the overall average settled at roughly six to seven thousand points per second for Nolan.
From the moment he entered the first world bubble until now, nearly four hours had passed.
More precisely, about thirteen thousand six hundred seconds. The number was still changing, but even calculating conservatively with thirteen thousand six hundred seconds, Nolan had already gained over eighty million points of cultivation progress.
Moreover, unlike Adventure EXP that needed to be manually allocated, cultivation progress translated directly into level-ups the moment it reached the threshold.
Thus, Nolan's level had already risen two times in succession:
---
Name: Nolan Walker
Level: Lv132 (2,522,311 → 6000+/42,000,000)
Race: Human
Titles: Honorary Knight, Distinguished Citizen of Liyue, Legendary Adventurer, Honorary General of Watatsumi Island, Sumeru Sage, Prince of Fontaine, Deputy to the Raiden Shogun
Innate Talent: Entangling Affection
Skills:
- Lumine's Musou · World Lv.10 ( Void Starsea Manifestation)
- Flowing Sky Shot: Arcane Level Lv.10 (Frostglow Arrow)
Specialties:
- Beloved by Maidens (Exclusive)
- Unmoving Gospel of the World Tree (Exclusive)
- Threads of the Northern Wind (Exclusive)
- Spiritual Core (Exclusive)
- Imaginary Energy
- Drifter of the Imaginary Sea
- Devour All Things
Adventure EXP: 106,252,811
---
Aside from his level reaching 132, his cultivation progress was still continuing to increase at a rate of over six thousand per second.
At this pace, in about two hours, he would reach level 133.
However, soon after, he noticed the increase rate change to (5000+/s).
That was because the total population of these world bubbles was only around three hundred million. In just a few short hours, seventy to eighty million people—nearly a third of the population—had already chosen to cultivate.
That was already an excellent result, not to mention that in some areas of these world bubbles, the Accursed Moon hadn't even had time to shine yet.
After all, only a few hours had passed.
Since it was already late, Nolan wasn't in a hurry to keep searching for more world bubbles. Instead, he returned to the Wonderland Space.
After dinner, he planned to rest briefly, then head into the "Simulated Universe" to grind Adventure EXP. That task was just as important and couldn't be neglected.
Wonderland Space, 6 p.m.
By this time, everyone was gradually getting off work and returning home. Nolan went into the kitchen to help prepare dinner, but soon couldn't help himself and started touching Noelle and Xiangling here and there.
Naturally, he was promptly chased out by the two of them, flushed with embarrassment and annoyance.
If they really started cultivating, it would obviously delay dinner for the day.
As soon as he stepped out of the kitchen, he was greeted by the disdainful looks of Lumine and Paimon. By now, Nolan's skin was thicker than city walls when it came to this sort of thing.
He pinched little Paimon's cheeks, then suddenly scooped Lumine up in his arms and dashed toward the hot spring bathhouse on the second floor amid her startled cry of "Ah!"
Only Paimon was left behind, stomping her feet angrily on the spot.
With no other choice, she went into the kitchen to help. There was no way she was going to follow them into the bathhouse and watch them do such shameless things.
Carrying Lumine into the hot spring bathhouse, Nolan saw Ningguang, Beidou, and Dehya soaking inside. He joined them together with Lumine.
Soon, while chatting about recent developments in various regions, they stuck close together and cultivated. They only paused briefly at dinnertime, then continued cultivating with the other girls afterward.
Late at night, once the girls were exhausted from all the activity, everyone went to sleep and rest.
At around one in the morning, Nolan got up and teleported to the Herta Space Station, heading once more to Herta's office to help her test the "Simulated Universe."
This time, he arrived in an ocean world—one with not a single scrap of land.
All life on this planet lived in the sea. There were three major factions: the Sea Serpent Clan, the Dragon Shark Clan, and the Blood Ray Clan.
The three races cooperated closely, helping one another and remaining highly united.
The main reason was that they shared a common enemy: the Submerged Dwellers living beneath the seabed. Most of these creatures lacked intelligence, but though not large in size, they were quite powerful and fed on life above the seabed.
With such a terrifying foe, the marine civilizations of the sea had no choice but to unite to face it.
Because this was an ocean world, Nolan's identity this time became an ordinary member of the Sea Serpent Clan, with the objective of clearing out the Submerged Dwellers.
Of course, his true identity was still the "Trailblaze" Aeon.
After briefly understanding the background, Nolan chose the "Nihility" Path and began today's test.
This time, backed by a major power, his start was much faster. In just over an hour, he had already reached level 100.
The powerful Path abilities could devour everything, turning any existence into nothingness.
Building on that, Nolan's monster-grinding speed became even faster. Another hour passed, and he had already reached level 199.
The Submerged Dwellers across the entire planet had basically been wiped out. However, no matter what he did afterward, he failed to attract the attention of the "Nihility" Aeon.
It seemed that the "Trailblaze" Aeon wasn't very close with Them—or, more likely, the other party simply felt that any action was meaningless.
So They didn't bother paying Nolan any attention at all.
Just when both he and Herta thought this test would end without results, a burst of laughter rang out, and a figure hidden within the void appeared.
Numerous masks, surprise boxes, children's toys, and similar objects floated around Them.
"Akivili, friend of Aha—welcome back to this false world!" the figure said, laughing joyfully.
Aha was the Aeon of Elation. Just as Nolan was about to speak, Herta's urgent voice came through from the side:
"Get out, now! End the test—there's a backend anomaly! They're altering the Simulated Universe's data and trying to slip out! That guy has realized he's inside a computer simulation!"
What?!
Nolan was secretly shocked, but he moved quickly—having the character he was controlling devoured by "Nihility," then immediately logging out of the Simulated Universe.
At the same time, Herta directly cut the power to the Simulated Universe, physically severing it to prevent that thing from trying to escape through a network connection.
"Phew." Once it was dealt with, Herta finally let out a small sigh of relief.
"What happened? Was it that serious?"
Nolan looked at Herta with curiosity.
"More or less. Even though it's just a data-based lifeform, even if it escaped it wouldn't be able to wield the Authority of 'Elation,' who knows whether it might end up drawing the attention of the real 'Elation' instead."
Inside the Simulated Universe, there was no need to worry about being noticed by the Aeon of Elation. But once it ran out, since that data-life Aha was an imitation of "Elation,"
its personality was far too similar to Aha's. It would be very easy for it to resonate with the Path and be perceived by the real Aha.
Attracting the attention of other Aeons wouldn't be a big deal, but attracting the attention of the God of Fun was another matter entirely. If They just happened to be bored and came here to have some fun, that would be real trouble.
"That does make sense," Nolan nodded.
He hadn't expected that merely testing a "game" could carry the risk of attracting an Aeon. If Aha were truly drawn here, handling the aftermath would be difficult.
At most, he could rely on the affection skills to check Herta, Asta, Ruan Mei, Screwllum, and the scholars—confirm that none of them were avatars of Aha—
then immediately stuff them into the Void Star Sea and make a quick getaway himself.
Otherwise, who knew whether that guy might decide to have fun by blowing up the space station? Nolan had no intention of gambling on that. Better to run first.
"All right. The Simulated Universe will need fairly long-term maintenance this time, especially the Aha inside—it has to be rolled back.
"We probably won't be able to test it for the next few days. Once Screwllum, Ruan Mei, and I finish fixing it, I'll come find you again."
Herta sighed.
"Alright," Nolan replied.
He couldn't help feeling a bit regretful. A single Simulated Universe test was worth nearly a hundred million Adventure EXP.
Take this time, for example—he'd gained over ninety million Adventure EXP, enough to raise his level by two consecutively.
Every day without testing was a loss. Fortunately, he could now gain cultivation progress by deploying the Accursed Moon.
That way nothing would be delayed. Perhaps he could even use the time saved from Simulated Universe testing to search for world bubbles in the Sea of Quanta and set up Accursed Moons within them—earning even more cultivation progress that way.
At this moment, Nolan discovered that the innate talent "Entangling Affection," cultivated through Nahida's affection skill "Wisdom Tree Diagram," had successfully grown a second branch.
It was likely that during his exploration of world bubbles and the Simulated Universe, it had absorbed enough knowledge to grow.
The ability it granted was also related to "affection"—it allowed Nolan to see the potential of a girl's affection skill in advance.
Affection skills were abilities born from the intersection, collision, and fusion of destinies. This process of destinies intertwining was, in essence, the process by which Nolan gained a girl's affection.
From the moment a girl first developed affection for him, such a skill began to gestate, gradually taking shape as her affection grew.
When affection reached its maximum, the gestation was complete.
Naturally, the strength of such an affection skill was not random. It primarily depended on the potential of the girl whose affection for Nolan had reached the maximum.
Potential was comprehensive: a portion came from destiny's favor, a portion from one's inherent foundation, and a portion from acquired accumulation.
All of these combined formed the potential of a girl's affection skill.
According to the talent's feedback, potential was ranked from low to high as: white, green, blue, purple, and gold.
Much like the grading of artifacts and weapons in Teyvat.
Up to now, the affection skills Nolan had obtained from the girls were, without exception, absurdly powerful.
Take Arlecchino's affection skill—so long as he could reach a planet with a large population, becoming an Aeon in a single day wouldn't be a dream.
It was almost certain that their potential was at the highest gold tier; even in the worst case, it wouldn't be lower than purple.
As for why, despite previously lacking the ability to see a girl's potential, he had still been able to find them so accurately and build rapport to farm affection—
the reason was actually quite simple.
When Nolan had just transmigrated to Teyvat and met Amber, as a holder of a Vision capable of controlling elemental power through sheer will,
she was one of the rare few in all of Teyvat. That alone proved how outstanding she was.
Moreover, Amber appeared in the story and was a playable character in the game—clearly an important figure in the plot.
By normal logic, someone like that wouldn't have poor potential.
The same applied later to Fischl, Eula, Acting Grand Master Jean, and the others.
Later on, when he reached Sumeru, because the versions beyond that hadn't yet been released before his transmigration, he wasn't familiar with which characters would appear afterward.
Even so, most of the girls he came into contact with were Vision holders, outstanding in every aspect—and, importantly, very beautiful.
By normal reasoning, the girls introduced later in Genshin Impact were highly likely to be Vision holders or beings with great power.
And most importantly, they would definitely be beautiful and cute, fitting the aesthetic preferences of most people.
Otherwise, how would they attract players?
Therefore, girls who met all these criteria had a high probability of being characters who would appear later.
Even if they weren't, possessing so many outstanding traits meant their potential couldn't possibly be low.
Thus, the reason the girls Nolan pursued all had such excellent affection-skill potential was probably due to his player's instinctive intuition.
Of course, all of this was hindsight—speculation based on results. At the time, Nolan didn't even know that affection potential was a thing.
The reason he tried to get close to the girls and raise affection was mainly because he was drawn to them and genuinely liked them.
Now that Nolan could directly see the potential of a girl's affection skill, things became much more intuitive.
In truth, this ability wasn't all that impactful.
After all, if Nolan truly liked a girl, even if her affection-skill potential were just ordinary white, he would still find ways to raise her affection.
And if he didn't like someone, would he really shamelessly approach her just because her potential was gold?
There were so many wonderful girls in the world—there was no need for him to do that.
Still, one could never have too many abilities. Having it was better than not. Nolan was very satisfied with the ability of this second branch and looked forward to what the third branch might bring.
Leaving Herta's office and returning to his dorm, Nolan decided to raise his level before going back to rest.
Including the original eight million-plus Adventure EXP, his total Adventure EXP had now exceeded one hundred million:
[Adventure EXP: 106,252,811]
After so much time had passed, cultivation progress was now increasing at only a little over a thousand points per second.
However, thanks to the earlier accumulation, he had already reached level 133. Now, he directly invested the Adventure EXP needed to rise two more levels:
Adventure EXP −87,000,000
Lv133 (3,522,012 → 1000+/42,000,000) → Lv135 (3,522,012 → 1000+/45,000,000)
A surge of immense power welled up within his body. Nolan felt stronger than ever before. At this rate of growth, he felt that it wouldn't take more than a few days to reach the life tier of an Emanator!
(End of Chapter)
T/N: Don't Forget to Read the New Aux Chapter! And Give me the PS ;(