Chen Yu locked the door to his room and sat cross-legged on his bed, the cloth pouch of spirit stones resting in his lap. His hand gripped the bag tightly as anticipation coursed through him. This was the moment he'd been waiting for. With fifty low-grade spirit stones at his disposal, he could finally test the true limits of his golden finger's time acceleration.
Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and sent his consciousness diving into his mindscape.
The familiar white void materialized around him, and there stood his clone in its cultivation posture. Chen Yu could feel the ambient spiritual energy flowing through the clone's meridians, slow, steady, methodical. At this rate, it would take days to reach the next layer.
Chen Yu focused on the spirit stone bag in his physical hand, feeling the connection between the real world and his mindscape strengthen. Threads of pure spiritual energy began seeping through the dimensional barrier, drawn by his will. The white void shimmered as wisps of luminous qi materialized around him and his clone.
"Let's see what you can really do," Chen Yu murmured.
He began channeling the spirit stones' energy into the space itself, weaving it into the very fabric of his mindscape. Time was relative here, he'd proven that already. But to truly accelerate it, he needed power. Lots of it.
The flow of energy intensified. Chen Yu felt the familiar sensation of temporal distortion as he pushed his will against the natural flow of time. One second stretched into two. Then five. Then ten.
His clone's cultivation speed increased proportionally. The spiritual energy cycling through its meridians began moving faster, each circulation compressing more qi into the body. Chen Yu maintained his mental connection with the clone, experiencing every sensation as if it were happening to his own body.
He felt his skin, already at the completion stage of the 1st layer, achieving a new level of perfection. The cells seemed to hum with vitality, each one brimming with purified qi. Then, like a dam breaking, his clone surged forward.
Second Layer: Muscle Refinement.
Power flooded through his muscles as they began to transform. Each fiber tightened, compressed, and restructured itself at the cellular level. What should have taken weeks of arduous training happened in moments. Chen Yu gasped as he felt his physical body in the real world mirror the changes, his arms, legs, chest, and back all simultaneously strengthening.
But something was wrong.
The drain on the spirit stones suddenly intensified. Chen Yu's eyes widened as he felt the rate of consumption spike dramatically. Where before he'd been using the energy steadily, now it was pouring out like water through a broken dam.
"The stronger I get, the more energy it takes to maintain the same acceleration rate," he realized with growing alarm.
He had two choices: slow down the time dilation or accept the increased consumption.
There was no contest.
Chen Yu gritted his teeth and pushed harder, feeding more spirit stone energy into the mindscape. The time acceleration stabilized at 100x normal speed. His clone's cultivation continued its relentless advance through the 2nd layer, spiritual energy hammering his muscles into perfection.
Hours passed in the real world. Months flew by for his clone.
Then came the next breakthrough.
Third Layer: Tendon Refinement.
Chen Yu's tendons snapped taut like bowstrings being drawn for the first time. The sensation was both painful and exhilarating, his ligaments and connective tissues being forged into something far beyond mortal limitations. Flexibility, explosive power, the ability to withstand tremendous force, all of it came flooding into his body.
And again, the energy consumption spiked.
"Damn it!" Chen Yu felt sweat beading on his physical body's forehead as he struggled to maintain the acceleration. The spirit stones were being drained at an alarming rate now. He could feel their luster dimming even through the dimensional barrier.
But he could also feel his power growing. With each layer he advanced, his control over the mindscape increased. The time dilation that had been capped at 100x suddenly jumped to 300x. Three hundred times normal speed, every second in the real world was five minutes for his clone.
Chen Yu's consciousness swam as he tried to process the dual sensations of his body transforming while simultaneously managing the massive energy flows. His cultivation base solidified at the 3rd layer, then immediately began pushing toward the next threshold.
The spirit stones continued to drain. Chen Yu could feel them crumbling to dust in the pouch, their spiritual energy completely exhausted. But he was so close now. Just a little further.
His clone's internal organs began to transform. The Viscera Refinement stage was considered one of the most dangerous breakthroughs in Body Refinement, the internal organs were fragile, and forcing their transformation too quickly could result in catastrophic injury or death.
Spiritual energy flooded his stomach, liver, kidneys, lungs, and heart. Each organ was being reconstructed from the inside out, purified and strengthened to support a cultivator's enhanced physiology. His heart began beating with the steady, powerful rhythm of a war drum. His lungs expanded, capable of holding breath for extended periods. His digestive system transformed to process both mortal food and spiritual pills with equal efficiency.
Fourth Layer: Viscera Refinement.
The breakthrough came like a tidal wave. Power surged through Chen Yu's entire body, inside and out, from skin to bone, muscle to organ. He was no longer merely at the beginning of Body Refinement. He was nearly halfway through the entire stage.
And with this advancement, his control over time dilation jumped again. The cap raised to 500x normal speed.
But there was no more fuel to push it that far.
The last spirit stone in the pouch crumbled to lifeless powder. Chen Yu felt the energy flow cut off abruptly, and the time acceleration in his mindscape ground to a halt. He gasped, his consciousness snapping back to the real world.
His eyes flew open.
The room was dark, evening had fallen while he'd been cultivating. Chen Yu's body was drenched in sweat, and a thick layer of black impurities had seeped from his pores, covering his skin and clothes in a foul-smelling residue. The characteristic expulsion of toxins that came with Body Refinement breakthroughs.
But he barely noticed the stench.
Chen Yu slowly clenched his fist, feeling the raw power contained within. His muscles moved with a smooth, precise control that would have been impossible before. His bones felt denser, his tendons more flexible. Even his breathing was different, deeper and stronger.
"Fourth Layer," he whispered, a grin spreading across his face. "I went from the 1st layer to the 4th layer in a single day."
The implications were staggering. With enough spirit stones, he could advance at a speed that would make even single-root geniuses weep with envy. Time was no longer his enemy, it was his greatest weapon.
He stood up, marveling at how light his body felt despite being significantly stronger. Every movement was precise, controlled. He threw a few experimental punches, and the air whistled with each strike. His speed had at least doubled, maybe tripled.
"I could probably beat any Olympic athlete from my old world now," Chen Yu thought with satisfaction. Sprinters, weightlifters, martial artists, none of them would stand a chance against even a 4th layer Body Refinement cultivator.
But the euphoria was tempered by a sobering realization: he'd just burned through fifty spirit stones, the equivalent of five hundred golden coins, in a single cultivation session. And the higher he climbed, the more expensive it would become.
"Being a capitalist in the cultivation world doesn't seem like such a bad idea after all," Chen Yu muttered. Money was power here, perhaps even more directly than in his previous life. With enough resources, he could buy his way to the top.
But first, he needed to make sure he could actually use this strength.
Chen Yu's expression grew serious. What good was power if he didn't know how to apply it? He'd jumped four layers in a single day without any real combat experience. If he got into a fight now, he might accidentally kill someone, or worse, fail to protect himself because he couldn't properly control his enhanced body.
He needed practical experience. Real combat. Not life-or-death battles against powerful cultivators, but controlled practice against weaker opponents where he could learn his limits.
The forest outside town would be perfect. The outer regions were filled with normal beasts, wolves, wild boars, large cats, that would pose a challenge without being truly dangerous. He could test his speed, strength, and reflexes against real targets that would actually fight back.
"Tomorrow," Chen Yu decided. "Tomorrow I'll go hunting."
But despite his mental exhaustion, sleep didn't come immediately. His mind was too active, buzzing with ideas and possibilities. His gaze drifted to the array materials he'd purchased from Master Li, still sitting on his desk untouched.
The Spirit Gathering Array.
Chen Yu dragged himself out of bed after a quick cleaning with a talisman to remove the layer of impurities, and sat at his desk. He unrolled the instruction manual that had come with the array plate and carving tools, his tired eyes scanning the diagrams and explanations.
Arrays were fundamentally different from talismans. Talismans were temporary, single-use tools that discharged their energy and burned out. Arrays were permanent formations that could continuously function as long as they had a power source.
The Spirit Gathering Array was designed to do exactly what its name suggested: gather ambient spiritual energy from a wide area and concentrate it in a smaller space. Cultivators used them to create personal training rooms where the qi density was several times higher than the surrounding environment.
According to the manual, a properly constructed Spirit Gathering Array required one low-grade spirit stone as its power source and could function continuously for an entire month before the stone was depleted.
But as Chen Yu studied the design, his mind began racing with possibilities.
"This is basically a battery," he murmured, tracing the energy flow patterns in the diagram. "It gathers energy from the environment and stores it in a concentrated form."
The current design was optimized for coverage, it drew qi from a radius of about fifty meters and concentrated it into a five-meter cultivation space. But what if he reversed those proportions? What if he made the gathering radius smaller and the concentration point even more compact?
Chen Yu's eyes gleamed with excitement despite his exhaustion.
A miniaturized Spirit Gathering Array wouldn't be useful for cultivation, the qi density would be too low. But it would require far less power to operate. Instead of needing a spirit stone that lasted a month, it might only need a small injection of spiritual energy to function for hours or even days.
Just like talismans.
"Spirit-powered tools," Chen Yu whispered. "Items that can recharge."
The applications were endless.
But that was a project for the future. Right now, he barely understood basic arrays, let alone had the skill to modify them. He needed to practice extensively with the standard Spirit Gathering Array first, understand every aspect of how it functioned, before he could even think about customization.
Chen Yu carefully set aside the array materials and rubbed his tired eyes. His mind was spinning with ideas, hunting trips, array modifications, talisman business expansion, cultivation planning. But his body was screaming for rest.
The mental strain of managing the time acceleration during his breakthrough had been immense. Even though his clone had done the actual cultivating, Chen Yu's consciousness had been fully engaged the entire time, directing energy flows and maintaining the temporal distortion.
He stumbled back to his bed, not even bothering to change clothes properly. His last thought before unconsciousness claimed him was a simple one:
"I'll one day make smartphones so I can doomscroll again."
In his mindscape, his clone continued its cultivation, now at the 4th layer of Body Refinement.