**Chapter 83: Half a Step Further**
Whether refining the body’s essence, spirit, or external entities, only “elements” could be derived, not “spiritual energy.”
Yet Jie Ming had not only produced spiritual energy this way but had reached Foundation Establishment.
This was, undeniably, his earliest encounter with creation from nothing.
“Looking back, the cultivation technique from the Great Dao Book Pavilion is likely extraordinary, despite appearing as a mere Refining Essence into Qi…”
When Jie Ming first arrived in this world, he asked the pavilion for a cultivable technique, and it provided only this one.
Other spiritual energy-based methods were available upon inquiry, but when asked for a “cultivable method,” it consistently offered this single technique.
Fortunately, Jie Ming wasn’t stubborn. After testing and confirming the pavilion’s “intelligence” was reliable, he dutifully followed its suggestion.
Now, it seemed the pavilion had detected the world’s true nature, thus providing this specific technique.
The reason it took over a decade to reach the first layer of Qi Refinement was likely because most of that time was spent building a “converter” within his body.
“Using specific breathing and movements to construct a converter that creates spiritual energy from nothing… the cultivation world is half a step ahead of the wizard civilization.”
The wizard civilization likely also possessed perpetual motion machines.
Though he’d never met a ninth-level wizard, their descriptions were consistent: for certain reasons, their power was considered infinite.
This naturally piqued Jie Ming’s interest.
Though the Magic Network had scant information, he was nearly certain that ninth-level wizards had mastered creation from nothing.
Thus, the gap between the wizard and cultivation civilizations lay in the “popilarity level” of this perpetual motion.
In the wizard civilization, only the nine top-tier ninth-level wizards wielded creation from nothing, while the cultivation civilization had integrated it into its most basic cultivation techniques.
“But… taking this half step may not be good for a civilization…”
This stemmed from a book Jie Ming read in the Great Dao Book Pavilion: *Chronicles of the Chen Jiezi* (Chapter 23).
Its author, Chen Jiezi, was born in the cultivation world’s Age of the End of Dharma.
The book explained that the cultivation world’s knack for capturing concepts to create something from nothing arose because of this era.
Before understanding spiritual energy’s nature, Jie Ming imagined the End of Dharma as his past world’s historical dramas with added supernatural elements.
But after learning that spiritual energy formed all matter, energy, time, space, and even fate in the cultivation world, he couldn’t fathom what a spiritual-energy-scarce End of Dharma looked like.
Even the Great Dao Book Pavilion lacked records on this, as it only contained the cultivation world’s knowledge.
If no one recognized the difference, the pavilion wouldn’t know either.
The depletion of spiritual energy was an immensely slow process. Many cultivators lived and died in such a world without noticing changes, thus failing to identify the issue.
Of course, some ancient, undying beings existed.
But their perspectives were too fundamental, unaffected by external changes, summing it up simply as “spiritual energy depletion.”
“The only certainty is that the root cause of spiritual energy depletion is those undying old monsters.”
Cultivators pursued immortality and the Dao, with strength and cultivation as byproducts.
Generally, those achieving immortality were never weak.
The cultivation world resembled Jie Ming’s technological world, a universe of planets, occasionally dotted with spatial pockets—cave heavens or small worlds.
It shared cosmic traits, like near-infinite superluminal expansion.
Initially, the cultivation world’s resources were abundant.
But as undying cultivators grew stronger over time, their consumption of matter and energy increased near-infinitely.
Worse, their numbers kept growing.
High-tier cultivators endlessly absorbed everything into their domains of mystery, causing the cultivation world not only to stop expanding but to shrink.
A solution existed, plain as day: eliminate the high-tier cultivators, and spiritual energy would recover.
But this was nearly impossible. Beyond their immense strength, even if defeated, their vanquisher would likely become the next threat.
The Great Dao Book Pavilion didn’t detail the cultivation world’s final fate, but it likely ended in destruction.
“Still, with such advanced creation-from-nothing technology, they might have escaped that fate.”
Sighing, Jie Ming shifted his focus to another matter in his dantian.
“After years of nurturing, it’s finally gained initial spirituality.”
Feeling the lively spirituality within the Five Aggregates Rainbow Mirror, Jie Ming smiled with satisfaction.
Worthy of a treasure chosen for its potent spirituality, it was already so active at the Foundation Establishment stage.
This level of spirituality was sufficient to serve as an auxiliary intelligence, handling simple information processing.
This meant his reconnaissance system was finally complete!
“With Internal Circulation solving the storage ring issue and the Five Aggregates Rainbow Mirror gaining spirituality, it’s time to advance my plan for mass-producing runic artifacts.”
After all, the Noren Workshop test was fast approaching.