Breaking Through Nascent Soul

Ten Years Later

Jack continued browsing through everything, experimenting, calculating, etc. but still failed to calculate the nascent soul chapter of Heaven's Way. Finally, he decided to break through the nascent soul with an alternative method.

The Heaven's Way technique has spells built into it, along with many skills, intuitions, sub-practices, etc.; until now, Jack had done his best to calculate Heaven's Way's complete nascent soul chapter. However, at the moment, it seemed there was no other way but to simplify it to make it easier to calculate.

Simplifying a cultivation technique is extremely risky. Usually, there is no distinction between critical and optional, so if one cuts a critical part in an attempt to simplify the technique, one runs the risk that the whole exercise may fall apart. Breaking through using a defective technique is fatal, to say the least. No one in the world dares to do it except Jack.

Fortunately for him, when he cheated and got the core formation chapter of Heaven's Way, he obtained complete and flawless details about it. He knows exactly which parts are critical and which parts aren't. Of course, his knowledge is only about core formation, but Jack gives it a 99% chance that it would also work for the nascent soul.

The 99% chance is very good, and Jack is willing to take the 1% risk.

Breaking through using a simplified technique would greatly reduce its power, but it has a very important advantage.

If one breaks through the nascent soul with no cultivation technique at all, one cannot just start cultivating a technique starting from a nascent soul; these techniques must be practiced from the start; one cannot just start midway. There are ways, such as developing an incarnation, using it to practice a cultivation technique from the beginning, and later transferring the soul to the body of the incarnation. But those ways all have flaws and are very expensive and time-consuming.

The orthodox, true way is to cultivate using a technique from the beginning with one's main body.

Breaking through with a simpler version of Heaven's Way would mean Jack would temporarily have much weaker combat power compared to what he could have had if he had used the complete technique, But because the simplified technique still originated from Heaven's Way, it would count as practicing it and would not hinder his future cultivation. Moreover, he could add what he cut back later when his knowledge improved. However, it must be said that once Jack breaks through the nascent soul using simplified technique, he must remain in the 1st stage. If he breaks through the 2nd stage, he may lose the chance to repair the nascent soul chapter of Heaven's Way.

In addition, using a simplified technique would slightly decrease the chance of forming a healthy nascent soul; for Jack, who has a near-perfect core, this is not an issue.

A close-to-perfect core is extremely important for all cultivators; unfortunately, it is difficult to achieve.

It does sound simple, but in fact, only the most talented can achieve a perfect core. If not talented, one has to be satisfied only with high-quality cores.

Pure quality mana requires extremely resilient meridians, which extremely few possess. For those not talented enough, pure energy is a curse, not a blessing; it can destroy their meridians and even kill them.

Only privileged people like Jack, Mike, and Lucy, who have perfect physical bodies, can pick up pure energy crystals and use them to form a perfect core. For most, if they intend to do so, they must first repair their physical bodies, which costs all kinds of rare medicines and pills, many of which are not even in existence at the moment. Even more, besides meridians, most lack a dantian strong enough to tolerate pure mana, so it is even necessary to strengthen dantian. It is also advisable to strengthen the physical body, veins, brain, and heart to peak human, to make them more suitable to tolerate pure energy and prevent internal injuries.

All of these are extremely troublesome; the current Heaven's Way sect lacks the ability to do these for all disciples. As a result, many of the newer, less talented disciples break through the core formation with normal or high-quality cores.

In the future, big sects that could afford the expenditure would definitely prepare everything and help all disciples obtain near-perfect cores, as the investment is worth it long-term. But only big forces could afford it, so disciples in small sects would be left behind.

The strong get stronger, and the weak get weaker. It's a cruel fact that to advance, one must have strength to find good resources, and to get good resources, one must be strong; it's a vicious cycle seen in all worlds.

Jack's approach to simplifying the Heaven's Way cultivation technique may seem rash; after all, he has many years left, so would it not be better to wait and try harder? But the issue is that he has made very little progress; it's doubtful he can ever discover the nascent soul chapter in its complete form.

One must note that once he is too old, breaking through becomes harder; he cannot risk everything and hold on until the last moment.

Breaking through using a simplified technique is the most logical approach. Currently, the world is small, with only a few realms and a very limited scope.

The total knowledge is very limited, and it is extremely time-consuming to calculate the next chapter in its entirety. However, once the world breaks to rank 11, the scope expands, and gathering knowledge becomes much simpler. At that time, Jack would easily calculate the true nascent soul chapter and breakthrough with peace of mind, as the nascent soul has a 2,000-year lifespan.

After deciding, he abandoned the project of calculating the complete technique and started calculating the simplified technique. His current research is enough to calculate the simplified technique quickly.

...

Six months later, Jack was sitting in a vast room covered by a formation. The formation had many functions; it isolated inside from outside, protected him from any attack below the nascent soul, and provided the rich energy required for a breakthrough.

After casually opening his eyes, he started without waiting any longer. The first step in breaking through to the nascent soul is cracking one's core.

Jack's core was near perfect, with nearly no unintended cracks.

Jack carefully cracked his core, directly cutting its surface into two. It was not painful, but it gave him a sense of crisis as if his life was on the line. With another crack, he split the surface into four. The number of cracks varies according to the cultivator's preference and cultivation technique. Some people crack it thousands of times, while other techniques only crack the surface into two.

For Jack, the minimum number of cracks required was four, and the maximum was 128. He chose to go with the minimum of four because he possessed the perfect core. If he had a high or medium-quality core, he would have gone with 128, but four would suffice because of his perfect core. Too many cracks may risk injuring the still unborn nascent soul, so in general, fewer cracks are best for the health of the nascent soul after birth, while more cracks ease the nascent soul's birth.

Jack was nearly certain his nascent soul would have no issue being born, so there was no need to risk cracking and injuring it.

With extreme concentration, he started absorbing energy. He sucked the energy with such speed that even such a massive formation had a hard time catching up. He stored all the energy around his core in his dantian.

Using that energy, he started pushing the core. After a few seconds, the core surface's original color, sky blue, changed to pure white. The core surface was originally hard, but by pressuring it, Jack made it crisp and weak.

Next, Jack expelled the energy from his dantian; the formation outside expelled the extra energy and balanced everything out.

Now, everything was ready. He could break his core and give birth to his nascent soul.

With closed eyes, Jack gave the final push. His core completely shattered, and something came out of it. Its face was like a child's; it had two legs, arms, and a head. It was exactly like a human, specifically, like Jack when he was a baby.

It was only ten centimeters long, had no hair, and looked weak and premature.

Jack was ready for it; his nascent soul was born successfully; the prematureness was normal.

From the moment the premature nascent soul was born, he became a nascent soul cultivator! But it was not over yet. The nascent soul was still weak; he had to help it absorb pure energy to strengthen it.

Fortunately, he had already gathered and readied many pure energy crystals. Picking them one by one, he started absorbing them madly.

His nascent soul was like a black hole, absorbing all the energy Jack sent to it while showing no sign of fullness. It was getting more powerful and taller as seconds went by. Only after five minutes, it turned from a ten-centimeter weak premature baby to a twenty-centimeter, adult-looking mini human; it looked exactly like a tiny version of the adult Jack.

At twenty centimeters, one may expect it could not fit into Jack's dantian. Fortunately, sizes and shapes work mysteriously. Even though it was very large compared to the Dantian, it still fit comfortably; it was as if his Dantian was bigger on the inside.

Finally, after ten minutes of constantly absorbing pure energy, it finally showed signs of fullness. He successfully broke through to the nascent soul and consolidated his realm.

Looking at it, Jack felt an unprecedented sense of power. At this moment, as long as he only released his aura, this entire formation would break down; it could not even tolerate his casual aura.

The nascent soul realm is much more powerful than core formation; the two are incomparable. Jack's nascent soul is also extremely healthy and strong for a first-stage nascent soul.

The fundamental question is this: What is a nascent soul? Everyone has souls, but not everyone has nascent souls. Simply explaining it on a surface level, the nascent soul is a cover for the soul; it is as if the soul hides inside a well-armed robot.

Before the nascent soul stage, the soul is vulnerable; it can easily be harmed, as the physical body cannot defend the soul in any meaningful way against supernatural dangers. But after the nascent soul stage, everything is different; nothing can harm the soul before going through the outside cover. For nascent soul cultivators, the true core is their nascent souls, not their bodies; the body can even be replaced.

Closing his physical eye, Jack looked through the eye of his nascent soul.

From now on, his body is no longer very important. It is controlled by his nascent soul, so if his nascent soul leaves it, the body will lose all consciousness.

Using the nascent soul, Jack jumped out of his body. Looking at the physical body, Jack nodded; he could already feel the instinct of teleportation. As long as he wills it, he can teleport 100 kilometers instantly without consuming mana.

Of course, he can only travel that far if he teleports with his nascent soul alone; with his physical body, even 1 kilometer of teleportation takes 1% of his mana.

To try it out, he closed his eyes and disappeared.

...

Far away in the forest, a small human-shaped silhouette appeared in the air. Although it was dark, it could see everything clearly.

"Let's see," Jack smiled cutely with his small face and released his aura.

Extremely bright gold-blue light shone from his nascent soul, immediately evaporating everything in a 1-kilometer radius to ashes. Beyond 1 kilometer, trees began burning wildly as if fuel was poured on them. The sky was originally cloudy, but the clouds dissipated as if they were pushed away by a storm. Below him, the soil started to melt, forming lava.

His aura was far, far beyond the previous imaginary 18th level of core formation maxim reached with the help of the formation. If he had been in front of the present Jack at that moment, he could have turned him to ashes with a single look.

"Are all nascent souls this powerful?" Jack was impressed with his power—and all of this while he took a shortcut. He could not imagine how powerful a nascent soul who used a complete cultivation technique would be. A nascent soul is indeed the beginning of becoming a big-shot cultivator.

Satisfied, Jack put the fire out and teleported back to his body.

"Time to annex the Far East and promote the world to rank 11."