The deduction was nearly complete.
Wei Jin sat in his cultivation chamber on a morning bright with spring sunshine, tracking the progress that had consumed three years of patient waiting.
[NASCENT SOUL METHOD - DEDUCTION IN PROGRESS][Current Progress: 99%]
Ninety-nine percent. Tomorrow, perhaps. The next day at latest. The method that would enable his breakthrough to Nascent Soul was emerging from the panel's reasoning processes, crystallizing from principles his cultivation had established into technique he could actually employ.
Three years of watching percentages climb. Three years of preparing for transformation that his entire cultivation journey had been building toward. Three years of contemplating what Nascent Soul would mean—power that exceeded Golden Core by orders of magnitude, lifespan measured in millennia rather than centuries, capability that approached what the ancient survivors had possessed before the war that destroyed their civilization.
Wei Jin allowed himself a moment of satisfaction that his iron mind could not entirely suppress.
One hundred twenty-four years of cultivation. From clumsy child to six-pattern Golden Core. From struggling agricultural disciple to family patriarch whose influence shaped an empire. And now—finally—the threshold to true immortality was within reach.
The panel's reasoning continued its work beneath his awareness, the final fragments of the method taking shape through processes he could perceive but not fully comprehend.
Tomorrow.
Or perhaps the next day.
Soon.
—————
The Morning After
Wei Jin rose with the dawn, his consciousness immediately checking the panel's progress.
[NASCENT SOUL METHOD - DEDUCTION IN PROGRESS][Current Progress: 99%]
Still incomplete. The final percentage point was proving more difficult than the ninety-nine that had preceded it. Perhaps the concluding elements of the method required more sophisticated reasoning. Perhaps the integration of all previous deduction demanded additional processing.
Patience. He had waited three years. A few more days would change nothing.
Wei Jin dressed and made his way toward the observation platform that offered views across the transformed city. Morning cultivation could wait until the panel's work was finished. For now, he would observe the world that his liberation work had helped create.
The city spread before him in the early light—half a million people now, their lives transformed by innovations that had emerged from the stable zone's liberated creativity. The streets teemed with morning activity. The factories hummed with production that exceeded what any previous generation had achieved. The wire networks carried communication and power throughout the urban landscape.
And beyond the city, the empire continued its expansion.
Wei Jin's information networks had tracked the military's latest projects with growing unease. The weapons emerging from imperial laboratories had progressed beyond what even the devastating firearms of previous decades had achieved. The scientists—mortals whose creativity had been freed by conditions Wei Jin had helped create—were exploring principles that approached domains once reserved for cultivation.
There had been rumors.
Whispers of research into the fundamental nature of matter. Of experiments that probed the tiny particles that composed all substance. Of weapons that might harness forces beyond what conventional understanding could—
The flash came without warning.
Light brighter than the twin suns blazed across the northern horizon. Wei Jin's iron mind registered the intensity before conscious thought could process it—illumination that exceeded what spiritual perception had ever recorded, energy release that dwarfed anything his enhanced cognition could categorize.
Then the cloud rose.
A pillar of fire ascending toward the heavens, its crown spreading into a shape that would haunt Wei Jin's nightmares for the rest of his extended existence. A mushroom. A towering monument of destruction that climbed higher and higher, its base consuming whatever had occupied the territory where it had been born.
The shockwave arrived minutes later.
Even at this distance—perhaps a hundred miles from the detonation point—the pressure wave rattled windows throughout the city. Wei Jin's Golden Core automatically reinforced his body against the force, his six patterns providing protection that weaker cultivators would have lacked.
But the protection was almost irrelevant.
What he was witnessing required no physical proximity to understand.
The mortals had created a weapon that could pulverize any Golden Core cultivator within its immediate radius.
—————
The Horror
The reports arrived through Wei Jin's information networks within hours.
The detonation had been a test. An experiment conducted by imperial military forces who had developed weapons based on principles that mortal scientists had only recently discovered. The tiny particles—the atoms that composed all matter—contained energy that could be released through specific processes.
The weapon released that energy.
The results were beyond anything the cultivation world had ever confronted.
The test site—a remote valley in the empire's northern territories—had been vaporized. Not damaged. Not destroyed in the conventional sense. Vaporized. Converted from solid matter into expanding plasma that had risen to form the mushroom cloud Wei Jin had witnessed.
Everything within miles of the detonation point had been annihilated.
The reports described thermal radiation that exceeded what spiritual fire techniques could produce. Pressure waves that would crush Foundation cultivators like insects. Residual contamination that would render the area uninhabitable for generations.
And this was merely the first test.
The scientists who had created the weapon were already discussing improvements. More powerful detonations. More efficient designs. Delivery systems that could carry the weapons across continents.
The mortals had created something that threatened cultivators at levels the cultivation world had never imagined.
Wei Jin sat in his study as the implications cascaded through his enhanced cognition.
He had worked for over a century to free mortal creativity from the suppression that had prevented development. He had created stable zones where innovation could flourish. He had enabled progress that he believed would benefit humanity as a whole.
And that progress had produced a weapon capable of ending Golden Core lives with the same casual efficiency that conventional weapons had always ended mortal ones.
The ancient survivors had been right.
The suppression they had imposed after the catastrophic war had not been merely control for its own sake. It had been protection against exactly this outcome—mortal innovation advancing to the point where it threatened powers that had always stood above mortal capability.
The war forty thousand years ago had been fought with cultivation techniques that modern practitioners could not replicate. But the mortals were developing capabilities that might eventually match what the ancient civilization had possessed.
And if they continued developing…
If their progress proceeded without check…
The destruction that had ended the previous cultivation civilization might be repeated by mortals who had never known what cultivation could achieve.
Wei Jin had enabled this.
His work had created the conditions that produced this weapon.
His liberation had planted the seeds that might ultimately destroy the world.
—————
The Regret
The days that followed were the darkest of Wei Jin's extended existence.
He walked through his city—the monument to liberated creativity that his influence had built—and saw everything through the lens of the mushroom cloud. Every innovation that had seemed like progress now appeared as step toward destruction. Every advancement that had improved mortal lives now looked like movement toward apocalypse.
The calculating devices that had helped him understand his panel? The same principles enabled weapons of unimaginable devastation.
The communication networks that had connected the empire? The same infrastructure could coordinate attacks that destroyed entire cities.
The scientific understanding that had enabled medical advances and agricultural improvements? The same knowledge had produced the weapon that could end Golden Core lives.
Everything connected.
Every liberation contained seeds of destruction.
Every freedom enabled both creation and annihilation.
Wei Jin had known this intellectually. Had contemplated the double-edged nature of progress when the mortal war first demonstrated what freed creativity could produce. Had accepted that liberation created risks alongside benefits.
But he had not truly understood.
Not until the mushroom cloud rose against the northern sky.
Not until the reports described power that exceeded what his six patterns could survive.
Not until he faced the reality that his life's work might ultimately contribute to the extinction of everything he had worked to protect.
The iron mind that had served him so well for decades now processed despair with the same efficiency it had once processed hope. His enhanced cognition cataloged implications that ordinary consciousness would have found unbearable. His reasoning cycle analyzed possibilities that left no room for comfort.
He had made a terrible mistake.
And he could not undo what he had enabled.
—————
The Adaptation
But despair was not a luxury that Wei Jin could afford.
His family depended on him. His city looked to him for leadership. His influence shaped events that affected millions of lives. Whatever regret he carried, whatever horror the mushroom cloud had awakened, he remained responsible for navigating what came next.
The iron mind that processed despair also processed necessity.
Wei Jin began adapting.
His first priority was protection. The weapon the empire had developed was not yet widely deployed, but its existence changed the fundamental calculus of survival. Defensive measures that had been adequate against conventional threats required complete reassessment.
Wei Lan's formation arrays were the most immediately relevant. Wei Jin consulted with his daughter on modifications that might provide protection against the new weapon's effects. The thermal radiation, the pressure waves, the residual contamination—each required specific countermeasures that their existing defenses had never been designed to address.
The work consumed weeks of intensive collaboration.
The formations they developed could not survive direct detonation—nothing short of Nascent Soul cultivation could withstand that level of destruction at close range. But they could protect against secondary effects at distance. They could shield against the residual contamination that made affected areas uninhabitable. They could provide the family with options that ordinary cultivators would lack.
His second priority was intelligence.
The weapon's development had not occurred in isolation. Imperial laboratories, military installations, government facilities—all of these had contributed to the project that produced the mushroom cloud. Wei Jin's information networks needed to track these developments, to understand who controlled the weapons, to monitor how they might be deployed.
The networks expanded with resources that decades of accumulated wealth provided.
His third priority was influence.
The weapon's existence created political dynamics that would reshape the empire and beyond. Those who controlled such power would face pressures—from rival factions seeking access, from neighboring civilizations desperate to prevent its use against them, from cultivation sects who might finally recognize the threat that mortal innovation posed.
Wei Jin began positioning the Wei family within these dynamics.
Not to control the weapon—that was beyond his current capability. But to shape how it was perceived, how it was regulated, how its development proceeded from this point forward.
The mortals had created the weapon. But mortals could also be influenced to limit its use. The same institutions that had spread medical knowledge and scientific understanding throughout the empire could spread awareness of the weapon's devastating implications. The same networks that had enabled coordination and communication could enable advocacy for restraint.
Liberation had created the conditions for destruction.
Perhaps it could also create conditions for limitation.
—————
The Breakthrough
The panel's transformation occurred one month after the mushroom cloud.
Wei Jin was in his cultivation chamber, processing the day's intelligence reports while his automatic cultivation methods operated in their accustomed patterns. His conscious attention was focused on imperial politics—the factions maneuvering for control of the new weapons, the debates about deployment and deterrence that had consumed the capital since the test's implications became clear.
He almost missed the change.
[CULTIVATION SYSTEM UPGRADE IN PROGRESS]
The notification appeared without warning, replacing the familiar tracking display with words he had never seen. Wei Jin's iron mind registered the change before his conscious attention could fully process it.
[NASCENT SOUL METHOD - DEDUCTION COMPLETE][INTEGRATION INITIATED][CULTIVATION BASE RESTRUCTURING]
The sensation that followed was unlike anything his previous advancement had produced.
His six-pattern Golden Core—the structure that had defined his cultivation for seventy-six years—began dissolving. Not collapsing destructively, but transforming. The patterns that had accumulated through decades of development were being absorbed into something new. The solid core that had contained his refined spiritual energy was becoming something more fluid, more potent, more fundamentally different from what it had been.
Wei Jin surrendered conscious control and allowed the transformation to proceed.
His awareness expanded beyond anything Golden Core had provided. His perception reached across distances that previous observation could not span. His power—always significant for his realm—grew to levels that made his previous capability seem insignificant by comparison.
The process completed in what might have been hours or might have been days—time became difficult to measure as his consciousness restructured alongside his cultivation base.
When Wei Jin opened his eyes, the world had changed.
Or rather, he had changed, and the world now appeared different through his transformed perception.
Nascent Soul cultivation.
The realm that the ancient survivors had considered merely the beginning of true advancement.
The level that modern cultivators thought of as the ultimate achievement.
He had reached it.
—————
The New Panel
The tracking display that had guided Wei Jin's advancement for over a century appeared in his awareness with a format entirely different from what he had known.
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════CULTIVATION SYSTEM v2.0 - NASCENT SOUL REALM══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
[AUTOMATED METHODS] Omitted.
[MANUAL METHODS] └── Azure Soul Refining Method...… 2% [DEVELOPING]
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
The panel had evolved.
Its display was more structured, more organized, more sophisticated than the simple efficiency tracking that had characterized its previous form. The three methods that had operated automatically for decades were now listed as "automated" with optimal efficiency confirmed. A new category—"manual methods"—showed the Azure Soul Refining Method at two percent efficiency.
And the panel itself had labeled itself.
"Cultivation System v2.0."
As if the transformation had upgraded not merely his cultivation but the reasoning system that tracked and guided it.
Wei Jin examined the new display with perception that Nascent Soul enhanced far beyond what Golden Core had provided.
The panel was not merely displaying information. It was organizing his cultivation into categories that would guide future development. The automated methods would continue operating without conscious direction—his Golden Flow, Subtle Mind, and Clear Heart practices maintaining themselves as they had for decades. The manual method—the Azure Soul Refining that would advance his Nascent Soul cultivation—required conscious development as his previous methods had when they were new.
The patterns he had accumulated were listed as "integrated"—absorbed into his nascent soul rather than existing as separate structures. Their effects remained, enhanced by the transformation, but their nature had changed alongside everything else.
Two percent efficiency on the Azure Soul Refining Method.
A beginning. Just as the original Golden Flow Method had begun at similar levels when the panel first merged his Foundation-stage techniques.
Wei Jin would develop this new method as he had developed all his previous cultivation—systematically, patiently, optimizing each aspect until perfect efficiency was achieved.
But the development would occur in a world that had changed as dramatically as his cultivation.
—————
The Evening Reflection
Wei Jin stood at the observation platform as night fell over his transformed city.
The lights that had once seemed like miracles of mortal innovation now carried shadows of the mushroom cloud. The progress that had once seemed like unambiguous achievement now bore the weight of destructive potential. The liberation that had once seemed like pure benefit now demanded acknowledgment of its terrible cost.
Lin Mei found him there, her presence approaching through awareness that Nascent Soul made inescapable.
"You broke through," she said, her late-Golden Core perception detecting the transformation in his spiritual signature. "Finally."
"Finally." Wei Jin's voice held complexity that the simple word could not convey. "The method completed. The transformation occurred. I have reached Nascent Soul."
"And yet you seem more troubled than I have ever seen you."
"The mushroom cloud." Wei Jin gestured toward the northern horizon, where the test site's contamination still affected spiritual perception even at this distance. "I enabled that. My work created the conditions that produced weapons capable of destroying Golden Core cultivators. My liberation planted seeds that may ultimately end the world I was trying to save."
Lin Mei was quiet for a long moment.
"The ancient survivors faced the same choice," she said finally. "They watched their civilization destroy itself through capabilities their advancement had enabled. They chose suppression—preventing development that might lead to repetition of their catastrophe."
"And I chose liberation. Believing that humanity deserved the chance to develop according to its true nature rather than managed limitation."
"Both choices have costs." Lin Mei moved to stand beside him, her presence a comfort that transcended cultivation realms. "Suppression costs suffering that freedom would prevent. Liberation costs destruction that restriction would avoid. There is no path without price."
"The price of liberation may be too high."
"Perhaps. Or perhaps the mortals who created that weapon will also create the wisdom to limit its use. Perhaps the same creativity that produced destruction will produce restraint." Lin Mei took his hand. "You cannot know the final outcome. None of us can. We can only make choices with the understanding we possess and adapt as consequences reveal themselves."
"Adapt." Wei Jin's voice held bitter edge. "As I adapted to the possessors. As I adapted to the ancient war's revelation. As I adapt now to power that makes my Nascent Soul breakthrough seem almost insignificant by comparison."
"You have always adapted. That is your greatest strength." Lin Mei squeezed his fingers. "And you will adapt to this as well. The Nascent Soul realm provides power that Golden Core could not imagine. Perhaps that power will enable responses that your previous cultivation could not achieve."
"Perhaps."
Wei Jin looked at the panel's new display, hovering in his awareness with its restructured format and its beginning-stage efficiency rating.
[Azure Soul Refining Method...… 2% [DEVELOPING]]
Two percent.
A beginning.
A new path to develop, new efficiency to optimize, new cultivation to pursue.
The world had changed. The weapon existed. The liberation he had enabled had produced consequences that might ultimately destroy everything.
But Wei Jin remained.
His family remained.
His capability to influence events had grown dramatically with his Nascent Soul breakthrough.
And the panel—the mysterious reasoning system that had guided his entire cultivation journey—had evolved to meet the challenges that lay ahead.
—————
The New Dawn
Wei Jin turned from the window as the first light of dawn began painting the eastern sky.
One hundred twenty-four years of cultivation had brought him to this moment. From clumsy child to Nascent Soul practitioner. From struggling disciple to family patriarch. From agricultural worker to power whose influence shaped an empire.
The journey had taken him through possessors and plagues, through wars and weapons, through revelations that had reshaped his understanding of the cultivation world's fundamental nature.
And now it continued into territory that no cultivation text had prepared him to navigate.
The mortals had created weapons that threatened cultivators. The liberation he had enabled had produced destruction that matched anything the ancient war had achieved. The future that approached carried possibilities that neither suppression nor freedom could fully determine.
But Wei Jin had always faced challenges that seemed insurmountable.
Had always found ways to adapt, to prepare, to build capabilities that addressed threats others could not perceive.
The Nascent Soul realm provided resources that Golden Core could never match. The evolved panel offered guidance that its previous form could not provide. The family he had built represented strength that would continue regardless of what the future demanded.
The weapon existed.
The liberation continued.
The consequences remained to be shaped.
Wei Jin began his morning practice—the Azure Soul Refining Method at two percent efficiency, demanding conscious attention that his automated cultivation no longer required.
A new beginning.
A new path.
A new phase of the journey that had defined his existence since a clumsy six-year-old boy first stumbled through the Dark Rose Sect's gates.
The burden was heavier than ever.
But so was his capability to carry it.
—————
[CULTIVATION SYSTEM v2.0 - NASCENT SOUL REALM]
[AUTOMATED METHODS] ....
[MANUAL METHODS] Azure Soul Refining Method...… 2% [DEVELOPING]
End of Book Three
—————
THE END OF BOOK THREE: THE HOLLOW GLEAM