Chapter 116: Internal Cultivation

Ian walked back toward the city after his transformation.

No biomass. No fallback regeneration. He could feel the difference. His senses were sharper than ever, but he couldn’t brute-force anything anymore. If he made mistakes now, he’d pay for them in full. Which was fair, honestly. After everything, this felt like a clean slate.

So he asked himself: what’s the best way to adapt to this realm?

One answer stood out.

Join a sect.

It sounded cliché, but that’s because it made sense. Sects were networks, access to manuals, cultivation techniques, spirit stone markets, information… and more importantly, local knowledge.

Ian needed that.

He spent the next day wandering the outer city, visiting open plazas where recruiters gathered. There were three main sects here:

The Verdant Cloud Sect, known for alchemy, healing arts, and defensive techniques.

Iron Harmony Sect, body cultivators, mostly fighters and laborers, simple but strong.

Void Crescent Pavilion specializes in divine sense, illusions, and mental arts.

Ian sat on a stone bench near a recruitment stall, listening.

A recruiter from Verdant Cloud, a girl with light green robes and a steady gaze, was speaking to a small crowd.

“Our sect offers safety, study, and steady cultivation. We are not fast, but we are stable. No internal battles, no politics. Just growth.”

Next to her, an Iron Harmony disciple cracked his knuckles and said bluntly, “You want strength? You work for it. We break bones to build foundations. If you’re weak, don’t bother.”

Ian appreciated the honesty.

He leaned toward a younger cultivator beside him, late teens, nervous energy, probably Foundation Stage. “Is it hard to join?” Ian asked casually.

The kid blinked. “Depends on your background. Got a noble clan? That helps. If not, you take the trial. Show them your spirit root, body grade, or soul strength.”

Ian nodded. “You joined one?”

“I’m trying for Iron Harmony,” the guy said, scratching his neck. “Not much talent for divine sense, and Verdant Cloud’s exams are mostly written.”

Ian smirked. “Written?”

“Yeah, like… philosophy, alchemical theory, herb identification.” He made a face. “I failed twice.”

Ian glanced back at the Void Crescent stall. That recruiter looked quieter, an older man with, calm expression, radiating subtle pressure.

Ian stood and approached him.

“Void Crescent Pavilion?”

The man nodded. “You interested?”

“I’m new to the region,” Ian said, keeping things vague. “Looking to understand this realm’s laws. I need a place to study.”

The man looked him over, probably scanning for obvious cultivation marks. Ian suppressed everything, his Chaos Qi, his aura. Kept it low.

“Have you cultivated before?”

“I have,” Ian replied. “But not under this realm’s laws. I’ve adapted, but I’m starting from the beginning.”

A pause.

Then: “That’s honest. Most won’t say that out loud. We don’t take many in, but if you pass the trial, we don’t care about origins.”

“What kind of trial?” Ian asked.

The man handed him a small black stone. “Hold this and pour your Qi into it. Only a little. If your mind can touch the illusion inside, you’re in.”

Ian nodded and stepped aside.

He let a thread of Chaos Qi slide into the stone, so carefully it barely shimmered.

Then… everything changed.

He stood in a hallway, endless mirrors on both sides, each showing versions of himself, some older, some darker, some completely broken. One mirror showed him still in the Eighteen Universes, ruling over golden palaces. Another showed him dead. Another? Lost, forgotten in a sea of noise.

The mirrors whispered, tempting and mocking.

But Ian just looked forward.

“These aren’t choices,” he muttered. “They’re distractions.”

He walked straight through the illusion.

The next second, he was back in the square, holding the stone.

The recruiter raised a brow. “You passed.”

Ian nodded. “Good.”

“We’ll send you a location crystal tomorrow. We don’t wear sect uniforms, just keep your identity badge with you.”

“Any fees?” Ian asked.

The first month is free. After that, you contribute missions, materials, and information. Pretty standard.”

Ian nodded. “Got it.”

As he turned to leave, the recruiter spoke again. “Most people get scared in the mirror test. Took you three seconds. That’s normal for you?”

Ian smiled faintly. “I’ve had… practice.”

That night, Ian sat in a rented cultivation room and stared at the black badge in his hand.

Ian arrived at the Void Crescent Pavilion the next morning.

The “sect” wasn’t some massive fortress in the mountains or anything like that. It was more like a hidden district, half-library, half-temple, tucked into the deeper layers of the city. The buildings were quiet, minimal, and slightly elevated on floating stone platforms.

When he stepped into the main hall, a thin elder approached him.

“You’re Ian?”

“I am.”

“Here,” the elder handed over a crystal tablet. “This is your access pass. Beginner-level reading hall, meditation chambers, and memory pools. No combat zones until your second evaluation.”

Ian nodded and took it. “Are there lectures?”

“Weekly. Every 9th day. Mostly theory.”

Ian followed the elder through the main passage as he took in his surroundings, white walls etched with sigils, faint murmurs from the disciples, no shouting or loud displays of power. The vibe here was cerebral.

Perfect.

“Where do most cultivators start here?” Ian asked casually.

“Sense training,” the elder said. “Soul strength, illusion resistance, and interpretation.”

“And what’s the average rate of improvement?”

The elder gave him a brief look. “It depends on patience. Most disciples stay five years before qualifying for inner access.”

“Hmm,” Ian said. “But the world outside… it doesn’t wait five years.”

That earned a raised eyebrow. “Do you plan to rush?”

“I plan to understand.”

The next few days, Ian spent his time rotating through beginner materials, basic Chaos Qi reading exercises, introductory meditations to feel the “weight” of concepts, and illusion dissection sessions.

In one of those sessions, he sat in a quiet circular room with four other disciples. A formation on the floor projected different emotional states, fear, regret, doubt, hunger.

A young cultivator beside him groaned. “This again? I’m not even sure this helps. It just makes my head hurt.”

Ian turned. “It’s training your responses.”

“To what? Sadness?” the boy said. “That’s not going to help when someone shoots a chaos spike at my chest.”

Ian tilted his head. “That’s assuming battles are always external. What if your own spirit is the first thing to collapse?”

The room fell quiet for a second.

Another disciple, a woman with short gray hair, spoke up. “You think that’s what this city was built for? Internal cultivation first?”

“I think,” Ian said, “whoever made this city knew that brute force is pointless here. The matter is too dense. The laws too strict. So the only path forward… is through adaptation of mind and meaning.”

“You speak like someone who’s seen another world,” the woman said.

Ian shrugged. “Speculation.”

Later, Ian shared a table in the open library with a few cultivators who were quietly reviewing soul diagrams.

One of them, a short man with a black robe and sharp eyes, leaned in.

“You’re the new one. The mirror trial guy.”

Ian didn’t confirm or deny. “Just reading.”

“You asked a lot of questions yesterday.”

“I ask a lot of questions every day.”

The man smirked. “What are you looking for?”

“Patterns,” Ian said.

“Of what?”

“Of everything. The way Chaos Qi moves. The way sects are structured. The way no one talks about the city’s origin.”

That made the man pause.

“You noticed that too?”

Ian nodded. “No records before a certain point. No names of founders. Even the Void Crescent Pavilion’s history starts mid-sentence.”

“You think it’s fake?”

“I think something was erased,” Ian said. “Or hidden.”

“You assume a lot.”

“I do,” Ian said, calmly. “Assumptions point to possible truths. You just have to be ready to be wrong.”

The man looked at him for a moment. Then cracked a grin. “You’re going to stir trouble.”

“I hope not,” Ian replied. “But silence always means something.”

That night, in his private chamber, Ian sat cross-legged with several scrolls spread out around him, chaos formations, mind-defense manuals, maps of the city.

He was forming a theory.

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