[Talent upgrade 1%...]

Aron stared blankly at the glowing notification.

A system upgrade. Finally.

After a long stretch of being unable to use his Inspection Talent, the sight nearly brought tears to his eyes.

He had learned the hard way how essential that ability was, and now, with the upgrade underway, he just hoped it'd return even stronger.

[Talent upgrade 2%...]

The progress bar crawled forward at a snail's pace, barely increasing by one percent every few minutes.

Aron wasn't particularly bothered, though.

Even during the upgrade, his abilities still worked fine.

He just couldn't check his status or claim new talents for now.

Inconvenient, but nothing he couldn't live with.

After six long hours, his clones were still cultivating the Yin-Yang technique tirelessly. Aron felt it was time to stop.

The moment they did, his body trembled, an immense, terrifying surge of energy flooded into him.

He had prepared himself for this moment, or so he thought.

No amount of mental preparation could've matched the sheer force now rampaging through his body.

He tried to hold it in, compress it, control it, but his effort lasted barely a millisecond before the energy exploded outward.

In an instant, his cultivation soared to the peak of the Nascent Realm.

A strange feeling of freedom washed over him, as if he could separate his soul from his body at will.

But the torrent didn't stop there.

Boom!

Soul Formation Realm.

The instant he stepped into the new realm, it felt as though chains binding his body had shattered.

The heaviness disappeared.

The air he breathed suddenly felt clearer, lighter, like he was inhaling life itself for the first time.

Yet the power within him refused to calm down.

Boom!

Soul Formation (Mid).

Boom!

Soul Formation (Peak).

At last, the wild energy began to settle, stabilizing deep within him..

"Hooo…" Aron exhaled, his breath frosty against the air.

He couldn't see the system notifications, but he knew, this was the doing of the Rebate Talent.

Remembering Helena's lecture on cultivation, Aron couldn't help but chuckle.

Every breakthrough, she had said, was supposed to be grueling, a true test of one's comprehension and connection to their path.

Cultivation wasn't about technique speed or energy absorption alone; it was about understanding the Way itself.

Each realm was a single step toward enlightenment, and one couldn't advance without grasping that piece of the path in each realm.

He still remembered the chill he'd felt when Helena mentioned that one of humanity's greatest geniuses had taken a hundred and sixty-four years to break through from Qi Condensation to Foundation Establishment.

(A whole hundred and sixty-four years!!)

He had honestly thought the human race was hopeless after hearing that.

But Helena quickly shattered that belief when she revealed the one considered the number one cultivation prodigy in the entire universe, the Titan Prince, Ivan.

The monstrous genius was said to have taken eighteen years to achieve the same breakthrough.

(Eighteen years!)

Even pretending to stay calm, Aron had been in absolute disbelief.

Compared to that, his own progress was just to ridiculous.

Even with the Rebate Talent and an amplified cultivation manual, his breakthroughs were far too fast and impossible to believe.

Which left him with only two explanations.

Either:

1. His aptitude and comprehension were secretly divine-level, guiding him without his knowledge, which was unlikely since, well… he knew what kind of brain he had. (Smart? Yes. Scholarly genius? Absolutely not.)

or...

2. He had already set his path back in Solara when he reached God Rank, albeit incompletely.

The second made more sense.

It was the only plausible reason for his absurd rate of advancement with no bottlenecks.

After stabilizing at the peak of the Soul Formation Realm, Aron wasted no time.

He unsummoned his clones, then resummoned them, syncing their strength to match his new realm.

Sharing the Yin-Yang technique again, he watched as they resumed cultivation.

If the previous Yin-Yang drainage had been a tsunami, this was a cataclysm.

Energy gushed from the surroundings like a thousand ruptured dams.

Aron sat cross-legged in the center, his expression serious, eyes burning with determination.

(I must reach the peak of cultivation as soon as I can ...)

...

..

.

Heh, the second chapter's coming later... stay tuned. 😏

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