Looking at her handiwork, Wei Yun gave an innocent smile. As she smiled, the torn space started to heal itself and refill the cracks. If Bao Gang, had not seen her the instant before, sucking the remains of 300,000 people into her cauldron, and from the looks of it, digesting them, he would never connect her with the virtuous looking young woman, dusting off her hands.

“Well, now that that’s over with, we should probably find you a sect.”

“A sect?”

“Yeah. You may be peerlessly talented, but you need somewhere to cultivate, and a place which lists missions which you can use to get cultivation resources”

“But haven’t you been saving spiritual energy and law fragments for all this time to use as cultivation resources?”

“No you silly goose!” she said, lightly bopping his head, “Those I used to nourish your soul, so you are on your own for cultivation.”

“Wei Yun, the rest of the universe around us has shattered into space fragments, except our solar system. Why is this?”

“Taking the law fragments out of the area destabilized the space which allowed it to crack easily, but I knew you found Earth to be important, so I protected it from the fragmentation. As for the rest of the solar system, there are no life forms, they are only balls of gas or rock, so when I collected the remains of the cultivators, I released law fragments which destabilized the space, which is why the planets still exist, however Earth will once again be protected, but this time by spatial cracks sharp enough to rip any of the weaklings from this realm to shreds.”

Looking back at the planet which he calls home, he sighed.

“Wei Yun, bring me to a sect”

“As you wish.”

Waving her hand, she created a black rectangle in space, about 4 feet wide and 8 feet tall and then walked into it. Having no choice but to follow he steps forward into the black rectangle. And into a new world.

A wave of dizziness crashes onto him and he blinks rapidly. The new world is nothing like one he has seen before. Earth is covered with trees and unless in a big city, they are usually visible. The difference is that this world has red trees, burning leaves, smoldering grass. Active volcanoes can be seen in the distance.

“This is going to be your cultivation spot for the next few days. Before you can enter a sect, you must complete the body tempering level of cultivation. This includes: tempered flesh, strengthened muscles, steel tendons, hardened bone, golden marrow, invigorated blood, improved senses, upgraded brain, and pure body. The first four are self explanatory, the golden marrow does not directly strengthen you, but prepares you for the stage of invigorated blood. This stage is a boost to your entire body, as blood is the basis of your bodies movement. Once your blood has thickened and turned golden like your marrow, you will gain an overall boost to your physical abilities. Improved senses and upgraded brain will involve circulating spiritual qi to your senses which will allow them to become more sensitive, or in the case of the brain, faster. Pure body is when you can circulate spiritual energy to all parts of your body, which will require clearing your body of impurities. If a normal human can sprint at 10 meters per second and hit with a force of 40 kgs, then a cultivator who has passed these stages will be 10 times faster and 10 times stronger. You will live on this planet until you have reached the peak of body tempering. I will not help you except in the case of extreme danger, here are two cultivation methods, and a pet which master wanted you to raise. Goodbye!”

Staring blankly at Wei Yun, he did not even realize that he had no idea how to cultivate before she left, returning to the cauldron which then shrunk to the size of a pea and flew between his brows and entered his soul sea.

“Sh!t!” Having no choice but to look at the three items which she had left, he threw himself to the ground and began to inspect them. The two cultivation methods came in the form of jade slips which he picked up. Having never seen jade slips before, he fiddled around with them trying to figure how to learn cultivation from them. He tried everything he could think of, everything from looking very closely at them to scratching at them. No matter what he tried, he could not figure out how to cultivate from them. Suddenly, he had an epiphany. He held the jade slip to the space between his brows, the same place where the cauldron had disappeared into. The jade slip melted into a light green colored glob which then entered his soul sea as well. He gasped as a flood of information inundated his mind.

The name of the cultivation technique was “Divide and Conquer,” A method by which a cultivator can split their soul sea and then nourish the pieces to eventually become whole soul seas. With these soul seas, the process could be repeated ad infinitum, that is to say, having an infinite number of soul seas, increasing at an exponential rate as the number of soul seas would always double after separation. These soul seas could be put into an inanimate body to create a double, which would prevent death in the case of the death of just one body. Additionally, these soul seas would be able to perform soul attacks to give the cultivator a numbers advantage in the case of a soul attack. As he would later find out, this soul cultivation technique is priceless. Forget about most cultivators not even having a soul cultivation technique, as the soul is the most arcane, complex part of the body, making soul cultivation techniques hard to create, this particular technique could be considered top tier among all soul cultivation techniques--even those in the 33 heavens.

Excitedly, he began to follow the instructions in his head. As soon as his soul began to tear, he felt a slight itch in his soul sea and 5 minutes later, he had successfully separated his soul into two halves. Unbeknownst to him, this “slight itch” was not the normal response to having your soul torn into halves. The normal response would be soul-splitting agony(aptly named), which would drive cultivators to the brink of unconsciousness. After falling unconscious, death would be the only result. As a top level soul cultivation technique, it came with high soul requirements as well. Well, high compared to the even genius cultivators, but not to Bao Gang. To Bao Gang these “requirements” could be considered nothing more than horse shit.

Following the instructions for the nourishment of the soul seas, he began to draw in spiritual energy. His unbelievably high spiritual energy attunement attracted the spiritual energy within thousands of miles. This did not create a visible spiritual energy vortex, but an effect closer to opening the window in a hot room when the outside is cold. To the other cultivators on the planet, they just noticed that the spiritual energy density had suddenly declined sharply, getting lower with every passing moment. The spiritual energy was absorbed by Bao Gang, used to nourish the two soul seas, which increased in size at a snail’s pace. He estimated that the two seas would be fully grown in about 24 hours.

While this decrease in density of spiritual energy did not strongly affect most cultivators on the planet, one heavily injured woman, sitting in a cross legged position, about 200 miles away, using the spiritual energy to heal her wounds, frowned. She stood up and and began to rush in the direction the spiritual energy was headed, towards Bao Gang. With an endurance 10 times above an ordinary human, and a normal human being able to travel around 20 miles in a day on foot, she would reach Bao Gang in 24 hours.

In this manner, with Bao Gang hurriedly healing his torn soul seas, and the wounded cultivator rushing to find the source of the reduction in spiritual energy, time slipped away…

Until 24 hours had passed.