Having finished negotiating, Hao Lin was tasked with bringing Bao Gang to his lodging in the outer sect. Bao Gang would have insisted in being put in the inner sect in order to obtain more benefits, but this would have placed him at risk. He would have been surrounded by people of higher cultivation and no guarantor of safety(as Xiao Gou Shi had already been taken to the beasthouse by the outer sect master, and Wei Yun, the cauldron spirit, had seemingly not been paying attention to his safety). By contrast, in the outer sect he would simply be one of the ordinary disciples, not drawing attention.

Hao Lin, believing Bao Gang to have a chance at becoming a powerful cultivator, gave him a tour of the sect in order to give Bao Gang a good impression of herself. She showed him the beast hall(same thing as beasthouse), the inscription workshop, and the alchemy hall. These would be places for crafts to be done. Crafts would provide disciples with a method to train their soul strength, and also a way to earn contribution points. If another disciple required an inscription on a weapon, or a pill, they would be able to buy it from the alchemy hall or inscription workshop(although not the cultivation standard pill due to a restriction set by the alchemy head). For those without talent in any of these fields, they would have to work in another. This other field would be a literal field, with crops and herbs, or these disciples would have to take missions to earn contribution points.

She also showed Bao Gang the two magic halls and the library. The library held martial techniques and craft knowledge, and the magic halls gave lectures on fire and water magic, the two most prevalent types of magic in this world.

After walking around the sect for a few hours to show him the locations of these buildings, she showed him to his accommodation. He would be living in his own house near the edge of the wall to the inner sect, giving him one of the best spiritual energy density location in the entire outer sect(the spiritual energy density increases as you go up the mountain). Most outer sect disciples would be forced to live in a dorm, or near the base of the mountain. Only the strongest among the outer sect disciples would be allowed to live in such a house!

After showing him the house, Hao Lin ended the tour and left for her own house in the core sect. Bao Gang looked around his house, using his spiritual sense to reveal any monitoring methods, such as a hole in the roof through which a spy could look. He found none, but did see a strange room with scratches all over the wall forming a complex pattern, but after walking in, realized it to be a room for cultivation. The room had a spiritual density of 150% of the rest of the house!

“Oh, so this must be what an inscription is.”

Not wanting to reveal his lack of knowledge about cultivation related topics, which would leave him in danger of being taken advantage of, he just pretended to know what Hao Lin was talking about when she introduced to him the halls and inscription workshop. Having explored enough for one day, he sat down to cultivate in the cultivation room, making sure to dial in his spiritual energy attraction so that he would not draw attention. Of course, the inscription would naturally help conceal him, as it would draw in spiritual energy anyway.

The inscription would keep the room at a spiritual energy density 1.5 times the outside, which would allow Bao Gang to absorb it quickly, replenishing when it dropped below that. When he cultivated, he obviously cultivated much more slowly, but still at a faster pace than any outer or inner sect disciple, and even most of the core disciples.

He cultivated all night long in a seated lotus position, but slept while he did so. For any other cultivator this would be impossible, but for him, this would soon become the norm. His spiritual energy attunement was so high that he almost needed to purposefully suppress it to avoid sucking in spiritual energy autonomously. Compared to his absorption when he focused on absorbing it though, it paled in comparison. While other cultivators could only absorb the spiritual energy of a few paltry cubic meters, he could absorb it from the entire planet!

Other genius cultivators would have a similar effect where their spiritual energy attunement would be so high that they would hold an attraction to spiritual energy and be able to cultivate without trying to. However, these geniuses would not even consider this cultivation, because it would not proceed at even a 10000th of their normal cultivation speed. But for Bao Gang, this would be just enough to cultivate at the speed of the most talented core disciples!

Add on to this that the core disciples were given houses higher up the mountain, allowing them a better spiritual energy density, and their hours of painstaking cultivation become a joke. When he gets a house with their spiritual energy density, he will cultivate faster in his sleep than they will at their peak performance!

Having already been at the peak of steel tendons, he broke through during the night, but only made it to entry hardened bone. In fact, had he been a normal cultivators, he would have already made it to golden marrow stage due to his heaven defying body cultivation method(he can absorb the spiritual energy of a cultivator by eating it. In this case, this is the tiger which he ate in the cave), but his body needed to go through more body reconstructions than a normal cultivator, and was only able to make it to the peak of steel tendons.

The next morning, he woke up refreshed, and was slightly happy that he broke into a new realm overnight. At this point, he is only one stage away from making sure like a situation similar to the one where he destroyed his own body due to being too strong, would never happen again.

He decided to start learning the basic information which he missed, such as basic information on inscription, alchemy, beast taming, and battle techniques.

He walked over to the library where he saw a wizened old man with a long beard, sitting in a rocking chair, seemingly asleep. While he could not see anything obviously dangerous about the man with his eyes, he felt a sense of danger when he was about to use his spiritual sense to observe the man more closely. Almost like a 6th sense which resulted in the hairs on the back of his neck feeling a tingly feeling. Similar to having a sharp blade placed behind your neck, a few inches from death. He hastily withdrew his spiritual sense.

He decided to just avoid the man and pretend to be the average outer disciple.

His ploy worked, and he got by the man unsuspected.

Inside the library, there were bookshelves in all directions, more than any one person could go through in their lifetime, or so he thought. He would later learn that cultivators can live for unbelievably long periods of time, and many of the powerful ones could bend time to experience 10 seconds worth of time while only aging 1. Even those who had not yet reached such a stage would be able to read through the entire library by virtue of their spiritual sense.

When a cultivator reaches the stage of being able to move super fast, the limiting factor in their reading speed would be how fast they can turn the pages without tearing them. Using spiritual sense however, they would be able to avoid this hazard, and thus only be limited by their comprehension and soul strength, as these would determine how fast a cultivator can interpret, and how fast they can view text. Without interpreting, there is no point reading, and would just be considered memorizing. A cultivator would be able to look back to what they memorized, but the speed at which they could interpret what they had memorized would be considered their reading speed.

Soul strength is dependent on how many soul tendrils a cultivator can form. A cultivator with more control over their soul seas would be able to form thinner soul tendrils, and thus would be considered having higher soul strength. Think of it similar to a wall of television screens. A cultivator would send a soul tendril to view a screen. One with weak soul strength would only be able to view one screen, but a different cultivator with strong soul strength would be able to view hundreds, or maybe even more. Next, the information from the television would need to be comprehended in order to be considered reading, this can be said to be dependent on the size of a cultivator’s soul. The soul is the basis of thought, and thus the larger the soul, the stronger the comprehension.

This presents an interesting dichotomy. Soul tendrils are essentially pieces of the soul sea which are spread out and allow the cultivator to “see” with all the soul tendrils, however, this temporarily decreases the size of the soul sea, which lowers comprehension. At lower realms of cultivation, it is very important how the cultivator chooses to distribute their soul sea, as they are not yet very large. However, at higher realms, this is no longer a problem, as the soul seas have gotten bigger. This is why high realm cultivators rarely go to libraries; they can read all the information too quickly.

In fact, when considering large quantities of information, this is why it would be stored on jade slips, which would allow almost infinite quantities of information and comprehension to be transmitted. This would bypass the need for both strong soul strength and comprehension, but is expensive and not considered feasible for a large number of people who need to know the information, as they would get used up after one use, and take a long time to inscribe a new one, which requires infusing the comprehension of the maker into the jade slip.

While thinking about how he would be able to read all the books in the library, Bao Gang came to the conclusion that it would simply be too inefficient to read all the books he would need to, and like other cultivators before him, realized he could view all the books in the library due to his soul strength which had been increased for trillions of years with not just spiritual energy, but also law fragments, a level higher than spiritual energy. This same circumstance also gave him a massive soul sea, at least in comparison to other same realm cultivators.

The problem is that his soul strength is super high(he could watch the lives of every being on Earth at the same time, which is in the trillions, but would only be watching, not considered comprehending anything), but his soul sea would be too small to interpret the information coming from all soul tendrils. That is, until he had used the soul cultivation method, “Divide and Conquer” which gave him two soul seas(double the comprehension speed), and even more would come later!

Bao Gang spread out his soul sense, sending one soul tendril to each book. Keep in mind, this library was MASSIVE. At least millions of books were included in the library.

He began interpreting all the information, and in this manner, he stood gazing off into space stupidly for 5 minutes.

Then he walked right back out of the library.

That’s right! He read and interpreted each of the millions of books in the library in five minutes!