Time meant nothing in this space. I floated in a sea of stars that was unrivaled in its cosmic beauty. It made me feel truly insignificant, made our lives but a speck in its sheer expanse. I meant nothing to it. A part of me rebelled at the idea.

Something deep inside me felt annoyed that I was so minuscule to it, it wanted to show me that I was better, that I was stronger than this. I could be more than this cosmic joke.

But instead of letting that feeling be my guide, I looked at it with detached pragmatism. I wondered if this was why cultivators were so combative, they allowed this to steer them. I was sure not all were like this, but every cultivator I met was so vindictive and self-important.

Why dominate? What purpose does it serve? Why not just ask?

A seed formed from these questions and the landscape shifted.

I was no longer in a sea of stars but now inside an absolute void.

A cacophony of voices wrung through my soul, all trying to be heard. Promises of power and eternity screaming into oblivion. There was a sense of madness but also a fragment of truth. The voices were not lying, there was a far grander sense of absolute infinity to them.

The sea of stars was a speck to this new much greater power, but it too had its cost.

This was a pursuit of the absolute, one without end.

To me, this was far more tempting. It showed you itself in its entirety faults and all, yet it was so alluring.

But did I want such unknowable and incomprehensible power?

The seed became more solid slowly, taking the shape of a colorless octahedron and the landscape shifted once more. This time it was not some grand gesture of cosmic beauty or the sheer

I was now in a very familiar scene, one of my strongest memories. Sunset by the sea.

Memories flooded in. A simpler time, a child with both his parents still in love, all walking by the shore making irreplaceable experiences.

This beach was empty save for a lone figure.

I now stood before this figure. I could not make out any features as it? he? she? they? simply existed staring back at me.

I was asked a question, the figure spoke no words but I could still hear it.

'Do you not want to be more?'

A simple question, one probably asked to every cultivator that ever existed but there was more to this question and I wanted to answer truthfully.

I spent a very long time trying to come up with an answer.

'Not if it makes me someone else.'

Another question popped up immediately.

'Even if it makes you better?'

Another curveball, there were a lot of hidden questions that existed, deep in that statement.

This time though the answer was quick.

'I am not opposed to change, humanity as a race was designed to be constantly changing and evolving. I just do not look into the mirror one day and realize that I was no longer me. These... visions of power want me to be them and that is not my wish, I want to be me.'

I could feel a form of acceptance wash over me as the figure vanished replaced with over a dozen bodies.

This time though, I was looking at dozens of me looking back at me.

A shockwave reverberated across the whole landscape and the world shattered.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I opened my eyes, a thin film of sweat caking my body.

I had just shut my eyes just now, why was I sweating?

Reality gave me no time to contemplate.

Why?

I was looking at myself. I did not mean like a mirror. I was literally looking at six naked 100% accurate replicas of myself. All of them perfectly still.

Welp, I guess I broke through.

You would think I would know immediately as I opened my eyes. That was not true.

I did not feel any different from when I was at foundation. There was no sense of being greater. When I went from mortal to essence refining and then to foundation, there was this sense that I was better, that the world was lesser. Right now, I felt normal like everything was where it was meant to be.

Honestly, I was little bummed out. That high of a breakthrough could be very addicting and somehow I lost that.

That still left the question of how I figured out how I was now an essence condensation cultivator.

The answer; my new breakthrough destiny.

C--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------C

Context Conner strikes again!

Every time anyone breaks into the next stage of cultivation your soul evolves along side your body and mind.

Like, how in essence condensation, you essence takes a qualitive leap forward and becomes denser, going from its normal gaseous state to a more liquid form which gives some passive benefits alongside the statistical upgrades.

An easy example, if you are practicing one of the base elemental essences, you can now directly manipulate the essence that exists in the world and not have to use your own.

See, your soul also gets this qualitive leap but needs a way to express it. See, the soul is arguably the most complex essence type known to man, and is the source of sentience itself. For reasons, that are very big story reveal spoilers so shall remain undisclosed, it does that by giving something like a superpower.

Now, hold on. Before you say that everything that goes on in this world can be likened to a superpower listen carefully.

While what you say is true, it all revolves around the core concept of essence. You use essence to do something mystical.

But these' superpowers' all have their own internal cooldowns and costs that do not align with the world.

An example, our mc's pocket dimension, it costs the mc nothing to maintain it or shift it around in any way, and remember he is not a god and cant just will a dimension into existence.

Also every cultivator without fail gets them. They might not always be something heaven defying but they will always be something the cultivator yearns for. Also, their relative power always stays at the highest level you have ever reached and can never drop or be lost.

A big reason as to why husks are even kept around is because some very rare grandmaster artificers and soul essence cultivators in the nascent soul can bypass their lack of any true sentience and directly use their soul thereby using any breakthrough destinies they might be capable of.

Why was this practice not more widespread? Because breakthrough destinies tended to be very good specific for that cultivator but not universally useful and the costs did not usually justify the final product.

An example, Cybele could absorb a portion of any damage or pain(including psychic) and store it. She can then unleash it at any point as massive omni directional force wave at double the power. Powerful, absolutely, but the maximum damage she could absorb and store was based on her cultivation stage and it could barely put a scratch on a nascent soul even at full output.

The final thing of significance is that the cultivator will know all its functions and limits perfectly from the moment of its genesis.

C--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------C

I staring at six handsome devils that were to exact likeness and could do everything I do down to even giving someone life essence. They were even expendable because if one 'died' for any reason they would turn to dust and another would be slowly created inside my Dual Cultivation Domain. The only caveat, it takes about a year and a half for one to regenerate and they can only regenerate one at a time.

If that was all I would already jumping for joy. Add to that, I gained all their experiences and memories when I slept or meditated. They acted just like me, but were essentially robots with a personality. A real extension of me.

It was not all-powerful, of course.

First, they could not use any breakthrough destinies, so no box in a box in a box shenanigans.

Second, they only had about 10% of my overall strength which I found to be more than fair.

Third, they cannot increase my cultivation base at all.

Fourth and scariest of all, their experiences could shape me the same way as they were constantly being shaped by me. What if one was captured and and tortured, every time I would go to bed it would be as though all of that was done to me.

So, never taking them out of my Dual Cultivation Domain.

But outside of that, it was only positives.

Six times more sexual experience, how was the ever a drawback?

…Me and my big mouth...