Courtney rolls her eyes, “You should have realized that Rosha isn’t exactly ordinary. Her chances of living long enough to cap out is greater than yours.”

Jason shrugs, “Give me a night and I’ll give you forever.”

Rosha laughs at this, “A bit melodramatic there, don’tcha think?”

Jason shrugs again, “It sounds cooler that way. Some of my other options were things like, I’ve got what money can’t buy and I know things beyond what mortals dream. So yeah, melodramatic. But that should never get in the way of a good line.”

Rosha nods, “It is a fun line if a bit cheesy. You would half expect the line you used to slip out of some romance novel.”

Rosha starts to speak in a fake male accent, “Oh Sandra! Sandra! Give me a night and I’ll give you forever!”

As a whole the group finds this funny and the conversation derails into spouting horrible pick up lines because if there is one constant in the universe, it’s bad romance novels. And with that, dinner passes quickly. Back in his room Jason yawns before going to sleep. He hadn’t done that in a bit and wanted to be fresh when he took a look at his foundation.

Later that night, after a good four hours of sleep, Jason yawns and wakes up. While he feels well rested now it does mean he has less than an hour now to check out how things worked out so without even bothering to straighten out in bed, he logs off.

Jason comes to in his pod and for the first time feels that it takes too long to open up. A gentle shove convinces the lid to swing open faster, and he stumbles out into the living room before sitting down on the floor. Because he is in such a rush, it takes him a few moments more than usual to settle into meditation.

Once Jason does, though, he turns his attention to his dantian. And there it is, the seed that will sprout into all his future achievements in cultivation. A sphere of the three concepts he has based himself on in this life. While it is constructed of all the power he had cultivated before creating his foundation, that power was now solidified into the meta-construct and no longer available to use. In other words, he’s now running on empty. There is a little bit of power kicking about, but that is all just passively gained and not much time has passed.

Though before he starts to cultivate again, there is one other thing to check. Before Jason was able to sense the world around him to some extent but that was more passive than he would have liked. He wasn’t actually sensing things directly. It isn’t a bad method and like using one’s eyes. The problem is you need light to see. Now though, he should be able to become more active in his sensing. Now he has a flashlight with him, no matter how small it is.

Like a bat squeaking for their echolocation, All it takes is to vibrate his foundation slightly and Jason creates a wave in the surrounding energies. This wave spreads outward, not responding to the actual physical structures but rather any concentrations of specific powers. The large sphere around the arcology would have likely surprised him but Jason isn’t able to detect out even half that far yet.

Still, with how far he can sense the lack of those corruptive energies is quite clear despite how imprecise the mystical echolocation is. However, unlike all those people gathered to figure out what happened, he isn’t surprised by it having gone missing. Jason might not be familiar with those specific powers but he does know about similar things.

As for why those energies retreated? Even if he didn’t sense the shock wave he released when forming his cultivation he knows the mechanics behind it. Those powers aren’t evil or corrupting, though he will continue to use the second one to define them. Rather, they represent alternate power structures. Like how there are multiple belief structures, cultivation can walk down many paths. Those powers Jason pushed away just happen to represent things that don’t react well with normal life. They could represent any number of things like radiation, the concept of early death, or even just the universal constants from a place that doesn’t support life as humans know it.

With the completion of Jason’s foundation, though, he asserted his dominance on the local area. If there were other cultivators, this wouldn’t have had such a huge effect. But like a match being lit in a dark room, he is the only light source and so shines brightly. And part of that is chasing away the darkness. All those powers that represent things counter to his own existence are thus pushed away and as long as he lives, like the lit match, the room around him will be bright.

Satisfied with what he can detect, Jason turns inward once again and begins to cultivate. There isn’t much time but unlike before, things go much quicker. His empty foundation fills up well before he has to log back into NeoRealm. It is only once full that things slow down and the true work begins.

At such a low level refilling, his dantian takes almost no time as he now has the structures to properly pull in the energies around him. But that isn’t moving forward. That only starts once full and the powers no longer have somewhere to go. At this point, Jason takes a more active role and makes a choice.

There are three key aspects to a person. Body, mind, and soul. To advance one’s cultivation is to refine these elements. His previous experience with cultivation involved first tempering the body and for the situation that made sense. When you might bump into a fire breathing beast when just travelling around, a sturdy body is a must. That isn’t a rule though and in fact you can cultivate any of them, just so long as you are improving one of them.