Vaguely, I feel my consciousness floating.

I can’t sense anything from my body, but I can tell it’s rebuilding.

Dust…

…

… My body and cultivator soul were turned into dust.

The latter, more surprising than the former. My ability gained from all those decapitations by Ao Jin had a permanent effect on me. I can be aware, even after being in a death state.

With my upgraded cultivation and tied into my healing abilities, the ability must have been multiplied. Giving me a pseudo nascent soul presence.

Not that I can move. But I can just use my soul-bound abilities outside of cultivation. Even with my cultivation and body technically destroyed, my cultivation techniques are still working in the background.

Huh, is it pulling directly from the sub-dimension? In the first place, cultivation is based out of the cultivator soul and body. So, how is working?

Luckily, my scan tells me everything I need to know.

Or maybe not.

All I can really gather is that there are aspects of the cultivation method that go beyond just the normal body and soul interaction. At least, this occurs when the comprehension of the abilities reaches a certain point.

And with how I received the technique, it was a perfect comprehension. Even if I still have to work through it step by step.

… well. I assumed a lesser version of this might happen, so it’s not a total shock. I am surprised about the jade tablet, though.

I didn’t expect to not even catch a small bit of the data within it. To think the information on it is so dense that I couldn’t even come close to reading it. Blowing me away just from a whiff of the residual concepts leaking out.

If the information I received from my cultivation method is a good reference; a lot of it must be the experiences and conceptual aspects that you would learn over time with the technique/method.

It’s likely that a failed one, like the whiff I received, has all the logs and experiences of failures that were tried to make it work. After all, a sect usually isn’t willing to just give up on a potential new method. They’ll try several things before giving it up.

So, a failed technique could have over 10 times the data a normal one would have because of this.

As my thoughts continue to run, I realize that it’s only been 15 minutes since I’ve been blown up.

My body is currently a pulsating, growing blob of viscera, muscle, and bones. Luckily for my clothes, before I popped, I stuffed my clothes in my space bracelet. The disposable clothes? Disintegrated.

The looks of horror and disgust on the elder’s faces are quite interesting to behold. I must seem like some sort of eldritch monster to them.

I should take around just under an hour to regrow completely. The amount of time is undoubtedly better than when I was sliced into meat chunks by Meili, the assassin.

That was likely around 3 hours.

And with each time this happens, I expect it to get shorter and shorter.

What’s most curious is that my healing seems to be an opportunistic regeneration style. If the pieces are nearby, it will use that. Otherwise, it creates a new part, while leaving the old wherever it is.

Leading to the earlier times with Ao Jin, of my disembodied heads with a new one regrowing.

Well.

… All that’s left now is to wait.

…

About 40’ish minutes in, once my brain, dantians, and meridians have regrown, I don’t wait to let the skin form. I move my body toward the slip again.

This is still quite painful, but luckily my healing is already working and cancels out some of the pain.

Having everything I need; I just immediately extend another strand of qi to the jade tablet in front of me.

“Wait, no!”

POP.

I can just hear Sister Nuan yell out as she realizes what I’m doing. But it’s too late by that point and I’ve already popped.

Each of the elder’s look sickened and Nuan actually turns away for a moment, seemingly in nausea.

Now that I think of it, showing a person close to me and that actually is romantically interested in me, my death and sickening rebuild is probably a bad idea. I’m sure the first death must have shaken her pretty badly, even if she knew it was coming.

I guess it is just common sense.

… probably should have a scan for that.

Which still doesn’t change what I need to do.

I keep reaching out to the tablet whenever I regenerate enough to do so. With the time to regenerate, dropping with each pop. Going from 40 minutes to being able to reach out, down to 15 minutes. All within 3 hours.

That’s when a qualitative change happens in my regeneration and what I can see on the tablet.

This last time, I could just barely get a piece of information. A small packet of information on an equally small fire technique, from a complete failure of a method.

But it’s something.

And my death changes, as well.

Instead of blood dust, a small chunk of bone remains.

… so, I continue.

Each time getting more information. With the amount increasing exponentially with each new regeneration.

Within the next hour, I’m finally at five-minute regenerations, with chunks of flesh and bone violently impacting the walls of the barrier. This is the aspect I was concerned about earlier, as my body is essentially exploding outwards. A small pile of viscera, meat, and bone form a small, sticky film on the surface of the barrier.

I’m about halfway through the jade tablet and all the elders just have a grim face at the developments.

They’ve been watching closely to understand how my body works and regenerates. An excellent opportunity to understand the limits of the ‘constitution’.

That it can regenerate the cultivator soul is definitely the most shocking thing for them.

On my side, it seems my ability to reference information in my mind is both better and worse. Better in the sense that I have more thoughts and information to access. Worse, in the sense that there are conflicts in the information I have and too much data on hand.

This whole time, as part of my training, I’ve been trying to absorb the whole jade slip at once. Adding to my memory, then overwriting it afterwards, every time. All so that I will have ‘space’ in my brain for other actions.

This is the downside of having a data dump. Just because it’s information doesn’t mean it’s true. It also takes time to go through it all.

Once I finish, the final step will be to put it all together.

… which will have its own risks, as I’m essentially generating even more information than the original, as the ‘true file’. The process of doing so should increase the speed of my thoughts, as my mind will struggle to keep up with all the changes. Giving me the opportunity to improve further.

If everything goes well, this will reduce or eliminate some downsides of this whole thing. While giving me the ability to better handle more information in the future.

It doesn’t take much longer before I reach the point that I can just tank the whole thing. Now down to 30 second regenerations.

I reach out to the jade slip one more time, as a skinless being.

I feel my entire being shudder, with two jade slips worth of information in my brain. I instantly start using my scan to process it. Not letting my body rest, as I continue to heal myself.

Blood pours from my every orifice… but I hold on. It seems the countless regenerations have made my body hardy against acquiring excessive data.

My skin continues to rebuild as I go through every piece of information. Sorting, correcting, and finally, merging into a workable form. One that can be manipulated into any form I need.

The final piece is actually the easiest, as everything is there for me to change as needed. My mind now spry enough to handle the dense information.

Just as that piece is put into place, I create my first work from it.

The Omnibus Cultivation System, or OCS for short.