One by one, the small nations backed out, their leaders fuming in private. "Extortion," whispered a Huyat country delegate. "They'd bleed us dry before we even breathe a single cycle."
The major powers fared little better.
Freedom Union and the Great Dulu Federation dispatched high-level negotiators to Beijing. Both blocs, locked in their proxy skirmishes with India, saw the technique as a game-changer—soldiers who could lift tanks, dodge artillery, endure sieges.
Xing's demand: "Surrender blueprints for your newest super weapons. Railguns, hypersonic drones, Magic Energy fusion warheads—all schematics, no redactions."
After tense internal debates, both the Union and Federation capitulated. Encrypted data transfers began within days, trading cutting-edge military secrets for the Xuan method.
Whispers in intelligence circles suggested Xing had already begun reverse-engineering the tech.
India, however, stood firm. Mordan, in marathon sessions with allies from Eurasian union and Helvetica union, pushed back. "We'll offer economic partnerships, joint research on Magic Energy applications, even territorial buffers in disputed zones," his diplomats argued.
Xing's reply was curt: "Blueprints or nothing. Your weapons are the price of progress."
Negotiations collapsed in acrimony. Mordan, reviewing the failed transcripts in his secure bunker, rubbed his temples. "They're not just after the tech—they want to disarm us subtly, make us dependent."
He turned to his core team: top scientists, military strategists, and a hastily assembled group of unconventional experts—avid readers and writers of cultivation novels, pulled from online forums, publishing houses, and academic circles.
"Create our own breathing technique," he ordered. "Mine every novel, every webtoon, every ancient myth retold in fiction. Diagram human meridians, energy flows, dantian concepts—adapt it all to real Magic Energy absorption. Test prototypes on volunteers. We need results yesterday."
Simultaneously, he escalated another directive: "Accelerate efforts to breach the East India Mysterious Valley. That fog-shrouded gorge in ankuraya holds secrets. Drones, ground teams, Magic Energy probes—crack it open, it might be our shortcut."
Mordan couldn't afford complacency. The world was a powder keg. India's arsenal—Magic Energy–infused missiles, energy shields—made it a fortress now, but what of tomorrow? Xin Xuan's demonstration haunted him: a young man lifting weight, which four muscular military soldiers struggled to lift, effortlessly. Novels flooded his mind—protagonists dodging bullets like raindrops, shattering mountains with a palm strike, assassinating kings from shadows.
"Even if Xinxuan is just a beginner," he confided to a trusted aide, "give him years, and he becomes a walking apocalypse. Our weapons? Useless if he infiltrates and strikes first. We need cultivators of our own—stronger, faster, unbreakable."
Regret gnawed at him. India's history stretched millennia deeper than Xing's—Vedic sages, yogic masters, texts like the Yoga Sutras detailing pranayama breaths that harnessed life force. Ancient rishis had mapped the human body with precision: chakras, nadis, the flow of prana. If those records survived intact, they'd eclipse any modern invention.
He clenched his fist slowly.
"Even if those ancients didn't have Magic Energy, they understood the body's subtle pathways perfectly. Pranayama wasn't just breath control—it was a science of energy circulation. If we still had the complete texts, the oral traditions, the Master-disciple transmissions… we could have adapted them in weeks. Turned fiction into fact. Made India the birthplace of true cultivation once again."
But time and conquest had been cruel, colonialism, invasions, time's erosion—most were lost, burned in libraries or scattered in forgotten monasteries. "We squandered our heritage," Mordan muttered. "Now we're chasing fiction while they parade pioneers."
All hope pinned on the valley. Seismic scans showed anomalies—pockets of dense Magic Energy, unnatural formations hinting at ruins. If it held even fragments of true ancient techniques…
India would rise—not as a victim of the race, but its leader.
Yet as the clock ticked inexorably toward full-scale war, new fears gnawed at him.
He had begun reading cultivation novels voraciously—late nights poring over web serials and translated classics. The patterns were clear: breakthroughs didn't always come from committees or research labs.
Sometimes a heaven-defying genius emerged, creating a flawless technique from nothing, like Xin Xuan. Sometimes a mysterious senior or transcendent being bestowed inheritance. Sometimes pure luck unearthed a jade slip or divine ring.