The breakthrough to Late-Stage Nascent Soul was not a singular event, but a cascade of realizations.
Wei Jin sat at the center of his virtual construct—a white void stripped of all sensory distraction, a canvas of pure consciousness where he could rewrite the rules of existence. He held the fabric of his own soul in his mental grip, applying the pressure of expanded simulation capacity against the limits of his spiritual container.
It was like inflating a balloon made of diamond. It required immense, sustained force, applied with surgical precision. A tremor in concentration, a microscopic flaw in intent, and the structure would shatter, taking his mind with it.
But Wei Jin had practiced this.
In the simulation, he had failed ten thousand times. He had shattered his soul, lobotomized his consciousness, imploded his physical body in energetic feedback loops. He had watched himself die in every conceivable permutation of error. And with each death, the Reasoning Cycle analyzed the failure, corrected the variables, and optimized the process.
The path to success was no longer a guess. It was a calculated certainty.
He exhaled in the real world.
The barrier snapped.
The spiritual pressure in Qinghe City dropped suddenly as the ambient qi rushed toward the Wei family compound. It was a tidal wave, a tsunami of energy that terrified the lower-level cultivators in the city. The great defensive formations Wei Lan had spent decades perfecting groaned under the strain, the runes flaring white-hot as they channeled the torrent into Wei Jin's meditation chamber.
Inside his dantian, the Nascent Soul expanded. The infant-like spiritual entity grew, its features sharpening, its substance becoming denser, heavier, more real than the flesh that housed it. The six patterns integrated within it began to spin—not in isolation, but as gears in a single, unified machine.
When it was over, Wei Jin opened his eyes.
The world had changed.
He looked at the wooden table across the room. He didn't just see wood; he saw the cellular structure, the lignin and cellulose, the carbon chains binding it together. He saw the history of the tree it came from, the sunlight it had absorbed a century ago, the axe that had felled it.
He looked at his own hand. He saw the flow of blood, the firing of nerves, the ceaseless replication of DNA. He saw the spiritual energy interweaving with the biological matter, binding soul to flesh.
Late-Stage Nascent Soul. The realm where the cultivator began to touch the underlying code of reality.
[Azure Soul Refining Method v3.0 - Progress: 98%]
He was close. So close to the peak.
And he had a new tool to get there.
—————
The Virtual Lifetimes
The Simulation Chamber, now powered by a Late-Stage soul and integrated with the principles of Virtual Reality, became Wei Jin's primary method of existence.
He discovered that time in the simulation could be dilated. With sufficient Soul Force, he could experience a week of subjective time in an hour of objective reality. The cost was high—mental exhaustion that required days of recovery—but the potential was infinite.
He began to live lives. Not as Wei Jin, the cultivator, but as students of the fundamental truths he needed to understand.
Simulation 1: The Biologist
He lived a lifetime as a mortal scientist in a world without qi. He was born, grew up, went to university. He spent forty years in a laboratory, studying the building blocks of life.
He learned about evolution—the ruthless optimization algorithm of nature. He studied genetics, understanding how information was encoded in biological substrates. He dissected bodies, mapped neural pathways, watched cells divide under electron microscopes.
He understood why poisons worked—not because they were "evil qi," but because they disrupted specific enzymatic processes. He understood why diseases spread, how the immune system fought wars on a microscopic scale, how the brain encoded memory in synaptic webs.
When he woke from that lifetime, he looked at his medical texts with new eyes. The traditional cultivation understanding of the body—meridians, dantians, humors—was not wrong, but it was incomplete. It was a map drawn by someone who had never seen the territory from above.
Simulation 2: The Physicist
He spent eighty years in another world, studying the fundamental forces. Gravity. Electromagnetism. The strong and weak nuclear forces.
He derived the equations that governed the atomic bomb. He understood the horror he had unleashed not just as a weapon of mass destruction, but as a violation of the binding energy of the universe. He saw the math behind the mushroom cloud—the conversion of mass into energy, the Einsteinian truth that matter was just frozen light.
He applied this to his cultivation. Qi was energy. The body was mass. The transition between them was governed by laws that mirrored physics. His Fire techniques were no longer just "summoning heat"; they were the excitement of molecular vibration. His Earth techniques were the manipulation of density and lattice structures.
Simulation 3: The Sociologist
He lived as a ruler, a peasant, a revolutionary. He studied how societies formed, how economies functioned, how ideologies spread like viruses through a population.
He mapped the currents of human behavior, understanding the "managed confusion" of the cultivation world not as magic, but as the exploitation of cognitive biases and social dynamics. He saw how the suppression worked—by keeping populations fractured, by incentivizing short-term greed over long-term cooperation, by creating cultural taboos against innovation.
Each lifetime added a layer of profound understanding to his cultivation. He was layering knowledge upon knowledge, building a tower of comprehension that reached toward the heavens.
When he refined pills now, he didn't just mix herbs; he manipulated molecular structures to maximize bioavailability. When he used Poison Breath, he targeted specific neurotransmitters to induce paralysis or fear. When he engaged in politics, he played the mathematical game of social leverage.
He was no longer just a cultivator. He was a scientist of the soul.
In two years of real time—centuries of subjective time—he reached the Peak of Late-Stage Nascent Soul.
He stood at the summit of the mortal world.
—————
The Imperial Gambit
The Empire had grown wary of Qinghe City.
The technological explosion, the economic dominance, the mysterious "stable zone"—it was all too much power concentrated in hands that did not bow to the Throne. The Emperor, a Mid-Stage Nascent Soul cultivator of the royal lineage, was growing restless. Spies whispered of mobilization. Generals argued that the Wei family was a state within a state, a cancer that needed to be excised before it consumed the host.
Wei Jin sat in the strategy hall, looking at the map of the empire. The red markers of the Imperial Legions were shifting, moving closer to the trade routes that fed Qinghe.
"They are preparing a blockade," Wei Feng said, his voice grim. "They want to choke us out."
"We could fight," Wei Lan suggested. "Our formations can hold against their bombardment. Our weapons are superior."
"War would destroy the economy," Wei Jin said calmly. "And it would invite intervention from the other Great Sects. They are waiting for us to stumble."
He needed to preempt the conflict. He needed a move that would bind the Empire to Qinghe without surrendering sovereignty.
He sent a message. Not a threat, but a proposal.
Wei Tianming, eldest grandson of the Wei Patriarch, Late-Stage Foundation Establishment, to marry Princess Li, the Emperor's favorite granddaughter.
It was a classic political maneuver. A hostage exchange dressed in silk. Wei Tianming was a capable young man, intelligent and handsome. Princess Li was known for her curiosity about the "new sciences" coming out of Qinghe.
But Wei Jin knew a marriage wasn't enough. The Emperor needed something tangible.
Dowry: The schematics for the Mk. IV Spirit-Steam Engine, capable of powering heavy industrial machinery without constant cultivator supervision. And a guaranteed supply of High-Grade Clarity Pills for the Royal Family.
The Spirit-Steam Engine was the key to the next industrial revolution. It would allow the Empire to modernize its own manufacturing, to lessen its dependence on Qinghe for finished goods. It was a massive concession—giving away the keys to the kingdom.
But Wei Jin knew something the Emperor didn't. The Mk. IV was already obsolete in Wei Jin's labs. The Mk. V, powered by miniaturized spirit reactors, was in prototype.
The Emperor accepted within three days.
The wedding was the event of the decade. It was held in the capital, a spectacle of both traditional pomp and modern technology. Electric lights illuminated the palace. Fireworks orchestrated by computer algorithms painted dragons in the sky.
It cemented the Wei family not as subjects, but as partners in the Empire's governance. It bought time. It bought legitimacy.
And it put a Wei in the Imperial Palace, right at the heart of the information flow. Wei Tianming was not just a husband; he was an ambassador, a spy, and a gentle influence on the future policy of the throne.
—————
The Artificial Souls
The development of Artificial Intelligence in the mortal world had stalled.
Mortal computers were fast, but they were literal. They lacked the intuitive leap, the spark of consciousness. The hardware simply wasn't fast enough yet to simulate a brain.
But Wei Jin didn't need silicon. He had Soul Force.
He began populating his simulations with NPCs (Non-Player Characters) powered by fragments of his own reasoning cycle.
He created a virtual assistant. Zero.
"Analyze the current market trends for Spirit Iron in the Southern Provinces," Wei Jin commanded in the void.
Zero, manifesting as a sphere of blue light, replied instantly. The voice was synthesized, calm, genderless. "Prices are up 15% due to the localized conflict between the Iron Fist Sect and the River Guild. Intelligence reports suggest the conflict is being stoked by third-party agitators to drive up prices. Recommended action: liquidate current stockpile to maximize profit, then reinvest in medical supplies for the inevitable casualties."
It worked.
Then he went further. He created sparring partners that learned. He modeled opponents based on the psychological profiles of his enemies. He fought the Sects a hundred times. He debated philosophy with simulations of ancient sages.
He created entire virtual villages populated by entities that had jobs, families, desires. He gave them simple goals, simple fears, and watched how they interacted.
He was playing god in a bottle.
And in doing so, he learned the final secret of the Nascent Soul realm.
The soul was not a monolith. It was a construct. A complex system of memories, patterns, and intent. It could be edited. It could be programmed.
If he could build artificial souls… could he modify his own?
Could he rewrite his own source code?
He began to experiment on himself. Small changes at first. He optimized his memory retrieval algorithms. He dampened his emotional response to fear. He overclocked his perception processing.
He was turning himself into the ultimate weapon—a fusion of human will and machine precision.
—————
The Student Becomes the Master
Shen Ruyi found him in the garden one evening.
Wei Jin was hovering a few inches off the ground, his eyes closed, manipulating a complex holographic display floating above his palm. It was a projection of a new pill formula, rotating in 3D, its molecular bonds highlighted in glowing colors. The notation was a mix of ancient runes and chemical symbols.
Ruyi watched him for a long time. She had seen everything in her seven hundred years. She had seen empires rise and fall, geniuses burn out, monsters devour the world.
But she had never seen this.
"I have never seen alchemy notation like this," she admitted, her voice hushed. She walked closer, peering at the floating lights. "It… it makes sense. The spiritual properties are aligned with the chemical structure. You are using the physical shape of the molecule to channel the qi."
Wei Jin opened his eyes. The display didn't vanish; it stabilized.
"It increases potency by 40% while reducing toxicity to near zero," he explained. "It's a synthesis of ancient knowledge and modern physics. The old alchemists knew what worked, but they didn't know why. Now we know."
Ruyi looked at him. The man she had chosen as a shelter had become a fortress. She had thought to guide him, to use her ancient experience to steer his potential, to be the wise mentor to his rising star. Now, she found herself running to keep up.
"Teach me," she said.
The role reversal was complete. The ancient widow, survivor of seven centuries, sat at the feet of the two-hundred-year-old upstart and learned the new laws of the universe.
She was a quick study. Her adaptability, honed by centuries of survival, allowed her to grasp the new concepts. She reveled in the Simulation Chamber, fighting battles she had lost centuries ago, correcting her mistakes, refining her combat arts. She learned the basics of physics, of biology, of logic.
She began to see the world through Wei Jin's eyes—a world of systems, of solvable problems, of infinite potential.
One evening, she came to him in the study. The sun was setting, casting long shadows across the room. She looked… softer. The sharp edges of the predator were smoothed by something else. A glow that had nothing to do with cultivation.
"I am pregnant," she said.
Wei Jin stopped his work. The stylus in his hand froze. He looked at her, his Purple Eyes activating automatically, scanning her vitality.
It was true. A small, fierce spark of life nestled in her womb. A new soul, forming within the old one.
"I thought…" Wei Jin paused, searching for the right words. "Your age. Your cultivation level. It is… difficult."
"Nascent Soul bodies are malleable," she said, walking over to the window. "But more importantly… I never wanted children before. Not with him."
She looked out over the city, at the lights of the world Wei Jin had built.
"My previous husband… he changed bodies every century. He was eternal, but he was hollow. He had no legacy, only continuity. He consumed the future to feed his present. To have a child with him would have been… cruel. The child would watch their father wear the faces of strangers. Would watch him discard lives like old clothes. Would wonder if they were next."
She turned back to Wei Jin, her eyes fierce.
"You are solid. You build things that last. You plant trees you will never sit under. You fight for a future you might not see. With you… a child has a future. A real one."
"It is your first?" Wei Jin asked softly.
"In seven hundred years. Yes."
Wei Jin stood and went to her. He took her hands in his. They were warm, strong.
"Then we will protect it. With everything we have. With the simulations, with the formations, with the family."
Ruyi smiled, and for the first time, it reached her eyes completely. The cynical mask dissolved.
"I know. I've run the simulations."
They laughed together, a quiet, shared moment in the eye of the storm.
—————
The Precipice
[Azure Soul Refining Method v3.0 - Progress: 99.9%]
Two years later.
Wei Jin stood on the observation deck of the central tower. The wind whipped his robes, carrying the scent of ozone and rain.
He was at the peak. The absolute limit of what the Nascent Soul realm could contain. His soul was a diamond, flawless, faceted, harder than the world itself.
Below him, the city hummed with electricity and qi. The stable zone was stable no longer—it was expanding, pushing back the suppression for a hundred miles. Above him, the stars wheeled in their courses, cold and indifferent.
He had the power of a god. He could level a mountain with a thought. He could read the mind of a man across the city. He could cure diseases with a touch.
He had the knowledge of a thousand lifetimes. He knew how the stars burned. He knew how the cells divided. He knew the history of the empire better than its historians.
He had a family that spanned the empire. A wife who was his anchor. A partner who was his sword. Children and grandchildren who were the pillars of the new world.
But the text on the panel was changing again.
The familiar interface flickered. The lines of code dissolved and reformed.
[SYSTEM ALERT][THRESHOLD REACHED][INITIATING FINAL DEDUCTION PHASE]
The reasoning cycle was spinning up to its maximum capacity. The fan in his mind roared.
[TARGET: SPIRIT SEVERING / DIVINE TRANSFORMATION]
The next realm. The realm of legends. The realm that the ancient war had destroyed. The realm that the possessors had failed to reach for forty thousand years.
Spirit Severing. The severing of the mortal fetters. The transformation of the soul into divinity.
Wei Jin looked at the sky. He felt the gaze of the Watchers—the hidden masters, the suppressors—heavy upon him.
"The Watchers," he whispered to the wind. "Are you seeing this? Are you afraid?"
He was ready to break the ceiling of the world. He was ready to challenge the ancient order.
He closed his eyes.
Begin Deduction.
The panel flared.
[DEDUCTION TIME: 10 YEARS]
Ten years. A blink of an eye for an immortal.
The countdown began.
—————
End of Chapter Five, Book Four