HolyMouse
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Cultivation Nerd: Chapter 261
🕑 Added 2025-05-07 17:03:37 +0000 UTCChapter 261 - Breakthrough To The Next Stage
I looked down at the map in my hands. The parchment was smooth and tightly pressed, its edges curled slightly from use. The ink was dark and precise, etched with the care of someone who’d actually travelled these lands.
Every ridge, bend, and rise in the terrain was captured with remarkable clarity. Valleys sprawled like shallow bowls between mountain spines, forests were marked in clustered strokes, and rivers wound through them like veins.
Near the lower corner, a vast expanse of pale lines marked the start of a desert. Names of regions and trails were written in elegant, miniature script, and faint dotted lines traced paths through forests and around ridgelines.
“Can you stop gawking at the map and tell us what our next route is?” Fu Yating cut in, snapping me out of it.
“Heaven forbid I have a hobby,” I muttered.
“I don’t think obsessively staring at maps qualifies as a hobby, dear husband.”
“What would you know about my hobbies, dear wife?”
“More than you know about mine.”
Wu Yan and Speedy sighed at the same time. Wu Yan even went out of her way to create a mouth just to do it. That was effort.
I considered saying something sarcastic, something like: if I didn’t remember your hobbies, they probably weren’t interesting. But decided, just this once, to be the bigger person.
Anyway. Back to the map.
It only covered the western part of the Blazing Sun Sect’s territory. And while this world’s tech level might be a century behind Earth’s, if you knew where to look, you could find maps like this, beautiful, accurate, and detailed. Cultivators could fly, after all. Cartography sometimes became an art when you could see the world from above.
“We’re approaching the Blazing Sun Sect,” I said finally. “I’m looking for a place where we won’t be bothered.”
Fu Yating looked at me, brushing her long hair behind her ear.
“You’re about to break through to Foundation Establishment,” she said. Not a question.
“How did you know?”
“You haven’t been cultivating before bed recently.”
Huh. So she noticed. Creepy.
“Anyway,” she added, “is there anything I can do to help?”
It was rare to see her like this; she was so calm and unguarded. She was being supportive in her own way, too. Fu Yating had the capacity for kindness. She just didn’t use it often.
I turned to meet her eyes. And for a second, just a second, it felt like our thoughts aligned. We didn’t like each other all that much, but we understood each other. Probably more than anyone else ever would.
“Do you believe in me?” I asked.
“Believe you?” she echoed. “No, not really. You’ve got this weird sense of honor I don’t get. I don’t understand it, or how it came to be, or what kind of life could’ve forged something like that.”
Her voice was cold. Honest. Not cruel, just real, and a little bit annoying.
“But do I believe in your ability to break through to Foundation Establishment?” she continued. “Absolutely. There’s no doubt in my mind. Even your worst enemies couldn’t deny you’re brilliant in some areas.”
She really had a way with words.
I looked back at the map. My hand still rested on the parchment, tracing the ridges with the edge of my finger.
I held out my hand and poured a thin thread of Qi into the jade disc resting in my palm. The surface pulsed softly, and with a quiet hum, lines of light rose from it. Within moments, a three-dimensional miniature of the map unfolded in midair, glowing with a faint jade-green radiance.
The valleys curved gently, forests rippled like soft moss, and mountain ranges jutted upward like jagged teeth. Rivers shimmered as thin threads of flowing light, winding between hills and ridges. In the lower corner, the desert was etched in pale, shifting dunes that flickered slightly, as if stirred by a phantom breeze.
My eyes drifted upward to the topmost part of the jade construct, where a proud set of characters glowed just a bit brighter than the rest.
Blazing Sun Sect.
The letters stood tall over a cluster of elegant peaks and layered buildings carved into the mountainside, rendered in meticulous detail. Seeing it like this. This distant, serene, and reduced to scale... made it feel… less imposing.
I stared at it a moment longer, then slowly exhaled.
Two months of travel, at most, and we'd be there.
Of course, before that, I'd break through to Foundation Establishment. I'd integrate my element with my Qi. That much was decided.
A part of me still hesitated. My element wasn't going to be particularly combat-oriented, and neither were the techniques I planned to develop. This wasn't how most Foundation Establishment cultivators built their pillars. But it was my choice. My path. My version of cultivation.
It had always felt wrong to me reducing such a miraculous process to nothing more than "how strong can I punch" or "how big of an explosion can I make?" Cultivation was supposed to be a privilege of a beautiful mystery. A pursuit of understanding.
But maybe the others were right. Maybe this was naïve.
Once I reached Foundation Establishment, I'd have to rely on my arrays to fight. The techniques I had in mind were obscure, barely tested, and almost entirely absent from any written records. If they failed. Or worse, if I miscalculated, I could be cutting myself off from ever reaching Core Formation. All of this potential, wasted on a pipe dream.
Logically, I knew this was reckless.
But in my heart… I was still that reckless dreamer. That same nerd who would never be satisfied just copying the blueprints left behind by others.
I swallowed the doubt.
These anxious thoughts, this obsessive planning… it all felt like leftover reflexes from my old life. Like I was still worried some middle manager was going to yell at me, or that I might miss a deadline and ruin everything.
But this wasn't that life anymore.
Here, I would live or die by my own rules.
Without further hesitation, I reached into my storage ring and pulled out the pelican egg. I set it gently on the ground beside me.
Then I deactivated the arrays on the ring, those carefully constructed tricks that allowed it to store something alive, despite all the rules of spatial storage. I also disabled the instant-activation arrays woven into my clothing. They were half-finished experiments, unreliable. I hadn't tested them properly.
"I'll be back in a day or two," I said aloud, more to myself than anyone else. "Either as a Foundation Establishment cultivator…"
I looked down at my hands, my dantian. Then up at the sky.
"…or a one-star Qi Gathering cultivator, after losing everything I've built these past few years."
That was the truth. The line I was walking.
And now, it was time to take the next step.
I took off all my storage rings, every single one. Anything that could be a distraction had to go.
Some of them carried deep sentimental value. Like the ring the librarian had lent me, it held everything he knew about arrays and the wealth he had saved over his entire life.
When I returned to the Blazing Sun Sect, that would be the first thing I gave back. He’d handed it over like it was a last will, back when I left. The old guy and I were going to mock him for that dramatic, depressive speech he gave on my sendoff, just as soon as I got the chance.
I passed the rings to Wu Yan, meeting her gaze for a long, quiet moment before dragging my eyes away.
I hadn’t realized until now just how much those rings meant to me.
Even the ones from Song Song.
Even now, as I tried not to dwell on her and not think about what she might be going through, I couldn’t help but worry.
But this wasn’t the time.
There was no room for distraction.
Just like there was no room to think about the old man or the librarian back in the Sect. Whatever had happened to them… that was a problem for later.
In the distance, a stony mountain caught my attention.
Its jagged silhouette carved harshly against the sky, like a scar across the land.
At its base, a deep ravine split the earth, dark and mist-shrouded, like the land itself had been torn open.
The mountain’s surface was raw, worn with time, dotted with ledges and outcroppings. I spotted the faint outlines of caves along its flanks, some half-collapsed, some hidden in shadow.
Yep. That would do.
There wasn’t much vegetation up there, and that was exactly what I wanted. No grass. No trees. No herbivores. And without herbivores… no predators either.
The odds of being interrupted were slim.
I rushed toward the mountain like lightning, closing the distance in minutes.
As I climbed, I passed scattered mounds of snow clinging to the jagged stone, untouched and cold.
For a moment, I considered heading into one of the caves… but I decided against it.
Instead, I climbed all the way to the top, my fingers gripping stone like a monkey swinging through branches.
The air at the peak was thinner, but not enough to bother me.
The cold seeped into my bones, but strangely, it felt… comforting.
A lingering gift from the Hearthfire Ice-Stem Flower still coursing through me.
I sat down at the summit, cross-legged on the naked stone, and took a long, steady breath.
The wind howled softly around me, but it felt distant, like the sound of the world quieting itself out of respect.
I closed my eyes.
Inside me, my foundation pulsed, solid and overflowing.
My dantian brimmed with Qi, so full it threatened to spill over, but I held it, refined it, shaped it.
I hadn’t just filled my dantian, I’d strengthened it. Deepened it. Tempered it.
If someone tried to destroy my cultivation now? It would be like punching solid steel unless they were a Foundation Establishment expert.
Then, calmly and decisively, I began the process. Slowly, with precision, I unraveled my dantian.
Piece by piece.
Thread by thread.
Like pulling apart a masterpiece I’d spent years crafting… just so I could rebuild it into something greater.
I began the long, delicate work of forging the first Pillar.
At the same time, I recalled everything I knew about breaking through to Foundation Establishment.
A cultivator had to attempt it before the age of sixty; any older, and they wouldn’t have enough vitality left to handle the transformation. To qualify, one needed to reach the peak of nine-star Qi Gathering. That gave about a fifty percent chance of success. Not great.
Fail, and you crash back down to one-star Qi Gathering. Years of effort wiped clean.
There were ways to soften the blow. Certain rare resources could cushion the drop, holding your cultivation at five-star instead of bottoming out. But it didn’t stop the real danger, the damage to your spiritual roots. Without a Tier 3 Root Mending Pill, those would take five years to heal.
Worse still, if someone tried again with damaged roots, the success rate dropped below ten percent. And if they failed a second time? That was it. They’d be stuck at peak nine-star Qi Gathering for the rest of their life. Even if the roots were healed afterward, they’d never break through.
At least, on the second failure, the cultivation didn’t crash again. The roots bore the damage instead.
Of course, there was a shortcut. Take a Tier 4 Foundation Creation Pill, and your success rate jumped to ninety percent. But the drawback was subtle, because the pill protected your body from the full transformation, it weakened the foundation. Just slightly, but still.
I hadn’t taken one.
My foundation was strong, maybe stronger than anyone else I’d ever met. Thanks to the Hearthfire Ice-Stem Flower and years of careful cultivation, my odds were above average, maybe sixty or seventy percent.
Still not great.
I gathered all the Qi in my body. It had begun forming into the shape of a thick, vertical line, the beginning of the pillar. But a pillar alone wasn’t enough. I had to create a miniature dantian inside it, something that could stabilize it once formed. That required compressing my Qi to a ridiculous degree while maintaining the shape of the pillar.
And if I failed… all that energy would smash into my roots like a tidal wave.
I shaped the pillar slowly and carefully, my awareness balanced between my breath, the structure of my Qi, and the sensation of the cold night air brushing against my skin. I couldn’t afford to be distracted now.
The leftover energy from the heavenly treasure helped stabilize the pillar, it was enough Qi to save me months, if not years, of effort. After all, gathering Qi didn’t just depend on cultivation level. It depended on the number of spiritual roots, and sometimes their quality.
At first, I didn’t feel much. No massive spike in power. No divine revelation.
But then… the Qi changed.
It thickened. Heavied. Shifted.
A soft, constant layer of Qi settled across my body. Always active, even when I didn’t focus on it. A natural defense, passive, invisible. Subtle, but strong. Most Qi Gathering cultivators wouldn’t even be able to break through it.
And then… the pillar was complete.
I felt the new dantian form at its center, stable and alive, drawing in Qi like lungs pulling air.
I waited for the tidal wave.
I had expected a grand moment, something explosive. Something violent. After all, I had more Qi than most cultivators ever gathered, and my foundation was stronger than I’d dared hope.
But what came was different.
The sensation was gentle. Like lukewarm sea water brushing against my toes. Calm. Steady. Comfortable.
Not underwhelming. Just… peaceful.
A breakthrough without chaos. Without suffering. No damage. No loss. Just a smooth, natural ascent.
I opened my eyes slowly, breathing in the high mountain air.
I had done it.
I was now, officially, a Foundation Establishment cultivator.
Comments
Bookworm bibliophile
They spent together months calling each other wife and husband... .
Rat with a Pick
Poor Wu Yan, her parents are fighting again get that poor child into a more stable home
ScarletIce
Nah, that's his biggest fault. He assumes everyone overthinks things as much, if not more than he does. He's spent too much time around absolute monsters like the Song clan and the Sect Leader. He uses them as the bar that he measures himself by and concludes that he is above average at best. He doesn't recognize that all his careful planning elevates him to genius tier.
ScarletIce
I'm wondering if mc has stumbled upon the "correct" path of cultivation. Meaning, the heavens won't object to him reaching immortality. What if the heavens are pleased by mc's cultivation path that is focused on understanding and appreciating the world first and foremost. Essentially, his is the path of enlightenment.
Bill Shifer
Thank you from the bottom of my heart, author, for not making the breakthrough 2 chapters long, unlike some other authors.
DemiurgeMal
wohou!
Justin Mott
Like the stable breakthroug. I was expecting some impurity removal or something TBH
Treacherous_Usurper
I didn't get what is element is, but it feels like he's becoming a jade lantern.
Green0Photon
Love those smooth rank ups due to making a stable foundation
Maxemuud
Bro is a certified genius now. I wonder if he realized that about himself
