Chapter 19: Agency

In the classroom, Chen Mobai sat by the window, looking gloomy.

He had almost believed he was about to change his fate. A single cyan carp increased his water-affinity spiritual root by 2 points. Eating dozens of them, wouldn't he achieve a Heavenly Spiritual Root of water attribute? But he had forgotten one crucial detail: the "Cultivation Assistant" software had detected that his adaptive spiritual power, cultivated through practice, fluctuated for only one day before returning to normal on the second.

Reality was somewhat cruel. The power contained within the cyan carp only lasted for a single day. That day, he had consumed eight of them in one go, boosting his water-affinity spiritual root to 39 points. Chen Mobai had never experienced such a sensation during cultivation before. His efficiency in absorbing spiritual energy was nearly double what it had been. Beyond the spiritual root attribute increase, cultivating directly on a second-tier water vein, with both effects combined, almost led Chen Mobai to switch his cultivation to the "Black Water Art."

Fortunately, he always acted cautiously and waited a day. As a result, the next day, feeling uneasy in the school's cultivation room, he used a spiritual power test strip again and found that his water spiritual root attribute points had dropped once more. Refusing to believe it, he returned to the water mansion that evening and caught five more cyan carp to prepare as sashimi. His water spiritual root surged again, only to fall back down after a night of cultivation.

However, it wasn't all bad news. Perhaps due to Chen Mobai's extensive consumption, the power of the cyan carp had subtly strengthened his spiritual root over time. After five days of voracious eating, with nearly forty cyan carp consumed, Chen Mobai's water-affinity spiritual root points fluctuated like a stock market curve, eventually stabilizing at exactly 30 points and refusing to rise further. Of course, they also stopped falling. After all the ups and downs, Chen Mobai's water-affinity spiritual root points had still permanently increased by 7.

Name: Chen MobaiAge: 18Realm: Fifth-level Qi CondensationSpiritual Roots: Metal 23, Wood 27, Water 30, Fire 17, Earth 10Cultivation Art: Five Elements ArtSkills: Levitation Art, Cleansing Art, Spiritual Energy Shield, Qi Nurturing Art, Water Control Art

Opening the personal panel software on his phone, Chen Mobai hesitated, then manually changed the water attribute number in the spiritual root section back from 30 to 23. He had a strong feeling that it was best not to let anyone else know about the water mansion. While the Immortal Sect had no shortage of cultivation techniques and medicines that could enhance spiritual roots, few offered such immediate improvement to water-affinity spiritual roots. Its effect was almost twenty to thirty percent as potent as the Azure Dragon Carp from the Kunpeng Dao Academy.

The Azure Dragon Carp could permanently enhance a cultivator's spiritual root with each one consumed. The Kunpeng Dao Academy once used it to cultivate a prodigiously gifted water-affinity alchemist from an ordinary 33-point water spiritual root to an 80-point Heavenly Spiritual Root. This achievement had been widely publicized by the Immortal Sect, and Chen Mobai remembered it being a daily news topic on TV for a period when he was a child. Although the cyan carp from the water mansion couldn't compare to the Azure Dragon Carp, their cumulative effect still permanently increased Chen Mobai's water spiritual root attribute by 7 points. If this knowledge were to spread, it would undoubtedly cause a huge stir. This was because the Azure Dragon Carp was considered a precious treasure by a certain Nascent Soul Venerable, and for the past twenty years, no one had been able to acquire any.

However, Chen Mobai was not preoccupied with this matter now. He opened his "Cultivation Assistant" software and fell into deep thought as he gazed at the five halos above his avatar frame in the top right corner. Last night, the proxy button on the "Turtle Treasure" software suddenly lit up and protruded. Unable to resist his curiosity, he tapped it. Subsequently, the "Cultivation Assistant" software on his phone changed. Five rings appeared on his avatar.

Resources were scarce on the Địa Nguyên Star, yet the founding wars every millennium were unavoidable. To protect their homeland, thirty-six Tiangang satellites orbited in the sky, forming a massive grand array. In peacetime, these thirty-six Tiangang satellites also provided all network and communication services for the Immortal Sect. Each satellite functioned as a supercomputer, but most of their computational power was dedicated to drawing in cosmic spiritual energy, transforming it to supply three hundred million cultivators in countless households. Precisely for this reason, to avoid wasting computational power, the permissions available to cultivators of different stages within each software application varied.

For example, Chen Mobai, at the fifth-level Qi Condensation realm, could only use the most basic functions of various applications on his phone. Taking the Cultivation Assistant software as an example: If Chen Mobai were to reach the Foundation Establishment realm, while using "Cultivation Assistant" to analyze cultivation videos, he could also apply to view footage of Golden Core Venerables cultivating the Five Elements Art from the database. Comparing the two would not only correct his own cultivation errors but also reveal the most accurate methods and various tips for practicing the Five Elements Art.

The Immortal Sect's software permissions were visually represented by intuitive halos. For instance, Qi Condensation, being the first stage, was indicated by a single halo above the avatar frame. So, the problem arose: these five halos should represent fifth-stage permissions, right? What realm did the fifth stage correspond to? Chen Mobai mentally calculated and gasped. Damn, he had instantly become a Soul Transformation Patriarch! There were only two such individuals in the entire Immortal Sect. Couldn't this tortoise shell proxy be a bit more discreet? A third-stage Golden Core permission would have been sufficient; why go straight to max-level fifth stage?

Just as Chen Mobai was feeling inexplicably alarmed, in an office at the Heaven-Mending Dao Academy, several cultivators were also frowning at the sudden data transmission below.

"This... could it be that the Patriarch has awakened? And is traveling in an avatar, enjoying the human world?" The sudden appearance of a fifth-stage user left Mr. Shi, the developer of the Cultivation Assistant software, feeling both surprised and somewhat alarmed. It was widely known that the two Patriarchs had been in secluded cultivation for over three hundred years without any activity, while his software had only been developed two hundred years ago. Although permissions were categorized into five stages, only the first three stages had actually been perfected. Since he himself was only at the Golden Core realm, for cultivators one level above him—the Nascent Soul Venerables, of whom there were only a dozen in the Immortal Sect, and who would seclude themselves for decades—the only effective cultivation assistance came from the training videos and guidance of Soul Transformation Patriarchs. Therefore, until a Soul Transformation Patriarch uploaded their own content, the highest realm that the "Cultivation Assistant" software could effectively aid was the Golden Core realm. Thus, with the appearance of the first fifth-stage user, Mr. Shi was both excited and fearful.

"Use the backend to check the location, then we'll go to the site to confirm who it is. It might be a hacker who cracked your software's permissions." The major investor, the boss, remained remarkably calm. His words immediately brought the other cultivators, who had been contemplating how to curry favor with the Patriarch, back to their senses.