Elias Vance spent his mornings doing two things, with the robotic precision of a well-oiled machine.
First, he drank tea that tasted suspiciously like regret boiled in ditchwater. It was served communal-style in cracked ceramic bowls, a lukewarm, vaguely earthy liquid that somehow managed to be both bland and offensive. He'd tried to analyze its chemical composition, but his internal processor had simply labeled it: "Nutritional Value: Negligible. Flavor Profile: Existential Dread." He drank it anyway, for the sake of appearances.
Second, he stalked people.
Not in the suspicious-loner, trench-coat-wearing way. More like a highly specialized professional botanist observing particularly dim houseplants, or an astrophysicist studying the chaotic, yet strangely predictable, orbits of minor asteroids. From the corner of the outer sect dining hall, tucked away from the boisterous morning chatter, Elias sat cross-legged with his cracked ceramic bowl of spiritual barley and something that might have been meat (he hadn't risked a full scan, fearing a data corruption event). He watched the crowd with the same intense focus one might reserve for counting solar flares or debugging a critical system error.
And all the while, his divine sense was busy doing what divine sense had never, ever been used for before: stealing cultivation secrets from every so-called genius, every eager, aspiring cultivator around him.
He wasn't just watching disciples. He was scanning them. He was meticulously mapping the enzyme activation in their blood when they channeled Qi, tracing the micro-fluctuations in their nerve endings as they circulated spiritual energy. He recorded how their unique spiritual roots—the mystical conduits that allowed them to absorb and manipulate Qi—lit up like neon circuits when they showed off for girls, or subtly flared during moments of intense concentration. He was building a database of human bio-spiritual dynamics.
And more importantly? He was cataloging everything. Every subtle resonance, every flicker of energy, every genetic predisposition he could detect.
To the untrained eye, Shen Yuan—the quiet, seemingly unremarkable outer sect orphan, who kept to himself and almost never spoke—was just meditating. Again. In the corner. Still weird. Probably couldn't even reach Foundation Establishment, everyone whispered.
But under that placid surface, behind the dull gaze of a mediocre disciple? A metaphysical super computer was silently, ruthlessly slicing its way through the sect's entire genetic and spiritual blueprint.
Three disciples two tables ahead caught his attention. He mentally zoomed in, his divine sense threads expanding like microscopic antennae.
"Hmm," he internally noted. "Subject Alpha has a robust root in the lower lungs—strong fire affinity. Classic. Efficient, but limited."
He shifted his focus. "Subject Beta's Qi surges strongest through the spine—lightning, or maybe pure instability. Hard to tell without more data. The fluctuations are too wild."
Then, Subject Gamma. Elias's mental eyebrow rose. "This one has wildly inconsistent energy resonance across multiple points. Like a bad network connection."
He took another bite of the flavorless barley, thoughtfully considering the data. "Triple root," he finally concluded. "Impressive, in a crude, biological way. Also, inherently inefficient. It's like trying to drive three cars at once with one steering wheel, and all the cars are trying to go in different directions."
A younger disciple, perhaps fourteen years old, with nervous eyes and a faint blush on his cheeks, slid awkwardly onto the empty spot beside Elias. He tried very hard to sound confident.
"Hey, uh… Senior Brother Shen. You always eat alone?"
Elias blinked, his thoughts abruptly pulled from the intricacies of spiritual root architecture. He looked at the boy, processing the unexpected social interaction.
"His endocrine Qi feedback is irregular, how his he still alive," Elias thought, completely oblivious to the boy's confusion, his eyes narrowing slightly as he detected a subtle energy imbalance. "That liver Qi flow is tragic. Are you over-cultivating your water affinity?"
The boy's face paled. "Uh… I… I don't know what you mean, Senior Brother." He quickly grabbed his own bowl and shuffled away, muttering something about needing to find his friends.
Too late. Elias had already tuned him out, his mental focus snapping back to his primary objective. His eyes narrowed at a nearby inner disciple, a broad-shouldered young man with an air of smug superiority, as the man lifted his arm and subtly flexed—a tiny, almost imperceptible spark dancing across his skin.
Lightning affinity confirmed.
Elias's divine sense zoomed in. The man's spiritual root was clearly bifurcated—twisting into a unique double-helix configuration at the base of the sternum, allowing it to rotate Qi faster than a traditional single-channel cycle. "Interesting. A harmonic spiral model. Efficient for acceleration," Elias mused, observing the intricate flow. "But the field distortion suggests instability at higher throughput. Probably shortens his lifespan if he overchannels. High output, low longevity."
Elias didn't bother physically writing it down. He didn't need to. His hippocampus, super-enhanced with divine sense SSD layering, was already filing it away in a neatly labeled folder within his mental database:
📁 Cultivation Roots
📂 Lightning-Based
📄 Inner Disciple Dou Chen – Spiral Pattern (unstable, high output, low longevity)
📂 Fire-Based
📄 Outer Disciple Lin Fan – Lower Lung Root (efficient, limited elemental scope)
📂 Water-Based
📄 Outer Disciple Xiao Ming – Liver Qi Flow (sub-optimal, potential health risk)
He left the dining hall two hours later with over 40 new full spiritual root mappings, each meticulously tagged with its strengths, weaknesses, and potential pitfalls.
By the end of the week? Over three hundred disciples and seven elders had been observed, scanned, and involuntarily studied. From powerful Soul Formation elders passing by looking for enlightment, to hapless Foundation Establishment 'pups' trying to copy techniques off poorly translated bamboo scrolls, Elias had recorded them all, their deepest cultivation secrets laid bare to his silent, scientific gaze.
And now?
Now he was ready to do something stupidly brilliant.
The Birth of the Fractal Root
Sitting on his meditation mat that evening, back in the absolute silence of his cave, Elias floated in a state of deep concentration. Inside his mind, a massive, glowing lattice hovered—a complex, interconnected web of spiritual root patterns he had stolen from across the sect, layered like an evolutionary tree diagram.
Some were elegant but weak, like beautiful, fragile glass.
Some were strong but brittle, powerful but prone to shattering.
Some were just bizarre. "That guy who claims he cultivates through eating? What evolutionary hellscape spawned that path?" Elias muttered to himself, a rare, amused huff escaping his lips. His internal 'rant buffer' briefly considered logging an entry about 'Suboptimal Cultivation Practices: Gastro-Intestinal Affinity.'
He muttered to himself as he assembled his plan, not to copy, not to imitate any single root. "I don't want their talents," he whispered, a faint, almost mad glint in his eyes visible even in the dim light. "I want their code. The fundamental algorithms of how their spiritual roots work."
He plucked core traits from the best of them.
From the ancient fire-root elder, he extracted the energy acceleration pathways—the blueprint for efficient internal ignition, how to make Qi move fast.
From a nimble water-based inner disciple, he took the waveform smoothing—the technique for high resonance stability, how to make Qi move smoothly without wasting energy.
From a rare wood-affinity girl, he synthesized the cellular anchoring—the method for low-loss Qi transfer, how to make Qi stick where it needed to be.
From an unknown metal cultivator, he isolated the Qi compression lobes—the unique structures that turned dense energy into usable, metabolized threads, like a highly efficient power transformer.
From various lightning types, he analyzed and copied the oscillating pulse channels for high-frequency cycling, how to make Qi vibrate and generate extreme power.
Then he rewrote it. Not as a simple fusion, a clumsy mash-up of different roots. But as a complete, ground-up upgrade.
Using his surgically precise divine sense, Elias began designing a self-correcting, multi-elemental, recursive root system within Shen Yuan's body. A root that wasn't fixed in affinity or structure. A root that shifted. Adapted. Updated itself based on ambient Qi density, elemental imbalances, and his own cultivation needs. He dubbed it the Fractal Root—a constantly evolving, infinitely complex pattern designed for ultimate adaptability and efficiency. It was the future of cultivation, designed in a cave by a reborn Earth scientist.
And then he carved it—into himself.
The first night was fine. He began by reshaping the outer channels—fine-tuning meridian alignment, anchoring Qi pulses in precise locations. It felt like rewiring a giant, living circuit board.
The second night hurt. This was the truly difficult part: breaking down Shen Yuan's old, mediocre spiritual root's geometry. There was internal bleeding. Not just mentally, a jarring, discordant feedback as his original structure resisted, but physically too—faint internal hemorrhages as his body struggled to keep up with the rapid, fundamental changes. He could feel tiny capillaries bursting, muscle fibers tearing at a microscopic level, only to be instantly repaired by his enhanced healing, creating a painful, dynamic flux.
The third night? He screamed once, a low, guttural sound, quickly muffled into his sleeve, so the disciples next door wouldn't hear his moment of agonizing scientific breakthrough.
"Wrong angle—reverting! Reverting! Why is my liver vibrating like a dying sub-harmonic generator? Oh god, did I accidentally invent spiritual arrhythmia? No—wait, I can fix this—"
His mind blurred from the sheer strain. He injected divine sense nanothreads, micro-pulses of spiritual energy, to reprogram his own cellular resonance behavior. He triggered enzyme cascades, specific biological reactions, to reset Qi conductance across his shoulder nerves, which felt like they were sparking uncontrollably. At one point, during a particularly violent internal restructuring, his toes lit up with a faint, blue glow. At another, his right eye briefly saw everything in thermal spectrums for three terrifying minutes, as if he'd installed faulty sensor suite. He had to suppress the raw input from overwhelming his vision entirely.
But on the fourth night?
It worked.
The moment the new root solidified, the chaotic internal storm subsided, replaced by a profound, almost blissful silence.
The activation of the Fractal Root was like a system-wide upgrade for Elias's very existence. His body, once merely Shen Yuan's, now hummed with a profound, almost alien efficiency. Every cell, every nerve ending, every strand of muscle and bone felt exquisitely tuned, ready to absorb and channel Qi with unparalleled speed. His divine sense, already a marvel, sharpened further, extending his perception into realms previously unimaginable. He could now 'feel' the subtle auras of living beings, not just as energy fluctuations, but as complex, layered data streams – their emotional states, their physical health, even their approximate cultivation levels. It was like having an X-ray, a mood ring, and a power scanner all rolled into one, active around him constantly.
The most dramatic change, however, was in his ability to interact with Qi. The Fractal Root didn't just passively absorb; it actively negotiated with the spiritual energy in the environment. His body became a perfect conduit, pulling in Qi with a silent, relentless hunger that far outstripped any other cultivator. No longer limited by a fixed elemental affinity, his root fluidly shifted, drawing in whatever type of Qi was most abundant and pure, instantly converting it into usable energy for his internal systems. This meant his cultivation speed would accelerate beyond anything the Emerald Sky Sect, or perhaps even the entire Xuanwu Realm, had ever witnessed. He was no longer just cultivating; he was processing reality through a perfectly optimized, self-improving spiritual engine.
Elias nearly cried from relief, a purely human reaction that surprised even himself. His new spiritual root—beautiful, sharp, recursive, a living, fractal pattern of light and energy—sat at the very core of his being. It spun silently, an intricate spiritual turbine, constantly recalibrating its elemental affinity in real time, absorbing Qi with astonishing speed and purity.
A traditional cultivator would call it "perfect," a heaven-defying talent, a gift from the Heavens. Elias, the scientist, simply called it "functional." It was the culmination of meticulous research and reckless self-experimentation.
And now?
Now he needed fuel. Lots and lots of fuel. The Fractal Root was a hyper-efficient engine, but even the best engine needed a massive amount of energy to truly power level. His true cultivation had only just begun.