The Origin Path had begun spreading. At first, it was confined to Origin Capital, but soon the galaxy learned of it. And with it came disbelief, excitement, and outrage in equal measure.
For most of the galaxy, affinities were fixed at birth.
It was the first truth every cultivator learned.
So when the Origin Clan announced that any being could comprehend multiple affinities, it was like telling the galaxy that gravity no longer pulled downward.
The minor clans stationed within the Origin Capital were the first to be stunned. To them, this was heresy, something that defied everything they had been taught.
They had come here for trade or protection, and suddenly found themselves living at the heart of what felt like a philosophical war against the galaxy's oldest belief.
But among the top clans and empires, the reactions were colder.
They knew of this already, at least, in part.
For those who had fought at the frontlines or lived among the top clans, multi-affinity comprehension wasn't entirely a myth. It was a possibility. But one so impractical, so time-consuming, that only someone who comprehended their entire affinity dared to try.
The Demon War was already consuming everything, resources, warriors, research, and patience. No one had the luxury to train children for a thousand years.
So when the Origin Path announcement reached the greater galaxy, the forums erupted.
On Lexarian Net and Origin Net, debates raged endlessly.
"The Origin Patriarch has done many great things, but this… this is lunacy."
"How can a clan fighting demons waste time on experiments?"
"He's a genius, not a god."
Others took a different view.
"What if this isn't about cultivation at all? What if it's just a scheme to sell more Knowledge Spheres?"
"This is genius in disguise. Even his bad decisions make him richer."
One thread, posted by an anonymous scholar on Origin Net gained traction fast.
"You all mock him, but ask yourselves, why does the Patriarch give these spheres away to his own people for free? If this was a scam, wouldn't he just keep selling?"
The replies came swift and bitter.
"Because he's already rich beyond measure. He can afford charity."
But buried deeper in the thread, someone else wrote,
"I bought a gravity sphere. My affinity is metal. It's been three days. I… I felt something. Just a flicker. But it was there."
The galaxy talked, the skeptics laughed, but Adrian didn't care.
He had expected this.
...
Days later, inside the Origin Construct, Varik stood before Adrian, a holo-screen hovering between them.
"My lord." Varik gestured, and the projection expanded into streams of data, sales figures, production logs, and shipping routes. "Since the news spread, even with all the mocking and disagreements, many started to buy the knowledge spheres for different affinities from their own affinity."
Adrian watched the numbers climb in real time. Fire spheres purchased by ice users. Shadow spheres bought by light wielders.
Varik continued, "That made the sales of knowledge spheres triple. But even with the new facilities, we're still falling behind by forty percent of production."
"It's not a matter of land or resources anymore, it's manpower."
Adrian nodded. He had already predicted this.
The bottleneck wasn't materials. It was people. Even with training programs, even with simplified methods, creating a single knowledge sphere required precision, focus, and time.
And on top of that, first one had to comprehend the knowledge to even start creating it.
Then he said simply, "I have a solution. Empty several production factories and prepare mana ink barrels there."
Varik bowed. "As you command."
He didn't ask questions. He had learned that when Adrian said he had a plan, it usually meant something impossible was about to become routine.
...
Later that day, Adrian arrived at one of the largest production factories in the Origin Construct. The space stretched wide and empty, a vast metallic floor surrounded by barrels of mana ink stacked.
Adrian floated above it, his mind already shaping a solution.
He planned to build something new, a formation that could produce knowledge spheres automatically.
An imprint machine, built with the same concepts he had once used for manual imprint, but magnified to industrial scale.
But the challenge was enormous.
Normally, an essence could only hold its own concept within it.
A fire user could only create fire-based knowledge spheres.
A water user could only do the same for water.
Only his source essence could contain any concepts.
So, for a formation to have all types of essence, he could solve it with source essence crystals like he did for the star system formation, but this imprint formation would be something running nonstop. The essence it would require would be higher. Adrian could not just keep creating source essence crystals nonstop.
For this problem, only one thing could work.
The Blackwood Ink.
If the formation itself was created with the source-infused ink, even powered with raw mana, the ink would convert it to source essence or any concept essence needed to create the knowledge spheres.
He planned to keep these formations protected inside the origin construct, only allowing trusted people to maintain them. This still carried risks of Blackwood Ink getting revealed, but he didn't have any other way for now.
He extended his hand, and source essence flowed into the barrels.
"Blackwood Ink."
The moment his essence merged with the mana ink, the liquid shimmered, turning from dark blue to white-grey.
Then, with a sweep of his hand, the ink lifted, guided by his Source Eyes.
The entire factory became a canvas.
Adrian etched rune after rune across the floor, pouring all the concepts he had comprehended until now into it.
Then, at its core, he carved the Imprint Concept and even connected this to the origin net.
Around it, he layered instructions for the formation, Imprint, Embed, Transcribe, Replicate.
Then he placed a large mana crystal in the core socket of the formation and etched additional concealment and shadow runes on top of the formation. The shadow would hide the fact that just a raw mana crystal was powering the formation, and the concealment runes took care of hiding the symbols themselves.
Only if a powerful being who comprehended an advanced concept deep enough could break this formation and see what lay within. But it would be rare since this place would be heavily guarded.
The core glowed, and a holographic interface flickered above the formation.
› Knowledge Sphere Production Interface Active.
› Select Affinities: Fire, Water, Earth, Ice, Lightning, Shadow, Light, Life, Gravity, Space, Imprint, Plant Growth...
› Mode: Single Affinity or Multi-Affinity Generation.
Adrian selected Single Affinity.
› Generation Commencing…
One after another, Knowledge Spheres began to materialize above the floor, floating in neat rows. Each pulsed with color, representing its elemental concept, crimson for Fire, azure for Water, green for Life, gold for Light.
Every second, a dozen more appeared.
A single formation now produced what once took hundreds of people hours to finish.
Adrian smiled faintly.
He spent the next few hours replicating it, one factory after another, engraving new formations, creating a network of autonomous knowledge forges.
By the end of the day, dozens of these massive formations pulsed quietly throughout the origin construct.
Production would no longer be an issue.
...
As Adrian inspected the last formation, Varik entered, holding a small object in his hand.
"My Lord." Varik approached and bowed. "This arrived from the Lexarian Embassy. They said you'd understand once you examined it."
He handed over a purple ring, etched with faintly glowing runes.
Adrian studied it. The symbols were space concepts, woven tighter than even Lexaria's nodes. He infused it with space essence, and a pocket of space unfolded before his senses.
Inside, he saw skill books and scrolls.
He reached inside with his mind and withdrew a single scroll.
The pocket remained stable. He tried another, and it was still intact.
"Reusable storage…"
Storage scrolls had always been single-use, unstable, breaking the moment one retrieved the contents. But this ring didn't collapse.
He examined the runes again, but there was nothing new in them. The secret seemed to be in the material.
It was able to hold a spatial pocket. Adrian didn't recognize the material; it was something new.
He reached inside again and saw the contents properly. What he saw shocked him more.
It was only basic galactic knowledge, but it was the rare concepts he had missed out on for all this time.
"Time, Death, Creation, Destruction?"
He remembered the deal with Archscribe Morvain, the trade of Knowledge Spheres for access to the Lexarian Archives.
But this went far beyond what he'd expected.
For a long moment, Adrian stood in silence, turning the ring slowly between his fingers.
"You're sending me this even after I break your monopoly."
He slipped the ring onto his finger.
"Lexaria…" he whispered. "What are you planning?"