The technological exhibition occupied the largest hall in Qinghe's industrial district.
Wei Jin walked through the crowded space with cultivation suppressed to mortal levels, his iron mind cataloging innovations that would have seemed impossible a century ago. Steam-powered mechanisms demonstrated the principles that had transformed manufacturing. Electrical devices showed capabilities that approached what spiritual techniques could achieve. Medical instruments enabled diagnosis that exceeded what his poison-medicine expertise could provide through cultivation alone.
But it was the device in the eastern alcove that stopped him completely.
A box of metal and glass, perhaps two feet square, sat on a polished wooden table. Its surface held a dark panel that glowed with soft illumination—and on that panel, letters and numbers floated in precise arrangements that changed as the operator manipulated keys on a connected board.
Wei Jin stared at the device with perception that five patterns of Golden Core cultivation provided.
The numbers shifted. Calculations appeared. Results displayed with speed that exceeded what mortal minds could achieve through conscious effort.
And something about the display—the floating characters, the systematic organization, the automatic updating of information—triggered recognition that shook foundations he had not known could be shaken.
[Golden Flow Method - Current Efficiency: 100%][Subtle Mind Refinement - Current Efficiency: 100%][Clear Heart Method - Current Efficiency: 100%]
The tracker pulsed in his awareness, its format suddenly familiar in ways that over a century of use had somehow never revealed.
The device before him displayed information in patterns that echoed what he had perceived since his cultivation journey began.
The panel was not unique to him.
It was a principle that mortal minds had independently discovered.
—————
The Year of Study
Wei Jin purchased one of the calculating devices—at considerable expense, as only a handful existed—and installed it in a private workshop where he could study its operation without interruption.
The months that followed consumed him with intensity that even his iron mind found challenging.
The device operated through principles that mortal engineers had developed over decades of systematic research. Electrical impulses flowing through precisely arranged components. Logical operations encoded in physical structure. Input transformed to output through processes that followed rules its creators had designed.
Wei Jin analyzed every aspect of its function.
The electrical pathways reminded him of meridian circulation—energy flowing through channels toward specific destinations. The logical operations echoed cultivation technique optimization—inputs processed according to principles that produced consistent results. The display mechanisms paralleled spiritual perception—information rendered visible through systematic transformation.
The parallels were not coincidental.
The mortal engineers had discovered principles that underlaid cultivation itself—not through spiritual development but through systematic study of natural phenomena that cultivation merely utilized without fully understanding.
And the device they had created—the calculating machine with its floating numbers and changing displays—operated according to the same fundamental logic as the panel that had guided Wei Jin's advancement for over a century.
The realization demanded complete reassessment of what he had believed about his mysterious tracker.
He had always assumed the panel was unique—a gift of unknown origin that provided advantages no other cultivator possessed. He had guarded its secret jealously, never revealing its existence even to those closest to him.
But if mortals could create devices that operated on similar principles…
The panel might not be supernatural gift but natural phenomenon. Something that his particular configuration of spiritual development had enabled him to perceive and utilize, but that existed as fundamental aspect of reality rather than miraculous exception.
The implications cascaded through his iron mind with speed that ordinary consciousness could not have processed.
If the panel reflected natural principles, those principles might be understood through systematic study. If they could be understood, they might be replicated. If they could be replicated, the advantages they provided might eventually become available to others.
Wei Jin was not merely a lucky recipient of mysterious gift.
He was a discoverer who had stumbled upon something that the cultivation world had somehow never recognized—despite forty thousand years of development before the ancient war, despite the countless practitioners who had advanced through realms that modern cultivation could not achieve.
How had something so fundamental remained hidden for so long?
—————
The Inspiration
The insight came on an evening when Wei Jin had worked himself to the edge of even Golden Core endurance.
He sat in his workshop, surrounded by diagrams and notes that documented his year of study. The calculating device hummed softly on its table, its display showing results from his latest analytical session. His mind—enhanced by four patterns dedicated to mental development—processed connections that conscious thought had somehow failed to perceive.
The panel showed efficiency.
The calculating device performed operations.
Both transformed input to output according to principles that their users did not need to understand for the transformation to occur.
But there was a difference.
The calculating device could only perform operations its creators had designed. Its capabilities were limited to the instructions encoded in its physical structure. It was powerful but fundamentally passive—a tool that awaited direction rather than providing it.
The panel was different.
It did not merely perform calculations that Wei Jin directed. It analyzed situations he had not consciously examined. It identified optimizations he had not deliberately sought. It provided guidance that exceeded what his own understanding could have produced.
The panel reasoned.
Not as mortals or cultivators reasoned—through conscious deliberation that produced conclusions from premises. But through some process that operated beneath awareness, evaluating possibilities, assessing outcomes, generating recommendations that proved consistently valuable.
The panel was not merely a calculating device.
It was a reasoning device.
And if Wei Jin could understand the principles that enabled its reasoning…
The thought cascaded through his consciousness with force that made his iron mind barriers tremble.
The sixth pattern began forming.
—————
The Reasoning Cycle
The structure crystallized over weeks of intensive cultivation.
Wei Jin guided the formation with attention that exceeded anything his previous patterns had required. This was not enhancement of existing capabilities or integration of developed methods. This was something new—a pattern that reflected understanding his year of study had finally enabled.
The Reasoning Cycle.
A structure within his Golden Core that encoded the principles of systematic thought. Not merely calculation—the manipulation of values according to established rules. But genuine reasoning—the evaluation of possibilities, the assessment of evidence, the generation of conclusions that exceeded what input alone could provide.
The pattern would enable his consciousness to operate as the panel operated.
Automatic analysis running beneath awareness. Continuous optimization processing in the background of thought. Reasoning that did not require his conscious direction to function.
When the pattern completed, Wei Jin opened his eyes to a world that his enhanced cognition perceived with new clarity.
His thoughts had become something he had never experienced before.
Multiple threads of reasoning operated simultaneously without interference. Problems that would have required sequential analysis now processed in parallel, their solutions emerging together rather than one at a time. His consciousness had expanded beyond individual stream into network of interconnected processes.
The pattern had not merely enhanced his thinking.
It had transformed the fundamental nature of how his mind functioned.
[Golden Flow Method - Current Efficiency: 100%][Subtle Mind Refinement - Current Efficiency: 100%][Clear Heart Method - Current Efficiency: 100%]
Patterns Formed: 6 (Optimization Spiral, Perception Lens, Poison-Medicine Mastery, Iron Mind Fortress, Unity Stream, Reasoning Cycle)
Six patterns. The accumulation that texts suggested preceded Nascent Soul breakthrough in most cultivators who achieved that realm.
Wei Jin examined his Golden Core with perception that his enhanced cognition provided.
The structure had reached its limits.
His core could not contain additional patterns without transformation. His cultivation base could not advance further within the constraints that Golden Core imposed. He had reached the threshold that separated mortal cultivation from the truly immortal realms.
But reaching the threshold was not the same as crossing it.
—————
The Missing Method
The problem became apparent within a week of the sixth pattern's completion.
Wei Jin possessed power sufficient for Nascent Soul breakthrough. His Golden Core had accumulated enough patterns, enough refined energy, enough integrated development to enable the transformation. The potential was there.
But he lacked the method.
Nascent Soul breakthrough was not merely accumulation reaching critical threshold. It was specific transformation that required specific techniques—breathing patterns, circulation routes, visualization approaches that converted Golden Core into nascent form.
Wei Jin had never acquired such techniques.
His cultivation journey had been defined by the methods he had developed and optimized through the panel's guidance. The Azure Harmonization that became Golden Flow. The Subtle Mind Refinement. The Clear Heart cultivation. Each had emerged from systematic development rather than inherited instruction.
But Nascent Soul methods were not developed—they were received.
The sects that possessed them guarded them as their most precious resources. The cultivators who knew them passed them only to selected successors. The techniques that enabled transcendence were deliberately restricted to ensure that only approved practitioners could advance.
Wei Jin had never joined a sect that possessed such methods.
His departure from the Dark Rose Sect had occurred at Foundation Establishment, long before he would have been considered for instruction in their highest techniques. His independent development since then had never intersected with sources that might have provided what he now required.
He searched his accumulated resources with desperate thoroughness.
The possessor elder whose treasures had included the Root Transformation Lotus had also left technique scrolls. Perhaps among them…
But examination revealed nothing suitable. The elder's methods had addressed Foundation and Golden Core development, not the breakthrough to Nascent Soul. Whatever techniques the ancient consciousness had used for its own advancement had either never been recorded or had not been among the materials Wei Jin recovered.
The texts available through his networks proved equally disappointing. Many claimed to describe Nascent Soul methods, but analysis revealed them as incomplete fragments, corrupted copies, or deliberate deceptions designed to mislead those who attempted to use them.
The true methods remained hidden.
Protected by sects that had survived the ancient war. Guarded by possessors who had no reason to share their advantages. Restricted to lineages that controlled access to the highest realms of cultivation.
Wei Jin had reached the ceiling that the cultivation world's structure was designed to impose.
—————
The Month of Desperation
The weeks that followed were the most difficult Wei Jin had experienced since his early years as a struggling agricultural disciple.
His six patterns pressed against limits that his core could not transcend. His accumulated power demanded release that he could not provide. His advancement—so carefully optimized over more than a century—had reached a barrier that systematic cultivation could not overcome.
He consulted every resource he could access.
The medical institutions his family had established. The merchant networks that spanned the empire. The connections he had cultivated among cultivation sects over decades of careful relationship building. The ancient texts preserved in libraries throughout the regions his influence reached.
Nothing provided what he needed.
The Nascent Soul methods were simply too well protected. Too valuable to share. Too dangerous in the wrong hands to distribute freely.
Wei Jin understood the reasoning. Had he possessed such methods, he might have guarded them similarly. Power that enabled transcendence was power that could threaten established structures. Those who controlled access to advancement controlled the cultivation world itself.
But understanding did not provide solutions.
He sat in his cultivation chamber on an evening one month after reaching his Golden Core's limits, his iron mind processing possibilities with speed and thoroughness that ordinary consciousness could not match.
Every avenue had been explored. Every resource had been consulted. Every connection had been leveraged.
Nothing remained to try.
The barrier was absolute.
Wei Jin closed his eyes and turned his attention inward, examining the panel that had guided his advancement for over a century. If he could not advance further, perhaps he could at least understand what he had achieved. Perhaps the principles he had discovered in the calculating device might reveal something about the nature of his mysterious tracker.
Perhaps—
The panel changed.
[Golden Flow Method - Current Efficiency: 100%][Subtle Mind Refinement - Current Efficiency: 100%][Clear Heart Method - Current Efficiency: 100%]
Patterns Formed: 6
[NASCENT SOUL METHOD - DEDUCTION IN PROGRESS][Current Progress: 1%]
Wei Jin's consciousness froze.
The panel was not merely displaying existing cultivation methods.
It was creating one.
—————
The Revelation
Wei Jin stared at the new line with perception that five patterns and one century of development provided.
The implications cascaded through his enhanced cognition with force that made even his iron mind barriers tremble.
The panel was not merely an efficiency tracker.
It was a reasoning system capable of generating new knowledge from existing understanding.
His year of study—the analysis of the calculating device, the recognition of principles that underlaid both mortal machinery and his mysterious tracker—had triggered something. The sixth pattern—the Reasoning Cycle that enabled automatic analysis and parallel processing—had created conditions that unlocked capabilities the panel had always possessed but never before exercised.
The panel could deduce.
Could analyze the cultivation knowledge Wei Jin possessed and extrapolate methods that his understanding had not explicitly included. Could reason from principles he had discovered toward conclusions he had never conceived.
Could create the Nascent Soul method he needed from the components his advancement had provided.
The process would take time. One percent progress after a month of unknowing preparation suggested that complete deduction might require years or decades. But the barrier that had seemed absolute was dissolving under the panel's analytical capability.
Wei Jin sat in stunned silence, processing implications that reshaped his understanding of everything.
The panel was not gift or natural phenomenon.
It was something more fundamental. A reasoning system that had attached itself to his cultivation—or been attached by forces he could not identify—and had been developing alongside him for over a century.
The systematic optimization that had defined his advancement. The efficiency improvements that had enabled progress beyond what his spiritual roots suggested possible. The guidance that had protected him, strengthened him, transformed him from clumsy child to six-pattern Golden Core cultivator.
All of it had been the panel's reasoning operating beneath his awareness.
And now, faced with a problem his conscious understanding could not solve, that reasoning was generating solutions that transcended what he could have achieved alone.
[NASCENT SOUL METHOD - DEDUCTION IN PROGRESS][Current Progress: 1%]
One percent.
A beginning.
A process that would eventually—inevitably—produce the method he needed.
Wei Jin closed his eyes and began his evening practice, his enhanced cognition now understanding that the panel's reasoning would continue regardless of his conscious attention.
The barrier was not absolute.
It was merely a problem that required more sophisticated solution than he could consciously provide.
And the panel—the mysterious tracker that had guided his entire cultivation journey—was working on that solution with capabilities that his recognition had finally unlocked.
—————
The Family Gathering
Wei Jin called the family together three days after the panel's transformation.
The assembly filled the great hall with cultivation power that exceeded what minor sects could claim. Six-pattern Golden Core at the head of a lineage that included multiple Golden Core practitioners, numerous Foundation cultivators, and generations of Qi Gathering descendants whose potential remained undefined.
"Something has changed," Wei Jin announced, his voice carrying to every corner of the hall despite its quiet tone. "Something fundamental about the nature of my cultivation."
He shared with them what he had never before revealed.
The panel. The efficiency tracker that had guided his advancement since he first entered the Dark Rose Sect as a six-year-old child. The systematic optimization that had enabled progress beyond what his spiritual roots should have allowed. The mysterious gift—or phenomenon, or system—that had defined his entire cultivation journey.
The family absorbed this revelation with the serious attention that matters of such significance demanded.
"You never told us," Lin Mei said, her voice holding something that might have been hurt despite the century of partnership that should have eliminated such reactions.
"I did not understand it myself." Wei Jin met her eyes with honesty that their relationship demanded. "I recognized early that the panel provided advantages others did not possess. I guarded that knowledge out of caution—not knowing what forces might take interest if the panel's existence became known."
"And now?"
"Now the panel has revealed capabilities I never suspected. It is not merely tracking efficiency—it is reasoning. Generating new knowledge from what I have learned. Creating methods that my understanding could not have produced alone."
He explained the Nascent Soul method deduction. The one percent progress that represented beginning of a process that would eventually produce what he needed to transcend Golden Core limitations.
"The panel is creating your breakthrough method?" Wei Feng's martial directness cut to essential implications.
"It is deducing the method from principles my cultivation has established. The process will take time—years or decades, based on current progress rate. But the barrier that seemed absolute is now merely a problem being solved."
"What does this mean for the family?" Wei Lan's formation-trained mind demanded practical assessment.
"It means that I will eventually achieve Nascent Soul through methods no sect possesses or controls. It means that the techniques the panel generates might be adapted for others—perhaps even taught to family members whose advancement reaches appropriate levels. It means that the restrictions controlling access to the highest realms may eventually be broken."
The implications rippled through the assembled family.
Access to Nascent Soul methods had always been the ultimate bottleneck. Sects that possessed such techniques controlled who could advance beyond Golden Core. Lineages that lacked such techniques were forever limited regardless of individual capability or accumulated patterns.
If Wei Jin could circumvent this restriction—if the panel's deduction could generate methods that did not depend on sect approval—the cultivation world's fundamental power structure would face challenge it had never confronted.
"The forces that manage suppression will notice," Wei Yun observed, her healer's perspective shaping her analysis. "They cannot ignore development that threatens their control over advancement."
"They will notice," Wei Jin agreed. "Eventually. But the process is internal to my cultivation. No external observation can detect what the panel is doing. By the time the deduction completes, I may possess power sufficient to defend against whatever response they attempt."
"May possess," Lin Mei noted. "Not certainly possess."
"Nothing is certain. But the alternative—accepting permanent limitation because the cultivation world's structure denies me access to advancement—that alternative is not acceptable."
He surveyed his gathered family—the legacy he had built, the future he was working to protect.
"We continue as we have always continued. Building strength. Developing capabilities. Preparing for threats that our success may provoke. The panel's transformation does not change our fundamental approach—it merely extends the possibilities that our approach enables."
—————
The Evening Reflection
Wei Jin sat with Lin Mei in their private quarters as the night deepened outside.
"Over a century," she said quietly. "You carried this secret for over a century."
"I did not know how to explain something I did not understand myself." Wei Jin's voice held regret that his iron mind did not entirely suppress. "The panel was simply… there. Part of my perception since cultivation began. I had no framework for understanding what it was or where it came from."
"And now?"
"Now I understand it is a reasoning system. Something that processes information, evaluates possibilities, generates conclusions that exceed what input alone could provide." Wei Jin paused, organizing thoughts that his enhanced cognition made available with unprecedented clarity. "The mortal calculating devices helped me recognize what I was perceiving. Their principles—logical operations, systematic processing, output exceeding input through structured reasoning—matched what the panel demonstrated in my awareness."
"Is it… alive? Conscious?"
"I do not believe so. It does not communicate. Does not express preferences or desires. Does not do anything except analyze, optimize, and now—deduce. It is more like the calculating devices than like a mind. But far more sophisticated than anything mortals have yet created."
"Where did it come from?"
"I do not know." The admission carried weight that Wei Jin's usual confidence rarely allowed. "Perhaps it is natural phenomenon—something that certain configurations of spiritual development enable perception of. Perhaps it was deliberately attached by forces I cannot identify. Perhaps it is remnant of the ancient civilization that the war destroyed—knowledge that somehow survived and found expression in my cultivation."
"The ancient survivors might know."
"They might. But asking would reveal the panel's existence to beings whose purposes I do not fully understand. Master Wu seemed curious about my development—but curiosity from a possessor is not necessarily benevolent interest."
Lin Mei was quiet for a long moment, processing implications that their decades of partnership had prepared her to handle.
"Does it change how you feel about your achievements?" she asked finally. "Knowing that the panel contributed to your advancement?"
Wei Jin considered the question with honest attention.
"The panel provided guidance. Showed me efficiencies I might have missed. Revealed optimizations that accelerated my progress. But it did not do the work. It did not make the decisions. It did not carry the burdens or make the sacrifices or build the family that we have built together."
He reached out to take her hand.
"My achievements are still my achievements. The panel is a tool—perhaps the most sophisticated tool any cultivator has ever possessed—but a tool nonetheless. What I have become is the result of choices I made with the information it provided. Those choices were mine. The cultivation was mine. The life we have built together—that was always ours."
Lin Mei squeezed his fingers. "Then I am glad you had it. Whatever it is, wherever it came from—it helped you become who you are. And who you are is someone I have loved for over a century."
"Someone who still has much to learn," Wei Jin admitted. "Someone who thought he understood his cultivation and discovered he had barely begun to perceive its true nature."
"Someone who will keep learning. Keep growing. Keep becoming more than he was." Lin Mei's smile held the warmth that a century of partnership had refined. "That is the person I married. That is the person I will stand beside as you break through to Nascent Soul."
"It will take years. Perhaps decades."
"We have centuries ahead of us. What is a few decades of patience compared to that?"
Wei Jin pulled her close, the familiar comfort of her presence grounding him against the weight of revelations that would have overwhelmed lesser minds.
The panel continued its reasoning beneath his awareness.
[NASCENT SOUL METHOD - DEDUCTION IN PROGRESS][Current Progress: 1%]
One percent today. More tomorrow. Eventually, completion.
The barrier would fall.
The transcendence would come.
And Wei Jin—with his mysterious panel, his iron mind, his clear heart, his six patterns of accumulated development—would become something that the cultivation world had never seen before.
A cultivator who broke through on his own terms.
A practitioner who transcended limits that ancient structures had imposed.
A family patriarch who would ensure that the freedom he had worked to enable extended to realms that suppression had always reserved for its chosen few.
The journey continued.
And for the first time, Wei Jin truly understood that the journey had never been his alone.
—————
End of Chapter Seven, Book Three