Immortal Freeloader 144 (Patreon)

I watched from the shadows as a seventy-year-old man silently surpassed the Connate Realm, his body transforming with the assistance of the Forest Essence I had created.

He was not the first one. He was not even one of the first thousand.

No, currently, he was one of the eleven thousand Blood Essence realm martial artists, spread between almost a hundred different enclaves.

It had been a month since I had recruited the first disciple, and the mysterious nameless sect that was dedicated to the growth of the forest had grown in leaps and bounds. Their breakthroughs had been far easier compared to the martial artists of Burning Blizzard.

Ironically, it was the problem I was trying to solve.

From the perspective of the benefits, it was not a problem. After all, the stronger they were, the faster they could expand the endless spirit forests, which would allow me to explore the misty mountains even faster, which was critical to understanding the truth behind the conspiracy.

However, the fact that I didn’t understand what was going on unsettled me. Just because it was currently beneficial, it didn’t mean it would stay that way in the future.

One that confused me more was the pace of the change. For the first week, the speed of development was just like I had expected. It started to exceed that by week two, which turned alarming. Especially since it seemed to only get faster.

It worked that way even with the new bases, even if I didn’t bring any trainers from the older enclaves.

Of course, I had one suspect, but only today, I had managed to collect the tool that could hopefully allow me to examine it. One that I was able to receive thanks to Janassa, and only because I had piled her with a shocking number of cultivation pills, pushing her cultivation to the peak of Formation Establishment.

[310x Return - Kartpa Alchemy Technique Lesson - Major Accomplishment, Perfection]

It wasn’t exactly ideal, even though I had done my best to keep the quality of the pills high enough to manage the side effects. Forcefully raising cultivation with the assistance of the pills was certainly harmful. I had yet to discover the process of breaking into the Golden Core, but even without it, I knew that any such attempt would have ended messily.

I still dared to push her — in the form of missions from the interface — not because I was merciless, but because I was confident I could fix it. I could have done so if my real cultivation was at Golden Core, but even without it, I was confident that I could find a way.

I just needed to reach the Immersion realm first, and if that wasn’t enough Integration.

With a deep sigh, I activated the skill, receiving another magical injection of knowledge. “Finally,” I said even as I absorbed the knowledge, and experienced the great difference. However, while the increased Alchemy ability meant that I could refine even greater amounts of pills with ease while maintaining the quality, I didn’t care about it for the moment.

I had a bigger reward in mind. The ability to analyze the alchemical tree I designed as a spiritual pillar. I had examined every other variable behind the sudden and unexpected development of the Forest Dance disciples and confirmed that nothing was extraordinary.

The only exception was the alchemical tree I had created as a container. While I was the one that created it, it didn’t mean I completely understood it. The tree had implemented some Golden Core and Nascent Soul aspects, and the lack of the corresponding cultivation knowledge meant that I didn’t always understand the full implications of what I had been doing.

I was hoping that, by increasing it to Perfection, I could understand the drivers for that improvement further.

“Let’s see,” I said even as I put my hand on the trunk of the alchemical tree, examining its structure, ready to delve into the details of its structure like the replacement wood, and the connection of the essence.

But, I didn’t need to. Because I immediately found the source of the ‘problem’.

Providence.

It was a subtle effect, spreading across the tree that I used as a spiritual pillar, with several tendrils leading out … tendrils that pointed to the location of the other enclaves I had created.

For a moment, I froze, my mind inevitably going to the horrible vision I had seen under the capital, the chained undead that was cursed by Providence. But, that flash was only a momentary reaction, as the difference between the two was apparent.

He had been used as a focus to a method to gather Providence, which was clearly a horrible idea, and what I had been feeling from the underground prison had only confirmed it further.

The province I could feel at the heart of the alchemical tree, and subtly bonding with the material.

“Alright, at least it confirms that I guessed correctly. There was one thing I neglected.” What I neglected was the high-quality material of the alchemical tree, somewhat absorbing providence to improve. That process meant that the Providence managed to stay invisible to my senses until I reached Perfection.

Unfortunately, even with the Perfection, that was all I could understand. Even for Nascent Soul, Providence was a mysterious concept. A Qi Gathering cultivator understood more about Qi than a Nascent Soul understood about Providence.

They could detect, and manipulate in very limited ways, but that was it. My own ability was even worse, lacking the cultivation technique portion, limiting my abilities to understand and manipulate Providence even further.

Not that I was exactly enthusiastic about manipulating Providence, as it was hardly a safe thing to do. However, it meant that I couldn’t even fully understand how Providence created some kind of connective web between the different trees, and how it enhanced the cultivation of the martial artists.

“At least I don’t have to wonder about why Providence gathered,” I said as I pulled my hand back. While everything else was a mystery, that one was simple.

Ridiculously so.

Good deeds resulted in Providence. While that statement was not simple — as to what exactly was good, how Heavenly Dao measured it, or why there was such a reward mechanism — the gathering providence explained one thing. The act of spreading spirit plants and essence plants and increasing the Qi density of the world counted as a good deed.

It wasn’t much. Singularly, the effect was too light for me to notice. However, I had almost a hundred thousand martial artists, more than a tenth of them in the Blood Essence realm, each doing nothing but work peacefully to cover the lands with forests full of spirit plants.

The surprise part was that the Providence that rewarded their action didn’t gather around them, but actually gathered into the spiritual pillar, and turned into some kind of a collective resource.

I might have suspected that it might be a side effect of using the alchemical tree based on Nascent Soul techniques, but I had one strong evidence against that assumption.

That horror show underneath the capital. They were not somehow gathering Providence for their benefit — I guessed — but actively positioning Everdawn Empire as the responsible party.

It wasn’t the source of the weakness of the essence, maybe, but it certainly played a part. Even now, there was one aspect I couldn’t properly understand, creating a web of connections between the different spiritual pillar trees.

Most likely, the spiritual pillar of the Everdawn Empire had something similar feature, one that at least gathered more Providence. And, if that was the case, creating those Providence collection traps would have been an excellent way to corrupt that main entity.

“It has so many implications,” I muttered even as I left the enclave, only to go deeper into the territory, and start creating five more enclaves, and this time, I made them even larger. Now that I understood the source of the cultivation speed, I had no problem scaling it up even further.

Risky, but when billions of lives were at stake, that much risk was acceptable.

And, working with the monotony allowed me to test the limits of my new discovery. I realized that the providence connection wasn’t created the moment I had refined a new tree. However, it didn’t actually need the collection of Providence.

No, the moment the density of Forest Essence surpassed a certain point, the tree had joined the web of connections and started receiving Providence from the other trees, almost like spreading the effect.

That was an interesting and promising mechanic. Too bad I didn’t dare to use it to find the location of the Everdawn Empire, not with its providence actively being manipulated by hostile forces.

Luckily, Everdawn Empire was not my only option.