Elias sat motionless, he didn't have much time, he felt bloated . He wasn't meditating in the slow, sleepy way the sect taught, where disciples just breathed deeply and hoped for the best. No, Elias was doing something far more intense: he was actively managing and monitoring a 37.2-trillion-node spiritual network—his own body—for any signs of self-detonation. It was like being the sole engineer of a massive, super-sensitive power grid, constantly checking for blown fuses.
A tiny flicker behind his ribs—cluster 2A03-Q (as he mentally labeled it) had a momentary wobble in its energy flow. He gently nudged the internal rotation angle of the Qi within that cell cluster by five degrees. Fixed. Another little energy node in the sole of his right foot was vibrating slightly out of sync with the rest of his leg's energy channels. He ran a quick three-second recalibration cycle. Smoothed.
"Can't believe the manuals call this 'just sitting still', my buttocks hurt." he muttered, a dry chuckle escaping his lips. He was working harder sitting still than most cultivators did during a full sparring match.
His skin felt tight. And he didn't mean it in a dramatic, "I'm so stressed" way. It was literally stretched from the inside, his skin under immense pressure. Qi energy was packed so densely within his billions of cells that the internal pressure could probably vaporize a small frog if he concentrated it enough. It was like wearing a suit that was slowly expanding, but the suit was his own body.
There was no guide for this. No ancient scroll in the outer, inner, or even the super-secret core library said anything about what to do when your entire circulatory system felt like it was whistling like a leaky teapot.
He shifted slightly on his meditation mat, and the stone floor beneath him gave a low, protesting creak. He felt a bead of sweat trickle down his temple, not from heat, but from the sheer concentration.
"I've become a pressure cooker," he mumbled. A very dangerous, very concentrated pressure cooker.
Elias wasn't worried about failing in his cultivation. He was worried about leakage. With that much Qi packed into his system, even a slight slip-up, a tiny misalignment of energy flow, could be catastrophic. It could rupture a meridian (like a burst pipe in his internal energy system). Or, worse, ignite spontaneous cellular combustion—meaning, a part of him could just burst into flames-or more like blood splatter.
"If one of my eyelashes gets itchy, I might vaporize the roof of this cave. Or worse, my entire arm." The thought was both terrifying and, to his strange scientific mind, morbidly fascinating. The potential energy release was enormous.
So, naturally, he created backup systems. Lots of them.
He began with his nervous system—using his precise divine sense power to map and encode conditional escape valves. He saw his nerves not just as signal carriers, but as potential emergency bypass routes. Each major nerve cluster became a controlled bleed-off node, programmed to activate if internal Qi pressure in that area exceeded a preset, dangerous threshold. It was like installing tiny pressure release valves all over his body.
He mentally carved the first node at the base of his spine, layering in mind-scan runes so small, so intricate, they'd make a fly's eye seem bulky in comparison. Then he placed eight more, strategically across his torso and limbs, forming an internal emergency array woven directly into his flesh.
"Just in case I sneeze too hard and accidentally turn into a local weather phenomenon," he quipped to himself, a dry grin on his face. "Like a sudden, localized Qi-storm. That would be awkward."
Next came the skeletal reinforcements. He realized very quickly that his bones, while strengthened by the Qi he'd packed into his cells, were still… well, bones. They were organic, imperfect. Not tough carbon fiber. Not indestructible titanium alloy. Just calcium and minerals.
So, naturally, he ran a full diagnostic on his entire skeleton, down to the molecular level.
He began carefully altering the internal atomic structure of his skeletal system using subatomic manipulation via divine sense. What was once a simple bone matrix became a complex, triangular crystalline reinforcement pattern, hexagonally layered. It was like taking a brick wall and reinforcing every single brick with microscopic, unbreakable rebar, then arranging them in the strongest possible geometric shape.
"Strong, flexible, and potentially useful for broadcasting low-band Qi frequencies," Elias mused, observing the new structure with a thrill of discovery. "Huh. Built-in antennas. Handy."
For his muscle tissue, he didn't just strengthen it. He wove internal energy-regulating "micro-coils"—muscle fibers that were shaped and trained into pulsing, spring-like lattices. These acted like hydraulic dampeners for spiritual pressure, absorbing shocks and regulating the immense energy flow whenever he moved. Every flex, every step, was now controlled with incredible precision, absorbing the internal pressure like a high-performance suspension system.
Even his organs were given structural failsafes. His lungs? Layered like an advanced bellows with alternating Qi-absorptive folds, making them incredibly efficient at drawing in and processing ambient Qi without overloading. His liver? Tempered into a hyper-efficient chemical filtration unit for any spiritual impurities that might creep into his system, cleansing his internal Qi with unparalleled speed.
His heart? Well… Elias paused, placing a hand gently over his chest. "You are now the motherboard, sorry, little guy," he said out loud, almost tenderly. He had woven complex Qi channels around his heart, ensuring it could withstand the immense energy pulsing through his body, turning it into the central processing unit for his entire Qi network.
On the eighth day of this insane internal makeover, he initiated a full-system stress test.
He sat down. Breathed once, a deep, slow inhale. And then, with a silent mental command, he gave himself permission to begin Qi flow from all 37.2 trillion micro-dantians simultaneously. It was like opening every single faucet in a city at once, but the water was pure, raw energy, and the city was his body.
The results flashed across his internal display:
Qi density in his body increased by 4,300% in just three seconds.
His divine sense recorded 1,271 near-failures, tiny moments where parts of his body were about to break under the pressure. All of them self-corrected instantly via his newly installed bleed-off arrays and structural reinforcements.
The ambient air in his cave began to ionize, crackling faintly. His clothes developed a soft, almost imperceptible electric hum.
The simple wax candle on his desk, left there for dim light, began to melt. Not just the wax, but the entire candle, slowly sinking through the solid stone desk beneath it, liquefying it with residual energy bleed.
And yet—Elias was stable. He wasn't vaporizing. He wasn't screaming. He was intact.
He grinned. A tight, tired, utterly triumphant expression.
"Congratulations," he whispered to himself, his voice raspy from disuse and strain. "You are now an unsanctioned nuclear power plant. In sandals." The raw power thrumming beneath his skin was exhilarating, dangerous, and perfectly under his control.
But then came the real challenge. The next stage: Foundation Establishment.
The sect's dusty manuals described the breakthrough in flowery, poetic terms: "Shape your Qi into a sturdy foundation within your dantian, stabilizing it with unwavering will and gentle breathing."
Elias stared at the mental image of the scroll. "Translation," he thought, a familiar wave of scientific disdain washing over him: "Build a glorified Qi donut in your stomach and hope it doesn't collapse under pressure. Good luck with that."
Nope. That wouldn't do. A "Qi donut" was not a stable structure for an energy grid of his magnitude. He needed a proper container—not a puddle. Not a cloud. Not a wobbly, spinning disc. He needed a structure worthy of housing what was essentially a city-sized energy grid shrunk down into human form.
So he turned back to physics. Advanced physics. The kind that made planets look like simple toys.
He visualized it: A perfect, three-dimensional, fractal-stabilized containment shell. Built not in his dantian, which he now considered an inefficient relic, but woven across his entire nervous system, a living, responsive architecture. He imagined interlocking triangular lattices, layered in nested tetrahedrons, forming an infinitely strong, infinitely adaptable internal framework. Qi filters would be aligned along his blood vessels, acting like circuit regulators, ensuring clean, stable power flow to every corner of his body.
And the core of it all? Not in the gut. But in his pineal gland—the most naturally electromagnetic and neurologically complex point in the body, a biological control center already attuned to subtle energies.
"If I'm going to ascend to godhood," he muttered, the ambition clear in his voice, "I'm doing it with symmetry and proper engineering."
He began the initial blueprint—sculpting the spiritual "Foundation" not as a wobbly blob of Qi, but as a dynamic, self-adjusting reactor casing capable of scaling exponentially, adapting to limitless power.
Meanwhile, outside his heavily sealed room, in the bustling outer sect, no one had noticed anything. The gentle ebb and flow of ambient Qi returned to normal. No alarms blared. No elders came knocking.
Because Elias, as always, kept his mind-scan power tighter than a miser's purse. All energy flow was internal. His powerful formation was buried beneath layers of stone. His activities masked by low-tier disciple camouflage, his presence as unremarkable as a pebble on the path.
Back in his room, Elias wiped sweat from his brow. His body was thrumming, a quiet engine of immense power.
Three weeks. Three weeks of non-stop saturation. Modification. Rerouting. Restructuring. He was exhausted, but exhilaratingly alive.
He looked at his internal mental display, plotting his next moves. "Next step: simulate the Foundation Establishment collapse scenarios. Then initiate containment core construction." He paused, blinked, and cracked his knuckles, the joints popping loudly in the quiet room.
"After that… we'll finally get to do some real research." The true journey, he knew, was just beginning.