I felt it first, only about an hour after the portal sent out its bright beacon into the night sky. Someone had reached their arm into the portal but didn't walk entirely through. The sensation rippled through my connection with the world bead like a stone dropped into still water. Whoever it was had pulled back quickly, probably startled by the complete darkness they encountered.
Sleep eluded me after that. I lay in bed, hyperaware of every subtle shift in the portal's energy signature, waiting for the inevitable. The pillar of light had been impossible to miss. By now, emergency services would have cordoned off the area, followed shortly by military personnel once they realized they were dealing with something beyond their understanding.
It wasn't until morning light filtered through my window that the first person actually walked entirely through the portal and appeared inside the Eastern Region of my world bead space. I sent my awareness into the pocket dimension and saw that it was a military soldier, exactly as I'd expected. His desert camouflage uniform looked out of place against the pristine landscape of rolling hills and crystal-clear streams.
The soldier stood frozen, mouth agape as he took in the impossible vista before him. The sun and dual moons hung in an azure sky, casting warm light over vegetation that seemed to pulse with vibrant life. The air itself shimmered with spiritual energy, though far less dense than the Core Region.
Sending my awareness to the outside portal area, I confirmed my suspicions. They had erected a green military tent over the portal and filled it to the brim with electronic detection equipment. Laptops, sensors, and devices I couldn't identify cluttered every available surface. On the floor lay a scattered pile of guns and other equipment, no doubt rejected by the portal during the soldier's entry. Standing around the portal were about ten more soldiers with their weapons aimed at the dimensional gateway.
Inside the world bead, the soldier was being fed cultivation knowledge by the Heavenly Dao. I watched his eyes widen as fundamental understanding flooded his mind. Information about spiritual energy, vital energy , cultivation realms, and his own elemental affinity downloaded directly into his consciousness. The process took only seconds, but I could see the profound shift in his expression as he grasped the implications of what he'd just learned.
The soldier looked down at his empty hands, then patted his sides where his sidearm and equipment should have been. Panic flashed across his face as he realized he was completely unarmed in this strange new world.
Without hesitation, he spun around and stepped back through the portal, appearing outside again in the military tent.
"What happened in there, Sergeant Martinez?" A commanding voice barked immediately.
Martinez stared at the pile of weapons on the ground, his face pale. "Sir, I... I received knowledge. Directly into my mind. About cultivation, about spiritual energy, about something called elemental affinity." His voice carried a mixture of awe and terror.
"Explain."
"It's like someone downloaded an entire education into my head in seconds. I know things now that I didn't know before. About realms of power, about tempering the human body beyond normal limits." Martinez crossed himself, making the sign of the cross over his chest. "Sir, with all due respect, the only explanation for this portal's existence is divine intervention. There's a God doing this."
Murmurs rippled through the assembled soldiers. Several others made the sign of the cross, while others shifted uncomfortably at the religious implications.
"Sergeant, you're telling me that portal is some kind of... divine gift?"
"Yes sir. The knowledge I received, it's too vast, too perfect to be anything else. And the world inside..." Martinez shook his head. "It's paradise, sir. A cultivation paradise designed to elevate humanity beyond our current limitations."
I smiled from my apartment across the city. The first seed had been planted. Soon, word would spread beyond military channels, and humanity would begin to understand what I was offering them.
But first, I had to make it obvious that the portal would not be controlled. Sending my awareness into the world bead, I closed the portal and moved its anchor point outside of the park and outside of the military quarantine area before opening the portal again. Another pillar of light shined into the sky from a new location three blocks away.
The military soldiers were rightfully surprised at the action. Through my connection to the world bead, I could sense their confusion and mounting frustration as their carefully constructed perimeter became useless in an instant. As soon as the pillar of light reappeared, they all rushed to the portal's new location, abandoning their equipment-filled tent and scrambling to establish a new containment zone.
I removed my awareness from the portal and gave control of it to the Heavenly Dao of my world bead. I didn't have the patience to consistently move the portal around every time the military tried to lock it down. The Heavenly Dao could manage it for me with far more efficiency than my manual oversight. Instead, I was more interested in how the human cultivation community would grow once people actually gained access to the dimensional space.
I turned on the news and, as I'd thought, information about the light pillar was all over the broadcasts. Every major network had breaking news alerts scrolling across their screens. Reporters stood outside Jeffrey Fontana Park with confused expressions, gesturing at empty air where the pillar had been just hours before. The government still hadn't revealed what the light was, but it wouldn't be long before people found out. Especially since the portal would keep moving until the military no longer blocked access to it.
"Authorities are baffled by the sudden disappearance of the mysterious light phenomenon that appeared over San Jose last night," the news anchor reported. "Military personnel who had cordoned off the area are now searching for the source of a similar light that has appeared approximately three blocks away."
Then it occurred to me that if the world bead could just move the portal anchors around indefinitely, couldn't I just generate dozens of anchors and have the world bead move them all over the world on their own? I wouldn't have to travel anywhere in that case. No need for the Bone Molding Divine Art transformations or sneaking around different countries. The world bead could handle global distribution while I focused on more important matters.
The Heavenly Dao of my world bead acknowledged my idea, though it warned me that the speed of the anchors was not too fast. It might take months for the portals to travel all around the Earth if I wanted proper global coverage. The anchors moved at roughly the speed of a brisk jog, with the distance to the other side of the Earth at about 12,000 miles, it would take roughly 30-60 days to reach it. Over the next two months, new portals will pop up in all locations of the Earth as the anchors spread with San Jose as its center.
I generated a few dozen portals, enough for just about all of the major countries to have at least one, and the world bead sent them all on their journeys. Some headed east toward New York and Washington D.C., others west toward Los Angeles and Seattle. A few began the long trek across the Pacific toward Tokyo and Beijing, while others started the journey across the Atlantic toward London and Paris.
Each portal anchor was no larger than a grain of sand, invisible to the naked eye and undetectable by most scanning equipment. They would travel through cities, across oceans, over mountains and through forests, following paths calculated by the Heavenly Dao to maximize human exposure while minimizing government interference.
Within hours, reports began flooding in from around the world. A pillar of light had appeared briefly in downtown Los Angeles before vanishing and reappearing in San Francisco. Another had manifested in Times Square for exactly seventeen minutes before relocating to Central Park. The pattern was clear to anyone paying attention: these phenomena were mobile, intelligent, and completely beyond human control.
I leaned back on my couch and smiled. Soon, every major population center on Earth would have access to cultivation. The age of spiritual awakening was about to begin, and no government or military force could stop it.
Now was the time for me to start thinking about how to manage merit. With my knowledge of artifact refining, I knew there were plenty of artifacts that could remotely connect to a central network, kind of like an internet. However, I didn't have the cultivation or the proper materials to craft most of it.
I racked my brain as I needed a system that couldn't be tampered with by anyone but me. I intended to use this as a system to track everyone's merit like a currency system. It also needed to automatically grant or allow trading of merit without my manual input.
The more I thought about it, the more complex the problem became. Traditional merit systems relied on manual oversight or trusted intermediaries. But with potentially thousands of cultivators eventually entering my world, I couldn't personally track every good deed, every contribution to the community, every act of protecting weaker cultivators from the beasts outside the Eastern Region. The system had to be automated, incorruptible, and completely beyond the reach of anyone who might want to game it for personal advantage.
I consulted with my world bead to see if there were any solutions it could help me with. The Heavenly Dao responded immediately with images and concepts flowing into my mind. Fortunately, there was something I could do.
The solution was elegant in its simplicity. By combining basic artifact refinement techniques with the Heavenly Dao's inherent connection to the world bead, I could create identity tokens that would revolutionize how the cultivation community functioned. The tokens themselves wouldn't require expensive materials. Simple spirit beast hide would suffice as a base, with the Heavenly Dao providing the true functionality through its connection to each piece.
The beauty of the design became clear as the Heavenly Dao shared more details through flowing images and conceptual understanding. The tokens would be completely integrated with each person's spiritual signature once they dropped blood on them to recognize their lord. This made them impossible to forge, steal, or transfer once bound. They would exist living inside the person's hand and could only be manifested and used by their bound owner. Even if someone cut off the hand, the token would simply disperse and reform inside the owner's other hand.
Trading merit points could be done between two tokens, but for safety it had to be completed entirely under free will. The Heavenly Dao would sense any coercion, fear, or external pressure during the transaction and simply cancel it. No one could be forced to hand over their merit at gunpoint or through threats.
The communication function worked similarly to a friends list. A person could register another token to theirs, establishing a two way connection. Once someone was on your list, you could send mental messages to that person and they could send messages back. The range was unlimited as long as both tokens existed within the world bead's influence.
The final feature impressed me most. Contracts could be established between two tokens, binding both parties to agreed terms. The Heavenly Dao itself would enforce compliance, interpreting the intent behind simple, clearly stated rules. If punishments weren't explicitly defined in the contract, the Heavenly Dao would determine appropriate consequences based on the severity of the breach. This created an entirely new framework for commerce, partnerships, and agreements within the cultivation community, one that couldn't be corrupted by lawyers or loopholes.
Meanwhile, gaining merit points would be handled mostly by the Heavenly Dao itself. Whenever someone performed an action worthy of merit, cultivating to higher realms, protecting weaker cultivators from beasts, contributing resources to the community, the Heavenly Dao would update the merit point counter on their token. Since each token was partially created by the Heavenly Dao, it could bind its consciousness to them and manage merit points even after people left the world bead and returned to Earth.
Conversely, the Heavenly Dao could track negative actions and reduce merit accordingly. Theft, assault, destruction of community property. However, I decided to hold off on implementing that feature for now. I didn't want to completely restrict everyone's actions or become some kind of divine babysitter micromanaging every minor transgression.
I entered into the core space of the world bead and took out some low level beast hides from beasts I had hunted for food over the few weeks of cultivation. The spiritual energy here was so dense that even the weakest creatures possessed hide with minor spiritual properties, making them suitable for basic artifact crafting.
The Heavenly Dao guided my hands as I began the refinement process. Despite my limited experience, the world bead's influence made up for my lack of skill. I carefully cut the hide into small squares, each about the size of a coin. Then, using a small needle with the Heavenly Dao guiding my hand, I began inscribing microscopic inscriptions into each piece.
The inscriptions were incredibly complex despite their tiny size. Each token contained identification matrices, merit storage, communication pathways to the Heavenly Dao, and security protocols that would prevent any external tampering. The vital energy required for the inscriptions came directly from the world bead itself, ensuring that each token carried a piece of the pocket dimension's authority.
After several hours of accelerated time flow, I had completed the first batch of fifty tokens. They looked like simple leather squares to the naked eye, but I could sense the complex spiritual formations humming within each one. When the first cultivators arrived and bonded with these tokens through blood recognition, they would become the foundation of an entirely new social system based on merit rather than force or political connections.
For the next few days, I threw myself into token creation with single-minded determination. The world bead's accelerated time flow became my greatest asset, allowing me to work for what felt like weeks while only hours passed in the real world. My fingers grew nimble with the inscription tools, and my control over them became increasingly precise with each batch.
What started as painstaking work on individual tokens evolved into an efficient production line. By the second day, I was completing batches of hundreds. By the fourth, I was outputting thousands at a time. The formations that had once required my complete concentration became second nature, flowing from my hands like practiced calligraphy.
However, my rapid progress created an unexpected problem. The beast hides I'd initially gathered were completely depleted after the first thousand tokens. I needed more materials, and that meant hunting.
Using my authority as the world bead's master, I butchered several more spiritual beasts. Each kill provided not only the hide I needed but also meat that I stored in my storage ring. The beast meat never spoiled inside the storage space, creating an indefinite food supply for future cultivation sessions.
As I worked, reports from the Eastern Region grew increasingly encouraging. New cultivators arrived daily through the various portals, their numbers steadily climbing as word spread across Earth. Most adapted quickly to the merit system, forming small communities and helping each other navigate the basics of cultivation.
The mathematics were staggering. Once the portal anchors finished their global journey and established permanent gateways in every major population center, I estimated that several billion people would pass the moral screening test and gain entry. Each would need a token, which meant I had barely scratched the surface of the production requirements ahead of me.
Several billion tokens. The number should have been daunting, but instead it filled me with anticipation. Each token represented another human being elevated beyond their mortal limitations, another step toward transforming our entire species.