Ch. 7115 May
Qingxue reached out and pulled Alexei up from the meditation cushion where he had been sitting for the past several hours.
"Cultivation requires focus," she said, brushing some invisible dust from his shoulder. "When your mental state isn't stable enough, it's best to have someone you trust watching over you during practice."
Alexei blinked, still coming down from the meditative high. "You need a babysitter just to cultivate?"
"It's a precaution." She summoned her flying sword with a gesture, the blade materializing in a shimmer of spiritual energy. "Cultivators don't only refine their power. They refine their minds as well."
She motioned for him to step onto the sword, and once he was settled, she continued her explanation as they lifted into the air.
"Extended cultivation brings inner calm. But it also erodes mental state. Many talented cultivators who could have gone much further instead fell at this hurdle. If one's mental state isn't properly stabilized before entering seclusion, then after several years of closed-door cultivation, their mind may age several years. It's not uncommon for someone to enter seclusion looking like a youth and emerge appearing middle-aged."
Alexei stared at her. "You age mentally from cultivating too much? That's the dumbest thing I have ever heard."
"It's the reality of this world."
The cultivation system in this world was absurdly complicated compared to anything he had read about in novels back on Earth. In those stories, people just sat down, absorbed energy, and got stronger.
Here, apparently, even working hard could screw you over.
"There is more," Qingxue continued. "Before the age of eighteen, a cultivator's spiritual meridians are still developing, so prolonged cultivation isn't suitable. For a normal cultivator, the period when they can cultivate freely in seclusion is only about nine years, from age eighteen to twenty-seven. Of course, if one wishes to maintain a more youthful mental state, that nine-year window shrinks accordingly. If one prefers a more mature mental state, the window can extend. This period is called the Ascension Phase by most cultivators, and it is when cultivation consumes the most resources. Without this Ascension Phase, in a place like the Eastern Territories, the mental cost required to reach Core Formation would be even greater."
Alexei's head was spinning from all the information.
He didn't fully understand half of what she had just said, but something about it left him deeply unsettled.
Cultivation was starting to sound less like a path to power and more like a way to give yourself early-onset dementia.
"I'll just try not to overdo it, then."
They landed back at the residential complex, and he suddenly remembered he hadn't checked his cultivation progress yet.
He opened his status panel.
The experience bar above [Cultivation: Qi Refining - Qi Sense (First Stage)] had increased by about 2%.
"Huh. That's better than I expected."
If he kept this pace, he could reach the next stage in about fifty days. Which was absurdly fast by this world's standards, but considering he had a Heaven-tier technique and was sitting in one of the most spiritually rich areas in the entire region, it made sense.
Everything else on his panel remained the same. No surprises there. His Sacred Body was still hidden and locked.
---
The next morning, Alexei was woken by the sound of shouting coming from the sect plaza.
He groaned, rolled out of bed, and stumbled to the window.
Down below, a spirit boat about eight or nine meters long had landed in the center of the plaza. A large flag hung from a tall pole on the deck, displaying "Ninth-Rank Sect."
Several cultivators were disembarking, led by a massive, heavily bearded man who looked like he could wrestle a bear and win.
Zhengxing stood near the edge of the plaza, arms crossed, looking thoroughly unimpressed.
Alexei had no idea what was going on, but judging by the expressions on both men's faces, this was going to be entertaining.
He grabbed his robe, threw it on, and headed outside.
By the time he reached the plaza, the bearded man had already slung an arm around Zhengxing's shoulders and was grinning like an idiot.
"Zhengxing, my old friend! Do you notice anything different about me today?"
Zhengxing looked him up and down with an expression that clearly said: You are being annoying, does that count?
"Not particularly."
The bearded man puffed out his chest, pushing it closer to Zhengxing's face. "Look at this badge! Does it look familiar?"
He flexed his pectoral muscles for emphasis, making the golden badge pinned to his chest gleam in the morning sunlight.
[Ninth-Rank Iron Peak Sect]
Zhengxing's eye twitched. "Ninth-rank. I see."
"Hahaha! I knew you would be impressed!" The bearded man clapped him heavily on the back. A normal person would have staggered, but Zhengxing didn't budge. "Just a few months ago, we were invited to participate in the campaign to wipe out the Ghost Sect. During the operation, my elders and I managed to kill one of their elders who was hiding after being severely injured. Half a month ago, more forces joined the siege, including the Celestial Path Sect. The Ghost Sect collapsed within a week and was completely destroyed. As a reward for our contributions, the Immortal Alliance promoted Iron Peak Sect to ninth-rank status! We're officially part of the system now! Every month, we receive a stipend of ninety low-grade spirit stones from the Immortal Alliance!"
Alexei, watching from a distance, had to admit the man's enthusiasm was almost contagious.
Zhengxing, however, looked like he was seriously considering punching his old rival in the face.
"So you came all the way here just to brag?"
"No, no, my friend. I came to share the joy!" The bearded man gestured broadly at the plaza. "Speaking of which, you really should renovate this place. That ditch over there is an eyesore. Do you need support? I don't have many spirit stones to spare, but my Iron Mountain Sect isn't lacking in gold and silver! Hahaha!"
"The plaza is fine as it is," Zhengxing said flatly. "But since you are here, why do you not take a closer look at me? Notice anything different?"
The bearded man frowned and looked him over more carefully, paying particular attention to Zhengxing's chest where a sect badge would normally be displayed.
"Don't tell me Aureate Summit Sect also got promoted to ninth-rank."
"Stop judging by badges. Use your spiritual sense and take another look."
The bearded man's frown deepened, but he complied, spreading his spiritual sense over Zhengxing's body.
His eyes went wide.
"What the... Nascent Soul?!"
The aura was incredibly stable.
"How is that possible?! We met just months ago! It should have taken you at least twenty years to break through!"
Zhengxing shrugged. "I had a sudden epiphany recently."
The bearded man stared at him, then lowered his gaze to the ninth-rank sect badge on his chest before looking back up.
The excitement drained from his face.
"...I see."
Zhengxing smiled faintly. "Congratulations on your sect's promotion, by the way. Ninth-rank is quite an achievement."
The bearded man's eye twitched.
The sect master is savage! Alexei, still watching from the sidelines, had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing.
Poor bastard. He had come all the way here to show off, only to get completely one-upped.
That was what he got for gloating.
The bearded man had come to Aureate Summit Sect primarily to show off his newly acquired ninth-rank status.
The two sect masters had been competing for years, and he had never managed to beat Zhengxing at anything. Strength, tactics, qi aptitude... he was always a step behind.
This visit was no different.
By now, he was almost numb to it. Why did Zhengxing always manage to turn things around at the last moment? Just when he thought he finally had the upper hand, the man broke through to the Nascent Soul stage out of nowhere.
Still, the Iron Peak Sect delegation had come, so they had to be received properly.
The Aureate Summit Sect had no intention of showing off things like spirit fruits or their rarer resources, but monkey wine was another matter. That, at least, they had in abundance.
The two sect masters drank heavily for three days straight. By the end, Zhengxing had stuffed the bearded man with an entire vat of monkey wine as a parting gift before they finally went their separate ways.
He had been grinning the entire time, and with good reason. The bearded sect master had brought news that was worth more than any amount of spirit stones:
The Ghost Sect had been completely wiped out two weeks ago.
The Celestial Path Sect had personally taken action. Alongside them were the Three Souls Sect, whose combat power rivaled that of first-rank sects, plus seven or eight second-rank sects, over thirty third-rank sects, nearly a hundred fourth-rank sects, and two to three hundred smaller sects and independent cultivators.
According to reports, more than a dozen yang-attribute cultivators at half-step Dharma Aspect were still stationed in the Ghost Sect's former territory, regularly blasting apart the lingering miasma in the sky to destroy the souls trapped within.
It was the best news Aureate Summit Sect had received in years.
Yesterday, the entire sect had celebrated together. The banquet had been lavish, filled with toasts and good cheer.
The Iron Peak Sect master, sitting at the head table as an honored guest, had been deeply moved. He had thought the celebration was for his sect's promotion to ninth-rank status.
It made him feel a little embarrassed. He had come specifically to gloat, and now it just felt petty.
---
The destruction of the Ghost Sect didn't disrupt Alexei's plans in the slightest. For the past two months, he had maintained a consistent routine: mornings training with Qingxue, afternoons exploring the Nether.
Hard work paid off. After a long time of searching, he had finally located the Nether Fortress.
Meanwhile, after constant cultivation, his realm had improved quite a bit. He had reached the second stage of Qi Refining, and his status panel showed the changes clearly.
The increases weren't as dramatic as he had expected, though.
His health had climbed to 90, and his qi to 130, not counting the threefold bonus from the Verdant Lamp. His attack had risen to 7.55. The numbers looked small, but the actual boost in combat effectiveness was anything but.
During his testing, he also noticed something interesting. Before he obtained the Verdant Lamp, when he attacked non-Minecraft creatures, only the weapon's damage counted. His own strength made no difference. But now, his personal damage was converted into equivalent weight and added to the weapon's calculation. That meant a stone sword, which already weighed over five tons, hit even harder than before.
There was also a subtle advantage from the Bedrock Edition. Bedrock Steve naturally dealt one more point of damage than Java Steve. It was a small difference, but still an advantage.
His movement speed had increased to 4.9. After some testing, he found that each point roughly translated to one meter per second at full sprint. It also affected his reaction time and combat reflexes.
The improvement was noticeable, but not really overwhelming. At his current speed, he probably still couldn't outrun a Karen back on Earth.
Even so, he was satisfied with his progress.
---
Nether Wastes, Nether Fortress…
Alexei had spent most of the week clearing out the entire complex. The mobs were exactly what he expected. wither skeletons showed up in large numbers, blazes spawned from their caged spawners, and the occasional regular skeleton wandered through the halls.
His approach was simple. He relied on enchanted golden apples and Thorns to carry him through every fight.
The apples came from the More Crafting mod. They were expensive to make, requiring eight gold blocks around a single apple, but the effect was worth it. Each one granted Absorption IV, adding eight extra hearts on top of his base health. With the Verdant Lamp's bonus on top of that, it pushed his total effective health to 162.
At that point, nothing in the Nether could really threaten him. His netherite armor and enchantments took care of most attacks, and anything that got through triggered Thorns. Wither skeletons barely scratched him, blaze fireballs did almost nothing, and most enemies died after one or two reflected hits.
It made the whole process feel almost boring.
He opened his inventory to review the spoils from his fortress raid:
Coal ×128, Wither Skeleton Skull ×19, Rib Armor Trim Smithing Template ×1, Nether Wart ×16, Soul Sand ×16, Ender Pearl ×1, Blaze Rod ×320
Of course, the drops had been far more extensive. Most of the junk he either left behind or tossed straight into the lava.
The single ender pearl was a surprise. This was the first time he had ever seen an enderman spawn inside a Nether Fortress. He had killed it immediately and kept the pearl as a souvenir.
"Looks like things are pretty much wrapped up here," he muttered, surveying the now-empty fortress corridors.
CLANG.
CLANG.
Splash.
Golden spiral particles swirled around him as nearby wither skeletons continued their attempts to damage him. Out of habit, he pulled his clock from his inventory to check the time.
The day-night indicator spun wildly, completely useless in the Nether's timeless environment.
He stared at it for a moment. "Should be... a little over an hour left before I need to head back?"
That estimate wasn't based on the clock. It came from experience. After two months of regular Nether expeditions, he had developed a pretty good sense of how long he had been gone.
A thought occurred to him.
"How about I try fighting a Wither before I leave?"
CLANG.
CLANG.
He had nineteen wither skeleton skulls. He needed three to summon the boss, which would leave him with sixteen spares. And honestly, with his current stats and gear, he was probably strong enough to take it on.
"Yeah, let's do it."
He cut down the nearest wither skeleton with a few quick strikes.
Switching items in his hotbar, he pulled out a fist-sized block of soul sand.
Summoning the Wither was simple enough in theory: arrange four soul sand blocks in a T-shape on flat ground, then place three wither skeleton skulls on top.
However, due to his height and the awkward positioning, Alexei chose to lay the T-shape flat on the ground instead of building it vertically.
"Here we go."
He placed the final skull.
The moment it locked into place, the entire structure burst apart into black ash and swirling grey-white smoke. A low chant echoed from nowhere and everywhere at once, vibrating through the air.
From within the ash, something began to take form.
A three-headed skeleton, towering over three meters tall, materialized as if being reborn from the remnants of death itself. Its body radiated faint blue streams of light, and intense white glow poured from its eye sockets and gaping mouths.
It spun wildly in place, whipping the scattered ash into a vortex that spiraled outward in all directions.
"Whoa. That's pretty cool," Alexei muttered, instinctively taking a couple steps back.
He popped another enchanted golden apple just to be safe.
The Wither continued spinning for about ten seconds before finally stopping. The white glow faded slightly, though the faint blue aura still clung to its form.
All three skull heads tilted back and opened their mouths wide, releasing a piercing screech.
"This thing is about to explode, is it not?"
He rolled his shoulders and drew his bow.
He had almost forgotten. The Wither unleashed a massive explosion the moment it spawned, tearing apart everything nearby.
BOOOOOM!
Space seemed to warp from the force of the blast. A shockwave slammed into Alexei, shoving him back.
On his health bar, the eight yellow Absorption hearts visibly dropped by nearly three full hearts.
Still, he had to give the Wither credit. That explosion was the single hardest hit he had taken from any mob while wearing full Netherite armor.
But with his current stats, there was no need to play it cautiously. He could just stand there and trade blows.
The only real downside was that Thorns didn't work against the Wither. He would have to fight this one properly.
The Wither's first phase was straightforward. He opened with his enchanted bow, nocking an arrow and taking aim.
Without the health bar visible above the boss, it was hard to gauge exactly how much damage he was doing. He would just have to count shots and estimate.
"One."
Thunk.
"Two."
Thunk.
"Three."
The Wither floated in the air, launching explosive skulls at him. The projectiles trailed dark flames as they arced toward him, detonating on impact.
Alexei ignored them. The damage was negligible.
"Four."
"Five."
"Six."
The Wither shrieked and spun, firing more skulls. Occasionally one would land a direct hit, chipping away at his Absorption hearts, but the enchanted golden apple's regeneration was already refilling them.
"Seven."
"Eight."
"Nine."
He was starting to understand why boss fights in Minecraft could feel tedious.
"Ten."
"Eleven."
"Twelve."
On the thirteenth arrow, the Wither's body began to glow with brilliant white light. Blue energy swirled around it, intensifying with each passing second.
It dropped from the air, plummeting directly toward him.
BOOOOOM!!!
The impact triggered a second explosion, even more violent than the first.
The ground gave way beneath Alexei, and he dropped nearly seven meters before landing at the bottom of a massive crater. When he looked up, he found himself in a semi-spherical pit more than ten meters wide.
Black ash swirled and gathered inside the crater, forming four wither skeletons. Swords already in hand, they charged straight at him.
Above them, the Wither burned with an intense blue glow. The light was almost blinding.
Phase two had begun.
In this form, the Wither was immune to all ranged damage. He pulled out another enchanted golden apple, taking a bite.
CLANG.
CLANG.
CLANG.
Three wither skeletons rushed in and struck almost at the same time. The Thorns enchantment triggered with each hit, forcing all three back as they stumbled away.
He barely spared them a glance. His focus stayed on the Wither hovering above him.
It shifted in the air, turning slightly as if lining up its aim before diving straight at him.
"Crap..."
WHAM.
The Wither slammed into him and drove him straight down into the netherrack beneath his feet.
It didn't stop there. The force kept pushing, breaking through the terrain as netherrack shattered and vanished into his inventory. The Wither bulldozed him deeper, carving out a wide tunnel as he was forced ten, then fifty meters underground.
His health bar flickered as the absorption hearts drained, then quickly refilled under the enchanted golden apple's regeneration.
At last, the momentum gave out. The Wither pulled back and hovered in the tight tunnel it had just carved, all three heads shrieking at once.
Alexei spat out a mouthful of netherrack dust. "That's not how it works in the game."
In Minecraft, the Wither's charge barely knocked you back. It was more of a shove than anything else, nothing like being driven straight into the ground.
He finished off the enchanted golden apple in a few more seconds, and the moment it was gone.
"Let's try something new," he muttered as he rolled his shoulders.
He drew energy into his right arm, guiding spiritual power through his meridians until it gathered around his forearm and fist. The qi condensed into a dense, earth-aspected layer that hardened like stone.
Then he pushed Flame Fist over it.
Crimson fire flared to life, spreading across the coating and wrapping his arm in heat. The Wither shrieked and charged again.
Alexei jumped to meet it.
He pulled his arm back mid-air and drove his fist forward with everything he had.
CRACK.
His punch slammed into the center skull's jaw. Fire burst outward, and the impact sent a jolt through his arm.
The Wither's head snapped back. For a brief moment, he thought it had worked. Then the boss steadied itself, shook off the hit, and fired a skull point-blank into his chest.
The explosion blasted him backward into the tunnel wall. He slammed into it, cracks spreading through the netherrack as his health dropped by two hearts before regeneration kicked in.
"Did I even do any damage?" he groaned as he pushed himself out of the crater.
He pulled his sword from his quick slot and coated it. Spiritual energy gathered along the edge, making it heavier.
The Wither dove at him again.
This time, Alexei was ready.
He activated Wind Walking, and wind-aspected qi surged through his body. The world seemed to slow around him as his reflexes sharpened.
He stepped aside, spun, and brought the coated blade down in an overhead slash aimed at the Wither's spine.
THUNK.
The Wither shrieked and thrashed, its tail whipping around to knock him away.
Alexei ducked under the swing, jumped, and drove his sword down again.
THUNK!!
This time, the Wither flinched.
"There we go!"
He didn't stop, chaining jump slashes one after another and pressing the attack.
The Wither tried to escape, shooting upward through the tunnel toward open air.
Alexei cursed and summoned his flying sword. The blade formed beneath his feet, lifting him as he shot after it. Wind rushed past his face as he closed the gap.
But there was a problem.
Flying sword combat needed precise qi control to stay balanced at high speed. He could manage basic flight, but chasing a boss through a narrow Nether tunnel while fighting was way beyond that.
The Wither banked hard to the left. Alexei followed, overcorrected, and nearly slammed into the wall. He pulled up at the last second.
A skull projectile struck his side, and the blast almost threw him off the sword.
"Forget this!"
He dismissed the sword midair and dropped, landing on a netherrack ledge. His knees took the impact, and he moved immediately.
Cobblestone filled his hands as he started building, extending a platform out from the ledge while the Wither circled above and fired projectiles that he blocked with his shield.
Without stopping, he shifted his build upward, raising a three-block-wide pillar toward the boss.
He reached the top of the pillar, now level with the boss, and activated Wind Walking again. He burst forward, crossing the distance in an instant with his sword raised.
His sword flared brighter as he pushed more qi into it.
WHAM
The coated blade slammed into the Wither's spine.
The boss shrieked as it lost altitude and dropped several meters.
Alexei quickly leapt off the pillar and fell toward it, driving his sword down as he closed in. The first strike landed hard, and he followed with more, grabbing onto its skeletal frame with one hand while stabbing into its back again and again.
The Wither thrashed violently, trying to throw him off as it surged forward and smashed him into the tunnel ceiling.
His grip gave out, and he fell, but he twisted midair and placed blocks beneath himself to break the drop. He landed on a newly formed platform and began channeling more qi into his sword.
The Wither turned toward him, all three heads glowing.
"Oh no you don't..."
He raised his shield just as the boss detonated.
BOOOOM!
Even with the shield absorbing the damage completely, the kinetic energy sent him skidding backward across his platform.
When the light faded, the tunnel had opened into a massive spherical chamber more than fifteen meters across. Drops were scattered across the ground.
A four-pointed, star-shaped crystal floated among the debris.
He dropped down to the crater floor and pulled it into his inventory.
[Nether Star]
The moment he picked it up, something didn't feel right.
The feeling was hard to pin down. It was like the item was incomplete, as if it were waiting for something. Almost like it could merge with other objects and turn into something new.
"Did one of the mods change?"
He turned it over in his hand, checking it from every angle. There was nothing unusual.
"I'll figure it out later," he muttered as he put it away.
There was still time before he had to head back. And he still had eighteen wither skeleton skulls left.
He might as well make the most of it.
---
The next four Withers went down much faster.
Now that he had the rhythm down, he charged his bow during the ten-second spawn animation, opened with three arrows, then switched to melee with his coated sword while Wind Walking was active. Each fight took less than fifteen minutes.
By the time the ender pearl stasis chamber teleported him back to the Profound Sky Continent, he had five Nether Stars in his inventory.
"Another productive day." He grinned like an idiot as he stood on the trapdoor leading to his mob farm.
He jogged back to base, dumped everything except the Nether Stars into the auto-sorting system, then stopped by the zombified piglin farm to collect experience points.
[Level 2599 → Level 2620]
Two months of Nether exploration had kept him too busy to farm experience properly. If he had been collecting from the piglin farm daily instead of just whenever he remembered, he would probably be over level 9000 by now.
He dusted off his hands and headed back to the living room.
Qingxue was lying on the sofa, reading one of her novels.
He pulled out two bottles of Everlasting Peach Juice, handed one to her, and finished his own in a few gulps before sitting down beside her.
Then he took out the Nether Star and stared at it.
"Hm? What's that, Alexei?"
Qingxue set her book aside and leaned closer to take a look.
It was the first time she had seen him this troubled over something that wasn't related to cultivation.
"This is a Nether Star," he said, holding it up for her to see. "You can use it to craft some pretty powerful items. Normally, it's just a crafting material, but…"
He frowned and turned the crystal over in his hand.
"This one seems different. I think it can fuse with other items now, but I have no idea what that does."
Qingxue watched Alexei's eyes light up as he went on about Nether Stars and all the things he could do with them. At some point, he stopped talking to her and started talking at her, and before long, he was just muttering to himself while pacing around the living room.
"If I activate a beacon, there can't be anything above it. If I put it in the sect plaza, every cultivator within a hundred kilometers would probably see the beam shooting into the sky..." he said, gesturing as he spoke.
"Torcherinos aren't really necessary right now. Actually, if I switch regular torches to soul torches, I could make a Slowing Torch instead. Not sure what I'd even use that for, but it's an option..."
Qingxue took a sip of her peach juice and let him work through whatever was going on in his head.
"Or maybe I should use all five Nether Stars to build a wither skeleton farm?" He stopped pacing and stared off into space. "With a proper farm, I could go to the End, grab some bedrock, and build a Wither killer setup. That would make farming Nether Stars way easier in the long run... No, wait. Forget that. I'll keep two for item fusion testing. The farm can be expanded later anyway. It won't take that long..."
The more he talked, the more worked up he got.
Qingxue could see exactly where this was going. If she let him keep going, he would be out the door in five minutes, running back to his base to start building in the middle of the night.
"Alexei," she called.
He didn't respond, still muttering to himself.
"Alexei."
Still nothing.
She got up, walked over, and grabbed him by the shoulders. "Sleep. You can deal with this tomorrow."
"But..."
"Tomorrow."
He hesitated, then the manic energy drained out of him and his shoulders slumped.
She turned him toward the hallway. "Go to your room and get some rest. The Nether Stars aren't going anywhere."
He muttered something under his breath but didn't argue, dragging himself off toward his room.
Qingxue watched him go and shook her head. At this rate, that boy was going to work himself into an early grave.
Ch. 7215 May
Alexei woke up with Nether Stars still on his mind.
He had dreamed about beacons, about massive glowing pyramids shooting light into the sky, and Wither farms pumping out skulls by the hundreds. It was ridiculous. But also kind of cool.
He got out of bed, dressed, and headed to Qingxue's place for their usual morning cultivation session.
Two hours of sitting cross-legged and cycling spiritual energy through his meridians. It felt less like meditation and more like hitting fast-forward on a video.
According to Qingxue, that was basically what it was. Spiritual sense acted like a playback speed multiplier, while the cultivation technique set the limit. The process of refining qi was happening dozens of times faster than normal.
Which was why two hours of cultivation felt like closing his eyes and opening them again a moment later.
Convenient, but still a little unsettling. He wasn't used to the idea that his sense of time could be sped up so easily.
When they finished, he headed straight back to his base.
Time to test this fusion ability.
---
Alexei stood in his storage room, staring at the five Nether Stars in his inventory.
He only had two fusion slots to work with.
He had spent half the night thinking it through. The safest option was to pick one Minecraft item and one cultivation-world item. That way, he could see how the fusion mechanic worked on both types of materials.
"Pickaxe and alchemy furnace," he muttered. "Yeah. That makes sense."
The pickaxe was an obvious choice. He had been using the same pickaxe for months now, and while it was great, he had always wanted something better. The problem was that rare minerals in the Eastern Territories were monopolized by the major cultivation families, and the prices were absurd.
Even if he could afford one, there was no guarantee it would be better than a netherite pickaxe that could mine two cobblestone per second.
The alchemy furnace was the other logical choice. Higher-grade pills took two or three minutes per batch to refine, and if he could speed that up, it would save him a ton of time in the long run.
"Let's do this."
He pulled out his netherite pickaxe and examined it one more time.
[Netherite Pickaxe:
Spirit Energy Circuit V
Efficiency V
Mending III
Fortune III
Unbreaking III
Experience Mending I
Wisdom I
Smelting I
Telekinesis I]
The pickaxe could hold up to thirteen, but he had no intention of adding more. It was already perfect as it was.
He held the pickaxe in his left hand and summoned a Nether Star in his right.
As he brought them closer together, he felt that familiar pull.
His heart rate picked up slightly.
"Here goes nothing."
When the two items touched, he braced himself for something dramatic. But nothing happened.
He frowned and focused, pushing his intent into them.
Still nothing.
Then the same sensation from item assimilation returned. The Nether Star was waiting for experience.
He didn't hesitate. If there was one thing he had in abundance, it was experience points. He began channeling experience into the pickaxe.
Golden particles burst from his palm and spiraled around the pickaxe and Nether Star, forming a glowing vortex.
Then his level started dropping.
At first it was steady, then it sped up.
"What the fuck?!"
Whether it was because the pickaxe was already an MC item, or because Netherite had some special property, the experience drained far faster than usual, almost a hundred times faster.
In just over a minute, the energy around the pickaxe vanished completely.
[Level 2620 → Level 1620]
He stared at his status screen in disbelief.
"One thousand levels?"
He turned the pickaxe over in his hands, examining it from every angle, but it looked exactly the same. The enchantments hadn't changed either.
Frowning, he mined a few blocks from the nearby wall. The speed was the same as before.
"There's no difference at all?"
He ran through a few more tests, swinging it to check the weight, trying it on different materials, even pushing qi into it.
Nothing worked.
The pickaxe was completely identical to before the fusion.
"Did I just waste one thousand levels on this?"
He scowled and shoved it back into his inventory.
This was ridiculous. There had to be some kind of change, even if he couldn't see it yet. Still, standing there getting frustrated wasn't going to help.
"I'll try the furnace instead. Maybe fusing a cultivation item will work better."
He left his base and headed to the alchemy workshop.
Yan was inside, sitting at her jade workbench as she ground spiritual herbs with a mortar and pestle.
She looked up when he walked in. "Alexei? What brings you here?"
"I need to borrow the furnace for a minute."
She raised an eyebrow. "Making more juice?"
"No. I want to test something."
"Go ahead."
He walked over to the Verdant Wood Alchemy Furnace in the corner. It was a sturdy piece of equipment, wood-aspected and meant for refining plant-based pills and elixirs. He had used it often enough to be familiar with it.
He picked it up with both hands.
A Nether Star appeared in his right hand.
Yan glanced over. "What's that?"
"Something I found in the Nether. It's supposed to fuse with items."
"Hm. Interesting."
He pressed the Nether Star against the surface of the furnace. "Let's see if this works."
The moment they touched, golden experience orbs burst out from his hand and began swirling around the furnace in a glowing spiral.
The fusion process took about ninety seconds.
For Alexei, it felt both longer and shorter than that. Time had a strange way of stretching when you were watching your experience drain away while hoping it would be worth it.
As the last of the golden particles flowed into the furnace, he leaned in and took a closer look.
It looked exactly the same.
"Well? Did it work?"
"I have no idea." He turned the furnace over in his hands. "It looks identical. Can you test it? I don't know enough about alchemy to tell if anything changed."
"Let me see." Yan stood and walked over, taking the furnace from him and examining it from multiple angles.
After a long moment, she frowned. "I don't see anything different..."
She set it down on the workbench and began loading spiritual herbs into it for a test refinement.
Alexei watched as she activated the formation with a small pulse of qi. The furnace began to glow faintly, heat building inside as it processed the materials.
Two minutes later, it chimed softly.
Yan opened it and took out three perfectly refined Spirit Recovery Pills.
She looked at the pills, then back at the furnace. "It's exactly the same as it always was."
Alexei's eye twitched.
He took the furnace from her and examined it again, turning it over in his hands as if staring hard enough would reveal something hidden.
Of course, nothing did.
"Are you serious?" He scowled at the piece of equipment.
"Perhaps the change isn't with the furnace itself," Yan suggested. "Maybe it affected something else?"
Hearing that, Alexei pulled out his crafting table, set it on the ground, and started going through the recipes one by one.
He started with tools, then moved on to weapons, building blocks, and redstone components, but nothing looked any different from before. Only when he reached the miscellaneous section did something finally stand out.
It was a recipe that definitely hadn't been there before, labeled Alchemy Furnace, with the following materials listed:
Copper Block ×5
Copper Ingot ×3
Spirit Stone ×1
The recipe was surprisingly simple. The furnace looked like a hybrid between a Minecraft brewing stand and a cauldron, with a minimalist, copper-colored design and a lid on top.
"Ah… so that's how it works"
If this really was a crafting block, then he could automate it. Villagers could use it. He could build an entire production line around it.
His thoughts were already running ahead.
If Nether Stars could unlock recipes by fusing with items, then that opened up a whole new path for him.
Yan looked at him. "I'm glad you found something useful."
"Sorry for taking up your time."
"It wasn't a waste. This was interesting." She smiled. "Good luck with your... project?"
He nodded absentmindedly, pulled out his axe, and broke the crafting table before dashing out of the alchemy workshop.
Yan shook her head with a faint smile, pulled the furnace back into her arms, and went back to her research.
---
Back in his storage room, Alexei stared at the greyed-out recipe and let out a quiet sigh.
He needed copper blocks, and he didn't have any.
He could ask Duan to pick some up the next time the smithing elder went out to buy materials, but that might take weeks depending on when the next supply run happened.
"I'll deal with that later. For now, I have other things to work on."
Wither roses had been on his mind for a while. They were useful for all kinds of projects, from mob-proofing areas to setting up certain farms, and even for decoration if he ever wanted his base to look a bit more ominous.
The problem was that farming them the normal way was a pain. He would have to summon a Wither, let it kill mobs, collect the roses where they dropped, and then repeat the whole process.
But he already had an idea to make it faster.
He geared up, putting on his full armor and grabbing his sword and bow along with a stack of enchanted golden apples, then stepped through the Nether portal.
---
The Nether greeted him with its distant sounds of ghasts wailing in the distance.
He left his small safehouse and took to the air on his flying sword, heading away from his usual mining areas toward a region he had scouted earlier: a massive bastion remnant with hundreds of the pig-faced humanoids wandering around.
He flew for about fifteen minutes before dropping into the middle of a dense cluster of piglins.
They noticed him immediately, grunting and snorting as they turned toward the intruder in their territory. A few of the warrior piglins raised their swords threateningly.
Alexei ignored them and started building four soul sand blocks in a T-shape, flat on the ground.
The piglins watched him warily but didn't attack, his gold armor apparently enough to pass as proper attire in their eyes.
He set down the first wither skeleton skull, then the second without pause. By the time he reached for the third, the piglins had already started backing away.
The structure exploded into black ash and swirling smoke. The Wither began to form, its three skeletal heads materializing from the remnants of death itself.
And the piglins lost their minds.
Within seconds, every piglin within a hundred-meter radius swarmed toward the forming boss, packing the area so tightly that Alexei could barely see the ground.
He took off on his flying sword, putting distance between himself and the chaos.
Behind him, the Wither finished spawning and began gathering power for its initial explosion.
The piglins didn't care. They just kept charging, warriors slashing with golden swords, crossbow-wielders firing from a distance.
All their attacks bounced off the Wither's charging form.
BOOOOOM!!!
The blast carved out a massive crater. Two or three hundred piglins caught in the radius were vaporized instantly, their drops scattering across the newly formed pit.
Wither roses sprouted everywhere the piglins had died.
"That worked better than expected," Alexei muttered from his safe distance above.
The Wither rose into the air, all three heads glowing as it prepared to fire explosive skulls at the remaining piglins.
But the piglins didn't back down.
More rushed in from all directions, letting out roars as they surged forward. Dozens of crossbow piglins raised their weapons and fired at the same time.
The Wither shrieked as the bolts struck. It lashed out in response, sending explosive skulls flying in every direction.
The crossbow piglins kept firing. Each volley barely did anything on its own, but there were so many of them that the damage quickly added up.
After a few more volleys, the Wither's health dropped low enough to trigger its second phase.
A blue shield formed around its body as it suddenly dropped from the sky, slamming into the piglin horde and setting off another explosion.
BOOM!
Another dozen meters around it were cleared of piglins, and four wither skeletons rose from the ash, drawing their stone swords as they joined the fight.
The Wither shot back into the air, but the crossbow piglins didn't let up. Arrows filled the sky, bouncing off the shield and scattering in every direction, only to slam into other piglins and throw the battlefield into chaos.
Piglins started dropping across the field as stray arrows struck their own ranks, while wither skeletons pressed in and the Wither's explosions wiped out anything caught too close. In the confusion, some piglins even turned on each other.
The fight shifted from the air to the ground, then down into a tunnel blasted open through the netherrack.
Alexei thought about following them, but one look at the entrance, packed with piglins forcing their way inside, was enough to change his mind.
He flew back to the crater and started collecting wither roses.
They were everywhere. Dense clusters had grown wherever piglins had died during the explosion and the chaos that followed.
[Wither Rose ×453]
"This is way more efficient than a normal farm," he said with a grin as he moved through the field of deadly flowers.
He waited another five or six minutes, keeping his eyes on the tunnel entrance until the piglins finally stopped pushing forward and the sounds of fighting faded away.
The Wither was dead. It had taken less than seven minutes.
Now all that was left was retrieving the Nether Star from a tunnel packed with confused and angry piglins.
He pulled out a bucket of lava and poured it into the tunnel entrance.
The piglins inside screeched and scattered as the lava flowed downward, forcing them back and clearing a path.
It took him nearly twenty minutes of carefully pouring lava, waiting for it to spread, and then scooping it back up before he finally reached the Nether Star.
He grabbed a few more wither roses that had spawned during the underground part of the fight, bringing the total to around thirty more.
That put him at 489 wither roses in total, which wasn't bad for less than half an hour of work.
He had briefly considered setting up a system where piglins could farm Withers for him automatically, but after seeing how messy the fight had been, he dropped the idea. It would probably be faster to just do it himself.
With that settled, he took off and flew back toward his base, pulling out his lodestone compass, the one he had named "Home," and following the needle.
By the time he landed at his survival base, he was already planning his next project: a wither skeleton spawner.
If he could get enough of them, he could automate skull collection and make farming Nether Stars much easier in the long run.
---
Building the wither skeleton farm took about a month, on and off.
It wasn't because the design was difficult. Alexei had built far more complex systems before. The real problem was the spawners. They only worked when the player stayed within sixteen meters, so he had to be there in person for every round of testing and calibration.
The mechanics themselves were simple. Each spawner could produce up to four mobs at a time within a four-meter radius. The challenge was arranging multiple spawners so their ranges overlapped without interfering with each other, then moving the mobs out of the activation zones fast enough to keep the spawn cycle going.
For the killing system, he went with a trident killer.
The drops were handled through water channels, same as always. Coal was sent into a crafter that compressed it into blocks before feeding it straight into the furnace array. Bones were converted into bone meal and routed to the bamboo farm. Wither Skeleton skulls were stored separately in dedicated chests.
The experience orbs merged with the output from his zombified piglin farm and flowed into the central XP pool.
While he was working on the farm, he also took the chance to redesign his furnace array from the ground up.
The old eight-furnace setup was gone. It had served its purpose, but it was outdated and inefficient compared to what he could build now.
The new design used thirty-four furnaces arranged in a rotating system, effectively creating a 34x smelting array. With redstone no longer a limiting factor, he scrapped the old minecart transport entirely and replaced it with piston-driven movement. Despite having more than four times the furnaces, the new system took up less space.
Better yet, it was modular. By rotating the input chest, extending the output line with a few extra hoppers, and mirroring the entire structure on the opposite side, he could push it up to 68x speed without much extra work.
A full stack of items could be smelted in seconds.
The system worked by moving the furnaces instead of the items. They rotated counterclockwise around a compact 6x6 loop, pushed along by pistons in a continuous circuit. As each furnace passed the bottom position, droppers refilled it with fuel and materials. By the time it reached the top, hoppers underneath would pull out the finished products and send them into the output chest.
The only downside was the noise. The constant clunking of pistons was enough to give him a headache if he stayed too close.
So he buried the entire system inside the walls, leaving only the input and output chests accessible from the outside.
Fuel was handled through a mix of bamboo and coal blocks, which he could switch between depending on what he had available.
---
Over the course of that month, Alexei gradually figured out how Nether Stars worked.
They weren't just crafting materials. They were closer to something like mod installers.
Each fusion unlocked new recipes or mechanics, but the process was gradual. He had to add features one piece at a time, and once a material was fused, it couldn't be used again.
For ores and metals, a single ingot was enough. Nuggets didn't work, and he had already tested that. Duplicate materials were rejected outright.
So far, he had successfully fused six items: a heavy hammer, a beacon, a black iron ingot, a frostmoon steel ingot, a low-grade spirit stone, and a cultivation technique jade slip.
Out of all of them, the heavy hammer fusion had been the most immediately useful.
It added an entirely new category of weapons to his crafting menu, including wooden, stone, copper, iron, gold, black iron, frostmoon steel, diamond, and netherite hammers. All of them followed the same basic recipe, using two sticks and one metal block arranged like a shovel.
The increase in weight was obvious from the moment he picked one up. Even a wooden hammer felt heavy in his hands, closer to a sledgehammer than a sword.
The trade-off was speed. Hammers swung about three times slower than swords, which made them awkward for regular combat.
But the damage more than made up for it.
A netherite hammer dealt roughly two and a half times the damage of a netherite sword, and it came with built-in armor-piercing. Against a Wither, which had four points of natural armor, that meant every hit was effectively dealing full damage.
With the Smite enchantment added, a normal swing could deal around thirty-five damage, while a critical jump attack could reach fifty-two.
That meant it only took about twelve hits to bring down a Wither.
It was ridiculous.
The beacon fusion, on the other hand, was incredible and completely unusable at the same time.
After fusing it with a Nether Star, the beacon gained a fourth-tier buff. By inserting a spirit stone, it could generate ambient spiritual energy within a fifty-meter radius.
The energy wasn't blocked by solid objects, didn't weaken over distance, and scaled with the quality of the spirit stone used. With his current base layout, a single beacon would be enough to cover the entire compound in spiritual energy comparable to a high-grade sect's inner sanctum.
It should have been perfect, but the beam made that impossible, since it shot a stupidly bright column of light straight into the sky.
At night, it was even worse. During testing, he had flown over two hundred kilometers away and could still see it clearly on the horizon.
Fog didn't hide it, and distance barely dimmed it. It was the most obvious thing he had ever seen.
There was no way he could activate it without drawing attention from every cultivator within five hundred kilometers. So he stored it away in a chest, where it would sit alongside all his other items that were too good to use.
Maybe when Aureate Summit Sect was strong enough to defend something like that, he could bring it out again. For now, it just wasn't worth the risk.
The black iron and frostmoon steel fusions were far more practical.
Once assimilated, those metals were added to the mob equipment spawn pool. Skeletons, zombies, and other mobs now had a small chance to spawn with armor or weapons made from those materials.
Which basically meant an infinite supply.
As long as he kept his mob farms running, he could passively gather rare cultivation metals without ever needing to mine them or deal with overpriced merchants.
His next experiment was to fuse monster spawn eggs from the cultivation world and see if he could add local creatures to the spawn pool. If that worked, the possibilities would open up fast.
The jade slip fusion, on the other hand, was almost useless.
The recipe called for seven pieces of Bright Spirit Jade, one assimilated technique manual, and additional materials that scaled with the technique's grade, from lower and middle all the way up to jade marrow and immortal marrow.
For a Heaven-tier technique, it required a unit of jade marrow.
That alone made it completely unaffordable.
And even if he somehow managed to get jade marrow, he still needed Bright Spirit Jade to begin with.
From what little he knew, Bright Spirit Jade used to be common before the Heavenly Tribulation. But after the spiritual energy in the Eastern Territories was drained, any unmined veins slowly turned into ordinary jade.
The only remaining deposits were hidden inside ancient mystic realms left behind by long-dead powerhouses.
In other words, they were out of reach.
---
"Is it... snowing?"
Alexei woke up early that morning, stepped outside, and found everything covered in white.
He blinked, momentarily disoriented.
It had been so long since he paid attention to the seasons. Time blurred together when most of your days were spent underground or in the Nether, so the first snowfall caught him completely off guard.
Qingxue walked up beside him and looked out over the snow-covered courtyard with a faint smile. "Want to take the day off? You've been working nonstop for weeks."
His eyes lit up.
"Yeah."
He pulled out his shovel.
Qingxue raised an eyebrow. "What are you..."
He started shoveling.
Everywhere the blade touched, the snow packed into neat spheres and zipped into his inventory. In less than thirty seconds, he cleared a ten-meter path and collected over a hundred snowballs.
"Snowball freedom finally achieved."
Qingxue looked at the cleared path, then back at him. "...that's not what I meant by playing in the snow."
"It's efficient."
She let out a slow breath. "You're hopeless."
He kept going, clearing the entire courtyard in under two minutes. The three sheep buried under the snow looked mildly offended as he uncovered them, shaking frost from their wool.
"I'm heading back to base," he called, already jogging toward the house. "I need to sort all this out."
Qingxue watched him leave and shook her head.
That boy would automate breathing if he ever figured out how. Then again, it was already automatic, so he would probably try to improve it instead.
---
Alexei decided to build a snow golem. Because honestly, a walking snowman sounded cool as hell.
He already had everything he needed. His automatic pumpkin farm inside the mountain had been running for weeks. He had originally built it to make Wither farming easier, but it ended up producing more pumpkins than he could use.
The setup itself was pretty simple. He got pumpkin seeds by trading pumpkin pies with apprentice-level farmers, then broke the pies down into their components: pumpkin, sugar, and egg. From there, he extracted seeds from the pumpkin.
Once planted, the pumpkins grew at fixed spots. An observer detected when they were ready, triggered a piston, and pushed them into a stream of water. The current carried them to the end, where a hopper collected everything and sent it straight into his storage system.
The farm produced about thirty pumpkins a day. It was just enough for what he needed, and he could shut it down anytime by pulling a lever inside the base. That would retract the observer underground, stopping it from detecting growth and halting the whole system.
He also had an automatic melon farm running on the same idea, though that one had an extra step. It combined nine melon slices into full melons before storing them. The seeds came from trading with master-level farmers for glistering melon slices, then breaking those down.
Alexei grabbed a few pumpkins from storage and crafted snow blocks from the snowballs he had collected earlier. After converting everything into MC versions, he headed back outside.
The first thing he saw was Yan and Mengyao by the livestock pen, trying to gather what little snow was left to build a snowman.
Mengyao looked a bit annoyed. She had planned to spend the morning cultivating, but Yan had decided she needed a break and sent her outside instead.
She was pretty sure Yan just wanted an excuse to play in the snow.
Since she was already out here, she figured she might as well build something. She had never made a snowman before, not in this life or her previous one.
The problem was that there was barely any snow left in the courtyard. Qingxue had already taken most of it, so Mengyao was stuck scraping frost off the fence, trying to gather enough for even a small snowman.
She glanced over when Alexei walked up. "What are you working on?"
"Building a snowman," he said with a grin.
Yan looked up from her pile of scraped-together snow. "Want to join us? We could build one together."
"No need to make it complicated. This will only take a second."
Alexei pulled a snow block from his inventory and stacked two more on top, then climbed up and set a pumpkin on the top block. Once that was done, he broke the block beneath his feet and dropped back to the ground.
"Done."
Yan and Mengyao both looked at what he had made.
It was just a three-block pillar with a pumpkin on top, with nothing about it that even tried to resemble a proper snowman.
"That's not a snowman," Mengyao said flatly.
"Watch closely."
Alexei took out a pair of shears and cut into the pumpkin.
The moment it turned into a carved pumpkin, the entire structure burst apart into a swirl of snowflakes, and a figure nearly two meters tall took shape.
"Presenting, a moving snowman."
He stepped forward and pushed the snow golem out of the drifting snow.
It had a carved pumpkin for a head, two stick arms jutting from its sides, and three black buttons running down its chest. Its shape was vaguely humanoid despite the blocky build, and when it moved, it felt just a little too lifelike.
The golem tilted its head, the dark eye holes in the pumpkin shifting slightly as it adjusted the position of its head with its stick arms.
Yan stared at it for a moment. "...Where did the sticks come from?"
"And how is it moving?" Mengyao added as she stepped closer. "You didn't carve any formations or place any talismans. You just stacked snow and put a pumpkin on top."
"And then cut it with shears," Yan said. "That was the only extra step."
"It's a snow golem," Alexei said. "It moves on its own and attacks hostile targets by throwing snowballs."
He paused, then pulled out a fist-sized snowball from his inventory.
"Actually, I'm not sure if these will work on cultivators," he added. "Want to test it, Yan?"
"How should I do that?"
In the cultivation world, puppets were a recognized type of formation artifact. Some sects in the Eastern Territories specialized in them, creating things like moving platforms for tall towers or spirit boats designed to carry cargo.
There were combat puppets as well, but those had fallen out of use. The materials were expensive and tightly controlled, and with spiritual energy so thin, the cost rarely matched the results.
This snow golem, however, had been made with almost no resources and no formation work at all.
If it could really function like a puppet, then its value was on a completely different level.
"Try hitting it with a snowball," Alexei said as he handed her a few. "See how it reacts."
Yan took them, and Alexei pulled Mengyao back with him to give her some space. She weighed one in her hand for a moment, then threw it straight at the snow golem. The snowball burst apart on impact, scattering into loose flakes, and the golem staggered back from the hit.
Before she could react further, a snowball formed in front of the golem and shot toward her.
She reached out to catch it, but the moment it touched her palm, it broke apart into soft snow.
She caught a few more in the same way, watching closely each time before finally speaking. "About twenty kilograms of force. It would hurt normal people, but anyone with basic body refinement should be able to handle it."
She threw another snowball, this time paying more attention to how the golem responded. "How do I make it stop?"
"That's easy." Alexei said as he drew his sword.
He stepped forward and swung once. The blade cut cleanly through the golem, and it collapsed almost instantly, bursting into a loose pile of snow along with a scatter of snowballs.
Yan and Mengyao both paused, then glanced at each other.
"That was… pretty direct," Mengyao murmured.
Alexei shrugged as if it was nothing. He crouched down and rebuilt the golem on the spot, stacking two snow blocks before placing a pumpkin on top. The moment he sheared it, the structure shifted, and the snow golem came to life again, its pumpkin head tilting slightly as it adjusted.
Yan and Mengyao immediately stepped closer.
At the same time, Alexei turned and jogged back toward his base. Since it was already snowing, this was the perfect chance to collect powder snow.
Powder snow had several uses in redstone setups, especially for mechanisms that relied on its unusual properties. All he needed to do was place cauldrons out in the open and let them fill naturally, then collect the snow using iron buckets.
With that in mind, he grabbed a full stack of iron ingots along with a crafting table and headed back outside, already planning to cover the entire courtyard with cauldrons.
---
Qingxue sat in the pavilion with a cup of hot tea, quietly watching Alexei as he worked.
In less than fifteen minutes, he had already transformed the entire courtyard.
Cauldrons filled the space in neat rows, covering every open patch of ground, and he showed no sign of slowing down. He kept pulling iron from his inventory and assembling more.
She took a sip of tea.
Was this really his idea of taking a day off?
It honestly looked more exhausting than cultivation.