Nova's eyes opened somewhere between three and four in the morning. He lay still for a moment, running his usual assessment.
No discomfort. No residual exhaustion from the previous night's session. If anything he felt better than he had yesterday morning, which was unexpected given that he had pushed Absolute Insight for over six hours straight and passed out fully clothed without eating lunch and dinner.
He pulled up his panel to investigate.
[Spirit: 683.]
He looked at that number. It had been 670 before he had collapsed. Thirteen points of growth from a single extended session — and it wasn't from cultivation or a system reward, but from pushing his spirit capacity past its previous limit and holding it there until his body adapted. The quality of the energy had refined itself alongside the quantity, the way metal changes when you heat it properly.
He filed that away with quiet satisfaction.
Then his stomach made a sound that could generously be described as a formal complaint and less generously as a structural concern.
He hadn't eaten since yesterday morning. His body had spent six hours running a divine-tier comprehension talent at full capacity and had apparently decided that breakfast from twenty hours ago was no longer a reasonable substitute for actual nutrition.
He got up, showered quickly, and headed downstairs.
A covered plate sat on the dining table with a folded note propped against it in Aunt Mira's handwriting.
Microwave it. Two minutes. Don't skip dinner.
Apparently he already did. He microwaved it for two minutes. He sat down and finished it in considerably less time than that. When the plate was empty he was functional but not satisfied, and his body's position on the matter(food) remained firm. He ignored it for now and pulled up the panel to look at what he'd built last night.
[Immortal Titan Foundation — SSS-Grade, Supreme Rank Body Forging Method]
A supreme cultivation technique consisting of 31 sequential forms. Systematically purges impurities and tempers the physical vessel. Treats the body as a cosmic furnace and true Qi as undying flame, refining each individual cell into an immortal particle. Cultivates body density to theoretical maximum.
Ultimate Achievement: Transform flesh into Eternal Diamond Glass. Evolve the mortal frame into a self-contained chaotic universe. Transcend physical space — traverse galaxies with the body alone. Stars may shatter and dimensions collapse, but the cultivator endures eternally.
Nova read it once. Then again.
"I actually created an SSS-grade Body Forging Method," he said to the empty kitchen.
Saying it out loud did not make it feel more real. He tried once more. Still nothing.
Cade had mentioned during a lecture that the most prestigious technique in the entire Valdris Federation was was a breathing method named The Stellar Breath Technique — developed by a Demigod-tier warrior after decades of dedicated research. SS-grade. Considered one of the most advanced cultivation methods in recorded history. Only the highest-tier institutions and the wealthiest warrior bloodlines had access to it.
Nova had been awake for six hours and had produced something one grade above that.
He thought about the inputs — one hundred thousand times amplified comprehension, Perfect Mastery of two foundational techniques, and fragments of intents and principles from lives he couldn't fully remember yet — and concluded that the result was at least logically consistent with the ingredients, even if it remained difficult to emotionally process over breakfast.
"Only one way to find out if it works," he said, stood up, and moved to a clear section of the living room.
The first form announced its difficulty immediately and without any diplomatic softening.
The technique required him to push true Qi past his meridians and down to the cellular level — establishing direct contact with individual cells and then vibrating them in precise coordinated patterns simultaneously. The frequency had to be exact. The coverage had to be total. The control required to maintain both conditions at once while also executing the physical form was something that Absolute Insight had given him complete theoretical understanding of and zero practical experience with.
His first attempt scattered at the integration stage. Second attempt the same. Third attempt he held cellular contact for two seconds before the vibrational pattern collapsed. Attempts four through eight produced progressively more coherent failures, which was encouraging in the way that consistently falling slightly less badly is encouraging.
Attempt nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
On the thirteenth attempt, something clicked.
The true Qi integrated. The vibrational pattern held across every cell simultaneously. The form began executing with the feedback loop running correctly for the first time, the technique doing exactly what it was designed to do.
Then every nerve ending in his body filed simultaneous emergency reports.
The pain was comprehensive. Invisible pressure from every direction. Something catastrophically wrong-feeling happening in his bone marrow. His internal organs offering opinions he hadn't requested. Heat erupting from within his skin with enough intensity that wisps of steam rose from his arms in the cool morning air.
He bit down and held the form.
Ten seconds.
When it concluded his legs quietly stopped working and he sat down on the floor. He stayed there for five full minutes while his cardiovascular system held a committee meeting about what had just happened and gradually arrived at a consensus.
"Dear god," he said to the floor, with complete sincerity.
When he could stand again he looked at himself and stopped.
He was covered in a thin layer of dark, faintly acrid residue — impurities his body had discharged during the ten seconds of cellular vibration, pushed out through his pores by the technique's purging function. Unpleasant. But beneath that, visible even through the mess, his body looked different. Leaner. Every muscle line cleaner and more defined than it had been when he woke up, as though the technique had quietly reorganized his physical structure toward greater efficiency in the ten seconds it had been running.
He went back upstairs and showered for the second time that morning.
Standing at the mirror afterward, he looked at himself properly.
The muscle distribution had changed. Not bulkier — more deliberate, each group placed and proportioned exactly where it needed to be for the kind of functional power his physique was being rebuilt around. His face had shifted slightly too, the features sharpening in a way that was subtle but visible to someone paying attention. He was fairly certain he was marginally taller than he'd been yesterday.
He flexed one hand experimentally and felt the power that answered the movement.
"So this is what SSS-grade does," he said to his reflection.
His reflection looked quietly pleased with the situation.
He checked his panel before heading back downstairs.
[Strength: +10]
[Speed: +10]
[Agility: +10]
Ten seconds of the first form. More growth than a full month of his previous training had produced. He stared at those numbers for a moment and thought about all thirty-one forms, and what consistent practice across months would compound into, and had to make a conscious decision to stop doing that math because it was becoming difficult to stay calm about.
His body's ongoing nutritional demands were becoming impossible to diplomatically ignore. He opened the delivery app on his watch and worked through the beast meat section with focused intent.
Shadowfeather Chicken hotpot, large. Grilled Thornboar ribs, triple order. Moonshadow Rhino steak, extra rare. Silverscale Fish platter.
Order confirmed. Payment deducted: 3,902 points.
Nova's eye twitched.
He had never in his seventeen years spent 3,902 points on a single meal. He had never spent 3,902 points on food in an entire month. Aunt Mira's grocery budget for a week was less than half that number. His father's salary transfer for supplements — sent with the warmth of someone sacrificing something real — would cover approximately two of these orders.
He closed the app.
He sat with that number for a moment and thought about what the Immortal Titan Foundation actually needed to run. True Qi. Not beast meat specifically, but the primordial Qi that beast meat carried in concentrated form, which his body converted into true Qi as fuel for the technique's cellular-level demands. He had been absorbing ambient primordial Qi passively since his physique evolved, but passive absorption was a slow trickle against what the technique burned through in ten seconds of the first form.
He needed a Qi breathing and circulation technique.
Not a purchased one — those were expensive, and the available commercial versions were designed for standard cultivation pathways, not for feeding a Supreme-rank body forging method. He needed one built specifically for his system, designed to pull primordial Qi from the ambient air at maximum efficiency and convert it to true Qi at a rate that could actually keep up with his requirements.
And while he was building it, he might as well integrate it with the Immortal Titan Foundation rather than maintaining two separate practice sessions. One unified technique. Body refinement and Qi circulation running as a single system, each one fueling and enhancing the other.
He added it to his mental task list, which was developing a distinct personality of its own at this point.