Cave Refuge

Zachary carefully savored this feeling; at this moment, his arm swung like a large net, and the Spirit Energy in the air was like fish floating in water. When his arm moved through the air, it would directly absorb all the Spirit Energy in its path into his body.

This situation was like a whale hunting a school of fish in the sea; wherever the whale went, every fish in its path would be devoured by its mouth that resembled an abyss.

To confirm his guess, Zachary started to move erratically as if he had gone mad. With every movement Zachary made, the same phenomenon occurred on all of his skin that was exposed to the air.

For further verification, Zachary stripped off his clothes, since he was alone in his Cave, and boldly continued bare-chested to confirm whether his inner speculation was correct.

The final results were indeed as Zachary anticipated—any skin exposed to the air possessed the ability to swallow the Spirit Energy from the air.

However, unlike the active drawing of Spirit Energy during cultivation, this swallowing seemed more like an unconscious act; only when Zachary moved his body did the skin in the moving parts passively absorb the surrounding Spirit Energy.

If his body remained still, the surrounding Spirit Energy would not enter his body continuously, as it would during cultivation.

But after repeated experiments, Zachary found that although his skin wouldn't actively absorb the surrounding Spirit Energy, when he was practicing his Cultivation Technique, the Spirit Energy drawn to his side would be directly absorbed into his body upon contact.

The quality of a Cultivation Method primarily depends on how much of nature's spiritual energy it can draw to the cultivator during practice.

If compared using game data values, a good Cultivation Method could attract several thousand or even tens of thousands of units of nature's spiritual energy to oneself during the same amount of cultivation time, while a poor one might only gather a few hundred or even just tens of units in the same period.

This is the difference between Cultivation Methods of varying qualities, and the distinction among cultivators is similar.

Talented cultivators can absorb hundreds or thousands of units of nature's spiritual energy at a time during cultivation, whereas those with lesser talent might only absorb a few dozen units in the same amount of time.

This is why there is such a stark difference in treatment towards disciples with varying talents in the Cultivation World.

Whether a cultivator's talent is good or not represents their efficiency in utilizing resources; given the same resources, a talented cultivator could improve their Cultivation Level by several years, while a lesser-talented one might only gain a few months' worth of improvement.

(The unit of Cultivation Level improvement mentioned here is based on the time a standard cultivator would spend on normal cultivation without the use of resources.)

That's why the saying 'law, wealth, companion, and land' exists.

Although talent is very important, law, wealth, companion, and land are equally significant,

But conversely, it could also be said that compared to law, wealth, companion, and land, talent is the most important thing for cultivators; after all, in those old novels, the protagonist starts with nothing in the early stages, using a very common Cultivation Method. After starting to practice, their Cultivation Level skyrockets rapidly—this is due to talent, just like that of a prodigy.

The mutation that occurred after Zachary's body absorbed that special energy seemed to have elevated his cultivation talent by a level, although this passive absorption ability looked somewhat useless, like a tasteless pork rib.

However, in reality, as mentioned at the beginning, the better the Cultivation Technique, the more nature's spiritual energy it attracts. A good Cultivation Technique can draw tens of thousands of units of nature's spiritual energy at once, but due to the limitations of a Cultivator's talent, they are unable to absorb all of the spiritual energy they attract.

It is precisely because Cultivators cannot absorb all the spiritual energy they attract that there are scenarios where the protagonist cultivates and the surrounding spiritual energy becomes denser than in other places, which in turn leads to cases where Spiritual Beasts gather around the protagonist while they are cultivating.

This phenomenon occurs when the protagonist cultivates without fully absorbing all the energy drawn by the cultivation technique. This is yet another interpretation of "when one achieves enlightenment, even their pets ascend."

While a Cultivator is cultivating, they are unable to completely absorb the spiritual energy drawn to their vicinity. Although the domesticated animals they keep lack Spiritual Wisdom and do not cultivate, their bodies instinctively begin to evolve after being immersed in a rich spiritual energy environment for an extended period.

Dong Tianyu was originally like this too. Although he practiced the Chaos Art, a Top Level Method, because the method was too advanced, it led to a situation of oversupply. When Dong Tianyu began cultivating, an enormous amount of spiritual energy would converge around him.

Even though Dong Tianyu's talent was also extraordinary, every time he cultivated, he utterly failed to absorb all the spiritual energy gathered around him. Only when he stopped practicing would the dense spiritual energy surrounding him slowly return to normal.

The spiritual energy in the air is like a puddle of water on a flat surface. If water from one place diminishes, spiritual energy from other places will flow rapidly, like water, replenishing that area.

However, despite the replenishment being speedy, in the face of abilities that can consume massive amounts of spiritual energy at once, there will be short periods where the spiritual energy fails to replenish in time.

When Dong Tianyu's body acquired the unfettered passive ability to absorb spiritual energy, combined with a top-rated Cultivation Method, the resulting effect was far greater than merely additive.

That's why, after Dong Tianyu experienced a bodily mutation and actively started cultivating for the first time, he was shocked to sense a vast flood of spiritual energy pouring endlessly into his body like a breached dam.

Fortunately, even though the amount of spiritual energy was fierce, Dong Tianyu's Golden Core was like a black hole. No matter how much energy entered his body, it did not produce the slightest change in his Golden Core.

If Dong Tianyu's cultivation level had still been at the Foundation Building Stage, he might have worried whether his body could explode from the energy being infused into it. After all, even refining Energy into fluid took time.

A fierce influx of spiritual energy into the body in a short time is, unless one is on the verge of a breakthrough from the Foundation Establishment stage to the Golden Core Stage, harmful rather than beneficial for the Cultivator.

But once one reaches the Golden Core Stage, it's different. The Core Breaking to Nascent Soul itself requires a massive amount of spiritual energy, and most importantly, at the Golden Core Stage, there's the concept of the Golden Core Ninth Transformation. Whenever one's Golden Core is in a state of fullness, one can, like during Foundation Establishment, refine it to improve the quality of the internal energy.

The Golden Core Ninth Transformation does not mean that this method of refining the Golden Core to improve its quality can be used only nine times. This method actually has no upper limit, but after each refinement of the Golden Core, in order to return the internal Golden Core to a state of energy fullness, it needs to absorb an amount of spiritual energy ten times greater than before.

This tenfold amount refers to the quantity of spiritual energy before refinement. It means that with each Transformation, the energy needed for absorption is ten times the previous amount, and with each additional Transformation of the Golden Core, the required energy is not additive but multiplicative.

Most prodigies, when resources are abundant, can at most achieve a Third Transformation of their Golden Core. While it may seem that with sufficient wealth and time, increasing the Golden Core's Transformations should be no issue,

for the vast majority of Cultivators, what they lack the most are precisely wealth and time.