"Are you sure? As I see it, even though this spell is masterful, it still has around a 0.5% risk of reducing your talent by 10%," said Daoist Snow.
"This is the best I can do; I don't believe it's possible for the current me to calculate a better spell," said Jack. After all, he cannot use knowledge from sources that are not directly in this world.
Nodding, Daoist Snow read the spell and learned it in a moment. The spell was at the level of soul transformation; for her, it was very easy to learn.
The simple fact that Jack could calculate a soul transformation spell while only being at multiple soul realm was extremely impressive; still, even for Jack, there were limits. He can only use his current brain, which means his calculative ability is only around the peak of multiple souls, which is insufficient to calculate a perfection realm spell.
He had Daoist Snow and could have given the calculating task to her, but he didn't trust her to be able to calculate a spell with a lower chance of side effects than he did. The current spell is enough; even in the worst-case scenario, it would reduce his talent. For Jack, talent is not that important; at most, it would take more points for the system to advance in the cultivation base.
The system takes so few points to help promote him to a higher cultivation realm because his talent is already very high. He has very few bottlenecks, and reaching the next realm takes just a push. If his talent were worse, it would have taken many more points.
After a few minutes, Daoist Snow got familiar with the spell and cast it.
"Temporary immortality," she shouted the name of the spell.
There was no visible change; still, Jack could feel the restraints of his lifespan had been removed from him. The spell makes the target immortal for one month.
There are limitations, however.
Some spells, such as 'Life Burn,' 'Luck Drains Life,' 'Big Bang,' etc., use lifespan as fuel to cast stronger spells. Once 'Temporary Immortality' is active, these spells won't be able to be cast.
There is a technical reason for this.
'Temporary Immortality' doesn't actually increase one's lifespan to infinity; its mechanism is different. It locks one's lifespan to its current state.
For example, suppose person X has lived 200 years out of his 400-year lifespan. In that case, the 'Temporary Immortality' spell prevents his lifespan from being consumed further, so his life would remain exactly at 200 as long as the spell remains active. The spell would also lock the upper limit of lifespan; it would remain at 400.
This means that spells that consume lifespan for increasing the potency of spells would likewise be unable to withdraw any lifespan and thus would fail to work. If the consuming spell is too powerful, it might break the lifespan lock that 'Temporary Immortality' puts on and consume the caster's life.
It can be said that Jack's name for the spell is misleading; the most appropriate name would be 'Lifespan Lock.' Spells that truly increase the upper limit of one's lifespan to infinity would be much harder to calculate, maybe even impossible to do.
There were a few other ways to design spells like 'Lifespan Lock.' One way would have been to lock only the upper limit of his lifespan; if Jack had done that, he would have survived without any issues. However, that had its own dangers, such as an increased chance of reducing talent and even drawing a heavenly tribulation. Of course, heavenly tribulations wouldn't be able to reach him in this inheritance space, but Jack still preferred not to take those risks, so he just spent a little more time to lock both the upper limit and his current used-up lifespan.
The heaven's will has no influence over the inheritance ground; for all practical purposes, this inheritance ground is a different, completely separate world.
With his lifespan's upper limit locked, Jack would have no issue dissolving his cultivation.
He cast the 'Dissolve' spell of the multiple souls realm with one thought.
The Dissolve spell is very common; there are versions of it all the way into the perfection realm. Only cultivators who intend to disband their cultivation cast it.
The spell was created by a very famous cultivator, Daoist Immortal Dream. He has been recognized as the father of modern spell-casting techniques and invented many foundational and famous spells. It's said that he failed to break through rank 10 and died, but Jack, who wrote the back story, knows that he actually succeeded. He left an inheritance of very rare and precious spell books; Jack plans on getting them in the future.
The dissolve spell began operating smoothly, slowly bringing Jack back to the late stage of multiple souls and then to the mid and early stages. Without any hiccups, it dropped him back to substance soul peak.
All the substance souls that appeared as a result of him reaching the peak of the multiple-soul realm disappeared.
After reaching the peak of the substance soul, Jack once again cast the 'Dissolve' spell, this time the substance soul level of 'Dissolve.'
Again, his realm fell from peak to late, from late to middle, from middle to early, and from early to the peak of the divine soul realm.
Each cultivation realm has 10 stages: 1-3 are considered early, 4-6 are mid, 7-9 are considered late, and the 10th stage is considered to be peak.
When cultivators speak about early, they mean 1-3 stages, and so on; they won't specifically name the number of stages just for ease of communication.
Jack felt nothing as his realm fell. The Dissolve spell, invented by Daoist Immortal Dream, was extremely smooth and completely safe, with virtually no chance of going wrong.
He repeated the process repeatedly; his nascent soul disappeared, a core appeared again, and then his core disappeared.
He became a mortal again!
"Okay!" Jack smiled and glanced at his system interface.
Name: Jack (Mortal)
Main mission: Conquer the World
Side missions: (list)
Temporary task: (list)
Grandpa count: 2 (+)
Current Grandpas: 2 (Soul Transformation Realm 10th Stage)(Perfection realm 10th stage)
Points: 9,554,000
Immediately, without delay, he began cultivating Tlod's improved basic cultivation technique.
Fortunately for him, Jack didn't hit the 0.5% chance of talent reduction, so his talent remained at its peak.
It would take relatively few points to increase his cultivation.
The system prompted, "It costs 7 points to reach the peak of the Energy gathering realm—confirm?"
Jack tapped on "confirm."
Immediately, Jack felt amazing, as if he was in a very comfortable hot stream.
Name: Jack (Peak of Energy Gathering stage)
Main mission: Conquer the World
Side missions: (list)
Temporary task: (list)
Grandpa count: 2 (+)
Current Grandpas: 2 (Soul Transformation Realm 10th Stage)(Perfection Realm 10th stage)
Points: 9,553,993
"It costs 56 points to reach the peak of the Core Formation realm—confirm?"
Jack tapped "confirm."
"It costs 448 points to reach the peak of the Nascent Soul realm—confirm?"
Again, he tapped "confirm."
"It costs 3,584 points to reach the peak of the Divine Soul realm—confirm?"
As always, he tapped "confirm."
"It costs 28,672 points to reach the peak of the Substance Soul realm—confirm?"
He tapped "confirm" without second thoughts.
"It costs 229,376 points to reach the peak of the Multiple Soul realm—confirm?"
Jack tapped "confirm" for one final time.
After reaching the peak of the multiple-soul realm again, 99 substance souls once again appeared.
The entire operation was extremely smooth, with no twists and turns!
Name: Jack (Peak Multiple Soul realm)
Main mission: Conquer the World
Side missions: (list)
Temporary task: (list)
Grandpa count: 2 (+)
Current Grandpas: 2 (Soul Transformation Realm 10th Stage)(Perfection Realm 10th stage)
Points: 9,291,857
"It's done," Jack smiled, feeling his visibly more agile and stable mana. His current self is at least 10 times stronger than just a few days ago.
"With this, when I reach the peak of perfection, I will be matchless!" he thought.
The peak of perfection is a fixed position; most peak perfections have the same power level. But, things such as the quality of the spells, the quality of mana, and one's mastery of the art of battle can still affect outcomes. Once Jack reaches the peak of perfection, even though he cannot overwhelm other peaks of perfection cultivators, he can cast much more powerful spells of heavenly dao. He can cast more complicated spells at much faster speeds. Even though it wouldn't be 'easy' per se to defeat peak perfection spells, he would, without a doubt, be the strongest perfection in the world. Coupled with many grandpas and grandmas he would buy by that point, he would have no issue dominating the world and finally completing the main task.
Then, Jack examined the spells of heavenly dao he obtained when he broke through the multiple-soul realm. He has not paid much attention to them, but now that he is finally done upgrading his basic cultivation technique, he finally found time to look through the new spells.
"Heavenly Container: A safe and separate space to place items; very resistant to space theft."
"Heavenly Furnace: Pill masters usually concoct their pills in isolated environments to reduce the chance of outside factors interfering with their process. With the heavenly furnace, there is no longer any need for that; any outside factor could only help and increase the chance of success. If the pill quality of the concocted pill turns out to be too high, it can trigger a heavenly tribulation."
"Heavenly Song: Songs composed by heavens which can be used to control worldly elements, and even some magical beasts; it can trigger heavenly tribulation."
"Heavenly Hack: It can, to some extent, circumvent the world's laws; can trigger terrifying tribulations."
"Merciful: Can reduce a tribulation's intensity of others; cannot reduce the intensity of the tribulation targets the caster."
"Heavenly Treat: Increases the quality of the food."
"Heavenly Compass: Can summon a compass which points to the nearest heavenly treasure; can trigger tribulation."
"Heavenly Calendar: Gives the caster detailed information about important naturally occurring events in the world."
"Heavenly Shortcut: A spell with very wide usage which can draw the power of heaven to create shortcuts that help the caster; can trigger tribulation."
"Heavenly Love: Can be cast to help bless the target; the target cannot be the caster."