The temple stood as a silent witness to Lin Mu's transformation.
More years passed and Lin Mu was now eighty years of age with ng Bai turning almost thirty.
Ti, as it often did in secluded cultivation, blurred into the rhythm of breath, the sound of footsteps under pressure, the low chanting of sutras, and the creak of muscles enduring crushing gravity.
Lin Mu trained every single day—no exception. Not even the storms that rolled over the mountains nor the shifting pressures from the residual energies of the closed rift deterred him.
With the Burdenless Dominator Physique as his unshakable foundation and the Gravity Dao Embryo nestled deep within his soul, he slowly began learning the intricacies of his new path.
At first, he had no idea how to properly apply his Gravity Dao Embryo beyond instinctual weight manipulation and brute force enhancents. But the monks of the monastery—guardians of a forgotten path steeped in pressure, density, and spiritual gravitas—beca his quiet masters.
The abbot, having witnessed Lin Mu's transformation firsthand, was particularly patient with him.
"Gravity is not just force pulling down," he once told Lin Mu as they walked under a fivefold gravity array. "It is attraction, binding, and centered will. All things orbit what they cannot escape. If your Dao is gravity, then your will must beco the center of all things."
Lin Mu had pondered that for months.
Slowly, the applications of Gravity began to unfold:
He learned how to anchor his qi and presence so deeply that even space around him resisted displacent. With a single step, he could beco immovable.
He trained in gravitational bindings, locking opponents in place by increasing the weight of their own bodies while simultaneously lowering their resistance, crushing their foundations mid-fight. He could further amplify this by adding the True Earth Dao Embryo's Dao Skill: Aspect of heaviness to it.
When he combined the two, he could basically flatten a small hill just by the pressure generated by it. Though the drain on his immortal qi by using two Dao Skills of two different Dao Embryos together was massive.
re seconds of activation drained away ten percent of his immortal qi which was a massive amount when one considered Lin Mu's colossal stores.
He even began experinting with gravitational lensing—bending light and energy through condensed gravity to confuse perception or reflect techniques. While this was still rudintary, the monks considered it a sacred mark of progress.
This also helped Lin Mu in another one of his techniques, the Spectral Phantasm Strike. With the addition of this thod, he could now further improve his illusions, making him grow closer to the true completion of the skill.
What Lin Mu didn't expect, however, was how his body cultivation grew in tandem.
The constant training under increasing levels of gravity polished his muscles, bones, and sinew like tempered steel. The very force of gravity pulled against his body every mont, straining it, reshaping it—compressing and compacting it with brutal efficiency.
Even without active cultivation, Lin Mu's physique grew stronger. But with the Burdenless Dominator Physique allowing him to bear the stress, he was able to continuously refine his strength.
"I don't even need to fight to grow stronger," he realized one day, drenched in sweat, skin glowing faintly gold beneath the weight of the world. "I just need to endure."
But Lin Mu was not the only one making progress.
ng Bai had his own quiet journey.
Though he often stood in Lin Mu's imnse shadow, the young man was no slouch. He had cultivated diligently over the two years, pushing himself despite the overwhelming pressure—both literal and taphorical.
He had tried to learn gravity-based techniques like Lin Mu, but they eluded him. His affinity was different. Still, that didn't stop him from observing and learning.
Instead, he focused on what he understood: formations.
He spent his days ditating under complex arrays drawn by the monks, watching how the energy flowed, how structure controlled chaos. He studied scrolls, old diagrams, and even rebuilt cracked formation plates for practice.
In ti, his cultivation rose, step by step.
And then—finally—it happened.
ng Bai reached the Peak of the Dao Shell Realm.
With his spiritual foundation firm and his essence stable, it was ti to decide the direction of his Dao Embryo.
While others might struggle to find their path, ng Bai had known for a while now.
He would take the path of Formations—of control, order, geotry, and structure.
But there was one problem: Formations were vast. Too vast to commit to a single aspect. To leave his future open, he took an unconventional approach.
He chose to shape his Dao Shell into a perfect icosahedron—twenty equal triangular faces forming a sphere-like shell. It was one of the most stable and versatile geotric structures in nature, balancing tension and compression equally.
"Each face is a window," ng Bai murmured during his secluded session, "a direction of study. A point of possibility. I will not be bound to one pattern alone."
This shell, unlike others, was ant to accommodate multiple aspects of a single Dao—interlocking and evolving with future comprehension.
The monks were intrigued.
"You've created a Formation Shell that is also perhaps a Dao Compass," the abbot said with appreciation. "You do not seek to control the Dao—you seek to map it."
ng Bai smiled, quietly proud.
Back in the training grounds, Lin Mu had taken to ditating under a boulder that weighed several thousand tons. He had carried it there himself, of course. It was originally small hill which had been condensed under gravity to its current smaller volu.
Now, as he sat beneath its shadow, his eyes glinted with subtle gravity fluctuations—spatial lines bent slightly around him, forming an unseen lattice of attraction.
He was no longer just training. He was integrating.
"One day," he thought, "this power won't just crush mountains. It will bend the battlefield to my will."
With two years behind them, both Lin Mu and ng Bai had grown. One forged a body that laughed at tribulation. The other molded his mind into a lattice of infinite precision.
Their paths were still long. Their enemies still unknown. But in the stillness of the temple and the embrace of gravity, they were becoming ready.
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