A Monumental Discovery!

Chen Zhengze obediently followed the instructions. He walked over to the meditation cushion, picked up the pill bottle, and gently popped the stopper. Moments later, a brown pill the size of a soybean rolled into his palm. *Is this the Primordial Origin Pill?* Chen Zhengze examined it curiously for a couple of seconds, then tilted his head back and swallowed it down. "The pill is down. What next?" The gentle female voice promptly delivered the next instruction: "Comrade Chen Zhengze, please sit back down on the meditation cushion. "Maintain a cross-legged posture, fingers pressed together, resting your hands palms-up on your knees." As the voice spoke— *Hiss—* A faint sound stirred within the chamber as a stream of fresh, pale-green gas was pumped inside. Being a senior base official, Chen Zhengze glanced up a few times and quickly deduced where the gas had come from. He hurried to sit down, adopting the required posture as directed. "And then?" The female voice spoke soothingly: "Close your eyes. Imagine yourself sitting quietly on an endless shore, waves rolling in from afar, spray light and lively, the tide steadily rising." As she spoke, the soothing white noise of rolling waves resonated throughout the chamber. "Gradually, the pale yellow sand merges with the tone of your skin. You dissolve into this landscape, and at this very moment, surges of tides churn within your body..." Listening to the guidance, assisted by the medicinal potency and the cultivation technique, Chen Zhengze felt his perception of the outside world grow dimmer while his internal bodily sensations sharpened. Without even realizing it, he had embarked upon his path of Awakening. *** Meanwhile, outside the chambers, the soldiers completed their preliminary steps one after another, entering the cultivation rooms in order to begin their Awakening attempts. As more and more soldiers settled into the meditative state, rows of instruments before the assembly of experts hummed to life. Pan Yongnian strolled casually in front of one monitor, hands clasped behind his back like an old man browsing a grocery market. On the left side of the screen, a row of information was displayed: [Name]: Xue Rui [Age]: 23 years, 173 days [Active Duty Unit]: Army Group Army Mechanized Infantry Brigade [Aptitude]: Five spiritual roots On the right side of the screen was a full-body scan. The figure in the image sat ramrod straight with legs crossed, its torso and limbs marked with numerous patches of varying colors. Almost by the second, these colored zones underwent subtle shifts. Seeing this, Pan Yongnian turned curiously to another expert beside him. "Old Feng, what is this...?" The man Pan Yongnian called Old Feng was a gaunt sixty-something fellow of ordinary appearance, whose most striking feature was a gleaming, polished bald head. His full name was Feng Congzhi, a leading luminary in the Republic's molecular imaging tracer field and one of the founding pioneers of domestic cross-scale biomedical imaging. In this Awakening trial, Feng Congzhi's team was in charge of tracking and localizing spiritual energy once it entered the body. Hearing Pan Yongnian's question, Feng Congzhi jutted his chin toward the cultivation chambers, speaking in a raspy, gravelly voice suited for belting out battle ballads: "Old Pan, remember the drink the soldiers downed earlier? That was our specially formulated tracer. "The carrier base is hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin conjugated with sodium riboflavin phosphate and phycocyanin. It's completely non-toxic and harmless, allowing us to track internal conditions using dual-channel fluorescent probes. "Beyond that, we spiked in a trace amount of germanate ions to serve as a high-precision targeting agent." Pan Yongnian blinked in curiosity. "Germanate ions?" "Yeah, GeO₃²⁻," Feng Congzhi explained, tracing the formula in the air with his index finger. "Didn't you guys collect a batch of spiritual energy samples the day before yesterday? We pulled an all-nighter running chemical analyses on them. "We discovered that when spiritual energy makes contact with germanate ions, it reacts with the tetrahedral void structure of the germanate, forming a metastable complex. "This complex is equally harmless to the human body. It simply emits near-infrared luminescence at a specific frequency for over eight hours straight. To quote one of my students, it's practically an innate saintly body born for tracing..." By the end of his explanation, Feng Congzhi chuckled at his own joke. Pan Yongnian finally understood. *So that's it...* Which meant the shifting colors on the scan represented the pathways of spiritual energy flowing through the body during Awakening. With that clear, Pan Yongnian refocused on the monitor. On Xue Rui's anatomical display, two distinct regions stood out with the most vibrant colors. First was Xue Rui's upper abdomen, glowing yellowish. Second was the crown of his head, radiant in deep crimson. The abdomen was easy to deduce—it was clearly related to the Primordial Origin Pill he had just swallowed, mostly tracking the dissolved medicine's trajectory. But the crown of his head... Pan Yongnian watched for a moment longer and noticed the red glow at the top resembled groundbait tossed into the water by anglers, gradually diluting and dispersing outward toward the limbs. A hypothesis instantly leaped into his mind, and he asked Feng Congzhi, "Old Feng, does that red trace represent incoming spiritual energy?" "Yes, that's spiritual energy," Feng Congzhi replied, his eyes glued to the display, clearly showing a trace of astonishment himself. "Incredible... In an environment with high spiritual energy concentration, the human body actually takes in vast amounts through the crown of the head... Comrade Lin Yi never mentioned this." Pan Yongnian nodded along, his brow involuntarily furrowing. During their earlier cross-world discussions, Lin Yi had mentioned two relatively efficient methods of cultivation: spirit stones and Spirit Gathering Arrays. Spirit stones were typically held in hand to draw in energy, whereas Spirit Gathering Arrays were used during normal seated meditation. As for how spiritual energy entered the body during meditation, Lin Yi's answer had been vague—he had merely stated that the body naturally absorbed it, without identifying any specific region or organ. Yet considering Lin Yi's loyalty to the home world, he certainly had no reason to deliberately hide such information. In other words... Even Lin Yi, a Foundation Establishment cultivator who had spent seventy years in the Tianling Realm, didn't actually know that spiritual energy entered the human body in massive quantities through the crown of the head? If this hypothesis held true, the implications were chilling. After all, this fell squarely within the realm of bodily sensation! Could an ordinary person not know they breathed through their nose and mouth? That was unthinkable. The only explanation was that something had clouded their somatic perception. Or, pushing the thought even further... Could it be that the other cultivators of the Tianling Realm didn't know either? If research could be directed toward this angle... *Hiss...* At the thought, Pan Yongnian genuinely felt the urge to suck in a breath of cold air and marvel at how terrifying the prospect was. A discovery—an absolute, colossal discovery! "Lin Qin!" Pan Yongnian wasn't the only one who realized it. Feng Congzhi reacted just as quickly, barking an order at his assistant: "Hurry, star this event and crank its archive priority to maximum! I'll follow up on this personally once the trial wraps up!" As he spoke, Feng Congzhi broke into a grin wide enough to show his back molars. To think they would unearth such a monumental clue right at the start of the experiment. What a massive breakthrough!