While Lan Xiaohui and Wu Yulan explore their new home, taking inventory of what they will have, and noting down any repairs and maintenance that needs to be performed, I study the point exchange.

For the past year, I have mostly allowed my subprocesses to interact with this system and to notify me of possible investments that exceed a certain appeal score — items and knowledge relevant to my immediate situation, like the [Imprint] suggestion I received some time ago.

I narrow down my so-called wishlist to several entries and capabilities that I will require in the next two years in order to give Lan Xiaohui a chance at catching up to Yu Shun in cultivation depth.

To begin with, the idea that a cultivator in the peak of Foundation Establishment can reach the peak of Core Formation in two years is insanity. For an average person, entering the Qi Refining realm at the age of fourteen, and then the Foundation Establishment by the age of twenty is considered to be an average talent. The Core Formation then, according to my stolen memories, can be entered by the age of forty and still be considered average.

This average is derived from the real experience of cultivators who have to navigate their life while also cultivating Qi. If one of these average cultivators were to sit down and cultivate — and only cultivate — they could cut the time down to half or thirty percent. If they used medicine as well, then they could possibly cut it down by half again.

When one considers tremendous or earth-shattering talent, naturally, the time it takes becomes much lower. Their ability to absorb medicine and to cultivate Qi is much higher, not to mention that part of their talent includes wealth and cultivation manuals from family or sect inheritance.

However, Qi in an area depletes and diminishes, and medicine requires time to be absorbed before it will be effective again.

All of these things take time.

In a vacuum, I am not certain how long it would take for someone to cultivate from the Foundation Establishment to the Nascent Soul realm, but I imagine Lan Xiaohui could do it with my help within five years. At full output of my [World Eater] breathing method and with my optimization of Lan Xiaohui’s meridians, her progress would be astonishingly quick.

In this place, specifically, with its rich Qi, that number could be reduced to within four years. The suggestion that Lan Xiaohui upgrades the Qi Gathering Array makes more sense in this regard. Ultimately, despite the Qi here being magnitudes richer than average, Lan Xiaohui’s speed would increase only by so much; the bottleneck is the dimensions of her internal systems that can process this vast amount of Qi at once and there is little I can do about it with my current methods.

The missing piece in this equation, then, is medicine.

I don’t need a deep Dao of Alchemy to know that medicine can improve all aspects of cultivation, temporarily and permanently. From lifespan extensions to modifying the internal configuration of a cultivator to be able to absorb more Qi and with higher efficiency.

Body cultivation also achieves a similar effect, but it is far more difficult to obtain — medicine only costs money; body cultivation is painful and difficult.

Sending Lan Xiaohui and Wu Yulan here may have been a calculated decision by the elders; supposedly this place has the raw materials necessary to produce medicine or obtain contributions with which to buy it. This was likely only in consideration for Wu Yulan and her future, and had nothing to do with Lan Xiaohui’s goal of meeting Yu Shun in battle and killing him — though it certainly seemed to be a convenient coincidence for them.

With this in mind, I decide to obtain an alchemy and refining manual, as well as the next stage of my body cultivation. Since Lan Xiaohui and I share the same Physique, we will both be able to benefit from it.

My subprocesses crawl through the list to find me a suitable manual for my capabilities and refining flame, and they return with an interesting choice.

I add it to the shopping list.

[ Cultivation Law - Emperor ] Black Jade Emperor Body (250,000 BP)

[ Manual - Supreme ] Extreme Refining Method (100,000 SP)

It is of the Supreme grade and is heavily discounted, just like my body cultivation method. These discounts likely appear because of the synergy with abilities I already possess. Even though I call it the Point Exchange, it is not as if these things appear out of nowhere — they are direct modifications of my internal system.

Next on the list is my internal storage.

I have felt envious at times of other storage devices with greater capacity than mine — but not capability — though I have not felt a pressing need to upgrade my capacity because of this.

However, my Inner World upgrades require a vast amount of material and likely storage for this material. Fifty tons of spirit stone, thirty-five tons of spirit metal, and fifty thousand spirit stones.

Iron has a density of around seven tons per cubic meter, and limestone has an average density of around two tons per cubic meter. My tiny capacity of ten cubic meters will not do.

This is pure stone and pure iron. When obtained from a vein, the density of the material I want per cubic meter will be quite different.

I estimate I will need around five hundred cubic meters of internal storage to be able to process these materials and to still possess some free space, though I would really prefer twice that amount of capacity, just in case.

For now, I settle on five hundred cubic meters with upgrades to the [Refining] and [Processing] arrays.

[ Array - Heaven ] Dimensional Storage (50,000 BP)

At the Heaven grade, my dimensional storage has a base capacity of 500 cubic meters, which could be upgraded separately, but for now, it will do. The Supreme grade version has a capacity of 2000 cubic meters, but it costs considerably more.

[ Array - Upgrade ] Refining III (10,000 BP)

[ Array - Upgrade ] Processing III ( 10,000 BP)

I am not quite certain how much of an improvement the upgrades will be, but I am looking forward to finding out. For once, I share the same excitement that my sentient core exhibits.

There is only one thing left to obtain. There were many situations in which I wished I had a better ability to analyze things. Even at its basic level, [Critical Analysis] has proved to be quite helpful in combat as well.

[ Talent - Supreme ] Critical Analysis II (75,000 BP)

I look over my shopping list with satisfaction. This will cost me quite a bit of blood points and the entirety of my soul point reserve. When I consider it this way, it is highly unlikely that I will have this amount of blood points again for a very long time, considering that a majority of it came from devouring the snake and the tree.

These nearly half million blood points would likely be the accumulation of half a decade of slaughter, now all about to disappear in a fraction of a second.

I am already familiar with the process of spending a large amount of points at once and I prepare myself for the execution of the trade.

Through [Nooparallelism], I dedicate a small sliver of my consciousness to record and log any changes to my internal system and then execute the trade.

As expected, the vast changes to my internal system cause my consciousness to diminish severely — to the point of losing it entirely — but my preparations pay off.

[ Analysis: Gained Tremendous Insight into the Dao of Arrays after recording internal changes. ]

[ Analysis: Gained Deep Insight into the Dao of Meta after recording internal changes. ]

[ Analysis: Soul Perception rank increased from Grade C to Grade B. ]