The Quantum Path to Immortality-Chapter 220 - 219: Night Training First Hunt - Into the Wild

Night Training & The First Hunt

Three Days of Progress

Kai lay in bed, staring at the ceiling while his family slept peacefully around him.

Three days had passed since he'd gotten Void Severance, and those three days had been more productive than most cultivators achieved in years.

Servy rested beside his bed, gleaming with purple-black energy that was noticeably stronger than when he'd first awakened it. Every night, Kai had fed the sword void energy, watching its power grow steadily. The blade hummed contentedly even now, dreaming whatever dreams growth-type artifacts had.

Technique Mastery was complete. All twenty integrated techniques from Ice Wind's legacy—sword arts, movement techniques, defensive methods, offensive attacks—Kai had mastered them all in roughly seven hours of practice spread over three days. His parents thought he was just enthusiastically training in the yard. They had no idea their son had achieved complete mastery of techniques that took normal cultivators decades to learn.

Soul Strengthening had progressed significantly. Kai had consumed three Soul Strengthening Elixirs over the past three days—one each night after his family went to sleep. The effects were cumulative and profound.

[Current Spirit: 30,248 (+30 from three elixirs)]

[Soul Density: +45% from baseline]

[Spiritual Sense Range: 51,500 square kilometers]

His soul felt solid now. Dense. Like it had weight and substance instead of being the ephemeral thing most people's souls were.

Energy Control had become his primary nighttime focus. While his family slept, Kai practiced the exercises from the Energy Mastery Manual with obsessive dedication.

The manual taught progressive levels of control:

Basic Control: Move energy without waste Intermediate Control: Shape energy with precision

Advanced Control: Multi-task energy manipulation

Perfect Control: Execute techniques with zero inefficiency

Superior Control: Manipulate energy at subatomic level

Absolute Control: Command energy with pure thought

Divine Control: Energy becomes extension of will itself

Kai had blown through the first four levels in six hours. Perfect Control came naturally to someone with his attributes and comprehension. But the manual made it very clear—there were at least three more realms above that.

He was working toward Superior Control now. The exercises involved forming energy constructs so precise they could manipulate individual molecules. Shape void energy into structures smaller than a single cell. Control thousands of separate energy threads simultaneously without any of them interfering with each other.

It was hard. Actually hard. The first thing that had challenged him in days.

He loved it.

Law Comprehension was perhaps his greatest achievement. Every night, multiple threads of his consciousness had been dedicated purely to understanding his five Laws on deeper levels.

Through intense study, meditation, and his Terran Bloodline's ridiculous 100,000× learning acceleration, he'd made massive progress:

Wind Law: 12% → 19% Ice Law: 12% → 19% Sword Law: 12% → 19% Speed Law: 12% → 19% Void Law: 12% → 19%

Seven percentage points in three days. Most cultivators would spend years—sometimes decades—advancing a single Law by seven percent.

Kai had done it with all five simultaneously.

Dimensional Energy Access was tantalizingly close. His deep study of the Primordial Universe Void Scripture had brought him to the edge of a major breakthrough.

The scripture described dimensional barriers as membranes—thin films of condensed space-time that separated different realities. Between these membranes existed dimensional energy: raw power that was one thousand times denser than normal Nexis.

Accessing it would revolutionize his cultivation speed.

Kai understood the theory perfectly now. He understood the structure of dimensional barriers, the way space folded between realities, the points where the membranes grew thin.

He just needed one final insight—the practical application. The actual technique for breaking through those barriers without causing dimensional collapse or killing himself in the process.

He was close. So close he could almost taste it.

Constitution Enhancement had been dramatic. Last night, Kai had consumed one Void Condensation Pill and one Cellular Enhancement Serum.

The Void Condensation Pill flooded his body with 100 billion void energy units—enough raw power to make his cells burn with energy for hours. The Cellular Enhancement Serum doubled his cellular efficiency, strength, and capacity.

The result was spectacular:

[Constitution: 1,500,000]

[Status: Beyond Peak Tier 5, approaching Early Tier 6 physical power]

[Physical Capability: Can destroy countries with casual strikes]

[Defense: Can tank Tier 5 attacks without damage]

[Energy Body Density: 71× baseline human cultivator]

His body wasn't flesh and blood anymore—it was condensed void energy shaped into human form. Every cell was a micro-dantian containing compressed power. His bones were crystallized energy. His blood was liquid void energy worth 100000 spirit stones per drop.

He was, by any reasonable measure, a walking catastrophe waiting to happen.

The System Shop had unlocked three days ago—a new function that appeared without warning or explanation.

[System Shop Activated]

[Free Purchases: 1 per month]

[Current Shop Coins: 0 (used for first purchase)]

Kai had immediately browsed the available items, his eyes going wide at the sheer variety. Cultivation techniques. Artifacts. Bloodlines. Pills. Formations. And...

[Universal Knowledge Tablet - Cost: 1 trillion shop coins]

[Contains: Complete compendium of scientific, magical, and cultivation knowledge]

[Includes: Physics, chemistry, biology, quantum mechanics, engineering, mathematics, farming techniques, runic theory, alchemy, robotics, AI theory, herbology, cultivation insights, fundamental forces, spatial theory, dimensional mechanics, and more]

Kai had used his one free purchase on it immediately.

The tablet existed in his soul space now—a repository of essentially infinite knowledge that his consciousness threads could access and study constantly.

Multiple threads were dedicated to learning physics and chemistry. Others studied quantum mechanics and engineering. Still others explored robotics, AI theory, and advanced mathematics.

That's where his understanding of fire as "rapid oxidation in exothermic chemical reactions" came from. The tablet taught him to see cultivation concepts through both mystical and scientific lenses simultaneously.

And it had given him an idea.

When he had time and revealed some of his abilities, he didn't just want to be a powerful cultivator. He wanted to build things. Create technology. Combine science and cultivation in ways no one had ever attempted.

A tech empire powered by cultivation energy and scientific knowledge.

But that was a dream for later.

Tonight was about combat. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Real combat. Against real opponents. In real danger.

Well, "real danger" was relative when you were a five-year-old with continental-destruction powers, but still—spirit beasts wouldn't just stand there and let him practice like training posts did.

Kai's eyes gleamed in the darkness.

Time to hunt.

Scene 2: The Escape

Kai's spiritual sense swept through the house one final time, checking everyone's status.

Mom and Dad: Deep sleep in their bedroom, breathing slow and steady. Dad was snoring softly. Mom had her arm draped over him protectively.

Taylor: Sound asleep in her room, clutching her stuffed bear, drooling slightly on her pillow. Dreaming about something that made her smile and occasionally giggle.

City night watch: Following their predictable patrol routes through Redwood City's streets, currently three blocks away and moving in the opposite direction.

Perfect. Coast clear.

Kai slipped out of bed silently. He'd gone to "sleep" already dressed in dark, practical clothes under his blanket—a trick that had served him well these past three nights of secret training.

Servy hung at his waist in its leather scabbard, the sword humming with barely contained eagerness. It could sense what was coming.

Ready for real combat? Kai thought at the blade.

Void Severance pulsed with violent approval, void energy swirling eagerly along its edge.

Kai crossed to his window—hinges recently oiled with cultivation oil he'd "borrowed" from Dad's old adventuring supplies. It opened without a sound.

Don't ask what the oil was used for.

He climbed onto the windowsill and looked down at the two-story drop to the backyard below.

A normal five-year-old would need to carefully climb down.

Kai just grinned and stepped forward into nothing.

Then the world shattered as his foot landed in the void.

Reality fragmented into purple-black pieces as Kai stepped through the boundary between normal space and the void layer beneath.

For one impossible instant, he existed in pure void—a dimension of absolute nothingness where the normal rules of physics simply didn't apply.

Distance had no meaning here. Time flowed strangely. Space itself was just a suggestion.

From this perspective, Kai could see everything. The void layer connected every point in space simultaneously, like looking at a three-dimensional map that extended in all directions infinitely.

He could see Redwood City below him—a cluster of lights and life energies. Could see the forests surrounding it. The mountains in the distance. Other cities hundreds of kilometers away. The entire region laid out like a map he could step to any point on.

His enhanced comprehension—Void Law at 19% and Space and Speed Law at 19%—made the technique feel completely natural now. Like walking through a door instead of forcing his way through reality's fabric with brute power.

Most cultivators who learned Space Step could manage maybe fifty to one hundred meters per step. Masters of the technique might reach a few kilometers if they pushed themselves.

Kai could cross continents.

[Current Void Step Specifications:]

[Maximum Range: 1,000 - 2,000 kilometers per step]

[Energy Cost: 0.00001 Void Energy units (essentially negligible)]

[Cooldown: None]

[Accuracy: Perfect (Law-level spatial awareness prevents miscalculation)]

[Side Effects: None at current range]

His destination tonight wasn't some random forest near Redwood City where Tier 1 beasts roamed and cultivators came for safe hunting practice.

No.

Tonight, Kai was going to Eternal Darkwood Forest.

The most famous—and most dangerous—wilderness in the entire region. Possibly the entire Planet.

Kai visualized his destination and stepped through the void.

Reality reformed around him 800 kilometers from home.

He stood on a hilltop overlooking a massive forest that stretched to the horizon in every direction. Trees so tall they seemed to scrape the sky. Canopy so thick it looked like a solid green carpet from this height.

But something about the perspective was... wrong.

The forest looked too big. Like an optical illusion where the scale didn't match the distance. Like looking at something through a lens that distorted space itself.

Because Eternal Darkwood wasn't a normal forest.

It was a natural dimensional pocket.

From the outside, the forest appeared to span maybe 500 kilometers across—roughly the size of a medium-sized country. Large, but not impossibly so.

From the inside, the forest was actually tens of

galaxy clusters positioned side-by-side.

Each galaxy cluster spanned roughly 10 million light-years. Ten of them together meant the forest's true interior dimensions were approximately 100 million light-years across.

Space itself folded, compressed, and twisted within the forest's boundaries. Normal geometry didn't apply. You could walk in a straight line for millions of years and never reach the edge. Distance and direction became suggestions rather than fixed rules.

It was a pocket dimension that had somehow formed naturally—some quirk of dimensional barriers growing thin in this location, creating a bubble of impossibly warped space that had existed for eons.

The reason it needed to be so vast? Tier 10 beasts.

Creatures powerful enough to destroy entire galaxies lived in Eternal Darkwood's depths. They needed space to roam, territories to claim, room to fight without accidentally obliterating the entire forest.

Cultivators came to Eternal Darkwood for three main reasons:

One: Hunt spirit beasts. The forest contained literally trillions of them, ranging from Tier 1 to Tier 10. Every ecosystem imaginable, compressed into one impossible space.

Two: Find natural treasures. The dimensional warping created exotic materials that couldn't form in normal space. Spirit herbs that grew nowhere else. Minerals infused with dimensional energy. Artifacts left behind by ancient cultivators who'd died in the depths.

Three: Kill other cultivators and steal their stuff. No laws applied inside Eternal Darkwood. No city guards. No sect protection. Just pure survival of the strongest. Murder was not only allowed—it was expected.

Basically, it was a giant free-for-all murder forest filled with monsters, treasures, and psychotic cultivators.

Perfect for a five-year-old's first hunt.

Kai took another Void Step and appeared directly at the forest's boundary.

The edge was visible even to normal sight—a faint shimmer in the air where normal space ended and dimensional space began. Like heat haze, but constant and unmoving.

Beyond that shimmer, the forest looked darker. Denser. More real somehow, as if everything outside was just a pale copy.

Kai took a breath and stepped through the boundary.

The change was immediate and overwhelming.