"...and say hello to the sixth cultivation path, hehehe!"

".....!!" Theo slowly opened his eyes, the motion almost reluctant, as if his mind itself resisted what it was about to face, then in the very next instant he jolted upright and took two hurried steps back, "This? This...?!"

His gaze snapped onto the small booklet, fingers tightening around it unconsciously, his heart hammering violently against his chest before skipping a beat entirely, as if even it hesitated, fearing what acknowledging this might mean.

Then, almost stiffly, he raised his eyes to meet his father’s, confusion and raw disbelief clashing with a faint trace of fear, "This?!"

"Too many questions won’t change the answer." Robin chuckled, the sound carrying unmistakable pride, almost teasing in nature, "What you’re holding is the sixth cultivation path, or more simply... it’s a way to solve humanity’s internal energy problem."

"...How?" Theo’s voice came out lower this time, strained, as though forcing the word through a tightening throat. He knew his father had been researching this for a long time, had heard fragments of it here and there, but he had always, always dismissed it as nothing more than a dead end.

No matter how absolute and unshakable his trust in his father was, this was not something that could be accepted on faith alone.

If his father told him he was about to march out and fight the Behemoth of Destruction head-on and somehow emerge victorious, Theo would not even hesitate, he would believe him, stand beside him, and lend everything he had... but solving humanity’s internal energy problem? That was something else entirely.

How many millions of years had passed with no answer?

Five Great Truth Chosen had risen and fallen across history, their names etched into eternity, and alongside them countless millions of peerless researchers had devoted their lives, their minds, their very souls to this exact problem... yet not one of them had even scratched its surface, not one had left behind anything meaningful that could be built upon.

And his father... had started from nothing.

From absolute zero.

And somehow reached a solution before even crossing the threshold of a thousand years of age?!

What would happen if the five Great Truth Chosen heard of this achievement?

How would it make them appear before the masses who revered them?

Before themselves, standing in the shadow of something that should have been impossible?

"How?!?" Theo asked again, louder this time, the disbelief breaking through, "Which one of your approaches actually worked? Creation? Balance and causality? Or was it that insane theory you mentioned once, using spacetime as a medium to transfer energy directly into the skin?!"

Naturally, Theo was not completely in the dark about what his father worked on day after day. It wasn’t espionage, not even close, it was simple curiosity... he wanted to understand what his father was building, what new force would soon emerge to strengthen the empire, and in return, his father often just wanted someone to listen, someone to hear the endless trials, the failures, the absurd ideas that came and went.

Even so, talk about the sixth path had always been peripheral, a side thread compared to his father’s truly monumental research. Theo had long treated it as trivial, background noise at best, like idle conversation about the weather or passing family news.

"None of them." Robin let out a soft sigh, though the faint curve of his lips betrayed amusement more than frustration, "I spent far too long searching in distant places, complicating things far beyond what was necessary, didn’t I?" Then he let out a quiet chuckle, "Just imagine having to teach a small child how to use a spacetime construct or a balance-causality framework every single time they wanted to launch a simple energy attack," he shook his head slowly, "The more obsessed I became with the problem, the more wild, impractical, and detached from reality the solutions grew."

"I don’t understand..." Theo frowned deeply, his grip on the booklet tightening slightly, "Then what did you actually do?"

"...I received a rather harsh remark from a friend," Robin said, his gaze drifting off for a brief moment as if recalling that exact instant, before he turned back, a light laugh escaping him as he met Theo’s eyes again, "And it turns out that rebuilding my solid foundations every once in a while has far greater value than I gave it credit for, hehe."

"Huh?" Theo blinked, clearly thrown off, the answer only deepening the mystery rather than resolving it.

"Read the booklet," Robin gestured for him to sit with a calm motion of his hand, his tone carrying a quiet certainty, "and while you’re reading, I want you to drink any purification elixir you have, to cleanse your body from the lingering effects of the Affinity Elixir."

"...?" Theo frowned, a crease forming between his brows as confusion flickered across his face, but he did not question it further. He simply nodded after a brief pause, reached into his storage, and pulled out a small bottle filled with a transparent, almost glass-like liquid, then tilted his head back and drank it in a single motion without hesitation.

That liquid would return his physical body to a pristine state, as if he had just been born into the world. Whether toxins, residual drugs, or any foreign substances lingering within his circulatory system, everything would be forcibly expelled, evaporating out through his skin over the next few minutes in a faint, almost invisible mist.

That bottle was strictly forbidden to use during battle. Even if struck by a lethal poison that promised certain death, it was considered wiser to fall than to drink it. The moment it was consumed, every enhancement, every amplification, every external advantage granted by elixirs would vanish completely, leaving the user as vulnerable as a defenseless creature in the middle of a battlefield... and for an army like that of the True Beginning Empire, which relied almost entirely on layered elixir enhancements, such a moment of weakness was equivalent to suicide.

...After finishing the bottle, Theo exhaled slowly, then dropped down to sit without wasting another second. He opened the booklet and began reading, his focus sharp, his mind already racing ahead.

The booklet was barely the size of his palm, thin and unimpressive at first glance, containing only a handful of pages. Most of those pages were filled with diagrams, simple yet precise illustrations of the lower abdominal region and the pathways through which energy was meant to flow. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

This... this thing was supposed to solve the greatest dilemma that had plagued humans, mutants, and evolvers alike for tens of millions of years...

Yet it looked no more impressive than a cheap pamphlet explaining the location of a restroom in a public park.

"...."

Theo continued reading in silence, his eyes narrowing slightly as he examined each line, each symbol, each carefully drawn stroke of the diagrams, as if trying to force hidden meaning out of them. When he reached the final page, he paused, then slowly lifted his gaze to meet his father’s calm, confident smile...

Then lowered his head again and started from the beginning.

A third time...

A fourth...

A fifth.

Each time, his reading grew slower, more deliberate, as though repetition alone might reveal something concealed between the lines.

But there was nothing.

Nothing that stood out.

Nothing that felt groundbreaking.

Nothing that even hinted at the magnitude of the claim attached to it.

The booklet simply explained the process of constructing the eleventh foundation using a heavenly law. Its tone, its structure, even its simplicity... you could hand it to a ten-year-old child and they would not be able to distinguish it from the most basic instructional manuals. There was almost no difference whatsoever.

Theo stole another glance at his father, his expression tightening just slightly.

Was it possible... that his father’s obsession with the sixth path had finally crossed a line? That he had begun to see patterns and truths that simply did not exist to anyone else? That perhaps he had—

No.

Theo’s jaw tightened faintly.

He refused that thought immediately.

His father would not fall that far.

"Hey!" Even Robin seemed to grow mildly irritated, his voice cutting through the silence, "The contents of the book won’t change no matter how many times you read it."

"I’m trying to make sure you’re not joking with me!!" Theo shot back instantly, almost reflexively, then dropped his gaze once more and flipped back to the first page, stubbornness flashing across his features, "Fine... maybe I missed something, maybe there’s a detail I overlooked, I’ll read it again."

"You’ve read enough." Robin waved his hand dismissively, though his eyes remained sharp, observant, "Tell me. What’s the one difference you noticed?"

"..." Theo finally stopped. He closed the booklet slowly, his fingers lingering on its cover for a moment before he spoke, "Almost nothing. There’s barely anything here... except one thing."

He lifted his head and locked eyes with his father.

"You interfered with how law patterns are distributed onto the foundation."

He paused briefly, organizing his thoughts before continuing.

"Normally, during foundation construction, the cultivator injects their understanding of the law into the energy. The energy itself then translates that understanding into patterns and integrates them into the foundation in the most optimal structure possible... a structure chosen naturally by the law itself."

"And because of that, the deeper the user’s understanding of the law before beginning construction, the better the resulting pattern distribution, and the more stable and promising the future growth becomes... this is considered one of the greatest miracles of the internal cultivation system."

His brows furrowed deeper.

"But what you’re doing here... you’re tampering with that fundamental principle. You’re not introducing a new mechanism, you’re overriding an existing one."

"You’re forcing the law patterns into a specific arrangement instead of letting them form organically. You’re stripping the law of its autonomy... and imposing your own structure over it."

Then he leaned forward slightly, his gaze sharpening.

"That’s not innovation... that’s going against nature."

A brief silence followed.

Then Theo spoke again, his tone carrying a trace of disbelief mixed with reluctant acknowledgment.

"Right now, you’re like someone who saw water spill and spread into an irregular shape... and decided, no, I’ll force it to form a perfect star, no matter what."

"Exactly." Robin nodded immediately, without the slightest hesitation, his expression brightening with unmistakable satisfaction, "That’s precisely it."

Then his smile widened just a fraction.

"Because I am more knowledgeable than the heavenly laws themselves... and correcting their mistakes is my responsibility."

"..."