On the western coast of Middle-earth, the twins have temporarily settled in a bay.
Jill Young dives and swims deep in the ocean, relentless as ever. Since she doesn't need to breathe, she can stay down for ages. Every day, she absorbs the life energy of deep-sea beasts to break through the remnants of her pill, progressing at lightning speed and charging boldly toward an even greater future.
Once your strength surpasses a dragon, the world flips upside down. Whether it's the original Titan Spirit Method or the updated Neo Titan Spirit Method, descriptions of what comes after 'One Dragon' are always a bit sketchy. That's probably because among all the cultivators over the ages, very few ever get past 'One Dragon.' So, just like with the Great Shift, the last few steps are full of wild guesses, and nobody can point out a clear path forward.
So, the old rules of the Titan Spirit Method don't work anymore. It's time to innovate and make improvements to keep moving forward. Jill Young pushes ahead, exploring and challenging her limits every single day.
Meanwhile, Jack Young built a small house on the bay, simply decorated but with its own quirky charm. For him, it's also time to tweak the Insight Technique to better fit his current needs.
Inside his sea of consciousness, a flawless divine ring symbolizes a certain kind of perfection—and also marks another finish line. From here on out, everyone has their own path to walk, so the Insight Technique descriptions start to thin out.
The Seven Wheel Yoga that's helped him this far has reached its end. After much thought, Jack remembers what Big Moe once said about the 'External Wheel,' 'Eighth Wheel,' and 'Brahma Wheel'—all solid breakthrough ideas. But he didn't ask for details back then, and now Big Moe's nowhere to be found, so Jack has to figure things out on his own.
Every day, he reads, plays the zither, studies martial arts, and ponders new transcription methods. Sometimes he helps his disciples solve problems, stokes the sword furnace, and nurtures sword spirits. When he has free time, he goes out for a stroll—wandering among mountains and rivers, mingling with folks from different lands, or visiting masters in sacred groves. All this, he uses the Supreme Spirit Path to push his Insight Technique further.
Three months later, a thunderous boom erupts from the sea. A massive water column shoots skyward, soaring like a white dragon for hundreds of meters. With a crash, tons of seawater fall back into the ocean like a torrential downpour.
"Here you go!" A familiar voice drifts over. Rachel Luo, who was practicing horse stance on the seaside rocks, bracing herself against the raging waves, instinctively reaches out—and catches several fish falling from the sky. On closer look, the fish are already roasted!
She looks up and sees a flash of platinum light. Jill Young bursts out from the water column like a streak of lightning, landing with a smack on the shore. Steam billows all around her, with a faint red glow shimmering beneath. After just three steps, all the water on her body has evaporated—her surface temperature must be off the charts.
"Hssss—!" She straightens up and takes a deep breath, as if she’s inhaling all the winds and clouds from every direction.
"Whooo—!" She exhales long and hard, the light itself seeming to ripple and twist—just imagine how scorching that breath must be.
"Back already, Ocean Critter?" Jack Young lounges on his homemade rocking chair, sunbathing and sipping tea, barely lifting his eyelids. "That's eighty years of cultivation, huh? Not bad progress. I'm prepping 'Dual Cultivation Divine Skill—Beta Version 0.919.' If you keep up this pace, you'll be ready for the new update right on time."
"Internal energy is just a side quest—the real focus is the Titan Spirit Method! It's making huge breakthroughs, look!" Jill Young flexes her arms, blood energy surges, and dragon shadows appear. Besides her two Dragon Forces, a faint, tree-like network of energy veins emerges. It looks like roots and branches, stretching throughout her body, mysterious and intricate. Now, the two Dragon Forces run along these veins.
At the core of this network, there's a dazzling point of light—a Dragon Force Seed. The phantom network pulses with her heartbeat, sending waves of life energy out and drawing them back in, on a constant loop. The Dragon Force Seed, just like a real seed or embryo, breathes along with this cycle and slowly grows.
Right now, the seed is tiny and not much use, but once it matures and ripens, it'll become another Phantom Dragon.
"Oh?!" Jack Young stops lazing and puts down his book, staring in surprise. "You’ve turned the Titan Spirit Method upside down! Was this from something you picked up at the Earth Tree?"
"You got it!" Making Jack Young genuinely surprised puts Jill in a great mood. "Maybe it's just author error, but the last few layers of the Titan Spirit Method are pretty vague and confusing. There were probably lots of deep concepts, but they couldn't be put into simple words, so other methods were used instead. If the transcriber wasn't advanced enough, they couldn't copy it, and after a few handovers, we ended up missing the best, most essential core ideas. But the indescribable insight I got from the Earth Tree filled in those gaps perfectly. I used the Earth Tree info as a framework to integrate the last four layers of the Titan Spirit Method, and now we’ve got the Neo Titan Spirit Method."
"On that front, you really are a genius among geniuses. Even with the same memories, I couldn’t pull that off. I mean, who would've thought you could do all this in just three months?" Jack Young rushes over, pushing up imaginary glasses like a scientist, examining Jill from head to toe. "This Neo Titan Spirit Method is way better than the old version—tons of advantages. Oh? Now I get it, you must have some serious grievances against me!"
"Huh?" Jill Young is totally baffled. "What do you mean by that?"
"This Power Matrix covers your whole body, linking up all your blood energy so it's simple, fast, efficient, and super precise to control. From now on, you don’t have to shift whole dragons around—just a thought and your Dragon Force appears or disappears wherever you want. It's like going from copper wire to fiber optics, or upgrading from 2G to 4G—speed is way up, and it's just so much easier! Total game-changer against Internal Martial Arts, right?"
This chapter isn’t over yet~.~ Click next page to keep reading the good stuff!
"Whaaaaa—!" Jill Young’s jaw drops, looking like she’s just been zapped by lightning, then nearly jumps out of her skin. "Oh oh oh oh oh!!! This is wild!! Why didn’t I think of that? You’re right, this is the perfect counter to your Internal Martial Arts!"
Jack Young’s eyes immediately go shifty. "Hey, aren’t you the one who invented it? You mean you didn’t even know?"
"Well... hehe, calling it 'invented' isn’t exactly right. It kind of just happened on its own," Jill Young explains. "Here’s what went down—"
Deep-sea cultivation is never safe, not even for Jill Young. Three days ago, she had a close call while diving.
That day, Jill Young was training at a depth of 2,200 meters. The water pressure was intense, making her bones and muscles creak. But that massive external pressure was the only thing that could counter the terrifying internal pressure—every time she digested a bit of 'Meat Pill Fragment,' it felt like a grenade going off inside her. If she hadn’t come to such deep waters, she wouldn’t be able to absorb it at all, and the shock would’ve wrecked her foundation.
"Already reached the sea floor..." The bay isn’t bottomless—her feet are touching the ground. In this deep darkness, her heart is under huge strain. It beats slow but strong, like a blazing flame. The deep heartbeat sounds like sonar, sending waves far and wide, echoing back again and again. That’s how Jill knows the sea floor is super complicated.
She pulls out a Meat Pill to use as a flashlight and looks around. The sea floor is cracked like dry earth, full of countless ravines. Big and small fissures crisscross the endless ocean bottom, some wide, some narrow, all dark and mysterious. You can’t help but imagine all sorts of bizarre creatures lurking down there—it’s enough to give anyone the creeps.
Holding her breath, Jill Young sinks all the way to the bottom, the pressure on her is no joke. She struggles to move around down there, her muscles and bones creaking and popping until she finally starts to get used to it.
With all that pressure, her usual Power Matrix skin wave propulsion is way too hard—the skin is pressed tight against her muscles and bones, so she has to move like a regular diver, swimming with her hands and feet or just walking along the ocean floor.
Thanks to the buoyancy and resistance, walking here feels like moonwalking—light and floaty, with no force behind it. One step barely gets her anywhere, and it takes ages to drift down, seriously slowing her progress. Jill tries to use internal energy for a 'Thousand-Pound Drop,' but a third of her power is spent keeping up Eggshell defense, another third is invested in Supreme Skill cultivation.
As for the last third, this place is full of danger, so she has to keep some energy in reserve just in case.
So, she can only keep floating forward, step by step.
Even in the deep sea, in the place most likely to get lost, Jill Young still keeps her excellent sense of direction. She heads away from the coast, traveling for a whole day. The sea floor has mountains and valleys, and she runs into all sorts of weird creatures in the cracks. These strange fish have eyes that are totally useless—they can’t see any light, even when Jill shines her Meat Pill flashlight on them, they don’t react.
Since there’s no sunlight down here, the sea creatures don’t need pigments, so their skin has turned transparent. There’s so little organic material that most of them are tiny—not much bigger than a little crayfish, which actually helps them survive.
After a whole day with no decent monsters, Jill pulls out a Secondary Meat Pill. Since she can’t open her mouth, she can’t swallow it—she just holds it and uses the Dragon Elephant Extraction Method to absorb it directly. Secondary Meat Pills pack a ton of energy, but compared to Middle-earth’s life force, it’s just... how do I put it? More flavorful, richer, more satisfying.
For some reason, compared to the mass-produced bio-weapons of high-tech aliens, the natural life force of Middle-earth’s creatures is higher quality. Like, wild pheasant is always chewier than farm-raised chicken.
"Already reached the edge..."
A day later, Jill Young arrives at a massive cliff. The ocean floor comes to an abrupt stop—a huge drop stretches endlessly to both sides. Peering over the edge, she sees nothing but endless darkness below. Clearly, Middle-earth’s continental shelf has more than one layer, and here’s where it suddenly plunges.
Below, it might be twice as deep. Jill knows she's basically at her limit—this is the best spot for efficient cultivation. Any deeper, the risk skyrockets, and it’s just not worth it. She’s bold, not reckless—no need to get herself killed.
"Hmm?" Just as Jill is about to sit and meditate for a while, she senses something off. She looks around and realizes the problem: this part of the sea is way too quiet.
There should be tiny movements in the cracks and mud—even the most barren places have some life. But here, there’s nothing. No matter how hard she looks, there’s not a single living thing. It’s dead silent, like a deserted graveyard.
"There’s definitely something dangerous here." Jill’s intuition is screaming, so she decides to lay low and check things out. But before she can act, the nearby currents suddenly surge—fast, fierce, and totally unexpected.
Jill quickly uses her Rooted Stance to stay put, making sure she doesn’t get swept away. If she does, there’s no traction in the water, and all her skills are useless. But then—crack! The cliff rocks under her feet split and crumble, swept away by the current and dragging her down over the edge.
"Natural phenomenon? Nope—it's a creature, an enemy attack!"