Chapter 437: Project Ascension – Part 3
Lucas’ initial idea was to substitute technological sensors with a powerful Cultivator’s Soul Sense. It wouldn’t work as well, but it was a fairly simple logical leap and was probably sufficient for the moment.
His own Soul Sense was very strong for his Realm, but nowhere near enough for what he was trying to do.
Celestina’s Soul Sense, on the other hand, had the required power, but she wasn’t familiar enough with the Unarmed Foundations Art to simply handle the task on her own. What’s more, even with her incredible learning capacity and physical capabilities, at her current rate of study, she probably wouldn’t reach the necessary level of mastery for at least another year.
Delaying that long seemed like a colossal waste, so the obvious solution was for Lucas and Celestina to work together, but the need to run extensive and repeated tests in order to properly complete the initial matching process had become a severe bottleneck.
It seemed that any time Lucas was free, Celestina wasn’t, and anytime Celestina was available, Lucas was busy. This mismatch in scheduling had resulted in Project Ascension’s progress slowing to a crawl.
What they needed was someone with a very powerful Soul Sense who could dedicate themselves to mastering the generic Unarmed Foundations Art and then run all the necessary tests to try personalizing it for themselves.
Preferably someone diligent, intelligent, and meticulous who would take very detailed notes along the way so that the process was easier to replicate in the future.
That was why Lucas proposed having Elizabeth Carlson join the project.
They would get a competent and capable researcher, while Elizabeth would acquire a method to continue enhancing her cultivation.
Now, it wouldn’t be possible for the Carlson Family’s Supreme Elder to use the Unarmed Foundations Art to achieve a breakthrough in her Spirit or Soul cultivation just yet.
By pairing appropriate Forms of the Unarmed Foundations Art together with an appropriate Cultivation Technique, Mortal Realm Practitioners were able to use it to boost their cultivation efficiency significantly, especially in a rich World Qi environment with additional pressure applied to the body.
This much had long ago been confirmed by Lucas, Eris, Christina, Sasha, Anna, Drake, and Charles.
However, when Farah had tried doing the same, she saw almost no benefits at all.
At first, Lucas theorized that the Foundation Art simply lost effectiveness for Spirit Realm Cultivators, but Farah had disagreed with his assessment.
When she switched from using her Cultivation Technique to the Focused Breathing Art, the Unarmed Foundations Art’s Forms had allowed her to continue tempering her body and enhance her Martial Cultivation.
It was a painfully slow process, made all the worse by Farah’s semi-crippled meridians, but it was definitely working.
Using the Foundations Art this way also helped Farah greatly in terms of unlearning her original Cultivation Technique’s circulation pattern, which came as a pleasant surprise as this was generally the biggest difficulty any True Cultivator faced in their life after ascending to their peak.
Knowing all this, Lucas was able to create a new theory of what was going on.
Clearly, the Unarmed Foundations Art was still useful for Spirit Realm Cultivators, but in its current format it was only capable of boosting Martial Cultivation.
Later, Celestina and Allina had both confirmed Farah’s findings, though they too said that the effects were pretty much on par with them simply using the Focused Breathing Art on its own.
Something wasn’t matching between this method and Spirit and Soul Cultivation, causing it to fail.
This was why Lucas was desperately trying to acquire as many Cultivation Techniques as possible. He wanted to study them, especially the advanced sections used by Spirit Realm Cultivators, to try to figure out why the Unarmed Foundations Art wasn’t capable of further enhancing them.
That was the second objective of Project Ascension, to properly mesh the Unarmed Foundations Art with existing Spirit Grade Cultivation Techniques so that Spirit Realm masters could use it for all forms of cultivation.
This objective, or rather this aspiration, was one Lucas had barely even begun to tinker with for a simple reason; he was nowhere near reaching the first objective of being able to customize the Art for each individual, which he considered an essentially pre-requisite.
Trying to work on a more difficult problem without solving the simpler, more fundamental one was both stupid and pointless, a mistake Lucas wasn’t about to make.
As for Project Ascension’s third and final objective...
Lucas considered the ultimate goal of Project Ascension to be creating a whole new cultivation methodology, one where the Stances, Figures, Motions, and Forms of the True Unarmed Foundations Art were perfectly adjusted to an adaptive Cultivation Technique which could be customized for each individual.
Essentially, Lucas wanted to do with cultivation what the humans of the other universe had done with physical training, to create a universal Cultivation Technique.
Suffice-it-to-say, Lucas had lofty ambitions, and no one could accuse him of not dreaming big enough.
This final goal was so vague and distant that Lucas had absolutely no idea how to even approach it, but he figured that if he could achieve the project’s first two objectives, he might discover a pathway to that beautiful future somewhere along the way.
Simply put, one small step at a time!
For now, Lucas had a much simpler task, he and Celestina needed to fully familiarize Elizabeth Carlson with the Unarmed Foundations Art.
Fortunately, his new student was more then eager to learn, which was hardly surprising seeing how this was probably going to be her best chance to ascend to the next Major Realm, dramatically increasing her strength and lifespan.
Even if nothing more came of Project Ascension, even if Lucas never managed to fully customize the Art to her physique, even if it was never possible for her to use this method to break through to the Spirit and Soul Adept Realm, just being able to unlearn her Stormcaller Art would be enough to give Elizabeth hope.
Couple that with the possibility of using the current Unarmed Foundations Art to achieve a breakthrough in her Martial Cultivation, and Elizabeth was willing to pay any price that did not violate her core principles to grab hold of this opportunity.
Besides, compared to her Carlson Family’s Cultivation Techniques, the knowledge Lucas and Celestina were currently sharing with her was a million times more valuable.
Over the past 5 days, Elizabeth had reflected many times on what might have happened if she had been stubborn and refused Celestina’s offer, and each time she did, she shivered in fright.
Soul-crushing grief, anguish, regret, and despondence would probably not even begin to describe it.
Fortunately, she had said yes, and the price she paid was clearly more than fair; all that was left to do now was dedicate herself to helping Lucas and Celestina in order to repay them for this great favour they had given her.