Chapter 575: Breakthrough – Part 1

Amidst all the chaos and troubles, it wasn’t like there was no good news.

It was now late July, 877 NE, and in Celestina’s private cultivation chamber in Misty City, her Second Disciple, Eris Newton, was in the midst of making her breakthrough to the Vein Opening Realm.

Over the past 9 or 10 months, the amount of resources and mentoring available to Eris had increased dramatically, allowing her to make rapid progress in her cultivation. In fact, she would have broken through long ago had it not been necessary for her to first adapt to her current disability.

The loss of her right forearm was no small blow to the young girl, but through a combination of therapy, training, and plain-old persistence, she had eventually managed to overcome her unfortunate circumstances.

That wasn’t to say that Eris was back to full strength; far from it.

Second Queen Ancestor Ariana Rockwell had sent her an advanced prosthetic arm from the Kore Sovereignty which had somewhat made-up for Eris’ loss, but that only applied to mundane tasks like eating or putting on clothes.

The prosthetic itself had a functioning hand, but because Eris had yet to reach the Spirit Realm, not only did she need to use Spirit Crystals to power it, it also needed quite a bit of concentration on her part to operate.

Even with all her practice so far, closing her fist to grip a fork took several seconds.

It was better than not having a hand at all, but not by much, and it certainly wasn’t enough for Eris to use her right arm in combat other than to balance herself or, in the direst of circumstances, block an incoming blow.

If Eris had been cultivating in a traditional manner, this probably wouldn’t have been too much of an issue, but since she had completely switched over to using Lucas’ new method of combining the Focused Breathing Art and Unarmed Foundations Art, she needed to be mobile.

Eris had made a breakthrough under extreme circumstances back in Redwood Town without needing to use the accompanying physical movements of the Unarmed Foundations Art, but that had resulted in damage to her body and meridians that had taken over a month to recover from, so she had been forbidden from attempting that again.

And so, time passed by until today, when Eris was finally ready to break through to the next Major Realm.

Celestina, Sasha, Allina, Lucas, Christina, and Elizabeth Carlson had all gathered together today as well to witness this event.

Elliot and Teagan, Eris’ grandparents, would also have liked to be here, but unfortunately, they weren’t privy to the details of Project Ascension yet, so Celestina had no choice but to forbid their presence.

Farah, the final active participant in Project Ascension, was currently away from Misty City, serving as a wilderness survival instructor for new recruits to the Raging River Legion.

Yuki was also allowed inside, but as clever as the young fox was, she naturally didn’t quite understand what was going on and had thus decided to take a nap after everyone else just stood around watching Eris from the side of the room.

As for the girl in question, Eris currently had her eyes closed and was carefully executing one Form after another.

When she had started cultivating about 2 hours ago, the World Qi around her had only been somewhat disturbed, but now, it was obvious that the flow-rate towards Eris’ body had increased significantly.

A nascent aura pressure had also begun to appear, which was a clear sign that she was close to breaking through.

No one spoke, as they were all worried they may distract Eris and spoil her breakthrough, but that didn’t mean they weren’t observing her closely.

As much as everyone was here to cheer on and support Eris, there was another critical reason they had gathered together today.

Putting it politely, they were trying to determine how this new method affected cultivation on a fundamental level and what factors were involved that allowed it to serve as a method of cultivation to begin with.

Putting it bluntly, they were studying Eris, hoping to gain insight and inspiration from her breakthrough.

Eris knew this, of course, but rather than feeling offended, she was the most enthusiastic of them all and had whole-heartedly agreed to this intrusive observation.

So far, she hadn’t been able to contribute much to Project Ascension despite being one of the few people alive who knew about it, so she was more than happy to do her part now.

Truthfully, it was just Lucas, Celestina, and the Carlson Family’s Supreme Elder who were really examining Eris’ progress, while Sasha, Allina, and Christina were here more-so to learn by example.

Although she had been incredibly busy ever since that fateful night last fall, Sasha had benefited greatly both from Lucas’ new cultivation method and the resources of her family, so her cultivation had soared from the Sixth to the Eighth Step Vein Opening Realm.

If all went well, she would be breaking through to the Core Formation Realm within the year, thus reaching the same Realm as her distant husband.

Allina had been a Complete Peak-Rank Initiate for some time now, so it also wouldn’t be long before she began contemplating her breakthrough to the Adept Realm.

As for Christina, while she was ’only’ in the Fourth Step Sea Establishment Realm, her Innate Talent eclipsed everyone else’s in this room by a wide margin, so the Initiate Realm was probably not far off for her.

Previously, Celestina had been concerned about Christina breaking through too quickly for a number of reasons.

A year ago, Christina had been mentally immature, lacking in worldly experience, and slightly unstable in both physical and cultivation foundation; however, all of those issues had since been resolved, so the only problem was that hiding her astonishing talent would have been impossible had she reached the Grand Spirit Realm.

Now though, with a High-Rank Grade 3 Mirage Pendant Spirit Tool from former queen Ariana around Christina’s neck, that was no longer an issue. As such, Celestina had given her Third Disciple permission to cultivate as much as she wanted and break through as soon as she was able to.

In other words, Sasha, Allina, and Christina were all very interested in seeing just what would happen when Eris used the new cultivation method to break through.