Chapter 384 - 39: Second Jump: The Mental Path

Chapter 384: Chapter 39: Second Jump: The Mental Path

Ash sat in the center of Training Room Seven and fully activated the Boundless Origin Martial Soul.

The pull came at once. It started deep in the middle of his consciousness, steady and absolute, like a hook that had always been waiting there. This time, however, he was ready for it. The first jump had been a shock—raw, disorienting, almost violent. Now the sensation felt familiar, almost welcome. His awareness stretched, then tore free from his physical body with a clean, sharp sensation that no longer startled him.

For a brief moment everything went dark and weightless. He felt the quiet training room fall away beneath him. The cool stone floor, the faint smell of ozone, the shallow circular depression that still refused to heal—all of it disappeared.

Then the real journey began.

His soul rose through the training room ceiling as if the solid metal and stone were nothing more than mist. In the next heartbeat he was already outside the building, looking down at the sprawling campus of the academy. The lights of the city beyond it glowed like scattered embers. His soul continued upward without effort.

The planet itself fell away beneath him. Continents became patches of green and brown. Oceans turned into blue curves. Clouds looked like thin white smoke. He felt no cold, no wind, only a smooth, accelerating pull that carried him higher and higher.

The star system opened around him. The sun burned bright and steady. Distant planets hung like quiet jewels. His soul passed the outer edges of the system in what felt like a single breath. The pull never slowed.

Then the galaxy itself became visible.

Billions of stars stretched in a vast, glowing spiral. Nebulae painted the darkness with soft colors of purple, blue, and gold. Ash’s consciousness flew through the galactic arm at a speed that made the stars blur into long streaks of light. He could feel the size of it pressing against his awareness, yet the Boundless Origin Martial Soul carried him forward without strain.

Finally the universe itself appeared as a single glowing sphere of light and energy. Its barrier rose ahead of him like a thin, luminous membrane, soft and slightly elastic. He broke through it without slowing down. There was a soft tearing sound that only the soul could hear—like silk being pulled apart—and then the multiverse opened.

Endless pillars of light stretched in every direction, rising and falling into infinity. Each pillar was a universe or a timeline. Some burned bright and stable. Others flickered weakly. A few were cracked or slowly collapsing. The sight was vast and quiet and strangely ordered, like looking at the inside of a machine too large for any single mind to understand.

Ash floated in the space between them and let the view settle.

"Still looks like the universe’s version of a server room," he said quietly. "Just a lot more beautiful."

Even though this was his second time seeing it, the scale still impressed him greatly. He gave himself a few seconds to feel the awe. The light from the nearest pillars washed over his awareness in soft waves. Some of them hummed with quiet power. Others felt empty, like abandoned houses. He pushed the feeling aside after a moment. He had work to do.

He focused the Boundless Origin Martial Soul and set clear conditions for the search.

"I need a version of me who walks the pure mental path," he said aloud to the endless light. "Psychic, psionic, soul cultivator—whatever they call it over there. He has to have heaven-defying comprehension talent. Ideally he should still be weak so the copy rate stays high. And he needs a mental technique, preferably one with real recovery methods. Not attack methods only. Recovery."

The martial soul accepted the parameters and began filtering.

Pillars of light flashed past his awareness in rapid succession. Most were dismissed in less than a heartbeat. Then the first matches began to appear, and Ash looked closer.

The first one made him wince.

A young man who looked exactly like him sat in a plain room with his eyes closed, trying to open his sea of consciousness for the first time. The process went wrong almost immediately. Psychic energy surged out of control. The young man’s head simply burst apart in a wet, red explosion. Residual mental shock still echoed through that universe like a scream that never finished. Ash pulled his attention away quickly.

"Hard pass," he muttered. "I like my head attached to my neck, thank you."

The second version was worse in a quieter way.

This one had found a fragmented mental inheritance. He tried to force the incomplete knowledge into his mind. For a few weeks he seemed to progress. Then the broken information ate him from the inside. Ash watched the final stages: the young man rocking back and forth in a dark corner, whispering equations and half-formed techniques to people who were not there. His eyes were empty. The universe around him felt stale and sad.

Ash rejected it without hesitation.

"Not dying crazy either. Next."

The third version had succeeded in mental cultivation, but at a cost. He had abandoned his physical body entirely and existed now as a pure spiritual entity. His power was real, but he could never touch the physical world again. Ash felt a cold dislike for that path. He needed both mind and body. He moved on.

"I’m not becoming a floating ghost. Hard no."

The fourth version had monstrous comprehension talent. It shone so brightly that Ash almost selected it on instinct. Then he saw the ending. At nineteen years old that version was killed by a precise mental attack from an enemy he never even sensed. The talent died with him.

Ash shook his head.

"Talent without survival is just a waste. Keep moving."

The fifth version made him speak out loud.

This one also had heaven-defying comprehension, but the path he walked required the complete erasure of emotion and free will. The young man sat in perfect stillness, eyes blank, while a cold technique slowly carved away everything that made him a person. What remained was a calculating machine in human shape.

"No," Ash said flatly. "Absolute no. I’m not turning myself into a robot."

He filtered further.

Several more unsuitable versions flickered past. One had already grown too strong, which would make the copy percentage tiny. Another cultivated a mental path that depended on consuming other people’s memories. Ash rejected that one with mild disgust.

"I’m not eating people’s minds. That’s just nasty."

Then the martial soul locked onto a pillar that felt different.

Ash turned his full attention to it.

The young man inside looked the same as him, only thinner and clearly newer to cultivation. His soul carried a bright, almost aggressive comprehension talent that made the surrounding space feel sharper.

Only a short time ago this version of himself had helped a thin old beggar who was being harassed in an alley. The beggar had laughed, pressed a jade slip into his hands, and walked away as if the whole thing meant nothing.

The jade slip contained a complete Rank 10 mental cultivation inheritance.

Ash examined it carefully through the connection.

The technique covered everything he needed. Methods to expand and stabilize the sea of consciousness. Mental defense strong enough to stop most soul attacks. Mental attack arts that could crush weaker minds. And, most importantly, recovery methods that restored mental energy at a high rate. The inheritance was complete and clean.

The best part was the target’s current strength. That Ash had only just begun walking the mental path. He was still extremely weak.

Ash felt a slow smile form in his consciousness.

"Jackpot," he said softly. "And he’s still a baby. Perfect."

He initiated the soul resonance.

Because the target was weak, the connection formed easily. The two identical souls lined up with very little resistance. Copying began at once.

First came the innate comprehension talent.

It poured into Ash like cold, clear water flooding a dry riverbed. His soul shuddered, then expanded. The sensation was deep and almost euphoric. Layers of his consciousness that had felt slightly foggy suddenly became transparent. Concepts that had resisted him for an entire day now looked simple, as if someone had turned on a light in a dark room.

"So this is what real comprehension talent feels like," Ash said, voice quiet with surprise. "Everything just got a lot less complicated."

The Rank 10 mental inheritance followed right after.

The complete technique settled into his mind in ordered blocks of knowledge. Recovery methods. Defense methods. Attack methods. Sea-of-consciousness structures. All of it arrived intact and ready to be studied. Ash did not try to circulate any of it yet. He only confirmed that the full inheritance was there.

He had what he came for.

The target version still had almost no combat experience or deeper insights worth taking. Continuing the resonance would only waste mental energy. Ash cut the connection cleanly.

The pillar faded from his immediate focus.

His soul was still changing. The new comprehension talent continued integrating, rewriting small pathways and sharpening every mental process. The feeling was pleasant and slightly overwhelming at the same time. Ideas that had been difficult only hours ago now felt almost obvious. The wall he had crashed into on Day 15 suddenly looked a lot thinner.

Ash checked his remaining mental energy.

There was still enough for one more short resonance if he was careful.

He already knew where he wanted to go.

The Martial Saint’s universe had a unique fingerprint he had memorized from the first jump. Ash focused on that signature and directed the Boundless Origin Martial Soul toward it.

The pillars of light began streaming past him again as he moved.

Behind him, the weak mental-path version of himself continued his quiet life, unaware that a large piece of his potential future had just been copied by a parallel self.

Ahead of him, the Martial Saint’s universe grew brighter.

Ash’s consciousness flew toward it, still riding the high of the new talent settling into his soul.

A small part of him wondered what the Saint’s version of him was doing right now. Another part was already planning how to use the Rank 10 recovery methods the moment he returned to his body.

Day 15 had turned into Day 16 while he worked.

The second jump was only half finished.

Ash kept flying forward, eyes fixed on the familiar pillar that held the Martial Saint’s timeline.

"Let’s see what else I can pick up while I’m out here," he said to the endless light around him.

The multiverse stretched on, quiet and infinite.

And Ash, carrying a brand-new heaven-defying comprehension talent and a complete Rank 10 mental inheritance, flew straight toward the next target.

He could already feel the difference the new talent made. The pillars of light no longer looked like simple glowing columns. He could sense faint patterns inside them—threads of destiny, pockets of strong souls, places where time moved differently. The Rank 10 inheritance sat quietly in the back of his mind, waiting. The recovery methods alone would change everything about how fast he could train once he returned.

Ash smiled inside his consciousness.

"Wall of comprehension," he said softly, "you’re about to get broken."

The Martial Saint’s pillar grew larger and brighter ahead of him.

The second half of the jump was about to begin.