Chapter 124: All My Fault for Not Having a Place for You to Ascend

In the room, Xu Zhi opened the refrigerator, took out some vegetables, and went to the kitchen. "I never expected this to happen," he frowned. "Medusa still discovered some clues."

Of course, she didn't discover that he was the "little person in a bottle" living in Xu Zhi's orchard. Instead, she realized that creatures in the Wizard World simply couldn't become gods! Xu Zhi hadn't anticipated this himself. He had initially thought that the arrival of the Cthulhu evil god and the world-ending catastrophe would stimulate the wizard civilization, causing them to surpass the epic seventh level and eventually produce mythical eighth-level beings.

Things did unfold as Xu Zhi expected: under pressure, Medusa took the final step, breaking through to demigod status and igniting divine fire, yet she did not become a god. "The reason for this inability to break through is, of course, our Earth's barren environment. The world's energy is too thin; it's impossible for a living deity to be born here. Demigods are the limit of our low-level world..." The Wizard World is in the orchard, and the orchard is, naturally, on Earth.

Xu Zhi had indeed carefully observed Medusa's breakthrough process. She broke through to the demigod realm at the moment of her death. She then immediately used the path to godhood she had opened, igniting divine fire and creating a second bloodline, "Blood of Immortality," to begin her breakthrough. However, at the moment of her breakthrough, she became like a giant bellows, trying to draw energy from her surroundings, but she couldn't draw any, making breakthrough impossible. The "divine bridge" she spoke of was a bridge to channel the world's energy. "The divine bridge is broken" meant that the world's energy was too sparse to form an energy bridge or absorb universal energy.

The Zerg Sub-brain hadn't known this before because it hadn't followed the cultivation system of the transcendent path; Xu Zhi had been exploring it alone. "In my understanding," Xu Zhi thought, "the spiritual energy concentration isn't enough. Breakthrough is impossible in this environment. Even if one were to break through, our Earth is too barren, and staying here too long would cause an immediate regression in cultivation." "Spiritual energy" was just Xu Zhi's term for it. Strictly speaking, it referred to the soul energy and various psychic energies scattered by the deceased, permeating the air.

The more deaths occurred in a place, the more "spiritual energy" it would have. Such "spiritual lands" could roughly be compared to graveyards, cemeteries, or other places on Earth with an exceptionally strong 'yin' presence. According to Xu Zhi's speculation, a truly high-dimensional transcendent world was often built upon the endless remains of various divine tombs, powerful beings, and mighty individuals, requiring long periods of accumulation.

When creatures first died, their energy was indeed that of ghosts and resentful spirits. However, over time, it would slowly purify, becoming clear, refined soul energy that permeated the air. Previous mass extinctions, which killed vast numbers of ordinary creatures, weren't very useful. After all, only powerful individuals possessed strong souls and psychic energy. The 800 years of accumulation in the Wizard Era saw the deaths of many wizards, leading to a large amount of dissipated energy from powerful beings dying in this sandbox world.

In reality, the energy released by dead Zerg spore creatures would feed back to the Zerg Mother Queen, but 100% absorption was impossible; the utilization rate was only 30%. Most of it would dissipate into the air, enriching the land. This "heaven and earth spiritual energy" dispersed into the air, enveloped by the Zerg Sub-brain's mental barrier, creating a 'ghost-nurturing ground'—an environment like a "hundred-acre graveyard" that already showed faint signs of spiritual energy recovery. "But these are merely signs," he mused. "After just 800 years, it's virtually nothing! It's only 1% of the progress. At this rate, it would conservatively take 80,000 years to truly reach ancient times, a land rich in the world's spiritual energy, with natural treasures everywhere, becoming a truly transcendent world with gods."

Xu Zhi quietly sighed. It was difficult, too difficult! "No wonder those urban cultivation novels always say Earth's spiritual energy is scarce, making it hard for cultivators to emerge. It's an era of declining Dharma... They all need to 'shatter the void' and ascend to other worlds to become immortals."

Medusa had clearly thought of this at the time, which was why she spoke of being guided by the gods' abode in the heavens, opening a portal for her to "ascend" there, to a higher-dimensional transcendent world. In her eyes, the gods' abode was where deities lived; it had to be a divine realm, extremely rich in spiritual energy, an environment suitable for gods to exist and cultivate.

"But Medusa's long-awaited abode of gods is still right next to me, happily eating dog food!" Xu Zhi finished cooking and sat down on a chair by the door, speechless at the sight. A partially deformed bird lay in a stainless steel food bowl, joyfully eating dog food and making strange eating noises, "Puff, puff, puff!!"

Xu Zhi had bought the dog food. This creature usually had an enormous appetite, but Xu Zhi had thought at the time, "It can't just eat rice all the time, right? Without supplementing some vitamins, how unhealthy would that be!" But could he really prepare nutritious meals for it every day when he barely had enough for himself? After thinking it over, he realized he was essentially raising a master. Since dog food contained various vitamins, he had bought a few bags incidentally. It was best to raise it cheaply and not make it picky. Xu Zhi applied his past experience of raising dogs to nurturing this future aggregate deity in the orchard.

"And even if the abode of gods were completed, it would be useless," Xu Zhi mused. "It would just be a vast inner space, still a barren world with no spiritual energy." Xu Zhi had a headache. This wasn't something that could be formed overnight. How could a nascent, barren world, without tens of thousands of years of accumulation, possibly have enough foundation to give birth to deities?

Medusa indeed felt regret; she had strived for 800 years, was just moments away, had broken through before her death, and was on the verge of becoming the first deity in the sandbox world, yet... "Perhaps a miracle could happen?" Despite knowing it was highly unlikely, Xu Zhi held onto a sliver of hope. "Eighty thousand years is too long; we must seize the day! The wizards within have created countless miracles over untold years... They might just be able to overcome this obstacle! Perhaps in some way, they can break through the environmental limitations of our Earth's scarce energy, ignite divine fire, and become gods?"

Upon reflection, Xu Zhi was dumbfounded, thinking he was overthinking it. He could only temporarily set this thought aside and shift his focus. "However, Medusa did indeed devise her own cultivation method for godhood and improved the 'Blood of Immortality,' even planning to integrate it into her body as a second bloodline."

Xu Zhi's gaze shifted to the improved cancer cells before him.