Relocating the tribulation

As the pair of 'Spiritual UZI' formed, the energy overflow started to slow down. It was still too much to be contained, but it wasn't as overbearing as before, an much easier to handle with the help of continuous analysis. Since there was still more overflowing energy, I decided to continue, and try to tackle the final stage of Spirit Hardening: Spiritual Activation. This stage would use the overflowing energy from the dantian and spiritual artifact to form a spirit for the latter. For me this held a completely different meaning though, since I had no intention of forming a brand new spirit. Instead, I wanted to awaken Eve.

As I drove my consciousness in the overflowing spiritual energy, I started nourishing Eve's slumbering spirit. She absorbed the energy at a high speed, filling up with vitality.

This stage would be the easiest, because all I needed to do is pour all the excess spiritual energy into Eve. As an inner spiritual lifeform she could take as much as I could, so all the overflow would be eventually used up, and if not, I'd just redirect it to analytical power. Since Eve was starting to show signs of awakening, my analytical power also gave me some nice surprises.

First, its efficiency skyrocketed, making the spatial analysis much faster, and almost instantly providing me with several more basic spatial abilities. These were 'Basic Spatial Seal', or the ability to seal a region of space from any source of interaction with the rest of the world, 'Basic Teleport', which was just an upgrade of 'Portal', localized and shaped at a person or object, but with a higher efficiency, and 'Basic Spatial Blade', which was a spatial tear that I could launch in a certain direction, having it obliterate anything in its path.

The second surprise was that now I could run several threads of analysis at the same time, for a disproportionately higher energy cost. Since spiritual energy was something I currently wasn't lacking at all, I immediately started up the research of 'temporal abilities' and 'spiritual abilities related to machine guns'. The first one was simply an energy sink, and I didn't place high hopes on it. The second was something that would be impossible without the analytical ability, since this world didn't have advanced firearms until now, so obviously it didn't have any related abilities or techniques. But with Eve's analysis it would be possible to adapt the myriad of sword, saber, spear, spear, fist, palm and so on abilities to my dual machine guns, essentially creating my own Gun Fu. This research didn't have much use for the current me, but it could be very useful in the future, once I leave the Immortal Galaxy. It could also give me some personalised introspection into the usage of spiritual energy, helping out with other research, after all, guns are the weapons I'm the most proficient with.

As my mind was starting to fill up with comprehensions of time and some interesting Gun Fu techniques, I noticed that my surroundings started to darken. It was due to some strange black clouds gathering above my head. Now I'm no meteorologist, and I actually wasn't ever one in a previous life, but I still have a good understanding of atmospheric sciences. Which meant that I immediately realised that clouds gathering above a certain spot from all directions, instead of being blown over by the wind is nowhere near normal.

I ran a quick analysis of my current cultivation level, and realised it's something that occurs at the peak of every realm starting from Spirit Hardening: heavenly tribulation. The heavens are a background force in this galaxy, that govern the laws of spiritual energy and cultivation. They manifest as tribulation lightning whenever a cultivator attempts something heaven-defying. Giving birth to a living spirit from energy was obviously such an activity, and thus there was always tribulation lightning during the Spirit Activation stage. It didn't make too much sense to me, because no heavenly lightning appeared due to me using analysis, which was clearly heaven-defying here, and no lightning should appear when Eve only awakens, since I didn't give birth to her in the first place. This meant that this heavenly force was unable to see through Eve's true nature, which was good news. It also meant that I would never ever attempt to analyse the heavenly force, since if I get discovered doing so, I would probably die in seconds. Well, I could probably do it when I'm stronger, but not in the foreseeable future.

The clouds completely covered the entire sky and caused an eerie darkness to descend upon the world. Several disciples were running around mindlessly to find the source of the weird phenomenon, but of course their search turned up nothing, since it was practically impossible to pinpoint the center of all the swirling clouds.

Now one question remains in my mind: how large is the tribulation's sphere of influence? It's common xianxia knowledge, that it gets stronger with more people around the person hit by it. And this strengthened lightning simultaneously hits all these other people too. So how close do I have to be to others? An ordinary cultivator would try to distance themselves from everything and everybody, so they wouldn't receive powerful lightning strikes. As for me? I could use some electric energy right about now.

I run out of the main hall into the courtyard and out on the street, then head towards the most populated area, the market. There are also some sparring arenas nearby, so it's bound to be filled with people. I execute my fastest movement techniques, not being able to use teleportation, due to the space around me being locked down by the heavenly energies. This unexpectedly gives me the benefit of gaining the basic 'Seal distortion' spatial ability. It allows me to distort spatial seals to a certain extent, weakening their effects upon me. I could probably smash any other type of seal with this ability in an instant. I was probably close to obtaining this ability in the first place, but the heavenly spatial lock around me sped up its research considerably, allowing its analysis to complete in an instant.

As I review my new ability, I quickly arrive at an alley between the marketplace and the sparring arenas. From here I can see both places bustling with cultivators. Well, now that I'm here, I guess they're basically all dead.