Chương 54: 4 times the size, 16 times the detail

By most standards, Jin was not a particularly good cultivator. Up until this point, he had worked too much on scenarios, rather than cultivation. When he did have time off from the former, he generally sat in a nature clearing staring at a single blade of grass with his improved vision.

Or he was stuffing his face on the delicious food in the mess hall and then burning it off with the rigorous physical training he was forced to undergo due to Flower's insistence that he be a half-decent combatant as well as Illusion Room creator. Or he was just sleeping in and napping… Mostly napping… But when he did sit down and properly cultivate, it usually led to some pretty good results.

He was currently in the latter part of the late-middle stage of foundation establishment, or as some would call it, the 6th pillar out of 9. It was the part where the cultivator slowly shaped their body into a vessel that could more easily draw in, store, and use qi. Basically, it was again the gross part where impurities were purged just like they had been in the qi condensation stage, so Jin liked to do it with some water at hand to wash himself off after.

But, recently, the gunk had lessened to a very manageable degree. This meant that he was approaching the last stage of foundation establishment. The part where the impurities had been expelled, and the focus lay on improving what was left by infusing it with qi in specific bursts of energy determined by one's cultivation technique and focus.

Jin, for example, was supposed to become primarily a mind cultivator due to his Illusion Room Sect affiliation, but also had to put aside some energy for his body and soul capacities due to Flower's insistence that he be a decent combatant as well. Jin suddenly lurched forward and wretched into an empty bucket next to the water-filled one. A small amount of purple-white bile escaped his throat. He groaned and continued onwards.

If you were purging impurities from your bones, the shit had to come out through the pores. Once you started working on the throat and the tissues connected with the body's injection and ejection chutes, well, suffice it to say that the trash in your body, like everything else, followed the path of least resistance. Jin continued cultivating, feeling as he slowly approached the bottleneck of the transition from the middle to the late stage.

The issue was that at the beginning of this stage, it was very easy to locate and expel impurities. It was like finding apples in a wagon full of hay, not particularly difficult, especially if you had a good sense of smell. But once you'd expunged the most obvious parts, what was left was the needles. Well, no, not even needles, but just straight up hair. Blonde hair at that. He was now in the process of slowly removing the hair from his haystack.

The thing with cultivation was that there was a level of success that you could reach at every stage of it, which determined how many benefits you'd get out of it. Cultivators divided this into hard to understand jargon like finishing the middle stage of foundation establishment with nine jade internal chicken cauldrons versus the seven rainbow crucibles of the poop deity or whatever. Jin just called it basic foundational thinking.

If you invested more in mastering the basics, the harder stuff would come easier later. For example, during the qi condensation stage, where one undergoes the basic body strengthening rather than the cellular one, you could technically rush through the bone refinement stage to get to the tendon stage. Still, it would leave you with brittle bones later on.

Very unadvisable unless you enjoyed snapping your own leg every time you threw a kick because your leg muscles were stronger than the bone at the core of the limb. Jin was following the same logic here, trying to go for the best foundation, which was called something like the 49 basilisk ouroboros snacking on ketchup chips that gleamed like celestial metal.

All he knew was that if he managed to remove the hairs from his haystack leaving only the microbes, which he couldn't expel anyway because they were almost as small as your ex's dick energy, he could improve what was left even more. Not that it was any fun, trying to be a perfectionist to such a degree, but his biology knowledge from modern earth was too helpful to pass on such an opportunity, which most cultivators would kill for. A knock on his apartment door suddenly released him from his suffering.

He opened his eyes and sighed loudly from relief, scampering up to open the door. The wooden door opened to reveal Hashimi and Francis, a pair that, under the wrong light, could have been taken for a pair of grandfather and granddaughter if their skin tone hadn't been so different.

"Thank the heavens you're here," Jin said with a sigh of relief.

"I've been cultivating for 30 minutes, it's been torture." Hashimi threw him a weird look, while Francis' brow twitched in anger.

"And what stage are you on?" the old man asked a bit saltily.

"Almost late-stage foundation establishment," Jin muttered.

"Trying to go for the 49 basilisk chicken breast circle." Francis simply stared at him blankly. Hashimi opened her mouth and closed it before opening it again.

"You mean the 49 Celestial Metal Scale Basilisk Ouroboros?" she asked.

"Well, it's ok to be a bit faster, but don't neglect your foundation," Francis warned.

"Since you're already on the sixth pillar, I imagine you couldn't select so many nodes in the qi condensation stage? The more of them you have to do manually, the harder," he said commiseratingly. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Jin looked at him nonplussed.

"What do you mean? I assigned 56% myself." He then shook his head.

"Anyway, what stages are you two on anyway?" He paused, "Or is it rude to ask that?"

"You already did, idiot," Hashimi said with a huff before flashing him a victory sign and a cheeky grin.

"3rd pillar, almost middle stage foundation establishment," she said proudly. Jin turned to look at Francis, whose forehead vein was beginning to bulge a bit dangerously.

"6th pillar as well, for a few decades now." Jin didn't want the old man to suffer a stroke, so he quickly changed the topic of conversation.

"Come inside, come inside," he said, stepping aside and letting the two enter his apartment, which had become an impromptu office for the group during the last week when they'd been improving his already done scenarios for a percentage of the library profits.

"Before I forget," Jin said and went off to his desk, rummaging around a bit. He came back with six scrolls, three for each of his co-workers.

"Your shares, as discussed, should be used to withdraw the sect contribution points at the administration office, yadda, yadda, yadda," he said distractedly before clapping his hands.

"But let's talk about the new project!" He was excited about Skyrim, very excited in fact. The Last of Us had been a bit of a pain, Outlast a bit of a torture, and Dragonslayer Ornstein a bit of a rush. Now Elder Flower was finally giving him time to pick his own project, work at his own pace. His teammates didn't seem that excited, preferring to open the scrolls and read the contents of the share agreement.

For their work in perfecting the designs, Hashimi visually and Francis conceptually, they'd each gotten a 10% stake in Dragonslayer Ornstein and Outlast. For The Last of Us, Hashimi had 40%, Francis 10% and Jin 50%. He'd wanted to make it equal to Hashimi, but the girl had insisted that his cut should be larger because he'd been the lead and had come up with the idea in the first place. Anyway, the reward for "winning" the competition had already been 50/50, so they were both loaded.

"Glad to have this in writing," Jin said as they finished reading.

"Can never rely on verbal agreements anymore since that guy stiffed me last time," he said, referring to his past business experience. Thing about earning the millions which had been necessary for him to go into early retirement on earth, well, you worked with a lot of scumbags and everyone got burned at least once before they learned their lesson.

"No honour amongst thieves?" Hashimi joked, causing Jin to shake his head.

"Honor's well and good, but when some loser gets on a mid-life crisis, an ego-trip, or god forbid, becomes addicted to the rich lifestyle, you can blow your verbal agreements goodbye," he said. Hashimi and Francis, finally content with their three scrolls each, sat down on the offered chairs. There had used to be only one in the apartment, and Jin had added another due to Hashimi's inclusion a few months back. Now he'd found himself a third teammate at least for the Skyrim project, so he'd gotten a third chair.

The apartment was starting to be very cramped. Was it possible to get an office in the inner ring? Probably, if you paid enough points.

"So what's the project?" Hashimi said carelessly as she leaned back in her chair, throwing an arm over one side to lounge more efficiently. Francis, meanwhile, sat as stiff as a board, arms in his lap. Very old man posture, taking care of his spine.

"You remember our discussion, I hope," Jin started.

"The one about how a complete experience can form a more reliable warrior with a greater variety of skills. At the end of the day, for all that people like to specialise, it's also good to be independent and build different skill sets that synergise. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."

"I remember you using a hunting example," Francis said.

"A mission taker is better advised to take as a teammate someone who can track, disassemble and fight rather than someone who can only do one of the three, but very well."

"At the end of the day, a team is supposed to cover each other's weaknesses, but who wants to work with a one-trick pony?" Jin asked rhetorically. Francis shrugged.

"It's your project, so even if I see a value in specialisation, something that our own team is founded on, if I may ask, your vision has proven effective enough in the past."

"Three projects, three bangers, they just don't make them like that anymore," Jin bragged.

"The only thing you banged is your head against the floor when you were dropped as a baby," Hashimi muttered quietly.

"No haters allowed," Jin replied before continuing.

"Anyway, I sketched myself a vision recently when coming up with a new project. We saw in the army how a complete adventure can change a person. The Last of Us is a long ass scenario, several hours of purely immersive, philosophical, socially interactive gameplay. Some of the soldiers who went in, well, they came out as changed people. We don't know for how long, but we know that at least in the short term their priorities shifted, their morale increased, and their training speed improved."

"I heard one of them broke through and became a cultivator," Hashimi said. Francis shook his head.

"If that had happened, we'd know for real instead of simply existing as a rumour. It's never happened that someone broke through into becoming a cultivator. A bottleneck? Sure. The first one, no. But, someone did comprehend the dao of the sword, that I know."

"No changing of the topic, please," Jin interrupted the two before they got into an argument. Hashimi liked to gossip, and Francis didn't believe it if he didn't see it. Not a very compatible part of their personalities.

"Anyway, The Last of Us proved that rather than just serving as training tools for specific skills, an immersive enough, long enough scenario can also change a person fundamentally, or let's say, shift the direction they were going into. Solidify some attributes, help discard others."

"Yes, immersion impacts skill gain and other factors," Francis said with a nod, "but where are you going with this?" he asked. Jin waved his hand.

"I'm getting there." He coughed into his hand.

"Anyway, as I was saying, several hours' worth of content got us some motivated, changed mortals. But a wise man, and by that I mean a Reddit user named longschlongdong69, once told me that for someone to truly change, they need at least 30 days." He let that last part hang in the air.

"30 days of what?" Hashimi eventually asked. Jin grinned. The original Skyrim took around 40 hours to play through, more if you wanted to do every side-quest. But that was with game distances, Illusion Rooms were real, at least as real as you could make something that wasn't real. With longer distances, more enemies, and a harsher difficulty to make for more deaths. More interactive dialogue, more realistic, longer quests. Why did a protection detail mission only take ten minutes, for example?

Why did an assassination mission only take 30 minutes?

"30 days," he corrected Hashimi.

"30 days of what?" Hashimi asked again while rolling her eyes.

"30 days of pure unfiltered content, baby," Jin said proudly.

"I don't want to be a downer, but what exactly can we make 30 days of content for?" Francis asked dubiously as he furrowed his brows.

"Is it like a very long set of missions?" Jin shook his head.

"You're thinking small, buddy. We're not talking missions. We're talking an entirely fictional pantheon of gods, dozens of monsters that don't exist in this world, nine large life-sized explorable cities, an entirely new power system, quest-line, dragons, souls, I could go on." Hashimi and Francis looked at Jin as if he were insane. Maybe he was.

"Are you sure?" Hashimi asked eventually. Jin paused and shook his head, receiving two sighs of relief.

"You're right," he corrected.

"I'm thinking too small. Thirty days is peanuts, it's going to be 69."

"Why 69?" Hashimi asked weakly. Jin giggled.