Abyss Sequence-Chapter 403 - 60: People of the World, Lend Me Your Strength!
It took five days for Yulia and Wu Zechuan to completely restore their engravings.
Perhaps because Yulia has lived longer and spent more time with her engraving than Wu Zechuan, her recovery was faster than his.
Her combat ability was fully restored, possibly even surpassing its previous state.
Yulia clenched her fists, feeling an illusion of power flowing through her body.
Unfortunately, even after extracting the nanomachines and regrowing her engraving from her own nerves, she had not completely transformed into an extraordinary being with immense power inherent to herself.
No matter how you look at it, the engraving is ultimately an external object, even though her current engraving was grown from her own nerves.
The magic power remained stored in the nerve-formed engraving structure and did not actually integrate with Yulia.
"Next is ’Foundation Establishment’," Yulia sighed with complex emotions.
In recent days, whenever she wasn’t meditating to regrow her engraving, she would read ancient Xia Country texts—poems or prose—and study them. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚
As one of the world’s few remaining ancient civilizations, Xia Country possesses a nearly uninterrupted history from ancient to modern times, and its ancient texts are well-preserved. Studying them might inspire Yulia in ’Foundation Establishment’.
For someone raised within the cultural atmosphere of Xia Country, understanding the meaning of ’Foundation Establishment’ might come easier, but Yulia, being Slavic, never fully grasped Xia Country culture despite her parents’ insistence on her learning Chinese as a child.
After restoring the engravings, Wu Zechuan greeted Yan Luo and the others before leaving, but Yulia stayed behind.
She intended to consult Yan Luo, Sasa, and others on what ’Foundation Establishment’ truly meant.
Upon hearing Yulia’s question, Sasa furrowed her brows in distress.
"Although I am from Xia, I don’t really understand ’Foundation Establishment’ thoroughly. What I know can be found online. However, I can offer my perspective on what ’Foundation Establishment’ represents to me."
Yulia nodded, "I’d love to hear more."
Sasa took a deep breath and said, "Firstly, the engraver’s ’Foundation Establishment’ should be different from the Daoist term. After all, engravers do not refine qi... perhaps they do, but not in the conventional sense understood today. To me, ’Foundation Establishment’ is the premise for the ’Golden Core’, which in turn is related to the concept of ’Golden Nature Immortality’.
"’Golden Nature Immortality’ can be understood literally—that once a practitioner possesses ’Golden Nature’, they become imperishable and indestructible. Note, this ’Golden Nature’ doesn’t refer to the metallic element of the five phases but rather a comprehensive and pure state. The word ’Core’ carries another profound meaning: preserving the essence and maintaining completeness, so the correct interpretation of ’Golden Core’ is a purely thorough, complete, and flawless state."
Yulia found Sasa’s words perplexing and had a hard time understanding them, but she forced herself to remember them for further study later.
Sasa continued, "Foundation Establishment precedes the Golden Core, which is the ultimate goal. Mortal beings cannot become what is called ’Immortals’ overnight, so Foundation Establishment means we build our ladder to progress. ’The Jade Capital in Heaven, twelve towers, five cities’; I think Wu Zechuan’s description of the engraver’s stages is quite accurate. To build the ’Jade Capital’, one must climb twelve steps and pass through five phases, yet the ’Jade Capital’ requires one prerequisite, which is ’in Heaven’.
"Twelve steps, twelve engravings clearly aren’t enough to make mortals ’Heavenly Beings’, so we need to find the ’Fifth City’ hidden beyond the initial four, which we now call Sequence One. Following these lines, there are two more: ’Immortals touch my head, tying my hair to grant longevity’. If Li Bai, during the Tang Dynasty, truly encountered an engraver with ancient heritage, then these lines could carry symbolism as well."
With that, Sasa pointed to her head, "The answer to ’Foundation Establishment’ might be in our minds, but how to uncover this mystery, I don’t know."
Yulia nodded thoughtfully, turning to look at Yan Luo.
Yan Luo shook his head calmly, "Don’t look at me, I’m just a modern illiterate who became a hunter after high school. Although I learned a lot in high school, now I only remember knowledge related to the Abyss and demons, and I’ve almost forgotten everything about exoskeletons."
Yulia was left speechless. She then stood, bidding farewell to Yan Luo, Sasa, and Yevgenia, and returned to her residence in Crimson No.2.
Back at her standalone villa, not far from Yan Luo’s, Yulia began searching online for keywords like ’Foundation Establishment’, ’Golden Core’, and ’Immortals’.
Shortly after, she had to filter out most related searches from modern works, focusing solely on those recorded in ancient texts.
After reading these articles for several hours, Yulia closed the projection in front of her, lifted her visor, and pinched her brow.
She had now come to understand the true meaning of ’Foundation Establishment’.
Yulia realized that as long as an engraver was growing, they were in the process of ’Foundation Establishment’.
The Golden Core can be compared to a fully constructed and decorated building, while Foundation Establishment is akin to building a structure from scratch.
One engraving acts as the foundation, two engravings as cement mixing, three engravings as the construction of load-bearing pillars...
The twelfth engraving is akin to the topping out; following that, one begins decorating to stand out from other ongoing constructions.
The structure named ’Yulia Ivanovna Bilyukova’ has reached its topping out and must now begin decorating, a style decided upon at its inception.
The twelve engravings on her body were constructed to match this ’decor style’.
Yulia had a vague grasp of the concept of ’Foundation Establishment’, but how to integrate her twelve engravings into her body remained entirely unclear.
Clearly, all twelve engravings are made up of nerves and connected to her own nervous system, why then can’t it be considered ’integration with oneself’?
Must she create a brand new engraving?
...No, not right!
Even if a new engraving is created, it would still be just another engraving.
Yulia, burdened with twelve engravings, knew that creating a new one would be no different from the twelve engravings on her back.
So what must she do to ’Foundation Establish’?
Yulia became stubborn, pondering this question for three days and nights, devoting every moment not spent eating, washing up, or sleeping to contemplating ’Foundation Establishment’.
Until on the third day, a somewhat anxious Sasa rang her doorbell, pulling Yulia from her thoughts; otherwise, she would still be ruminating over the issue.
"Ms. Bilyukova, it’s been two days since you responded to anyone’s messages. Are you sure you’re okay?"
Sasa questioned as she entered Yulia’s home.
Yulia sighed, shaking her head, "I’m fine, I’ve just been too caught up in the issue of Foundation Establishment. Although I now know that I have to completely integrate the engravings with myself, I still don’t have any leads on how to do it."
Yan Luo, who came along with Sasa, spoke up, "In that case, why not seek some opinions and suggestions from everyone?"
"What?" Yulia looked at Yan Luo.
Yan Luo calmly replied, "I mean, post your troubling questions online and let everyone worldwide discuss it together. As the saying goes, three cobblers with their heads together surpass one Zhuge Liang. If people all over the world discuss a problem, gathering all the world’s unique ideas, perhaps they might guess the right answer?"
Not only Yulia, even Sasa looked at Yan Luo dumbfounded.
It was supposed to be an extremely secretive matter, involving a high-level power like Sequence One, instinctively excluding ordinary people from their considerations.
Until Yan Luo’s reminder, they realized that the public of today’s era has a decent education and ample imagination.
If the whole world discussed one matter together...
It might just work?
