Ever since her captivity, Lin Mo visited Vespera every night, grinding through her mental defenses. She was a tough nut to crack but it only took him three days before she eventually collapsed. Not because of despair but because of the hope he dangled in front of her, such as giving her freedom.

Of course, words alone weren’t enough to accomplish that.

Lin Mo introduced her to ’convenience’.

First by adding a simple, mundane amenity to her otherwise sterile, white box of a cell: a small, floating holographic screen.

He didn’t offer her food or a comfortable bed initially. For a being that fed on psychic feedback, physical deprivation was a secondary concern.

Her primary starvation was informational and emotional. So, Lin Mo gave her a window to the outside world, specifically tailored to maximize her psychological discomfort.

The screen displayed a continuous, curated feed of the Store Bulletin Board, specifically focusing on the ’Realm Guardian Leaderboard’ and the ’Harvester’s Guild’ activities related to the Sunken Caverns Anchor.

He forced Vespera to watch as the ’primitive natives’ she so despised systematically dismantled the beachhead her faction had sacrificed so much to build.

She watched high-definition recordings of rogue cultivators clumsily but effectively using store products to mow down remaining Decrint stragglers.

She saw threads where mid-tier sect elders bragged about training their mental defenses in the now-transformed dungeon that simulated the previous Sunken Caverns Anchor.

Most devastatingly, he made sure she saw the reports on the Amalgamations that had been captured outside the Anchor. The grotesque fusions that Xylos had prided himself on were now being dissected and analyzed by the Poison Demon Cult. The High Priest had even begun posting preliminary, albeit amateurish, findings on the genetic weaknesses of the Decrint-Beast hybrids, asking the community for alternative reagents to counter their regenerative properties.

Lin Mo watched from the observation room as Vespera’s initial disdain morphed into rigid, silent fury. The foundation of her worldview – the inherent superiority of the Dreilling and the inevitability of the ’Path of the Apex’ – was being publicly mocked and monetized by beings she considered livestock.

By the second day, the fury had cooled into a profound realization of her own obsolescence. Lin Mo escalated the psychological pressure.

He introduced a second screen, this one displaying a live feed of the store proper, the Celestial Hot Spring and the Arcade Zone.

Here, he showed her the social effect of the ’convenience’ ecosystem. She witnessed mortal merchants arguing playfully with Foundation Establishment sword cultivators over a game of Celestial Duel. She saw fierce, bloodthirsty barbarians from the Stormhowl Tribe soaking in the same healing waters as the refined elders of the Verdant Sky Pavilion.

Lin Mo demonstrated a terrifying truth to her. The natives were not a fractured, squabbling mess waiting to be unified under their control. They were already unified and they had found a harmony that bypassed the need for violent subjugation.

The Divine Convenience Store was achieving the ’order’ the Highland Realm claimed to bring, but doing so through voluntary, enthusiastic participation rather than psychic domination.

It was this realization that finally cracked her aristocratic shell. The Highland Realm’s invasion was nothing but an external threat for the Realm of Nine Heavens. No matter how they want to frame their invasion, it will be nothing more than that. Invasion.

On the third night, Lin Mo finally offered a tangible comfort. He placed a single, chilled can of [Heavenly Dew Soda] and a small platter of meticulously arranged snacks inside her cell.

It wasn’t a reward for compliance. Lin Mo simply wanted to give her a taste of them as well. However, Vespera believed it was a demonstration of effortless resource superiority. That he was showing her that while she starved in the dark, he had the power to casually discard luxuries that would spark wars in her own realm. Little did she know what he gave her were not even luxuries. Even mortals could buy them.

When he entered the observation room that evening, Vespera was sitting cross-legged, the empty soda can resting neatly beside her.

She had not devoured the snacks like a starving beast, maintaining her dignified posture, but the rigid defiance in her eyes had softened into a calculating, weary pragmatism.

She finally recognized his game. She was a Mind-Weaver, a manipulator of variables. She understood that the Shopkeeper was systematically destroying her leverage and replacing it with a carefully curated dependency. He was stripping away her identity as an invader and attempting to reforge her as a future patron.

And in that moment of mutual understanding, Lin Mo finally made a connection to her, causing her to lower her guard slightly.

She began talking about the Highland Realm, her origins and the plight of her people. She mentioned how, despite being the superior race, the true unity of their realm had yet to be achieved. There were still small forces plotting in the dark to overthrow the Dreillings.

Furthermore, even the High Emperor isn’t an absolute being. There are a lot of Eternal Beings above him. In a way, the land she originated from was just like the First Heaven, the bottom layer of the Realm of Nine Heavens.

As for what lies above the peerless High Emperor, she had no idea. Or at least, her power and authority remained insufficient.

During the fifth day, she detailed the Path of the Apex and the Path of the Zenith more.

Surprisingly enough, the cultivation stages also correspond to the stages cultivators needed to pass through before facing their immortal tribulation. They only differ in the method of cultivation.

Cultivators have to cultivate starting from Spirit Gathering, Spirit Condensation, Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul, Spirit Severing, Void Refinement, Law Integration, Immortal Embryo and Tribulation Transcendence.

All the beings of the Highland Realm also have ten different stages. And it didn’t matter whether they’re a Flesh-Shaper, Mind-Weaver or even the lesser races like the Decrint Tribe and Gremblins.

However, instead of listing all ten stages, it was divided into four major realms, the first three realms consisting of three stages while the final realm being similar to Tribulation Transcendence.

The four major realms are Assimilation, Ascension, Apex and Singularity.

The first major realm, Assimilation, was the foundational phase, roughly equivalent to the Spirit Gathering, Spirit Condensation, and Foundation Establishment stages. However, the methodology was different.

In the First Heaven, cultivators focused on internalizing ambient spiritual energy, purifying it, and building a stable internal foundation. It was a process of accumulation and refinement.

In the Highland Realm, the Assimilation Realm was exactly what its name implied: the forceful absorption and integration of external matter and energy into the practitioner’s own being.

And they’re called Grafting, Synthesis and Integration.

The second major realm, Ascension, encompassed the power levels of Core Formation, Nascent Soul, and Spirit Severing. This was where a practitioner ceased being merely a low-rank Mind-Weaver and Flesh-Shaper. A Decrint who could start their own tribe and be called a Chieftain also starts from here.

The three stages are called Resonance, Manifestation and Severance.

Vespera, Xylos and Zyrith are all at the Severance Stage, with Vespera being at the peak. She only needed to accumulate more to break through to the third major realm and the seventh stage.

The third major realm, Apex, represented the true ruling class of the Highland Realm. This realm correlated to the Void Refinement, Law Integration, and Immortal Embryo stages of the Nine Heavens. It was a realm of absolute conceptual dominance, where the physical form and the psychic will were no longer separate entities but a unified, terrifying force capable of rewriting local reality.

The three stages are called Dominion, Sovereign, and Supreme.

For a Flesh-Shaper, reaching Dominion meant that their biological adaptations were no longer limited to their own body. They could project a ’Bio-Domain’ that actively accelerated mutation and decay in any living tissue caught within its radius, effectively terraforming the battlefield on a microscopic level.

For a Mind-Weaver, Dominion meant the ability to construct permanent, external psychic structures. The ’Convergence Engine’ that Vespera had attempted to build was a crude, desperate application of a Dominion-level concept. A true Dominion-stage Mind-Weaver could project their mental labyrinth across a wide area. Spiritual Senses of the cultivators of a similar stage could find themselves disadvantaged.

As for Sovereign Stage, this was the level Vespera had attempted to artificially induce by sacrificing herself to hatch the premature Avatar.

A Sovereign, much like Law Integration Stage cultivators, embodied different laws. Most of them only focus on a single law, while geniuses could even comprehend two to four. Five was an impossibility because of the limitations of one’s mind or body.

The High Nobles and the Dukes that Vespera served under were firmly entrenched in this terrifying stage.

Lastly, the Supreme Stage stands parallel to the Immortal Embryo Stage. At this stage, they’re already preparing themselves to become an Eternal. The High Emperor and many of his favored court officials were reportedly at that stage.

However, there was still the final major realm, which was Singularity. According to Vespera, even her Duke-father hasn’t seen one yet but they knew those above the High Emperor and orchestrating the Highland Realm’s invasion could be at that stage.

Despite that, they’re still just receiving orders from the Eternal Beings that were similar to the immortal cultivators that had long ascended to the Second Heaven.