When Heavin returned, Krune went straight to the point.
"Heavin, can I leave my cultivation up to you now? I will just send the Spiritual and Elemental Source energy for you to cultivate if that is the case."
Heavin immediately nodded his head.
"You can leave it to me, I won't feel bored anymore now that I can do other things."
Heavin then looked at Krune and asked something else.
"Oh, right! I want one of those communicators. It seems a fascinating thing to be able to connect to the network. I want to see what more techniques are available online and if there is anyone that might be of some help to me."
Krune nodded.
"No problem. As long as you don't stop cultivating, I have no issues with that."
Krune then bought and registered a new communicator for Heavin.
With everything in place, Krune and the others resumed their search for Elemental Path Stones.
Once again, time started to pass, and soon, Dilo and Xankruan also joined the search for Elemental Path Stones. As always, their group would act in different directions. Krune and Feifei, Ruik and Tiane, and Dilo and Xankruan. Their group only gathered once in a while for Elemental Path Stone consumption and to rest after.
Heavin played quite a lot outside, but because he couldn't go too far from Krune, he had to always stay in the surroundings. In the end, he changed his focus to the network and the information inside.
"Krune, next time we return to the city, would mind buying these techniques for me to take a look?"
Krune took a quick look at what those were and understood what Heavin wanted.
"Soul Strengthening Techniques, uh? You think they can help you?"
Heavin shrugged his shoulders, which looked quite funny for a Parrot Puppet and said.
"No idea. But it seems fun to try."
Krune smiled and then nodded. That day, after they returned to the city, Krune made the payment, and those techniques were quickly delivered to his communicators. Krune then transferred it to Heavin to check. Just like before, Heavin attached himself on Feifei's shoulder and went silent.
Krune knew that he probably started to ponder about those techniques, and it would take quite some time before he came back.
Not long after, the group reunited once more to check something.
"Dilo, did you get enough Elemental Path Stones?"
Dilo nodded.
"We searched for an entire week and got a lot of them. It should be more than enough to test your theory of surpassing the absorption limit."
Krune and the others nodded and then returned to the hotel.
Everyone took this opportunity to absorb their Elemental Path Stones as well, while Dilo did the same. Another day passed, and they gathered together once more.
"How was it?"
Dilo smiled and nodded.
"Yeap, my absorption rate did increase. It seems like that with this Elemental Path Stones, the limit can really be surpassed. If it goes like this, I might really reach a 100% conversion rate now that I'm in the Soul Forging Realm. Or at least, I should get more than 90%."
Everyone immediately got excited hearing that.
"Great! Since we are also cultivating while looking for the Elemental Path Stones, we are not losing any time."
Krune smiled now that he knew that everyone could achieve that result. The only difference is that he would do it while in the Divine Soul Realm while the others needed to reach the Soul Forging Realm for that.
"Alright, we passed an entire day absorbing the Elemental Path Stones. Let go to the restaurant to eat something and then take a rest. After we are finished, we are moving to another city again, is everyone okay with that?"
Feifei and the others nodded.
The next day, Krune's group teleported away from that city.
Time continued to pass, and over two years were gone.
By this time, the peak of the Elemental Stones appearance had already passed. They become quite hard to be found now, even for Krune and the others who had the Elemental Meridians. Still, those two years had an immense impact on everyone's overall strength, cultivations, and laws.
Krune was getting 10% more Elemental Path Stones until the very end, so he was obviously the first one to achieve a 100% absorption rate. He tried to change everyone's mind several times, but they kept insisting on giving him those extra stones. Fortunately for him, he reached the limit half a year ago, so the others had no more excuse to force him to take more. Instead, he gave his ones to the others and sold a few.
Just as everyone expected, the stones kept slowly losing effect on their Meridians, and by now, they were finally useless. If not for the fact that they could look for it while cultivating, they probably would have stopped already. After all, they are worth a lot of money.
By now, both Tiane and Ruik also entered the Divine Soul Realm. As mentioned before, their foundation isn't as big and complicated as Krune, so they didn't need as much energy as him. Even though their Elemental Source Energy conversion rate stopped at more or less 80%, their cultivation speed was still pretty much the same as Krune with his 100%. One must remember that Krune uses part of his Spiritual and Elemental Source energy to feed his Sun. This is something that everyone else didn't have a need to. Not to mention that a Universe Foundation obviously needs more energy to improve.
Ruik and Tiane had both simple foundations, so they were pretty much the same regarding cultivation speed. At the moment, the two of them reached the 3rd Stage of the Divine Soul Realm.
Feifei was already close to the 3rd Stage when Krune first entered the Divine Soul Realm. Even though she also has a Universe Foundation, she doesn't have a Sun to feed, which improved her cultivation speed in comparison with Krune as well. Just a month ago, Feifei was successful in entering the 6th Stage. As for her Elemental Source Energy conversion rate, it also reached 80% when the Elemental Path Stones finally lost their effect. In theory, she, too, will get a 100% or close to it when she enters the Soul Forging Realm.
Dilo was already in the Soul Forging Realm, so his cultivation speed was indeed the slowest one. Not to mention that he and Xankruan were half a year late to start gathering the Elemental path Stones. He was only able to bring his conversion rate to 95% to this point. Still, this is enough cultivation speed to put the biggest majority of Soul Forging Realm cultivators and demon beast to shame. These two years and something were still enough for him to jump two stages, being now at the 3rd Stage of the Soul Forging Realm.
Xankruan was still in the Divine Soul Realm. Her conversion rate reached 77%, which shows that Dilo forced her to use more Elemental Path Stones than himself. When Xankruan joined the group, she was in the 6th Stage of the Divine Soul Realm, and almost entering the 7th. Now she is already at the peak of the 9th Stage and might enter the Soul Forging Realm anytime soon. She just wanted to go out to take a few missions to get more used to this realm before doing that.
Finally, there was Krune and his 100% conversion rate while in the Divine Soul Realm. But as mentioned previously, he also has to feed his Sun, which uses quite a bit of his Spiritual and Elemental Source energies. Thankfully, Heavin is really better than him at cultivation, so that helped him as well. Krune was now in the peak of the 4th Stage, and he would soon enter the 5th.
Lastly, there was Heavin, Krune's Divine Soul.
Heavin is really as intelligent as Krune himself, and since over 2 years passed, he, too, had developed his mind and left his kid self far behind. There was nothing weird about it. After all, a wisp would achieve an adult mind when they are around 3 years old. Let alone Heavin who was surrounded by Krune's group and had access to the network with his own communicator.
But that wasn't the only thing that Heavin did. It turned out that Heavin loved to study soul cultivation techniques, skills, and other types. Krune would now and then buy a new one for him, and Heavin would go silent again to review it. Unfortunately, the fact that he is a Divine Soul made all those techniques useless for him... or so they should be. Heavin started to change and combine them in several different ways to the point that he finally could use them to a certain extent. Thanks to that, Krune could feel that his Divine Soul was quite stronger even though the realm itself didn't change.
At some point, Heavin thought about an idea.
"I want to create a Divine Soul cultivation technique."
Krune and Feifei didn't seem very surprised. By now, they already understood that Heavin is really good at these things, so there weren't any big risks as far as they can see.
"What kind of technique? Isn't it better to simply modify those ones you were working on?"
Heavin shook his head.
"No, the Soul Cultivation Techniques that exist at the moment are more for strengthening or learn new skills. What I mean is a real cultivation technique, with stages and realms to breakthrough."
This time, Krune and Feifei were really surprised. They had never heard about this type of Soul Cultivation Technique before.
Heavin was right, a Soul Cultivation Technique that would bring one through different realms really didn't exist. Or at least, they didn't find anything like that in the Dalin Universe network. Considering the sheer number of rare techniques available on the internet, it was hard to imagine that such a thing existed in other Universes as well. This is the Universe where all resources gather, after all.
"Do you think it is possible?"
Heavin nodded.
"It is, but I will need a lot of Soul Cultivation Techniques, Skills, and other types to even start thinking about devising something."
Krune then remembered something.
"What about the Soul Techniques of the Mohie Sect that I gave you? There were quite a lot in that batch."
Heavin agreed with Krune.
"There was quite a lot, indeed, but I finished revising them already. In the end, that was a branch sect from before the technological era. Although there were a lot, there were quite behind. The soul techniques online have several of the same types but much more refined."
Krune and Feifei looked at each other and nodded.
"We will help with what we can, but I don't think we have enough money to buy this many."
Heavin nodded.
"It's okay, I will start my own research with the common ones available. They are cheap, and there is more than enough to occupy me for a very long time."