CHAPTER 72: CHAPTER 72 - ANNOUNCEMENT OF ARRIVAL

The pieces clicked together in my mind like puzzle fragments finding their places.

During our marathon session, when all three women had been unstable and desperate, when I’d been pouring vitality into them to save their cultivation bases... the system hadn’t just been giving them what they needed.

It had been storing the overflow, the massive surplus generated by our combined essence exchange.

"That’s why," I said softly, understanding dawning.

"That’s why you only let me access 47,250 points during the realm collapse.

That’s all my body could channel without my wives as conduits."

[Correct. Host’s individual channeling limit: 47,382 vitality points maximum. All excess energy requires distributed network to prevent fatal overload.]

[Additional Note: Current vitality overflow is passively leaking through Host’s aura at rate of 10 points per second. Environmental enhancement effects may be observable.]

I frowned, glancing around the pleasure palace chamber.

Now that the system mentioned it, I could see it—subtle changes in the silk hangings, which seemed more vibrant, more alive.

The decorative plants in their jade pots were visibly fuller, leaves that had been wilting now standing proud and green.

A slow grin spread across my face as I slipped out of bed, careful not to wake the women.

I padded naked to the chamber’s edge, where a small decorative vine had been struggling in poor light.

As I approached, the plant seemed to perk up, its leaves unfurling toward me like flowers following the sun.

I reached out and touched one yellowing leaf with my fingertip.

Golden qi flowed from my skin, and I watched in fascination as the leaf transformed—yellow fading to healthy green, withered edges filling out, the entire plant straightening with renewed vitality.

"I’m a walking healing dao," I chuckled, the implications hitting me.

"Every step I take, every breath I release, I’m passively enhancing everything around me."

The strategic possibilities were endless.

Morally wounded allies could be healed with a touch.

Dying cultivators could be restored.

Hell, I could probably bring entire dead forests back to life just by walking through them.

The kind of power that would make people worship me as a living god.

But first, I had more immediate concerns.

"System," I said quietly, "what happened to all the vitality I should have gained throughout our sessions tonight? The notifications showed massive rewards."

[Response: Host reached maximum individual storage capacity during first stabilization procedure. All subsequent vitality gains automatically compressed and stored in dimensional matrix. Current compression ratio: 30:1]

[Note: To access stored reserves, Host must establish essence chain network with minimum three Soul Formation partners. Current available partners meet requirements.]

I looked back at my sleeping wives—Yue, Mei, and Feng, all now stabilized at Soul Formation, all carrying my children, all bonded to me at maximum loyalty.

The perfect conduits for channeling power beyond mortal limitations.

"Let’s awaken those bastards first," I murmured, my voice carrying dark anticipation.

But not yet.

First, I needed to test this new reality, to understand exactly what I’d become.

With a thought, I dismissed the pleasure palace, reality folding back into the simple cave where we’d been sheltering.

My wives remained asleep, their enhanced cultivation allowing them to rest deeply despite the transition.

I stepped outside into the pre-dawn darkness, my naked form immediately drawing moisture from the air as my overflowing vitality interacted with the environment.

Dew beaded on my skin, and where droplets fell to the ground, wildflowers began to bloom.

With a snap of my fingers, I accessed the palace’s dimensional storage, calling forth clothing—not the simple robes I’d worn before, but something befitting what I was becoming.

A perfectly tailored suit materialized around me, midnight black with subtle golden threading that seemed to pulse with inner light.

The fabric felt alive against my skin, enhanced by my passive aura.

I walked to the small stream nearby, drawn by curiosity about my physical state.

The water’s surface reflected a face I barely recognized—not the aging emperor I’d been, not even the reformed body the inheritance had granted me, but something transcendent.

My features had refined themselves beyond human perfection, skin unmarked by time or hardship, eyes that held depths of golden light, black hair that moved with its own subtle life.

This wasn’t temporary enhancement maintained by vitality expenditure.

This was permanent transformation, my body rewritten by the massive energies I’d absorbed and contained.

I looked up at the star-filled sky, feeling the weight of cosmic forces pressing down, the natural order recognizing what I’d become and preparing to test me.

"Breakthrough," I said simply.

The word triggered something fundamental.

Golden light erupted from my body like a second sun, a pillar of pure energy that twisted up through the atmosphere, piercing clouds and racing toward the heavens.

The very air around me sang with power as my cultivation base expanded, realms shifting and advancing with terrifying speed.

Early Void Returning surged to Mid, then Late, then Peak.

The breakthrough cascade continued, my essence chain with my wives automatically stabilizing the massive energy flow, preventing the catastrophic failure that should have killed me a dozen times over.

Space itself rippled around me as I ascended beyond Void Returning into Dao Integration realm, my understanding of fundamental forces expanding exponentially.

The stream beside me began flowing upward, gravity becoming negotiable in my presence.

Stars in the sky pulsed in rhythm with my heartbeat.

But even this wasn’t the end.

The compressed vitality within my dimensional storage was still feeding the breakthrough, thirty times normal capacity creating an advancement that defied every natural law.

Peak Dao Integration.

Early Great Vehicle realm.

My body began to fade partially from reality, existing simultaneously across multiple dimensional layers, my perception expanding to encompass vast territories, distant realms, the movements of sects and empires like chess pieces on an infinite board.

The golden pillar of my advancement reached into the void between worlds, announcing to every power in the cultivation universe that something unprecedented had just occurred.

In caves and hidden valleys, ancient monsters stirred from millennia-long slumbers, their senses detecting the disturbance.

In sect headquarters across multiple realms, emergency meetings convened as elders tried to identify the source of the cosmic disruption.

And in the deepest vaults of the Immortal Sect, alarm formations screamed warnings as their most sensitive arrays detected an energy signature that shouldn’t exist—a breakthrough so massive it registered as a natural disaster.

I smiled as I felt their panic rippling across the dimensional barriers, my enhanced senses picking up their frantic communications, their desperate attempts to locate and classify the threat.

Let them scramble.

Let them fear.

Behind me, I sensed my wives beginning to stir, their own cultivation bases resonating with the energies I was channeling, their pregnant bodies glowing faintly with reflected power.

The war I’d been planning could begin in earnest now.

Not the careful maneuvering of a fallen emperor seeking to reclaim lost glory, but the absolute dominion of a being who had transcended mortal limitations entirely.

I turned back toward the cave, my form solidifying into apparent humanity again, though anyone with spiritual sight would see the truth—I was no longer bound by the same rules that governed ordinary cultivators.

"Time to wake up, my loves," I said softly, my voice carrying across dimensions.

"We have a universe to conquer."

ALERT!

[System Alert: Heaven’s Will Has Noticed the Host]

[Effect: Cosmic surveillance initiated. Concealment impossible.]

[Warning: Multiple Ancient Eyes Have Fallen Upon the Host]

[Sources: Immortal Sects, Primordial Beasts, Slumbering Dao Ancestors.]

[Critical Alert: Host Designated as Calamity Incarnate]

[Heaven and Earth prepare Judgment. Tribulation unavoidable.]

[ Host will enter this realm’s Tribulation to qualify for ascension in... 3 sec ... 2 sec.... ]