The Mech Touch

Back when the Elemental Lord struggled to survive against the progressively stronger tribulation waves, the powerful living mech had been forced to learn on the fly and hastily figure out how to chain several different elements together.

The five brothers who had just been born did not enjoy the time to explore their own elements, let alone figure out how to fuse them together.

They were like babies who had been forced by circumstances to fight like adult soldiers!

There was no way for them to succeed in such awful circumstances. It would be like asking Andraste to fight against the Singularity Lord. The disparity in strength was simply too great for this venture to succeed!

As a powerful qi cultivator, Cynthia Larkinson definitely knew what she was talking about when she gave her advice on mastering the five elements.

Veronica listened carefully and took her mother's lessons to heart.

"There is nothing wrong with specializing in a single element." The True God said. "Any element can be exploited to produce results that are far greater than what is possible in nature. By lessening their focus on other elements, qi cultivators can dedicate enough time, resources and other factors to transform the expression of a single element in many powerful forms. A mono-elemental qi cultivator is not necessarily inferior to a duo-elemental cultivator. What is important to note is that the difficulty in making progress as the latter is at least several times higher."

"A duo-elemental cultivator has greater potential than a mono-elemental cultivator, right?" Veronica asked.

"That is only true in certain cases. A duo-elemental cultivator has more options at his disposal. If his cultivation is at the same stage as a mono-elemental rival, he can exert greater power through the synergies between the two elements. However, the time and effort it takes to master twice as many elements makes it so that the duo-elemental cultivator has often failed in their deeper meanings and possibilities."

This was essentially a contrast between breadth and depth.

It reminded Veronica of the possible development directions of his design philosophy.

She was able to choose between growing a broad but relatively short tree, or growing a narrow but also taller tree.

Veronica had eventually opted to go with the former because that aligned better with her own nature. She was way too curious about different stuff to stick to a single subject.

It appeared that the same dynamic also applied to qi cultivation.

"The differences will become even more exaggerated when more elements come into the mix, right?"

Cynthia smiled in a way that made it seem as if she was reminiscing about the past.

"Oh, that is most certainly the case. The difficulty and progression speed of triple-elemental, four-elemental and the most exceptional five-elemental cultivators become exponentially worse. Virtually no grassroots cultivator can ever succeed in them. It takes a strong background, many resources and most importantly talent in all of the relevant elements in order for a cultivator to make real progress in any of them. If any of these conditions are absent, it is always better to focus on a smaller quantity of elements."

That made a lot of sense. It sounded as if mono-elemental cultivators were all poor fellows who had to make do with less, but as long as they worked hard enough, it was still possible for them to defeat multi-elemental cultivators!

Veronica looked up at her mother again. "Hmm... you are a mono-elemental cultivator who specializes in wood, am I right? You have never displayed any strong abilities that make me think of the other four classical elements."

The cyborg cat received a small smack on her head as a response!

"It is not polite to point out someone else's cultivation!" Cynthia admonished the cat before smiling. "I can tell you that you are not wrong. My power is largely derived from wood. Due to my extensive exploration and mastery of this element, I have fused it with my own comprehension and insights and mutated it to form my own dao. This has granted me the ability to perform many methods and techniques that cannot be reproduced through shallower applications of the wood element."

Veronica recalled the times where her mother demonstrated her power as a qi cultivator.

Cynthia was frightening in how she was able to expand her nature-based domain to absorb any kind of energy and convert it into her own power!

"Is that the sort of strength and understanding that I must reach in order to sufficiently master a single element?"

That caused her mother to chuckle. "Oh no, my dear. That is far too much to you, I believe. Your circumstances are different from mine. You do not have the time or the need to explore one of the elements to such an extent. It is sufficient for you to master an element to the point where you can solidly manifest all of its basic applications to a perfect degree. There is no need for you to develop more advanced techniques because you can rely on the combination between multiple elements to produce more comprehensive results."

"So you are saying that I am much more suitable to become a multi-elemental cultivator?"

"Only in the context of a creation cultivator." Cynthia affirmed. "Your goal in mastering the elements is to incorporate them better into your mechs. You do not need to waste your time on learning techniques that are only relevant to qi cultivators. That makes it much more practical for you to explore multiple elements. In fact, almost every mech designer is a duo-elemental cultivator. They always have a foundation in mechs, which is a derivative of the metal element, and another attribute that is most closely aligned with their specializations."

Veronica nodded in agreement. She herself started out with a domain that was split between metal and life.

"Does this mean that I should start out by deepening my understanding of the metal element? That is my strongest so far, and I think I can make a lot more progress if I work together with Vulcan."

Surprisingly, Cynthia shook her head in disagreement.

"You are already working with metal practically every day. You have become so exposed to it that it is difficult for you to accelerate your progress if you work on it more. It is better for you if you shift your focus and explore a completely different element for a time. You will make many new discoveries as you work towards deepening your understanding of it. Once you comprehend this second element just as well as your original metal element, you can begin to explore how you can produce truly powerful results by combining them together. Over time, you can repeat this process with a third, fourth and ultimately a fifth element."

This was the proper progression trajectory of a multi-elemental cultivator. Veronica understood much better now how stupid she had been to design a five element mech from the start.

She felt so embarrassed by her monumentally stupid mistakes that she wanted to crawl inside a box!

"Even though you make it sound like it is manageable, it will still take many years before I truly gain the qualifications to develop a proper version of the Elemental Lord, right?"

"That is so, my child."

That would take way too much time and effort! Veronica was not even sure if she and her incarnations could master the five elements to a sufficient degree in a reasonable timeframe.

"Do I have to focus on the five elements at all? There are a lot of other attributes that I could explore instead in order to improve my mech designs. For example, I can choose to focus more on the attributes of space or death."

"Those are also valid approaches. There are many cultivators in the past and present who have done just fine without the five elements. However, I recommend that you do not disregard their power and their usefulness to your work. The reason why they are so important is because they encompass virtually every phenomena in our reality. You will not have any blind spots as long as you are able to master all five elements. Even if you fall short of that, mastering several elements will already equip you with the tools needed to address many different issues that you may encounter in the future."

Her mother made a good point. Veronica already had a firm foundation in the metal element, so she might as well get started in the other four ones in order to round out her elemental design applications.

Of course, she had to be careful about biting more than she could chew.

"I need to pick an element to begin my foray into mastering the five elements." Veronica said. "I am thinking about increasing my comprehension of the water element. What do you think, mother?"

"Why water?"

"There are three reasons for that. The first is that it is much easier for me to progress in it than the other options. The latest freebie given by the Red Ocean has substantially increased my phase lord cultivation. My main self's body carries a lot more phasewater in his body than before, and that has likely boosted my affinity to the water element. That means that I can make a lot more progress if I delve into water as opposed to the other choices."

Cynthia responded with an approving nod. "That is a good observation. Cultivators must always make use of their advantages. You are not an innate five-elemental cultivator, so you certainly cannot take this lightly. What else?"

"I have already learned a lot of insights and applications related to the power of blood." Veronica continued. "Just as mechs are a derivative of metal, blood is a subcategory of water.

I can use my existing understanding of blood to quickly deepen my understanding of the water element."

"That is also a good approach. It is not uncommon for cultivators to start with a narrow expression of an element and slowly work towards broadening and generalizing their understanding."

Veronica was pleased to hear that her suspicions about this were correct.

"The final reason is that this element synergizes well with phasewater and phasewater technology, which are highly relevant to mechs. Both hyper technology and phasewater technology offer many uses to applications based on the water element. Whether it is developing stronger azure energy shield generators or increasing the effective utilization of phasewater in a mech, a greater understanding of this element will boost all of these useful applications."

The only problem that bothered Veronica was that the direct offensive applications of the water element were rather... limited.

She could still think of a few ways for the water element to enhance the attack power of her mech designs, but it was a lot easier to leverage the fire element instead.

This was the nature of working with the five elements. Each of them possessed natural advantages and disadvantages.

By choosing to focus on the power of water, Veronica would find it a lot easier to improve the defensive properties of her mech designs in the near future.

She did not particularly mind this. Defense was of great importance as it was vital to preserving the lives of precious living mechs as well as their mech pilots.

It was only when his living mechs and his mech pilots were able to live long enough that they could grow into powerful legends!

"It appears that you have formulated a solid plan." Cynthia said with a hint of pride. "Know that the journey to mastering the five elements is destined to take a lifetime. The vast majority of cultivators never come close to it, and even the most talented ones often die before reaching their ultimate goals. The journey is much more important than the destination. Do not think about controlling all five elements in this century. Start by exploring what you can do with the power of metal and water before you branch out further. I suspect that it may take several decades before you are qualified to start the next phase."

Her mother really hit home how monumental it was to tackle the five elements. Veronica fully kept these words in mind.

"Thank you, mother. I will try my best not to skip over this process again. I have thoroughly learned my lessons."

The cyborg cat eventually left the design lab in order to sort out all of her thoughts and reform her mental models.

The Oblivion Empress watched the incarnation of her son depart from her mundane sight while her own attention drifted towards the past.

She raised one of her pale and shining arms and formed a ball of wood energy.

She then summoned a second ball consisting of earth energy.

Three more balls of energy of the remaining elements quickly followed.

The balls began to orbit around each other under her careful direction. Wood followed after fire which followed after earth and so on. Slowly but surely, the cycle of elements started to rotate faster and faster, generating a lot of excess energies that took an exponentially greater effort for Cynthia to control!

Soon, the five balls of energy spun so quickly above her palm that it seemed as if they were about to morph and merge into a single cohesive amalgamation of energy!

The five different representative colors of the five classical elements slowly made way for two contrasting colors.

Dark and light spun around each other in a mystical pattern that exuded a lot of power and sacredness!

Even though the Lady of the Night had invested only a trifling amount of energy in this little display, the power and other properties of this extraordinary energy ball would have shocked Veronica into silence!

Eventually, Cynthia closed her palm, causing the extraordinary energy interaction to disappear from sight.

To a cultivator like her, the five elements were the root of everything.