Lao Chen watched his sheep play with children, taking a break from his ceaseless cultivation to take a deep, cold breath of fresh air. The sun was at its apex, yet the cold autumn chill didn’t let up at all.

Lao Chen’s mind whirled with the thought of what sort of Nascent Soul he could create. Throughout all the research books he had read, they were all imperfect beings destined to bondage for the sake of personal strength, a disgusting idea. They had only the lowest of intelligence and free thought.

Lao Chen didn’t want to create a subservient creature bound to all of his whims and desires, a soul he could retreat to in the event that he dies of some external factor. It wasn’t a sense of hubris and superiority that drove him to this sort of thinking, but rather loneliness.

Perhaps a Nascent Soul was… like a child?

Next to him, sitting on the side of the hill that he watched from, was a soon-to-be mother, gently caressing her expanded stomach.

Within her was a soul. Lao Chen could sense it as clear as day. Not a pseudo-soul that is the closest a human can come to the creation of life, nor a basic puppet that can only imitate life. It was a human soul, full in and of itself.

Lao Chen chuckled ruefully to himself. While cultivators were capable of immense feats of ground-breaking miracles and earth-shattering attacks, it was the woman that could co-create and foster life within herself. A self-sufficient incubator for a youthful soul. A creator.

The woman smiled at Lao Chen, catching him staring, much to his red-faced embarrassment as he averted his eyes.

“No, don’t be embarrassed!” She laughed in a bell-like tone of voice. “It’s truly wondrous, isn’t it?”

Lao Chen smiled. “It truly is.”

The woman continued. “Have you heard the tales of the great Empress Wa?”

“Mother Nuwa?” Lao Chen asked. “The creator of mankind, yes?”

The woman sighed in veneration. “Truly the original Mother. While we can barely handle the stress of a single childbirth, the Mother created us all. A power unlike any other.”

Lao Chen pondered. If only his own Nascent Soul could have the qualities of a free-thinking human. A touch of Nuwa was all that he needed, perhaps.

The Core Formation stage he was in was not made to handle the sheer pressure of a Dao of any kind, but Lao Chen was at an impasse. Only Nascent Soul cultivators and above were safe from any penalty incurred from cultivating a Dao this early on, but to reach the stage of Nascent Soul cultivation, he needed the same inspiration that Mother Nuwa had when creating humankind. A single touch of Nuwa and her boundless wisdom was all that he needed.

The Sect was also doing fine without him. They had a grasp on what they were on about at this point, and there was no shortage of adults willing to help them. He could afford to take some time off to reach his answers. The Dao was off-limits, however.

Therefore, instead of cultivating the Dao, Lao Chen sat on his knees and prayed.

“Empress Wa, I beseech thee. Grant me your insight on creation.”

Lao Chen repeated the phrase non-stop beneath his breath, standing stock still for weeks on end. Come rain or shine, Lao Chen kneeled and prayed. The Village would take note of his ceaseless prayers, sighing in veneration while offering drinks and foodstuffs in front of him in case he ever felt like eating.

The elements weren't capable of stopping Lao Chen, but time was truly the deciding factor.

After a whole month, Lao Chen’s will finally faltered. The tedium of sitting in one place, doing something that obviously did not bring him any closer to enlightenment was not something Lao Chen was used to.

Throwing caution to the wind, Lao Chen sat cross-legged and began to reach for the Great Dao, searching for Empress Wa’s divine enlightenment.

The clouds overhead began to roil about, merciless Tribulation Lightning developing. Lao Chen saw it, feared it, yet he continued.

If he stopped progressing, that was a worse fate than starting from square one. The Empress's blessing and enlightenment were right around the proverbial corner. His mind was stretched to his limits as he rationalized his way forward inch by inch. The Lightning continued roiling, unheeding of his struggles, yet he pushed on.

The enlightenment was staring him in the face, but there was a final piece in the puzzle of creation that Lao Chen couldn’t get his head around.

And that was when the lightning struck.

In the last moment, however, the lightning curved around him as his metal ring siphoned the jolting electricity inside, glowing a deep purple. Lao Chen was wholly unaware as the final piece of the puzzle became more and more evident to him.

Above the Nascent Soul’s pseudo soul should be basic instructions for an intelligent being capable of learning yet within the confines of humanity. An id, an ego, a superego, these components were required to create the mind, and that was truly where the human was located. The body was a tool. The human lay in the mind.

Above the mind wrapped around the soul, Lao Chen had to create a corpus, an amalgamation of energy which imitated flesh and human anatomy to a perfect degree. Once the process of creation was over, the corpus would transform into a human vessel, and that was it. Lao Chen’s Nascent Soul in the form of a human being.

Lao Chen’s eyes darted open. His Nascent Soul was ready for creation.