Chapter 682: Slow but Steady Progress

In the blink of an eye, half-a-year had passed.

Winter was a distant memory, spring had recently ended, and summer had made its presence known.

Christina’s 17th birthday had been half-a-month earlier, Eris turned 15 back in March, and Lucas was now 12 years old.

A huge quantity of maple sugar had been harvested, the vast majority coming from the South-East Province while the North-East Province, which was just beginning to experiment with the tapping process, produced a much smaller yet still significant quantity.

Additionally, an enormous amount of new farmland had been planted using new steel plows and numerous seed drills which had been manufactured over the winter months.

Several of the major infrastructure projects which had been started the previous year under Second Queen Natasha’s Economic Cultivation Initiative were also nearing completion, further boosting trade and commerce within the kingdom’s borders.

At the same time, more such projects were starting up, many of them bigger and more expensive than the earlier ones as they had taken longer to plan out.

In other words, things were going great for the Rockwell Kingdom regarding its economy, making it pretty much the ideal time to host a giant international trade conference, which was exactly what they were planning to do in Mid September, approximately two-and-a-half months from now.

The timetable had been pushed back slightly for a number of scheduling reasons, but as of right now, every nation in the South-Central Region had confirmed it would be sending a formal delegation.

Representatives from a number of foreign chambers of commerce had also made their intentions to attend known, with the biggest ones being the Vast Ocean Trading Company from the Kore Sovereignty, the Heston and Bristow Guild from the Black Tiger Kingdom, and the Rising Sun Merchant Guild from the Rising Sun Empire.

While it wasn’t too surprising that the Vast Ocean and Rising Sun Guilds had decided to attend, the Heston and Bristow Guild expressing interest had caught everyone off guard, especially considering that their biggest claim to fame in international trade was actually their mercenary services, something the Rockwell Kingdom currently had absolutely no need of.

Unfortunately, the Rockwell Kingdom’s intelligence gathering capabilities in the Black Tiger Kingdom were minimal, so trying to discern this guild’s true intentions were all but impossible.

Nevertheless, given the fact that the Heston and Bristow Guild was nearly as strong as the Vast Ocean Trading Company, the Rockwell Kingdom had no choice but to, as Lucas would say, roll out the red carpet for them.

With so many important guests having confirmed they would be attending the conference, there was no longer any doubt this would be the biggest peace-time event in the history of this region of the continent, a true honour for its planners and the Rockwell Kingdom as a whole.

Now, while preparing for the conference was obviously the highest priority for everyone, that didn’t mean all other work came to a halt, especially not for Lucas.

In particular, Project Ascension had actually taken several important steps forward during the first half of the year.

After Supreme Elder Elizabeth’s breakthrough to the Martial Adept Realm, Celestina and Lucas had decided to greatly expand the number of participants in the project. Most of these new members wouldn’t be involved in the research side of things, but simply having more people cultivating using the new method would allow them to gather more data and also begin reaping some benefits from all the hard work they had put into Project Ascension thus far.

As such, at the beginning of the year some 40 individuals who had shown great potential and were deemed trustworthy were recruited into the program.

Most were from the younger generation, with the idea being that the most benefits seen so far from the new cultivation method had been for Mortal Realm Practitioners, but there were also quite a few promising members of the older generation who were included, like the recently promoted Commander Lana Gage.

Timothy Balfour was also added to Project Ascension’s roster, but due to his injuries, he had only recently begun this new ’special training program’.

In order to facilitate this increased number of participants, a new, state-of-the-art training facility designed specifically for the needs of the new cultivation method was built.

There was a suggestion to build this new ’gym’, as Lucas liked to call it, on the recently expanded Rising Pheonix Guild’s campus, but with secrecy and security still being the top concern, it was ultimately decided that the Balfour Manor was the better option for now.

While the new facility was being built, the veteran members of Project Ascension spent much of their time getting the newbies up to speed, teaching them the basic Stances, Figures, Motions, and Forms of the Unarmed Foundations Art.

It was during this period that an unexpected discovery was made by Sasha and Elizabeth.

As one might expect, the research team had been keeping very precise, very detailed records of the progress everyone was making in their cultivation while using the combined Unarmed Foundations and Focused Breathing Arts.

So, when Sasha broke through to the Core Formation Realm about 2 months ago in late April and had a gut-feeling that her progress had been faster than it should have been, she was able to cross-check these records and realized something shocking.

Sure enough, there was a discrepancy in her current cultivation rate compared to what it had been two-and-a-half years ago when she first began using the Unarmed Foundations Art, one that couldn’t simply be explained away by the additional resources and improved environment she had in Misty City.

Sasha was getting stronger at a faster rate than she should have, which either meant that the new cultivation method was even more effective than they originally believed, or something more fundamental had changed with her.

This had set off a huge series of tests for everyone who had been using the Unarmed Foundations Art for more than a year, and after painstaking analysis, it was determined that all of them had seen slight improvements in their overall cultivation rate.

In other words, their Innate Talents had improved.