When Victor finally walked out of the building, the sky was already dark. With money in hand, Victor went to a nearby motel and got a room for the night. It was a little run-down, but the rent was cheap, the room was clean, and it had a shower. That was good enough for Victor.

After a hot shower, Victor laid on the bed but found sleep difficult. He was finally feeling tired, but the bed was a little too soft for his comfort. He was too used to prison. Victor sat up and took out the books. Victor had only flipped through the books while in the sub-space, and now looked through them carefully. He noticed that the two books were written in his handwriting. Victor found this strange, but with no way to contact Reunion, he could only confront the system later. For now, he read the books.

He started with the Ways to the Foundation Stage.

After a few hours of reading, Victor finished the book and got a better understanding of cultivation. CuItivation was a lot more complicated than he had imagined. As he had thought, the Ways to the Foundation Stage was a beginner guide and it told the reader the different ways to form a core, and what to do with it once you had succeeded. Forming a core was not the end of the matter, but the start!

The book state that forming the core may have put you on the foundation stage of cultivation, but it was only the first level of the stage. The book spilt the foundation stage into three levels, and highly suggest that cultivators complete all three levels of the stage before trying to break through to the next stage of cultivation. The three levels were simply called low, high, and peak.

The three levels basically measure how strong the core was. The stronger the core, the more qi it could store. The book mentioned several ways to increase the strength of the core like mediation, taking qi supplements like qi pills, and through simple combat. Victor quickly realized that all these viable methods were based around the use of the core. The more Victor used his core, the more qi would travel in and out of it. As more qi goes through the core, the stronger the core would become. The core was like a muscle that grows bigger the more you use it.

Once his core reached the peak level, Victor could then break through to the next stage of his cultivation; the Mortal Stage. Victor had no idea what he would need to break through, but something told him the system store would have an answer. The book also mentioned the other stages of cultivation, but Victor figured those were problems for the future. Now he would just concentrate on getting the basics right. That was where the Iron Bear Sambo came in.

The Iron Bear Sambo was a much thicker book that the Ways to the Foundation Stage, and there was a good reason for that. The book showed Victor combat techniques and all of them had diagrams, illustrations, and explanations on how to move your qi during the moves. Outside explaining how to fuse normal punches and kicks with qi, the book also had a set of ten special moves.

As Victor was a beginner, he could only learn the basics. There were only three moves available for Foundation Stage cultivators; The Bear’s Charge, Flurry of Punches, and Iron Body. The good thing was that Victor could learn all of them even at the low core level.

Iron Body was a defensive skill that increased the toughness of his skin. At the Foundation Stage, it wasn’t all that powerful, but once Victor broke into the higher stages, his body would be able to withstand blades, arrows, and fireballs without any problems. The Bear’s Charge was a running tackle where the cultivators need to push their qi to the feet and charged at the enemy, and Flurry of Punches was a simple combo of punches.

What was even better for Victor was the simple fact that the book told him how to use all three moves together. First, increased your defense with Iron Body. Charged to the opponents with The Bear’s Charge and take them down to the ground. Once there, mount them and use Flurry of Punches to punch their lights out. You do not need to use one move at a time and the book recommend that cultivators practiced using the three moves in conjunction with each other. There was even a section in the book of how to spilt your qi between Iron Body and The Bear’s Charge.

It was good advice, so Victor decided to begin his practice with The Bear’s Charge. As a martial artist, he needed to be close to the opponent to be effective, so this move looked to be the most useful to him. However, practice required him to have more room than he had so Victor began moving the furniture around. The motel room wasn’t large by any means, but Victor managed to open a space for him to practice.

He found the move to be surprisingly easy to learn. He only broken through to the Foundation Stage after six years of training, so Victor had feared that learning this move would take a similar amount of time. His fears were unfounded. In the end, it was just a running tackle. Victor just needed to get use to moving the qi in his body. In combat, you need to move instinctively and the only way to achieve that was through repetitive practice. Victor was still practicing when a message came into his head.

“New side task available for host Victor Volkov. One of your descendent is in danger. Rescue your descendent and return to the spell formation for your reward.”

“Who is in danger? What is the situation?”

Victor asked, but his only reply was silence. Instead a portal appeared in front of Victor. Victor looked at the portal and groaned.

“I hate portals.”

With little choice, and no answer, Victor stepped through.