It been a week since James father had left for the war front although he was worried, he heard from the grapevine that the war hasn’t really started and it was the only skirmish was going on and they were just testing each other out nevertheless James was very happy because he had prepared the solution for his consciousness to connect to the fourth dimension as the beakers had already been sent he then spent a few days fine-tuning himself to the slight difference in the chemical laws of this place because of heaven and earth spiritual energy after all the preparation his cultivation path could finally be started.

“I hope my conjectures are correct” James mused even though he was usually confident about himself but this could define the future path he then sat in the lotus position then he drank the solution which put him in a semi-lucid state as he connected to the fourth dimension he felt a sense of euphoria and completeness which he usually felt when he performed his experiments as soon as he felt the energy flow through him.

he started practicing the art of refining as he moving the energy along his skin he felt his body being strengthened and toughened although he had refined his skin a little before with spiritual herbs before but now using fourth dimensional energy he could understand why it was said that with higher forms of energy you would get better result as the energy in spiritual herbs first the energy passed through the voids between the fourth dimension to here then was mixed in with the herbs properties which made the energy more impure and the principle of the art of refining revolves around using spiritual energy from the herbs to refine impurities out of the human body .

but because this herbs also has impurities the body is not properly refined into a high degree with a lot of impurities still remaining he had a feeling that he was improving in strength and he felt as clean as newborn thirty minutes late he had to get out of his because his mind couldn’t carry on its connection with the fourth dimension so he had to come out of his meditative state as he woke up,

he knew this would occur as cultivation acts also had this feature after waking up he felt as if he was reborn anew and his strength, reflex, agility and motor skill has been increased by many folds and even the rate at which he was thinking has increased tremendously and also a large amount of black slug came out of his body which was the impurities.

“So this is the houtian stage I can really see the difference “mused James this is the result of just refining twenty percent of my skin but am already this strong although I don’t know how strong I am compared to most houtian expert and I don’t have the toxin and wound caused by using spiritual herbs or other forms of practice to practice martial art which wound the users lifespan although they live longer than ordinary mortals but because of the wound caused by their practice they live less than their level equivalent in cultivation but through the method through which he used to cultivate the energy is not forced into his body which did not wound his body’s internal system and there were no toxins in the energy thereby making sure there were no impurities in his body thereby keeping his lifespan intact.

in fact, the amount of time he would need to refine his body has drastically decreased because if he used spiritual herbs he wouldn’t have refined one percent of his body by now as the energy was mottled, although he could refine his skin up to twenty percent because this is the first time.

later he would at most be able to refine it at five percent but this alone made him immensely happy because this meant that in a few weeks’ time would have finished refining his skin as he thought it would take him three to six month to complete the refining with spiritual herbs, to him the effect was phenomenal “

“I can see why people would be intoxicated with cultivation, “ James said while doing shadow boxing the feeling that someone gets from constantly improving in strength can be really addictive I can be called a superhuman if I am an earth”

when he first came to this world he was at the limit of the human body pushing past that limit would mean that person has entered the houtian realm this meant that the person has entered another state of being what didn’t know that the change in his body was more pronounced than a cultivators as what he evolved was his body but what other cultivators was just the energy running through their bodies although they would have immense strength while the energy is running through them but when the energy is running through their body is finished their strength will be dramatically decreased but the art of refining makes spiritual energy merge with the very body and toughen it creating a body filled with immense strength he had a feeling that if he could follow this path to the end he could destroy a planet with a punch,

Nonetheless he also wanted to practice cultivation when he discovered fourth dimensional energy but he didn’t understand esoteric terms such as dantian, celestial vein, spirit vein, and mind palaces written in the few cultivation arts that were in the manor and his father and uncle wasn’t at the manor to explain it to him and even if they were here he didn’t know how to explain to them he could absorb spiritual energy without celestial veins it will bring about questions he could not answer,

also if he told them and decided to use cultivation arts he would need to fashion out a new cultivation art for himself because the path of cultivation is that you first use your celestial vein to open your dantian this is the houtian realm you keep refining the energy and expand the energy pool until it changes to xiantian energy the percentage of energy refined to xiantian energy determine the stage a person is within the realm a person with zero to twenty-five present of xiantian energy is as at the early houtian stage, twenty-five to fifty percent is at the middle stage, fifty to seventy-five late stage and seventy-five to a hundred is peak after the transforming of the spiritual energy the practitioner can then break into the xiantian level at the xiantian level the cultivator will try to form a celestial body by refining his body, spirit and consciousness then he will try to open up his sea of consciousness which will propel the practitioner to the transcending mortality stage after this he didn’t understand much about the path of cultivation since his father was just a knight if he it wasn’t because they were members of the raindragon clan and was just an ordinary knight he wouldn’t even have known this much.

Because of all this reason he decided to focus on martial arts because it was less obscure and more straightforward than cultivation although it was painful it was his only good option.

“Humph although I will be done refining my skin in two weeks tops l should wait at least a month before showing that I had done it to avoid attracting attention to myself because it is always the tallest tree that is usually cut down although people know that I don’t have celestial veins and thou can’t cultivate they might just kill me just to find out how I did it since we live in chaotic times James mumbled to himself he couldn’t forget how he got into this world and possessed this body was the boy was poisoned and died halesbane was a very dangerous poison and it was said to have killed a houtian expert before.

his family thought that a miracle happened and he survived since they were preparing to mourn him when he woke up, after thinking all this he told the maid to prepare abate for him where he removed the slug caused by his cultivation session and after he came back refreshed he decided to start reading the book he got from the library an understanding of runes as he read the book he couldn’t help but be entranced as this explained runes in a form in which James has never seen before what James knew of runes before was just that rune masters inscribe runes in weapons to make them sharper, stronger more heavier etc.

but this book overthrew all his notions about runes because it said it can be used to attack, inscribed on the body to get some special property etc.

James couldn’t help but be dumbfounded as he read this he couldn’t help but think that the person who wrote this was crazy but he still couldn’t help but be entranced he was also wondering what this was doing in the barony library because although it had some outlandish theory the parts about normal rune making was pretty insightful and advanced.

what James didn’t know was that if he didn’t have his breakthrough just now he wouldn’t be able to read this as your soul energy will increase as you breakthrough realm but because he broke through with his fleshy body his soul was twofold stronger than that of a fellow houtian cultivator because the body is the container of the soul also because he was fusion of two souls his soul was five times more than a normal houtian expert making him comparable to a xiantian experts soul this was the only reason he could read the book .

The next two weeks went past in a blur for James because he was mostly cultivating or pondering the mystery of runes shown in the book as he read the book and tried to understand it he couldn’t help but be humbled by the scientific mind and genius of the person who wrote the book when he first came here although he respected some of the things they could do he still looked down on them as barbarians.

but as he read this book he gained an understanding that this people were at earth level in some technology and even surpassed them in some areas but because personal power is more respected and one person could really overawe an army the sense of the collective which made earth what it is today had been long abandoned leaving this world in the dark ages in technology but those were just for commoners and mortals but if you were a cultivator the sky is the limit like it stated that a rune here can allow your flying vessel to move at 3000km/h which made it faster than most supersonic jet ,

some rune could condense water from just the atmosphere etc. James was immersed but he did not forget to always practice his cultivation so it was not unexpected to him when he broke through as he completed his skin refining he felt as if he could lift a mountain but although he knew this was ephemeral he couldn’t help but immersed in it.

“The manual said that a person who completely refined his skin is comparable to an early houtian stage cultivator who is about to break through to the middle houtian stage” James mused.

“ I hope that kip has gotten what I asked him about if he had gotten it I would finally start inscribing experimenting with runes I know what makes cultivators strong is not just their cultivation arts it included their techniques and their weapons and other miscellaneous arts give a person an edge when adventuring or fighting for resources so he decided to use this rune making as his side profession, as he had nothing to do he decided to go and see kip as to ascertain the condition of the ingredient’s which he would use to start practicing runes” so James decided to go to the treasury immediately kip and all his assistants immediately stood up and bowed.

“Greeting young master how are you today,” Kip said after bowing looking prim and proper James couldn’t help but smile internally every time he saw kip because he was almost a perfect copy of Sir Eric’s mannerism and dressing, You could see how much he worshiped sir Eric.

“Good morning kip I would like to ask about what I told you about”.

“I am sorry young master but those goods couldn’t be procured because of the war as we are really disadvantaged in the war and most of the spiritual herbs and precious minerals has been appropriated by the army so those things can’t be procured readily and in such quantity as young master asked for” Kip said apologetically.