Six months passed by.

It was the middle of the night, and Red was focusing on his “rain dance”. At this point, he already engraved the steps of the technique in his mind. The movements flowed from him like never before, and there was a certain harmony and fluidity in each step the boy took.

No longer did the technique feel strange to him. Instead, Red felt at peace when he executed it, as if he was becoming part of something bigger. A few minutes passed by when he finally heard the sound of thunder right by his ear.

‘It’s here.’

He sat down cross-legged on his bed in a hurry. The boy grabbed onto the insectoid crystal by his side before the tide of Spiritual Energy flowed into his veins.

Over this last half-a-year Red discovered the trick to manipulating this strange energy. Instead of trying to direct it with his limited control, the boy let it roam free through his veins, nudging it along to travel all over his body like a flowing river.

Soon enough, the energy started to dissipate and lose strength, but the boy also had come up with a solution for this. He took out one of the Vein Opening pills the hawk spirit had given him before swallowing it.

Surprisingly enough, instead of wandering to open one of his acupoints, the Spiritual Energy from the pill merged into the strands of the river dance’s energy. The two seemingly different powers became as one, and a single new strand of energy now flowed through his veins.

Red tried to direct it. As he had expected, the previously stubborn energy now followed his orders without resistance, and travelled up towards his head.

Soon enough, they clashed against the ninth and last acupoint in his Five Senses Vein. Red already struck against this obstacle multiple times, so it didn’t take long for the powerful tide of energy to break through.

Red felt something pop in his head. A terrible headache overcame him, but he was already bracing for it and held onto consciousness.

As the acupoint opened, the insectoid crystal in his hand glowed. Strands of green mist slipped into his veins, filling the newly opened acupoint.

It took just a few seconds for the Moonstone energy to fill the acupoint, but Red was only able to collect himself and recover from the pain and exhaustion after three more minutes passed. When everything was done, he sighed in relief.

‘That should stave off the curse for a bit longer.’

Just like the hawk had said, the draining of the creature in the Moon had grown stronger over these last six months. Red barely had enough Moonstone energy in his veins to feed the beast’s appetite, and he was afraid of what would happen when it wasn’t enough any longer.

Thankfully, though, he persevered. Now, after six months, he finished opening his Five Senses Vein.

In retrospect, this vein alone took him longer to open than all his three other veins combined. Red was more than satisfied with his speed, though.

The Five Senses Vein was the third hardest vein to open, and it took most people almost half a decade to see it through. Yet, not only had Red done it in six months, but he had also done out of proper order. If he had the support of all the previous nine veins, the boy was sure he could have opened it even quicker.

‘This technique is truly magical.’

Red had also solved his issues with the Rain Dance technique over that period. No matter how hard he tried, he wasn’t able to direct the energy from that technique to the right vein. When he was out of options, he used one of the Vein Opening pills the hawk gave him.

To his surprise, that ended up working. The energy from the pill merged with the energy from the technique, and Red could finally direct it towards his vein. By then, opening his acupoints became a matter of time.

The boy didn’t know if that was what he was supposed to do from the outset. However, it was the only solution he found. He didn’t give up on controlling that energy by itself, but perhaps he could only achieve success once he opened more veins.

There was another discovery he made during that time, too.

‘My crippled acupoint has healed.’

He discovered this during his cultivation. Any energy strands that passed through that area in his shoulder would cause a pang of pain in him. Yet, during his experiments with the Rain Dance technique, he noticed that pain disappeared.

Red checked it many times before coming to a definite conclusion. He was joyful at the revelation, but he was also left quite confused.

The boy wasn’t sure who, or what, healed him. Was it the hawk? Was it the regenerative powers from the mist? If the latter was the case, then that had deep implications.

It meant his blood powers could heal even injuries in his vein. Didn’t that mean that Red could absorb as many Spirit Stones through his acupoints as he wished? Wouldn’t that make him invincible under the Lesser Ring Realm? Of course, this was all under the presumption he was willing to absorb more blood to recover, which would incur much harsher consequences on the boy.

He wasn’t willing to worsen his demonification.

The crimson mist inside his body returned to normal, too. It was willing to communicate with Red through his meditation technique and it even prompted the boy many times for “more.” He could hazard a guess as to what it was referring to, and he obviously didn’t provide it. Thankfully, the mist didn’t push him on the matter.

He had also found himself back on that dream hell-scape a handful of times over the last six months. Like the boy thought, his body in that place carried its own wounds and equipment. The scar of the cut in his hand was still there when he awoke and he was still carrying the bones.

He didn’t know what that meant necessarily, but it was more information than he had before. Nothing of note happened during those dreams, and Red kept walking towards that bone mountain.

He was yet to reach it, though.

‘I still don’t know what happened back then.’

Indeed, he still recalled nothing about the ‘incident’ and his lost memories. However, it did not happen again, so it wasn’t urgent for the boy to figure it out.

Another matter he made significant progress on was with his crimson sense. He had singled out many more peculiarities about the fluctuations he detected. Now he felt confident in detecting strong emotional fluctuations through his crimson sense, as well as age and general health of an individual.

This, by itself, wasn’t too impressive, since most of these things were observable by the naked eye. However, Red imagined the possibilities. If he could detect this much just through a single upgrade in his powers, who knew what he could detect in the future? It would be invaluable against the subterfuge of some cultivation arts.

Of course, for that he would need to absorb more blood, which he still wasn’t willing to do.

The boy sighed.

‘So much temptation. No wonder so many people resort to demonic arts.’

With such special powers and shortcuts, who wouldn’t feel tempted? Red had held steady, though.

Since the monsters in the forest return, he had more than a few opportunities to absorb more of blood. At times, he even had to be careful not to let spilled blood touch his skin.

It was a comical sight, actually.

Now he had to avoid touching the blood of anything he killed. He didn’t know if that was feasible, so it was better if he found a way to control the mist’s absorption.

As Red was absorbed in thought, he felt a fluctuation approaching his room. He looked out of his window and frowned.

‘He’s early.’

The boy got up and opened his door. He saw Domeron standing in front of it with a surprised expression.

The man smiled. “You know, sometimes I forget how you can feel when I’m approaching.”

Red ignored his remark. “What happened?”

Domeron frowned. “What do you mean? We need to train, don’t we?”

“You’re early.” Red said.

The man shrugged. “I just felt like starting training early today.”

“You’ve never been early since we started training at night.”

Domeron sighed in defeat. “Just follow me, will you? We need to talk.”

Red nodded and followed behind the man.

Soon enough, he found himself back at the training field.

He frowned in confusion. “Are we talking or training?”

“Do your stances first.” Domeron threw him a wooden weapon. “I’ll brief you on the situation.”

Red nodded. He took the short sword in his hand before walking over towards a wooden dummy.

He took the weapon in a reverse grip before straightening his posture, standing straight as a ramrod. His breathing slowed down, and he closed his eyes as he sought to tense his muscles in the way he had been taught.

Just as Red was getting ready to strike, Domeron spoke up.

“The horde might be here tomorrow.”

The boy stumbled. He looked over at the swordsman in shock.

“Tomorrow?” Red asked.

“Probably tomorrow.” Domeron nodded. “Might take a few days too.”

“Didn’t you say we would know about the horde coming weeks before it happened?”

The man sighed. “That’s what I thought too. However, something seems to have happened at Skycrown Mountain. Hector just received news about it and he woke me up to inform me.”

Red had a bad feeling about the situation. “What exactly happened?”

“The sect cultivators at the border were engaged in battle against the first waves of the horde when they were ambushed from behind.”

“Ambushed? By monsters?”

“No.” Domeron shook his head. “By demonic cultivators.”

Red’s blood ran cold.

Domeron continued. “We have had many isolated cases of demonic cultivators running amok around the world. Yet this is the first time in almost a decade that they have organized in such numbers, not to mention striking at the sects so blatantly.”

“Did the sect cultivators win?”

“Apparently there were some casualties, but they were able to force the demonic cultivators to retreat.” Domeron said. “However, by then, the damage was already done. Thousands of monsters slipped through the sects' barrier and they’re not causing havoc around the Skycrown neighboring countries.”

“And this includes us?” Red frowned.

“Indeed.” the man nodded. “We have received news from scouts across the river. They have already seen signs of foreign monsters appearing at the edge of the forest, with many of them in the Lesser Ring Realm. I wouldn’t doubt if we even saw a few of them in the Greater Ring Realm. The surrounding settlements will probably all start evacuating to our town tomorrow.”

“… What are we going to do then?”

“We are going to have an emergency meeting with the Baron tomorrow.” Domeron said. “Every person of power and influence in the town is going to be there to discuss our next course of action… Hector also wants to take some of our sect members with him.”

“I see…” Red nodded, before his eyes widened in realization. “Wait-”

Domeron smiled. “That’s right. That includes you.”