After Having defeated “Genius Child Complete Diamond”, Yanho, my days in Martial Citadel had become a lot chiller.

A lot more people would come up to me and salute me respectfully , I even had Young Martial Girls come up to me and bring me flowers, and proceed to ask me for a friendly sparring session or two.

Of course I was much too afraid to accept, as I had never been particularly good at talking to girls, and becoming a Ranker hadn’t really changed that too much.

But the change in attitude in a lot of the City really was a breath of fresh air for me.

Of course I still had a lot of people that gave me the stunk face, but after all I had been through, and the few friends I had made I completely disregarded their existence.

After some time I had actually come to realize that I had actually grown a soft spot for the Citadel, crappy attitude and all.

This was the first Civilized place I had visited other than Beans Village, and one of the places I had experienced the most growth in; other than my time with the Toltemic, and my training with Kemoro.

In this place I had started to make a name for myself, not only in the Expert World, but also in the business World.

The City had actually given me quite a bit and I was quite grateful for it.

In my contemplations, I decided to give something back to it to show my appreciation.

I still had a little more than 5 months left before the Official Ranker Gathering.

In that time, I still had to finish Inner Energy Training with Yupow, and finish selling off the rest of my merchandise, so that I could be journey ready.

Nevertheless my Inner Energy Training was a lot more relaxed now that I had officially become a Practitioner, and after a few instructions and lessons from Yupow in the morning, he basically let me train however I wanted for the rest of the day.

He was actually pretty impressed with my creation of my “Inner Combo Circle” Technique, and gave me a few tips on how to improve upon it.

Thanks to that freedom that I had, I was able to do a lot more things every so often.

Whenever I got bored I studied the notes on the Blood Bathing Method, I had accumulated after Weapon and Item Crafting, and thought of many ideas in my head.

I wondered whether I could do the same stuff I did with Mana through the Blood Bathing Method, except with Inner Energy.

To me something like that would be a lot more useful, as I actually had knowledge and control over Inner Energy, as opposed to Mana, which I practically knew nothing about.

I had many Ideas In relation to more experimentation with the Mana Blood Bathing, but my current scarcity of True Original Mana Blood, and the dangerous results I got from combining some of the substances with the Blood, made me hesitant in continuing on that Path.

After my thoughts of helping the City out with its problems, I was further encouraged to go through with my experimentation Ideas.

I took some afternoons to gather the necessary and extra ingredients that were required in the Blood Bathing Method with the help of the Guider, except I replaced my efforts in gathering Magical Beast Blood with just normal Small Beast Blood.

I tried to ignore the fact that I was going against my initial goal, of getting rid of so many of my possessions, by getting even more stuff.

In the end if everything worked out I would hopefully still be able to get rid of everything in a timely manner.

I ended up spending many of my afternoons killing Thieving Rats in the streets, hunting Golden Eyed Mice and Green Squirrels in the nearby fields, or gathering Bright Plant; and the necessary Clay,Charcoal, and other herbs and ingredients in the close Wilderness.

Soon I set up my experimentation zone outside Yupows backyard.

Yupow seeing that I was doing my weird material mixing only shook his head and got out of the house.

My first order of action was building a big wood and clay container in which I could do the Bathing in.

After some further consideration I decided to divide the container into 4 parts.

Thereafter I made a separate powder mix of clay, charcoal, Experts Yew, Ground Will Tree, and Bright Plant which I put into two clay pots.

My reasoning behind the mixture was that Experts Yew and Grounds Will Tree both had similar properties, in that they were both very compatible with Inner energy, and would perhaps help me achieve my objective.

On the side I had several pots of normal Animal Blood, and after grinding up several shoots of Bright Plant into powder, I threw it into the blood and let it sit there for a long time, thereafter putting a mix of charcoal, clay, and both the woods. I had come to a conclusion after so many blood crafting trials, that the Bright Plant was a key Ingredient in the whole process.

What it did exactly, I wasn’t sure of yet, but it definitely helped in making the binding of Mana to Items more successful.

Bright Plant wasn't exactly rare, but it wasn’t exactly abundant either, and it was hard to spot due to its tendency to grow in cold dark spots despite its name Bright Plant.

Once sunlight hit it the veins on its leaves, shoots, and flowers would faintly glow, as if it was darted with little dripplets of light, hence its name.

I hoped Bright Plant would have the same effect on Inner Energy, as it did on Mana.

My next order of business was finding out how to fill up the Blood with Inner Energy.

After taking my time in mixing the Blood with the required powder mix, I decided to add one more thing. I had gone to Martial Warriors Way Shop, and bought two Items for a total of 2000 Gold Coins.

It wasn’t a cheap purchase but seeing as I was also trying to reduce the amount of money I had to carry, the purchase actually served a dual purpose.

The two Items I had bought were two Inner Energy Weapons made out of Inner Energy Bronze.

One was an Axe and the other was a small Dagger.

The Axe I intended to keep for personal usage, but the small Dagger was meant to be sacrificed as ingredient material for my experiments.

Hopefully the endeavor would bear fruits and I didn’t just end up wasting 1000 Gold Coins worth of Metal. I used one of my Magical Knifes to slowly grind the Inner Dagger into dust, as I found the Magical Weapons were the only things that were hard enough to grind the Dagger into dust.

After some time, and half a dagger later, I figured I had accumulated enough Inner Bronze Powder for my intended purposes.

I dumped the Bronze powder into the 4 blood pots in equal amounts.

I Mixed the pots for a long time before finally letting it settle.

I had already tested the Axe and Dagger and had found them to be extraordinary, seemlessly absorbing my Inner Energy, and delivering powerful strikes.

The only thing was that as soon as I stopped funneling my Inner Energy to the weapons, the Inner Energy within the weapons would disperse.

My only hope was that the addition of the Bright Plant into the mix would help solve that problem.

I took two of the clay pots filled with the mixture of blood and dunked my hands into them; I didn’t expect there to be a reaction, as there was no Magical Energy in the mixture, but I was relieved nonetheless that the blood had cause me no harm.

In the end I didn’t know what kind of reaction the mixture of certain ingredients would have.

I proceeded to inject large amounts of Inner Energy in the pots through my hands, by performing the Technique, “Constant Flowing Stream”.

I had to sit down and focus hard on my technique and breathing execution, as I was still not a master of Inner Breath Arts, and I didn’t want to enter a state that was dangerous to my body.

Eventually after some time, I saw the Blood slightly change color from a Dark Crimson Red to a faint Gold Reddish color that glowed.

Eventually I became so exhausted, I had to stop and take a rest and focus on recovering my Inner Energy levels.

To my delight, the new color of the blood didn’t fade away the whole time I stopped injecting energy into it.

After I felt like I had replenished most of my Energy levels, I dipped my hand into the pot to examine it.

I almost screamed out in joy, the blood was full of Inner Energy and it was hardly dispersing into the air from what I could tell.

Even though creating Inner Energy Blood was my intended goal, I could hardly believe I had achieved it in my first try.

Was I some type of Alchemist Genius?

I could hardly believe so, as I didn’t know the first thing about Alchemical Magic, but for some reason I had already managed to create Artificial Magic Blood, a type of Magic Healing Potion, and now Artificial Inner Energy Blood, all through pure chance.

I was starting to realize that the Toltemics method of Magic Infusion, despite its simplicity, was just too powerful and valuable.

I started to wonder if anybody else in Potestera had discovered this method.

Maybe this was a secret method the United Kingdom of Magic had knowledge of, but just hadn’t shared.

I decided to stop thinking about it and instead focus on my task at hand.

I now had a reliable source of physical Inner Energy from which I could draw on, to attempt similar experiments as I had done before.

I focused my mind and repeated the process with the remaining two Pots of Blood, fully converting them into Inner Energy Blood Pots.

I now had the key to unlock the plans for my Inner Energy Goals.