Author Note

This chapter was quite hard to write (explaining things so it won't get boring etc.) so please understand... XD

“Here’s the water…” Zalea said with her head turned away from Kyril. She held the pail of water towards him. Due to the previous ‘accident’, a layer of light red covered the wrinkled cheeks of Zalea.

Kyril took the pail and couldn’t help but push his eyebrows together to form what looked like two sloping sides of a mountain. “Well this is a first… never have I seen an old woman blush like a teenage girl! She’s at least five or six times older than me right now, has she never seen ‘that’ before??”

Whatever it was, such a reaction from an old woman was totally unexpected.

As if realising what Kyril was thinking, once Kyril took the pail from her hand Zalea turned around and with a jerk from her legs, she vanished from view, throwing two or three leaves into the air.

“What…” Watching Zalea’s sudden disappearance startled Kyril, making him forget the out-of-character expression of Zalea from before. Instead, his eyes pinned straight ahead like an arrow, unblinking and wide open. “...Is this what cultivation can do?”

Coming and going like the wind, such inconceivable speeds were nothing short of extraordinary to the mind of Kyril!

“If cultivation can enable Practitioners to move like the wind, who knows what other abilities cultivation can grant Practitioners! Breathe under water? Walk through the pits of burning lava? Or maybe it can even allow people to withstand the dangers of outer space! If that’s the case, achieving my goal would no longer just be something that will depend on my luck, but as long as I work hard I can achieve it!”

The hands by the side of Kyril balled into fists and a crescent grin that spread from ear to ear formed on his now purified and handsome face. Within his eyes, a glint of burning fire set alight and shot rays into the world.

To understand the Universe completely was previously just a life goal that Kyril aimed for to satisfy his curiosity. But to Kyril now, understanding the Universe was no longer just a goal, it became a part of him, an inseparable piece of his heart that could not be taken away. For Kyril, understanding the Universe was now a path he was determined to follow.

From the insights he got earlier, Kyril gained a depth of understanding for the Universe that was incomparable to the depth of insight he got from his past life. It was like taking the contents of a profound, million year old book and copying the contents directly into his mind!

If the insight from the thirteen days he spent sitting down was just a drop in the ocean, then the insight from his entire past life would simply be nonexistent. It would be too small to even exist!

When he finished cleaning himself of the black ooze on his body, Kyril walked to the entrance of his shack, exhaled green, rotten air composed entirely of impurities, and then took in a deep breath of fresh air. With a metal pail in each hand, Kyril proceeded to walk towards Zalea’s nameless store.

After fifteen minutes of walking, Kyril arrived in front of the nameless store and entered. And like before, Zalea sat behind the wooden counter looking at the opening and closing of her store door as Kyril entered.

“You could sense me?” Kyril asked to avoid a silent atmosphere.

Although he already knew the answer, thinking of the incident that happened earlier and Zalea’s reaction, Kyril could tell that coming here would, in the end, be quite awkward.

“Mmm…” Zalea said with a youthful voice unbefitting of an old woman and she lowered her head to reveal the mountain on her back.

Hearing Zalea's unenthused response, Kyril could only smile wryly as he placed one of the metal pails he held on to the wooden counter.

“Ahem… Here's your metal pail. Thanks for watching over me while I was undergoing enlightenment,” Kyril said.

Having read several books on cultivation from the library, Kyril knew the importance of not being distracted when receiving enlightenment. Thus, to Zalea who looked over Kyril out of her own will, Kyril naturally expressed his sincerities.

After Zalea took the metal pail from Kyril, silence once again dawned upon them.

As if the silence were arrows that threatened to shoot at them if one of them did not speak, despite her embarrassment, Zalea raised her head and asked quietly, “Um… H-how does cultivation feel…? To be able to jump six stages is quite astonishing, after all…”

“Six stages? Uh… Yeah… About that… now that I've fixed my crippled body, can you explain to me more about the path of cultivation? I currently know very little about cultivation,” Kyril replied embarrassedly.

If Kyril were to ignorantly walk on the path of cultivation, then he could suffer some major setbacks in the future. This was something he did not want! Additionally, there was also the display of power Zalea previously showed. Judging from this, Kyril concluded that this old hunched back woman was quite likely a wolf in sheep's clothing who had an abundance of experience on the path of cultivation. Except, sometimes she was sometimes also like a docile sheep...

“It’s better to ask Zalea about cultivation while I have the chance than reading books first,” Kyril thought to himself. “While it is possible to learn of cultivation from books alone, all books can do is provide knowledge and not experience! Without experience, knowledge is nothing! That is to say, if a swordsman with the experience of a hundred battles fights against a swordsman who has studied a hundred books of sword techniques, then the swordsman who has fought a hundred battles would surely win!”

As a person who has lived for decades Kyril knew how important experience was.

Raising her head to look at Kyril’s serious face, Zalea backed a few centimetres away.

“Ah… Um… Well, exactly how little do you know? I’ll start from there.”

“Probably next to nothing I guess? So just from the start,” Kyril said as he rubbed the back of his head.

If someone other than Zalea, who knew about Kyril being crippled, heard that Kyril knew next to nothing about cultivation, then they would think he had been living under a rock his whole life! Cultivation meant survival in the Hundred Sky World, how could one not know about it?

“Well… He did have a crippled body so it makes sense for him to know nothing about cultivation…” Zalea thought.

Slapping her cheeks lightly twice to calm herself, Zalea said, “since you didn’t understand what I meant by stages, I’ll start from there.”

Zalea's face changed. The shy and timid attitude from before were completely blown away now that she was about to talk about cultivation.

“The world of Practitioners is split into five different realms: Normal, Grand, King, Emperor, and Arcane. Each of these realms are then further split into nine stages. Entering a higher stage of a realm is mainly dependent on how stable your cultivation is and how strong your body is.

To strengthen the body, Practitioner's would usually absorb and refine, or cultivate, Martial Essence which can be obtained from the Elemental Nuclei of Magical Beasts or Energy Gems, Herbs, and World Qi that come from the world itself. You can read about these things from the library so I won’t talk about it too much.

However, unlike entering higher stages, to enter a new realm is called ‘ascension’ and requires an advancement of understanding of the attributes of a Practitioner’s Martial Pneuma rather than simply strengthening the body or stabilizing one’s cultivation. As such, things like herbs would not be able to aid in ascending a realm as understanding the attributes of one’s Martial Pneuma is like learning. No matter how much the teacher spoon feeds the student with information, if the student cannot understand anything, then it is simply useless and the student will not be able to learn anything!”

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