There was nothing much i could do. By slowly nod. I was awake but my body still felt heavy. Then as my mind slowly cleared up, i felt my parched throat and all that bad taste in my mouth. I was thirsty and hungry. I needed food. I tried speaking but my voice would not come out. I tried to move but i had little energy to do so. Every movement hurt. My body was all sore. All that spasm made my body all sore. The healers healed most the damages. If i were older then they would have done more but i was so young and they would rather let nature take its course. My body would rebuild itself to be better that it was according to them.

Their philosophy was : we let you leave stronger than before you came.

Thankfully Joyce was a spirit master and she entered my mind and got to know what i needed most. Food and water. However, with my whole body being a wreck, i could barely take anything in. With some help from a water element master from a nearby room, they managed to bring some food and water into my stomach without choking me. It was really funny seeing small water bunnies jumping into my mouth. It was an enlightening experience.

Amy, Daniel and Eric came later in the night before anyone else came, together the 5 of us came to consensus that we would call this as backlash from the evaluation. This whole time while we had the discussion, i was stuck in joyce’s embrace. The 3 of them almost ended up in fits of laughter as they saw me in her embrace. It seems that i had awakened the motherly instincts of Joyce and that i now can’t escape her clutches. It seemed that she was known for her stoic and impassive character and this side of her was rather refreshing from their point of view.

Over the next few days i was like a mini celebrity. Classmates came and went, seniors came and went. Even teachers and some factions and families came and went. Some came to make fun, some came from concern. Those families and factions tried to recruit me into their fold. They all promised resources and assistance to me should i join but a cold pair of laser beam eyes stared them into retreat. They promised to come back and ask again however.

By the end of the rest at the ward, i had amassed a small fortune for a 5 year old. Everyone that came to try and recruit me had brought gifts. Herbs, core fragments of different sizes and types, magic tools, scrolls and various materials. There was also a large number of “useless” lifestyle items and toys. I also ended up with a stack of dolls that i have no use for. Apparently some jerks laughed and said i was weak like a girl and bought me dolls and girly items. That happened only on the first day as the next day it had stopped and most of those jerks became my neighbors. Their broken bones were all healed up but their bruises were still there when i left. Good job healers! Also, apparently those jerks entered the ward in dresses and makeup.

Mother hen pretty much kept everything for me as they were all stuff i could not use yet. She did leave me some protective items. As a mini celebrity i was constantly under watch. Jealous people, jerks and people from opposing factions and families were watching me. I came out from the osprey faction’s territory. I am most likely going to join the osprey faction and that meant that i am a target to eliminate. It is an open secret that i may be a spirit master. Only spirit masters and fainters have backlashes like that. It was better to play safe than be sorry. A 5 year old spirit master. No one will believe it. No one wants to believe it. They all just want to believe in what they want to believe in. It worked in my favor as no one is supposed to know that i was doing spirit refining and a backlash was the best cover up. Nothing was known about my vine and that alone was a big reason why the cover up could worked.

Things pretty much went back to normal for everyone. Or at least everyone but me. I had become almost skin and bones.3 plus hours. That was all it took to turn me from a healthy boy to skin and bones. It was also the very reason why mother hen refused to let go of me. She was afraid to lose me the moment she let go of me. It would have put her in guilt and that would have destroyed her.

My days were spent going from home to class, from class to bibliotheca, from bibliotheca to ward and from ward to home. I was too weak. Or at least my body was too weak. I needed help to just eat. But i was not going to complain, bunnies are awesome. The bunny master did not really mind anyway. He called it “precision training” and it was an interesting experience to him.

Meal time had become a spectacle. Many of the younger kids would hunt for where i was going to be “eating”. My food was similar to baby food mush so seeing whitish bunnies hopping into my mouth was just too cute for them to resist. It took another few days before i was able to eat on my own. When that finally happened, it was a big hurray for me but a throng of kids in tears.

On a side note, the bunny master got a decent paying job at a nearby healer’s ward after that. There was also a slight influx in demand for water element masters thanks to this incident.

In spite of all these, i did not stop in my cultivation. It was the only thing i could do. However, i learned from the bunny master, he did what i did not know could be done, he expanded the same amount of spirit energy no matter the the size of the manifestation of the tree if he chose to do so. He made 2 bunnies 1hh tall then he split one of them to two. He took 1 of the 2 split halves and repeated it. He repeated for another 2 times.he then took one of the last 2 and made it 1hh tall By the end i saw that there 6 bunnies of different sizes they were all of same shade of blue other than the last one which was much paler but 1hh tall. Next he shrunk all bunnies to the same size as the smallest one. The one that was not split had become a much deeper blue as compared to the other bunnies. It was truly a blessing in disguise. It was a stupid reason why i kept fainting. I had been going at almost full throttle every time. Amy and Joyce both face-palmed themselves. They forgot about common sense. They got used to how everyone would only use a trickle of their spirit energy when they manifest their tree to keep it prolonged that they simply thought that i had a small capacity. It was a strange combination of circumstances that put me in my current situation.

Think of it this way, if a person were to manifest a 1hh tall tree, they would use around 1 unit of spirit energy and maintain it for cycle, by the end of the day they may have used only 10 to 20 units of spirit energy. However, i had placed many times more than that into a 1hh tall tree. I expanded much more than most people in terms of spirit energy on every task. However thanks to that my baseline as compared to others have become more firm than others. It was like comparing whose soup is thicker and you added so much more cartilage that it had become a paste.

Thanks to this discovery, there was a new training menu for me for my cultivation. I have to now know where is my minimal to manifest a tree in my mind. I have to do the reverse of what the bunny master showed me. I had to keep double the size of my tree then halve it. I could not do it. I tried to ‘chop’ it into 2 and all i got was a splitting headache. Finally i found an answer in the books. Plants keep growing. So in this case i grow it into 2! The plan was half a success. Why half? Cause it now has 3 ends instead of two. By the end of all trying there was still no success. My vine have now become a ball of vine with 23 ends. It still used the same amount of spirit energy as my basic 2 ended vine. That meant that the plan was a failure. I still could not tell what was my minimal from this. In a fit of frustration i decided to make the longest vine at the same thickness until i am worn out. 20hh tall that was all there was to it. 20 times only? Now i was really pissed. I began a mad thrashing in my head. I repeated it again and again pushing at to the maximum each time. It always broke at 20hh tall. However i was unrelenting at that. I kept going with that. Something is me broke or snapped. 22hh, 24hh, 26hh, 30hh, 35hh, 43hh, 54hh, 67hh then 80hh. Each time i it broke i repeated again and again i was not aware that it was going longer and longer. It stopped at 80hh. Instead of breaking, it simply faded away at 80hh. i did not stop there i kept going and going in my head then there was suddenly a sharp pain in my head then i blacked out.