Dragon 20, year 8690 of the Grand Wulin Era,Alexander Grandstar

For the past few days, I’d been practicing with the spear, going over all the basic moves and working on understanding the basic footwork it required. So far, I knew how to not stab myself with the pointy end, and how not to overextend myself and fall on my face, and that was good enough to start using a training spear to do some sparring, I thought. I was doing a bit better with the Martial Art, i’d begun to grasp where and how these moves diverged from an ordinary kick or punch or palm move (and there were even...claw techniques, which I thought were weird then), and I was memorizing the methods that were used to infuse mana into the moves but i’d need a lot more practice.

The Body Tempering had been very painful, but now, my sheer physical strength and durability without using mana was at least equivalent to a 4th stage Misty Sea cultivator,(relying on pills from Uncle Andrew and some minor enchantments from Dad) which was at least twice the strength of a physically fit mortal adult in sheer terms of body alone, and significantly faster, more durable, and with greater reflexes. The gap would be even greater once I matured physically, and the reason i’d had such speed so far was because my mana cultivation and my strength as a Warrior and a Mage was much greater than my body refinement cultivation.

By the time my body went through adolescence, my Body Cultivation would have caught up, and it’d be safe to break through to Mana Sea in both, so i’d decided to spend most of my time for the next few years practicing my spear techniques, my Martial Art, the Spells I had(and new ones), sparring, having pseudo-life and death battles in the virtual world I could access through the Infinite Illusion Realm artifact i’d received for my birthday, Alchemy, Enchanting, and more. After all, just restoring my energy after practicing would help me build up the power I needed to break through to Mana Sea.Soon, i’d be able to leave the sect grounds a bit for training as well, and that sounded pretty fun to me.

I had some worries, though. A lot of the techniques in the book made references to something called Dao, which was a word from the Azure Dragon continent that translated literally, meant way or path, but more often was the “laws of the world” or “the essence of things”. It was, like Mana, a part of everything, and shaped everything. Dao in regards to weapons is about technique and understanding your weapon, as far as I knew, but according to the books, by studying the many Dao in the world (elements, weapons, the secrets relating to how things like bodies and souls worked, the various creative arts,practical arts like Alchemy or Enchanting or Strategy ,or various conceptual powers, and many other things), one could infuse appropriate Dao into techniques, making them more powerful and one who was learning the technique would have an easier time gaining insight into a Dao. At the same time, though, the technique would become weaker in the hands of those whose comprehension of the Daos involved was lacking compared to the creator.

Dao Insight could come through practice, witnessing a technique or natural occurrence that was heavily related to a given Dao or multiple Dao, through research, through meditation, and many other ways, It was said that there were even more ways to gain insight into Dao than there were Dao to gain insight into! This was hard to test, though, because Dao that hadn’t been seen before and new methods to observe them would occasionally emerge, or the methods to comprehend certain obscure Dao would be lost. I’d learned some of these things by double checking with my parents on what the technique manuals said, as I didn’t wanna misunderstand them and harm myself while practicing. After all, some of the books i’d read in the library had stories of people exploding from absorbing too much energy at once, or severely mentally traumatizing themselves practicing mind-related techniques, or their bodies turning to stone or becoming crippled from cultivating a Body Refining technique that was so unsuited to them their body rejected it.

Also, it turned out that spells were one of the most direct applications of the Dao, and the patterns you made when casting meant you could kind of tap into aspects of Dao without actually understanding them. This meant that the higher your insight into relevant Dao, the less costly, more effective, and quicker your spells would be to cast, and it’d be possible to create new spells when you had insights into Dao that worked well together.I was particularly excited to find out that Alchemy and Enchanting could be combined with spells and other things in a lot of ways, due to their strong connection to most other Dao. It was going to be extremely difficult to become an expert at all the things I wanted to learn, but I felt that only the path I had chosen would lead me to fulfill my dreams.

Soon, i’d start studying Alchemy under Andrew Summerwind, who told me to call him Uncle Andrew normally, but to call him Master (in the sense that he was passing down to me his understanding of the Dao of Alchemy, not that he owned me or that I worked for him) in public. I’d also be studying enchanting under my Dad. As it turned out, Alim Grandstar was the best enchanter in the entire Myriad Existences Sect, which made since, given that my Papa, Mingzhou’s deceased mother Hou Zhouxin, and Uncle Theo had been the main founders of the Sect 30 years ago, and while Uncle Theo was the most powerful of the three and the official Sect Head, they’d shared equal authority, their own spouses and friends gaining important positions not through nepotism, but because they were actually qualified. I’d heard they all had impressive backgrounds, and that our Sect was actually a semi-independent branch sect of one of the great super-sects of the Earth Dragon Continent we lived on, but I was too young and weak to be told any more than that.

Regardless, their backgrounds kept powerful Sects and Clans that would otherwise try to plunder our knowledge, resources and techniques that were a bit out of the league of what a Sect without said background would be allowed to possess away. Instead, they had to play fair and trade or buy things they wanted, so our sect had grown rapidly, even in the 9 years since my birth. That protection hadn’t helped Mingzhou’s mother when she fell prey to an incredibly powerful clan of bandits while out adventuring, whose strength had rivaled our Sect’s at the time, but the great power who supported us had made a move, and that clan of bandits disappeared within two days of her death.

As I thought about that tragedy that I was too young to remember, I began to practice again, this time with the Martial Art. My fists swept through the air as I practiced the simple movements, adjustingg how fast or how hard I was punching as I went. I did the same with the kicks, practicing the form and making adjustments over hundreds of repetitions. I figured within a few days I'd be ready to train on one of those unmoving dummies that basically exist so that you can feel what it actually feels like to hit something with whatever move you're trying out.

Later, i’d read some more, cultivate, practice spells and more, with breaks in between to relax, eat, and just do fun stuff. The loop of my training would be pretty much self-sustaining as each thing I trained would help me progress the other things.It was fun and intense, and it would make me stronger, and at that time, that was what I cared about most.