Cultivation

After I explained everything to my goddess, we concluded that she needed time to think about what she was just told. Since I also needed to try cultivating for the first time, something I am not ready to yet expose to Hestia, due to how volatile and dangerous it could be for me, I also went my own way.

Considering the way Hestia is already with me, the first member of her familia, even if we met not even a day ago, there is no way she wouldn't try to stop me from cultivating because of how dangerous it is for someone that has no technique to cultivate by himself.

I ended up installing myself inside the mountain behind the church, hidden away from the world by the structure of the rather tall church and the rocky exterior of the cliff of the mountain.

Exposed to the cold breeze of the night, the moon watching over me, I gaze at the stars one last time before starting to explore the world with my senses.

Immediately, the lack of ki presence except my own and the flaring one of Hestia, chained away to hide from mortal eyes, reassures me. Still, considering what just happened with the Guild Investigation Team, and the fact that I couldn't sense them in the vicinity before they revealed themselves, I can't help but double-check my surroundings, both visibly and using my ki sense.

'Immerse yourself in the world in front of you' I say to myself, nearly trying to self hypnotize.

Time passes as I start to see more clearly the inside of my body. I see the ki, stagnating inside of my three dantians, I see my soul, at the center of my soul sea, ever-glowing, and everlasting.

I am somewhat blinded by the beautiful sight of something I could never imagine before, but it doesn't take me long before I shift my attention away from it and concentrate on the matter at hand.

I know that despite the size of my meridians, of my dantians, and the fluidity of my ki, I had neither resources nor guides on how to cultivate. Besides the base knowledge and the expectations of what I should be able to do, I had nothing else.

Of course, most of these expectations are based on what I already knew about cultivators, those from the novels I used to read in my past life.

Which meant I don't know that much, therefore what I end up with could be vastly different, but so far my knowledge hadn't failed me so I have no reason to believe it will do so in the future.

First, I concentrate my attention on the meridians that govern the body. The book that I received created the pathways in my body since they didn't exist before, therefore now I had twelve meridians connected to various internal organs in my body.

Taiyin, Shaoyin, Jueyin, Shaoyang, Taiyang, Yangming.

6 for the hand, 6 for the foot.

I realize that just in one day, some impurity started to gather in those pathways already, letting me know that cultivation is more a habit than I expected.

'This is going to be a pain…' a sigh accompanies my thoughts because I understand that my life isn't going to be fighting, drinking, and women although I arrived in a fantasy world.

Well, more like a woman, since I'm currently pursuing only one.

Anyway, since I am a beginner, I can't make my ki flow into my meridians without focusing consciously to do it. Cultivators are supposed to constantly rotate their ki from their dantians to their meridians so that they're always in the best form they can be. It also helps to clear any impurities that could appear in the network of meridians and also passively grant protection against toxic substances that enter the body.

This practice makes them much stronger than the average person and allows them to momentarily draw on their ki and impose their will on the physical world.

The constant refinement of these 12 meridians eventually permeates the entire body, transforming the cultivator into a veritable force of nature, capable of pushing through everything and destroy any matter with their bare hands.

Though, in the beginning, the area of action of these meridians is limited to the internal organs they're linked with. That is why body refinement takes time and effort. You need to have the ki capacity to allow the qi from your meridians to slowly push through its natural limitations and flow through the rest of your body.

Since the mere presence of ki in my newly created meridians allow me to be vastly superior physically to any civilian, it's no wonder those that can use ki to better their physical frame are downright monsters.

However, there are 8 other meridians in a cultivator's body. Those that govern the soul.

Ren Mai, Du Mai, Chong Mai, Dai Mai, Ying Wei Mai, Yang Wei Mai, Yin Qiao Mai, Yang Qiao Mai.

They're a bit more complicated than the ones that are attached to the physical world. The 12 previous meridians can be seen if you decide to explore the body of a cultivator. They're like extra veins that flow through the body, attached to various organs. While if one were to open them up they wouldn't find anything in it since ki doesn't appear in the real world, they can be damaged quite easily.

One piercing attack from a sword and you could become permanently crippled at the start of your cultivation. That's why body cultivation is the art of refining the body until it becomes an unbreakable prison for what would be fragile. They become immortal by becoming impervious, whether it is to attacks or to time itself.

The higher tier of body cultivators are unable to die even if you put were to toss them at the center of the big bang. They are not gods in the way most people think of gods, but their prowess certainly is god-like.

Even though it is possible for them to create tornados and lightning with their ki, just like soul cultivators do, they more often than not just use it to increase their already monstrous physical abilities. They can easily take actions that break the laws of physics. They can even physically affect concepts and can resist nearly anything.

However, if you breach through their exterior, then you'll find a relatively vulnerable soul ripe for the picking.

For the soul cultivators, the higher they go into their cultivation, the lesser the usefulness of their body becomes. They make their souls so powerful that even in the case of defeat, it's very hard to destroy them outright. Often these cultivators are just imprisoned for eternity, or more often until someone is dumb enough to come knocking at their door.

They can also forcibly reincarnate or separate their souls into smaller parts to survive.

For all of these reasons, soul cultivation is often prioritized over body cultivation. Any cultivator worth their salt wouldn't focus on only one path and would dabble in both paths, but generally speaking, most are soul cultivators with just trained bodies than body cultivators.

There is also another reason why this path is preferred.

While body cultivation doesn't require nearly as many resources as soul cultivation, they can't ascend to a higher realm. They are stuck to the plane they are born in because only a soul can pass through the barriers separating each realm. And those that live long enough to gain the cultivation necessary to ascend despite having trained their body often refuse to do so because it would mean having to reform their physical frames, effectively losing all of their advantages.

However, the cultivation of the 8 soul meridians is oftentimes more painful than the cultivation of the 12 body meridians since one can become more easily attuned to physical pain in the mortal world. Soul cultivation also gives less immediate returns compared to body cultivation, the first few stages being exceedingly weak.

And of course, it takes much more time to cultivate the soul than the body. However, the end-game results were appetizing enough that nearly all of the cultivators walked this path.

I start to move my ki through the meridians of my body. The three dantians, representative of the soul sea, also not present physically in my body but are nodes of my soul that hold my ki, are currently brimming with vigor. They hold an incredible amount of ki for someone that barely started his cultivation.

The act of passing ki from the dantians to any meridians is a key part of cultivation, one reigned by the famous techniques that various cultivators use. Everyone had his way of manipulating ethereal matter into one that could affect the physical world.

While soul cultivation was harder mentally and didn't give out nearly as many visible results, it still bypassed the need to utilize pure ki, something that isn't supposed to exist in the real world, to refine the body.

Ki in the real world is divided into 5 elements.

Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal.

To attack using ki, one must transform the ki into one of the 5 stable versions of it in the real world. Pure ki simply isn't able to exist in the real world without significant outside intervention.

Of course, after ascending, these kinds of rules become meaningless since you can do whatever you want.

So, I move amateurishly my ki between the Ying and the Yang aspects, dividing my whole body. The process is…

'Slow.'

Having no techniques, I try pushing ki into the various parts, sweating because of the mental effort to keep the pure ki from transforming into one type of elemental ki, only to have mediocre results.

It works, but it doesn't work very much. I have no resources and I truly have no instructions on how to do it. I guess it doesn't come with the job.

Not only the act of drawing pure ki from my soul is rather hard, but I burn very quickly through my admittedly big reserve only to realize I only managed to take baby steps towards the first stage, clearing out my body of the impurities.

Once my concentration break, I immediately smell the horrible black matter covering my body. Thank god I decided to be nearly naked to do this.

I brought multiple buckets of water to clear the grime, but I want to try something else. Calling up the little ki left in my reserves, I focus, trying to transform it into some sort of water in the real world. Holding out my palm in front of me, the pure ki in my soul sea slowly transforms into water ki, releasing drops of water from my palm according to my will.

The rate of conversion being abysmal, I quickly stop the experiment before I'm truly out of ki and I fall unconscious. I can't help but breathe heavily, spent by the little progress I made tonight.

'It's also possible that I have a poor affinity with the Water element.'

Clearing away the dark impurities that came out of my body due to the pure ki slowly entering my body through the pores of my body meridians, I sigh realizing how hard it will be to properly advance through my cultivation.

I send one last glance at the moon before going to sleep.

#####

My goddess opens her eyes once I step into her room. I was sleeping on the couch but thanks to the changes made to my body, I am now officially a morning person.

No more do I have to drag myself out of the bed every time, I shall greet the sun like a rooster!

I know that the market in Orario opened very early, but I originally had no hope of visiting it in the morning because I didn't see the time pass while cultivating.

The money I brought back yesterday was put inside her room, therefore I have no choice but to wake her up to get it, not knowing exactly where she put the bag, that was my T-shirt.

The time I took trying to clear out my impurities was much longer than I thought it would be, considering that hours had already passed when I climbed down the mountain and entered the church again. Hestia was already sleeping, she couldn't afford to stay too late due to her job.

I already managed to convince her to quit her job at the stand of potatoes, not because it was beneath her but because there was no reason to expose herself more than she already is. People like Freya would have no qualm going after her if I am to stand in her way.

So today is her last day working at the stand and her first day of being completely free of obligations. Her lazy days were apparently behind her, she assured me, but that only meant that she needs to find a hobby.

Our familia isn't big enough for the time being, so we can't occupy a place important enough in the city that Hestia needs to do the things a goddess was expected to do yet.

My only goal, for the time being, is to become stronger, much stronger than right now. I have an unfair advantage against adventurers of my level since I have two ways of increasing my strength.

Cultivation would speed up a lot due to my innate talent once I get my hands on a way to cultivate properly, but that would take a lot of time to properly find.

My magic is a cheat code that is so weak, as established yesterday, that I can't rely on it yet. I have a lot of potential, infinite even, but such a slow start that I can't afford to skip one day in the dungeon.

I don't know the effects of my skills yet, but I doubt that one of them give me the same boost Liaris Freese gave Bell.

"Where are you going Tian-kun?" she says in a sleepy voice while yawning.

"I'm just going to the market," I answer her while putting on my shoes, "I'm going to need a proper bag to hold the magic stones and eventually valis that I'm going to earn."

Hestia looked at me putting the destroyed T-shirt I used yesterday as a makeshift bag now resembling a cropped-up top, and chuckled.

Seeing her laughing, I couldn't help but smile and say, " Yeah, I'm going to need some clothes as well. And some armor now that I think of it, but that's probably out of my money range right now."

Clearing the tears of joy that fell from her eyes because of my ridiculous appearance, Hestia simply nodded and wished me good luck in my shopping spree, before going back to sleep.

"That lazy goddess, I swear…" I mutter fondly looking at her beautiful sleeping form before leaving the room and closing the door behind me. Once in the living room, I look at the clock and realize it's displaying 5 am.

"Ok… maybe I'm a bit too ambitious," I whisper to myself.

#####

The market is already bustling with life, mostly adventurers looking to buy their provision before the general populace comes in.

"Excuse me…" I say as I try to wiggle my way through yet another group of packed adventurers.

The place is way too small for the number of people here.

'Now that I think of it, there are way, indeed, too many people in here…'

I poke the shoulder of an adventurer in the hope of gaining his attention, "Excuse me but, is there a reason why there are so many people in here so early?" I ask him once I see him turning around.

The man in question is a beefy middle-aged man with many scars running on his torso. Other than that, his face is as generic as it can get, it doesn't make the feeling that he could snap me in half if he wanted any weaker.

"What, you're new or something?" he blurts out, with one of his eyebrows raised. Even though I'm quite tall for a human, he easily towers over me and has an intimidating figure.

"Today's the day the Loki familia spearheads the expedition to the lower floors," he says, "Everyone here is looking to join their group. Even though the Loki familia has already allied with certain other familia to go down the dungeon, that doesn't mean that people like us can't join them either!"

"People like you?" I shuffle uncomfortably as yet another adventurer nearly bumps into me.

"Yeah, people like us. People that don't have a familia that is established enough to support us. You see, there's a lot of people that are alone in their familia to be higher than level 1 sometimes. So the expedition is a great opportunity for us that can't ask our gods to talk with Loki herself to join it. That's why she organizes these sorts of reunions when something is going down."

I nod in understanding, before realizing that the helpful man is staring at me rather weirdly.

"What?"

"Young man… I don't want to offend you but I don't feel like you're strong enough to join this expedition," he starts, his eyes softening a little bit, "The lower floors are really dangerous and I'm sure that your god or goddess would be quite sa-"

"Oh no no no, I'm not here to join the expedition, I'm only level 1 after all," I quickly interrupt, trying to dispel the misunderstanding.

The man's eyebrow rises once more before he laughs boisterously, "Well then young man, take care of you!" He says before disappearing into the crowd.

'Man, some of these adventurers are nice people…'

#####

I enter the Guild building through the swinging door; not unlike those seen in those old western movies. The building is immaculate, and I can't seem to find one particle of dust inside of it. Stretching on 4 floors, at least from the outside, the building is covered by multiple banners that I don't know the significance of. The first level of the building is made to make you feel relaxed, with plants scattered around the floor, the colors are mostly different shades of green, from the walls to the couches.

As expected, my entry goes completely unremarked, considering the number of adventurers present in the building. Some spare me a glance before returning to their previous activities, others don't even care.

Multiple guild members, dressed in a black vest and pants with a white collared long sleeve shirt underneath and a grey bow tie, are monitoring the entrance but don't react when I enter the building, even though I'm pretty sure they already have my face stuck to a wall in their headquarters with the words 'Tax Evasion' written in bold red next to it.

The floor is made out of interchanging white and blue tiles, and the wooden counter, clearly taken good care of despite the never-ending flow of adventurers coming to it, is my destination.

Arriving in front of a guild member that just ended her conversation with her interlocuter, I take my best smile, knowing that I might owe money to the person in front of me.

"Hello miss, I would like to regist-" I start, only to be interrupted by the woman in front of me.

"That'll be 5000 valis sir," her voice is completely monotone and she barely bothers to look at me.

I feel the urge to break something at the clear dismissal of the young woman in front of me. My eyebrow twitches in irritation before I decide to just shut up and take out the money.

Of course with the money I made yesterday, I bought myself an extra-large bag. With it, I should be able to hold all the magic stones that I want.

'Hold on a second…'

"Uhm Miss, is the registration to the guild that expensive?" I couldn't help but ask, outraged by the rip-off I'm currently experiencing.

She finally faces me correctly, and her bored gaze tells me everything I need to know about her.

I can't get along with people like this.

"No, but for your information, it's 1000 for the registration, and 4000 because you went to the dungeon yesterday illegally," she says, in the same monotone voice.

"So in the end you already have a criminal record on me."

"Yes, we do," she confirms, "Originally the cost of illegal entrance to the dungeon would only be 2000 valis, but my superior decided to double that amount based on the fact that you were uncooperative with the Guild Investigation team that visited you yesterday."

At her words, I break the pen she lent me in half. "That'll be 30 more valis, sir," she says while giving me another pen.

Not one ounce of emotion escapes her expression.

"Ohhh~And can I know who is this superior?" I ask, trying to not let my anger show.

Considering the snickers of the few adventurers that peeped on our conversation, I failed miserably.

"I'm not supposed to reveal personal information on the members of the guild, but this time the superior allowed it in case you were to ask. He is the same person that visited your familia home yesterday in regards to the investigation, sir."

My eyebrow twitches again, "The one with the glasses?"

She nods at my words, "Yes sir."

I take a deep breath, filling the final information on the form she gave me, and return to her the two pens I used before asking, "And I suppose there's no way for me to meet your superior, right?"

"No there isn't, sir."

'Fucking hell.'

I simply give her the money silently, taking a bit of time to search in the big bag I bought.

"May your expeditions in the dungeon be fruitful and I hope to see you soon, sir," she says, seeing me turning to walk out of the building, clearly uttering a practiced sentence that she tells every adventurer she takes care of.

I don't bother to answer as she greets another adventurer the next second.

Once I'm outside the building, I sigh at the injustice of the world.

"Fucking bitch was so average I couldn't even describe her if I wanted to," I complain to no one in particular, but the stares I get make it very clear that I was a bit too loud in the expression of my anger.

'Not even a week in this world and I'm already plagued by someone abusing their power.'