8 Good Morning (part 1)

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Author's warning: Info dump alert.

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The man-mist started to cultivate while meditating, he doesn't exactly know how to meditate though, so he just copied what Razzeroth was doing back then. He began by trying to power-up his body so that he can refine and use energy inside of it. He then gathered energy and used 3 ways to refine and materialize them. The mist-man's body turned obsidian black all over. 9 white rings formed and entered his body. A heavy pressure appeared around. He then infused laws that Razzeroth learned to reach his current level. His skin turned back to normal, the 9 rings entered his body and the pressure around conglomerated inside and you can hear a shredding sound coming from his body.

As of right now, he is at the same level as Razzeroth. If Razzeroth was alive, he would probably die of envy with the thought of 'I was wasting time'. Razzeroth took almost 30 years to have the power he has now. The man-mist did it in a second. The man-mist then started to think of what happened in order to understand it from his own point of view.

There are 3 main types of fighters. The mages, the warriors, and the cultivators. The first level everyone needs to achieve in order to power-up is houtian level. Where the practitioner will ready its body to handle the power of energy that is flowing through the air. It can be achieved by using medicine, harsh training or refining one's own body with the use of nature around.

The next level is the xiantian level. The practitioner will now attempt to gather and refine energies for his own uses. They all have to make a dantian so that the collected and refined energy will not escape their body. This is where the 3 paths will split or maybe even intertwine, depends on the practitioner. The mages will gather energies, convert said energies by means of refining. By doing this they will create mana. Using that mana they will then create rings of power around them and the dantian will act as the center where the rings will spin(imagine an atom with nine rings). The cultivators, on the other hand, will convert those energies into Qi. They will then make it enter their dantian, the dantian's color will change accordingly to the level of the cultivator. Bronze, silver and then gold, each realm having 3 different stages, early, mid and late stages. The warriors, on the other hand, will gather and refine these energies then inject them into their bodies. Muscles, bones, skin and even their own organs. Their body will turn into different shades as they advance in power. Blue, Purple then obsidian black, each of these having 3 different levels which will be seen in the density of the skin color.

At this level, the line will be drawn from geniuses to their peers. 50% of the practitioners will not be able to practice 2 paths. The other will have 2 practices. Among those double practitioners, most of them will consist of either mage-warrior or cultivator-warrior paths. These double practices are the most common among the 2-path practitioners. A warrior's powerful body can stand to tank a spell or a martial art at the same level unless the spell or arts is something that can overcome the body of a warrior.

Cultivator-mages are very rare, almost 1 in 100,000 is the usual case. The reason is that most practitioners at this level don't have that good of a control over their powers. Mages use their mana to control the natural energies around them to produce spells. Meanwhile, cultivators' qi is very similar to the natural energies around, and they use it in coordination with their body to use arts. There were stories of how cultivator-mages fire up a spell that instead of using the natural energy around, used the qi inside their dantian for the spell. This kind of accident happens, and in the worst case, they will die because the qi that they accumulated will all be used in the spell.

Of course, they can practice either mage-warrior or cultivator-warrior first and then train for the 3rd one, but it will take a long time of training. If they don't want to waste time like that, they would have to use a ridiculous amount of energies to make these 3 advances at the same time. Gathering and refining take time but can be bypassed by the use of resources. The real geniuses are the 3-way practitioners that already has 100% control over the energies in their body. They can refine the gathered energies and completely even them out between the 3 practices. They can make their cultivation completely stable because of it even with a small amount of time refining. But that is not all there is to this realm of power.

During this realm, they have to discover laws that belong to the dao they want to follow. Without such laws, they will not be able to ascend to wanxiang adept. There are 3 big differences between wanxiang adepts and xiantian experts. The usage of the laws, the appearance of their mindscapes, and divine sense.

Forming a mindscape is different for the 3 practitioners. The mages will have to condense their rings of power to form an imaginary palace inside them. This palace will house their techniques, laws they found and even daos they practice. The cultivators, on the other hand, will make a seed that will grow into a dao tree as they grow themselves in power. It can have a lot of branches that represent the different techniques and daos they learn along the way, but the main trunk has to be the dao that they follow. The warriors have a more different and slightly more difficult way. They will use the energy in their body to form scriptures, formation, scripts or even symbols that will show what dao they are following and inscribed them to their skin, muscle or organs. As they are making these symbols with the energies of their body, the obsidian black color of their skin also goes away and return to their original skin color. If they want to form other daos they have to do the process of refining and inscribing again from the start. They can also do it in a way that will make the daos interact with each other. In an odd way, this makes warriors better inscription makers than the intelligence oriented mages.

The next level is Primal Daoist. The appearance of the Dao is what separates the wanxiang adept to the primal daoists. They will have to fuse the laws they have discovered and form the dao that they will follow. There really isn't that much different in the appearance of the wanxiang adepts and primal daoists. Except of course the power that they can use. The moment they turn into primal daoists, they almost always have at least 100 times more power than wanxian adepts. That is only at the very early stages.

Primal daoists need to fortify their cultivation by discovering the other sides or laws of their respective daos. The more they find about their dao, the more stable and powerful it can become. They can also discover other daos to help or to support their main dao or they have to discover them, otherwise, they might just perish.

This is where the man-mist stopped cultivating. He can already advance to the primal daoist realm and he did. As soon as he entered, his eyes turned white and it shone. The last information about cultivation he saw in Razzeroth's mind is the tribulation. Once he is satisfied with his daos, he has to face a tribulation in order to become, an immortal.