Chapter 22

"Body refinement, dantian expansion, and mind strengthening." Each one of those methods was created differently. Each of them has its benefits, but they only truly shine when used at the same time.

It's almost as if they were complementary to each other: the dantian expansion makes you better at absorbing and storing energy, so you can cultivate faster than before; the mind strengthening makes your perception and manipulation of energy easier, so you can cultivate more efficiently than before, and the body refinement makes your body stronger and more resilient, so you can cultivate harder and for longer without having to worry about injuring yourself.

With the unification of these three different techniques, humans created the first fully functional cultivation technique.

"—Extract from "The Origin of Cultivation Techniques", by an unknown Esvert's cultivator."

After an hour of exchanging information, the three chosen found themselves sitting on the ground in a small cave while testing the techniques taught to them by the other two.

No one dared speak a word, as they didn't want to disturb their partners and also because they were too focused on their cultivation to speak.

Aiden was the most dedicated to the training since, while the others had made significant progress in their respective techniques, he had yet to make the first breakthrough with his dantian.

Because of this, while the others focused on one aspect of their cultivation at a time, Aiden tried to train on all three of them at the same time.

"Both body refinement and mind-strengthening principles are pretty similar." Aiden thought. " Both of them require you to draw energy from your dantian toward somewhere. To make your body stronger, you need to nurture it with energy while burning the different impurities within it. To make your mind stronger, you need to draw the energy toward the head, where there is something called the "sea of consciousness" that expands if fed with energy, making your mind and energy perception stronger. "

At that moment, energy began to enter Aiden's dantian, filling it at a fast speed.

"If I want to use all three methods at the same time, I should go step by step." He thought with his eyes closed as some of the energy inside his dantian began to fuse with the organ itself, making it expand by an imperceptible amount.

While the dantian was growing, energy began to leave its inside and flowed toward every single cell inside Aiden's body. At that moment, he burned some of the energy to destroy the impurities in his body while he directed the rest towards his head, where he fed it slowly to his sea of consciousness. In the end, his body absorbed the remaining energy, becoming slightly stronger.

"It should be something like that. Now I just need to get used to it to become faster and more efficient." Aiden thought to himself.

Before returning to his cultivation, he decided to look at the others to see how they were doing.

At first glance, it looked like Brigitte was doing worse than Aiden, as she was sweating and needed to rest from time to time as she wasn't used to training her dantian, so it was quite tiring for her, but when Aiden looked at Blunt, it was obvious that he was much worse, as his face was pretty red and he had bulging veins all over his face and neck, as if he was making a great effort by cultivating.

"Well, his body is pretty strong, so I guess there won't be any problems." Aiden thought while smiling.

Then, he decided to repeat what he had just done. At first, each "round of cultivation" needed at least a minute to be completed, but as more time passed and Aiden became more and more proficient at doing it, the time needed began to reduce more and more, until the point that Aiden began to follow his heartbeat to set the pace. After more or less two hours, he felt his body screaming at him to stop, so he decided to rest for a bit.

When he stopped cultivating, he opened his eyes and saw that both Blunt and Brigitte had already stopped and were watching him.

"What are you two doing?" Aiden asked without being able to avoid bursting into laughter.

"We are the ones that should ask you that!" Both of them replied at the same time.

"You are supposed to have a weaker cultivation level than us, so why the hell are you able to cultivate for so long?" Blunt asked, visibly upset.

"Well, you may have a higher cultivation level, but in my village, we are pretty good at using energy, so I'm probably more skillful than you at it, so I don't tire myself so much when I cultivate." Aiden tried to give Blunt a valid answer.

"Are you?" Brigitte asked while arching an eyebrow as if she wasn't buying Aiden's reply.

"What else could it be?" Aiden asked, shrugging.

"Maybe you are right, but..." Brigitte said with a tone that suggested that she didn't completely believe it yet, but when she was about to speak again, Aiden's stomach began to growl. "Maybe I'm overthinking this too much. It's not as if someone like you could perfect something like this in so little time."

"Should we eat then?" Aiden asked, smiling while trying to change the topic of the conversation.

After that, they prepared some of the rations that they brought with them to eat before deciding to continue with their journey, as they couldn't simply stay there cultivating forever.

In no time, they managed to reach their destination. It was a small tunnel that descended even further into the underground. While the tunnel itself didn't have anything special, what was different was the atmosphere in it, as it felt as if the energy was flowing toward the end of the tunnel, making the area in front of the entrance poorer than the rest of the underground.

"What is happening here?" Brigitte asked, confused. "I have never seen any place like this. It's like something is absorbing the energy around it."

"Maybe we will find out when we reach the bottom," Aiden replied, as he continued walking.

A few seconds later, they left the tunnel to enter a great cavern. Inside, a giant lizard covered in blue crystals was lying in the ground while all the energy in the ambient was flowing inside its crystals, which grew at a visible pace while becoming lighter.

"What the hell is that thing doing?" Blunt said while nearing the lizard.

When the beast noticed Blunt, it started to get up and let out a threatening roar before starting to advance toward the group.