Chapter 17: The system returns.

" Okay, now before the next test, you all will have and entier day to prepare yourselves, you can use whatever you have, just make sure not to harm other participants" Elder Zhang said to all of the remaining participants.

After he said that, all of the spectators moved away seeing that nothing was going to happen anymore. After the spectators moved, Richie, along with the others all left the centre in front of the alchemist guild.

After leaving the guild, Richie went to a nearby restaurant, he was quite hungry after the first test, and since he had so much money, why wouldn't Richie want to spend it.

He went to a tavern called 'the blue sun' it was a famous restaurant with lots of branch restaurants around the city, the place Richie was eating at was one of such places.

It was a 'mortal restaurant which means that its food were really cheap as they were for 'mortals' Upon the waitress seeing Richie's alchemist badge, she immediately became alot more respectful.

Nobody would treat an alchemist with disrespect unless they were a higher rank alchemist, especially not when you are so close to the alchemist guild.

Richie asked the waiter for some suggestions, unsurprisingly the waiter suggested some of the most expensive dishes and since Richie didn't really care much about money anymore, (due to being able to exchange alchemy tokens for gold coins) he just decided to get whatever the waiter suggested, he hadn't been here before so he didn't know what's good and what's bad.

After receiving the meal, Richie wolfed down his food before paying the bill. But then, the system returned.

-system online-

-new task given-

-cultivate to the 6th sub realm-

-reward: Hyper sensitive muscle memory-

- you have one day-

- failure penalty: shocked to death

" As soon as you return you're telling me to cultivate, no sorry, not telling me forcing me" Richie exclaimed to the system

- You've gotta do it whether you complain to me or not, believe me, I'm helping you more than you can imagine-

"*sigh* fine, but let me get home first" Richie sighed

-of course-

Upon arrival at the tavern, he went to his room before sitting down to cultivate. Soon after, he broke through to the 5th sub stage, but the system obviously wasn't happy with the speed he was progressing at.

- I know you want to get stronger to avenge your clan, but mindlessly rushing through the sub stages is not a good idea, cripple your cultivation once again, I'm going to help you build a proper cultivation foundation-

" A cultivation foundation, what's that?" Richie asked the system, he had never heard anything about strengthening or building a foundation

- do you ever wonder why people are able to fight people above their cultivation? it's because of their foundations, you could interpret it as creating a building, to create it, you must have a stable foundation, without one, you could be easily destroyed by even something as weak as the wind, with a strong foundation, you would be able to not only build your building higher, but you will also be able to add extensions onto your building even if they weren't built specifically for you-

" but how would that make people able to fight beyond their level" Richie asked, he got how with a proper foundation, one would be able to achieve greater heights, but how would it make you fight better than people of a higher cultivation than you

- Let's say that in your building, the amount of people you can cram inside the building is your strength, by cultivating, you can make your building higher, that will allow you to increase the amount of people you can cram inside, however, by reinforcing and strengthening your foundation, you can increase the width of your building also, say a 5 story building ,or a cultivator at the 5th sub stage of the first realm, were to contain 100 people, this means that each floor could only contain 20 people-

- are you getting me so far- the system asked Richie

" yep, you can continue" Richie replied

- now if that original building were to be compared to another 5 story building which had reinforced its foundations, the reinforced building could cram 150 people inside of it, this is due to each floor being able to hold 30 people instead of 20, now the number of people the building can contain is near the same as a 7 story building, that is how reinforcing your cultivation works- the system told Richie

- oh also, breaking through to the next realm can be interpreted as adding a new floor on which can hold like 100 people, that's why people usually can't fight people above themselves in terms of cultivation realms- The system added.

" oh, so that's why you got so angry" Richie realised. The system obviously saw how bad Richie's foundation was and decide to lecture him.

- cripple your cultivation now, then do what i say- The system demanded.

Reluctantly, Richie crippled his cultivation again, this was the second time it has happened.

-Now, all I need you to do is to sit down and wait- After a couple of minutes, Richie felt the same healing force from befor healing his body and before he knew it, he could cultivation again.

The faster Richie increased his cultivation, the faster the system would recover, also, Richie would be even safer than before with his higher cultivation.