Perfect Equilibrium

Adam pocketed the coin and turned to Neith, and asked "How long will you need to absorb this venom?"

Neith replied 'Probably all night. Is it a problem.' Adam shook his head "Of course no, take your time. But I'm curious, how can this help you?"

Neith said 'Although I have some venom myself, it is difficult for me to use it, I don't have enough of it. This is because my venom sack was injured.'

Adam was surprised by this information, and he asked "How did it happen?" Neith replied 'I don't know, it was already in this state when I awakened in that mine… It probably happened when I was younger, before I lost my memories.'

She then continued 'I don't know how those lizards got this venom, but I can feel it is familiar, as if it was part of me… I think this belonged to someone from my clan, although I don't know from which clan I am from. Moreover, this venom doesn't just eat what it touches, it absorbs it. This made the venom even more potent to heal my own venom sack.'

Adam nodded and said "Good then, focus on absorbing it. I will meditate in the meanwhile." Adam didn't really mind staying up all night, it wasn't like he couldn't. Moreover, he would be meditating for the whole night, so it wasn't that far from sleep.

He took out his sword and inserted it in the ground, and then jumped on it. There was barely enough place to putt a single foot on the handle. Adam placed himself so that his weight was distributed equally in all directions, and closed his eyes.

This was to train his gates, since the next gate, the Gate of View. The Fourth Gate was quite hard to master, as it took many hours of practice and some luck to unlock. To train it, one needed to reach a state of perfect equilibrium to have a chance to even have a chance to open the Gates.

Only when this special state was reached could one have a chance to create a resonance within their bodies and use this resonance to open the Gate. Theoretically, if one was lucky enough, they could activate this resonance the moment they entered into the state of perfect equilibrium, but as far as Adam knew, this never happened.

Instead, the longer one stayed in the state of perfect equilibrium, the higher the chances of opening the Fourth Gate were. This state wasn't so easily achieved though, as one didn't only need to stand on something and balance themselves. Otherwise, any circus artist could open the Fourth Gate, if they had opened the first three.

To reach this state, the first step was indeed to find a way to stand on something. Of course it couldn't be the bare ground or something bigger than the body, it must be a narrow object like a rope or the handle of a sword, where there is barely enough place to put a feet.

Then, the martial artist must find the exact position that would allow them not to fall, and completely stop moving. A single movement would break this state.

First, finding the right position was extremely hard, as there were actually several ways to do it, but that's wasn't considering outside factors like the wind. One needed to find a position that could resist those kind of things.

And finally, staying unmoved was extremely hard, be it for martial artists or mundane people. It was impossible to remain unmoved for over even two second for the untrained person, so to do so for hours is impossible. Only a trained martial artist could achieve this, with years of training.

Fortunately for Adam, he had already trained to remain unmoved in his past life, and he could even remain in this state of extreme stillness while thinking and meditating on his cultivation. This extreme stillness was the hardest thing to achieve if one wanted to open the Fourth Gate.

But now that he knew about Aura, or Qi, Adam actually thought of a way to make opening the Fourth Gate much simpler. The problem of outside interference and even extreme stillness could be resolved.

First, for the outside problems, one could ask someone else to create a shield around themselves to block anything like wind, dust and anything that would bother the cultivator. As for the extreme stillness, a skill could be created to stop oneself from moving, forcefully.

Since Adam had all this new knowledge about his meridians, he knew for a fact that some of these could be used to block the body's movement. Adam could research those skills, and try to create them, but he didn't need them for now.

They would be useless for himself, but they could be used to avoid years of training for the people he knew, mainly his Division Leaders. And even on Earth, from what Searing Light told him many, many experts were stuck on the Third Gate, and only a few had opened the 4th Gate, so if he ever needed something from Earth's experts, he could exchange those skills.

But for now, his disciples and Division Leaders were far from opened the Fourth Gate, they were still working on the 3rd Gate, and even with the guidance he gave to them every now and then, as well as the experience from using the scroll, it would take a few weeks for them to open the Gate.

So Adam decided to meditate things that would be more interesting to him.

As such, two hours after having started his training, Adam suddenly slashed out with his hand, and a large [Flying Slash] appeared out of his hand. However, instead of the usual blue blade of light, this time it wasn't just light, but an actual blade of water. Adam then waved his hand two more times, sending out a blade of ice, and another made of compressed vapor.

[Congratulations for upgrading your skill 'Flying Slash' from E to D Rank! Do you wish to change the name?]

Adam contemplated for a second before changing the name.

Aqua Slash (D): Creates a blade of water, ice or compressed steam to attack at a long range. Deals 200% of water, ice or steam damage. Range of the attack determined by the Aura consumed, but at least superior to 10 Aura.

Then, Adam went back to his meditation, happy with his progress. His goal was to use this skill to better understand [Lunar Smite], and perfectly master it. Then, he would also transform it from a pure ice skill to an aqua skill that could take all three stats of water, and allow the skill to attack from a distance.

The hours went by, and no monsters came to attack Adam and Neith while they were doing their own things. Of course, they were ready to defend themselves in case something came to attack them, but it turned out to be unnecessary. What they didn't know was that all monsters in the vicinity had been killed by Yoklag's flaming palm, and even the ones who were farther away and survived, fled away.

About 15 hours after Adam upgraded his [Flying Slash], Neith finally finished absorbing all the venom. Her shell, which was entirely black before, now had purple strips on it, and formed strange patterns that didn't seem to make any sense, and they probably didn't make any.

Another change was her level, she went up from Level 40 to 43, so it was quite the upgrade for her. As for her venom sack, although it wasn't completely healed, it recovered to around 50%, and she was capable of using her venom to fight now.

Finally, the last change was to her venom itself. Before, it was more of a poison that would impair on the system (not system as in the game system, as in the body) of her enemies, but now it had also gained an acidic property that would also destroy her enemies' armor.

Despite her having finished absorbing the venom, they didn't immediately depart. First it was still night, and Adam also wanted to continue his meditation, he could feel he wasn't far from successfully creating his cultivation technique.

Some time after upgrading his [Flying Slash], Adam had decided to work on his cultivation technique. Now that he had all the elements already, all he needed was to select the ones he needed, and put them together in the right order. However, doing so would still take some time, and since he had a lot of time in front of him, he preferred to do it in one go instead of working on it now and then.

Three hours after Neith finished absorbing the venom, Adam finally opened his eyes as he received another notification.

[Congratulations for creating a new skill! Please name your skill!]