16 Chapter 16. Cultivation officially begins

A few days later, the so-called Aranea Sect was now like a creepy ghost town, it's streets lay devoid of any movement. its houses lay empty and barren. There was no trace of human life in the whole sect. A dozen of so rotting dead bodies were hanging off a broken down mansion in the sect master's peak. All members of the sect were evacuated and since the sect leader and its elder were suddenly killed, there was no need for the sect to exist anymore. Furthermore, no one had dared to attempt to take ownership of the sect as they could not determine whether the killers of the sect master were still around or not, so it was now officially in the history books, the Aranea Sect was no more in this world.

About fifty kilometers away from the sect, a small double horse-driven carriage was being driven by an old man around the age of sixty who was at middle manipulation realm. And inside the wooden carriage were a pile of thick books and two little kids reading silently. The boy was silently reading as he intensely stared at the book while the other had a fed-up expression on her face as she reached the end of her book and upon reaching the final page as she said with relief, "I've finished reading everything regarding doctors and cultivation. Leo, can we do something else?"

Leo annoyedly looked at Aurora as she had been complaining non-stop about reading for the last half an hour, eventually giving up at reading, Leo began thinking of what else they could do, then he suddenly lit up and turned towards Aurora and asked, "Oh yeah, that reminds me, we should've started cultivation by now. So, would you like to start cultivation with me?"

Hearing Leo suggests this, Aurora excitedly nodded. Once the sect leaders had been killed, Leo and Aurora looted the library, Arts room, and their treasury. They completely looted everything, not leaving a single speck behind as they took everything and stored them on the spatial backpacks that they found inside the treasury. And after all of that, they started making their way back to the village on this carriage. And to pass the time during the trip, Leo had made Aurora read all the books regarding cultivation and medicine thus she was quite fed up with reading.

Leo then slowly put down the book that he was reading and held Aurora's hand as he took her once again inside his mind space.

"Aurora, wait here, I'm gonna be back in a few minutes then after that, you can start cultivating," said Leo as he started quickly running off into the distance.

…

"My Goodness, why do all of them cost so much?" Leo's complaining voice sounded as he angrily looked at the TV in the impartation hallway.

"Oh well seems like I need to find a soul art that will help increase my soul strength and energy"

Leo went and bought two new level three talents for Aurora which were water and earth. And after which he gave them to Aurora along with a book on cultivation and they both went back to reality and started helping each other. With the help of the book's very complex yet informative instructions, Leo's heavenly nether god eyes and their primary talents, Leo and Aurora had officially started cultivation.

It seemed like Leo had really underestimated the use of his talents that he and Aurora had as he broke through to vein opening realm in one and a half weeks while Aurora followed three weeks and a half after him. Along with that Leo's soul energy was slowly increasing every day due to a meditation manual which he had found in the sect library and soon he managed to recover all his energy and even increase it to two thousand and he was able to buy Aurora more of the primary talents and evening all of them out at level five with her photographic memory and medical skill becoming on par with Leo.

"We should be able to make it to the village in two more weeks. I can't wait. Lex should be about a month old now. It's a shame that I couldn't store everything in the treasury but we have a lot more arts to learn from now," Leo excitedly spoke as he looked up at the sky, taking in the wonders of the world.

Along with cultivation techniques, during their looting of the palace, Leo and Aurora found ten Art manuals that were at common white rank and two books at black rank.

After some research, Leo found out that this world's Arts were ranked. They started from white, blue, black, purple, red, orange, yellow. With white being the weakest and yellow being the strongest.

Learning the strength of these ranks, he saw that the arts that the myriad nether mansion provided them were not categorizable from these arts and from this he learnt that this art was definitely not something to look down on. So, he quickly warned Aurora, "Aurie, starting today, we are going to learn other arts. The dual art is one that we must hide, you know the power of it and that it's is over red rank. We must not easily expose it. Here we can learn together, that way it will be faster."

Aurora nodded her head as she also suddenly realized, the power of the phoenix and dragon was one that could completely annihilate a sect. And even just her on her own with just the phoenix and no cultivation could be pretty much undefeated below condesing realm.

And as they slowly travelled following Leo's directions, both of them started learning arts. They eventually decided upon the two black rank arts which were spider slash and spider's poison web, and two arts which were at white rank, a cultivation concealing technique and a white art called the spider's eight leg movement.

The arts that they were training were split up into different stages of mastery. At the beginner stage, the art would show 25% of the initial art's strength. At the middle stage, it would show 60%. At the final stage, 100%. And finally, at the expert stage, it could go from 101% to an infinite amount of strength and could even receive an upgrade in rank if the cultivator placed their notes and wrote improvements inside the book.

This gave Leo inspiration as he recalled back to the requirements for opening the second door, it stated that he would need to create a custom art so if he just improved the spider art then wouldn't it count as a custom art?

Leo didn't bother pondering much over this as the only way to find out was to try it out but he was nowhere near expert mastery yet.

And so, the next two weeks were filled with cultivation and mastering arts, due to the duo's photographic memory talent, they quickly improved their mastery of the arts with the two black rank arts at the middle stage and the white rank arts reaching the final stage.

Alongside this improvement, they also improved their cultivation as Leo made it to early almost middle manipulation realm while Aurora reached peak vein opening realm. Now with their strength alone, they were undisputedly the strongest kids of the village.

Another two more weeks later,

The beautiful scenery outside the carriage seemed to be slowly getting more and more familiar as they gradually closed nearer to the village. The skies were beautiful bright blue with wispy white fluffy clouds perfectly place along the sky and the green glazed grass swished along with the ever so graceful wind while the birds sang their songs of happiness to create a dazzling memorable scene.

Leo and Aurora were still cultivating in their carriage when the pitter-patter footsteps of the horses unexpectedly slowed down as the carriage slowly came to a halt.

"What's going one?" Leo called out to the driver confused as he could not see anything that was stopping them through his heavenly eyes.

"Young master and mistress, we are about to arrive at your destination… b-b-but there se-se-seems to be a problem," the driver spoke out with an old trembling voice as he started sweating profusely as they poured out from his skin, drenching his back. His eyes were fixed on the horizon as extreme fear and panic was slowly showing on his face.