5 Ch 5 Surprised

Lan Long eagerly walked to his parent's chambers and stood in front of the door.

"Come in." His Father's voice boomed. Tian Long was angry as he knew that his son didn't touch the books the entire month. He was extremely disappointed in Lan Long. His rage grew even more as he felt that Lan Long was behaving too casually. "Have you memorized the manuals?" Tian Long asked questioned with a calm tone but his gaze was piercing.

"Yes." Lan Long replied without hesitation.

"Lan Long, if you to answer any of the questions, you will then face the capital punishment of the clan." Tian Long warned Lan Long. Su Ren frowned immediately and looked at Tian Long's face. She sighed and kept her calm.

"Ok father." Lan Long said with the face confident voice.

"Ok. What is the natural phenomenon that determines the purity of Ki?" Tian Long began to ask questions one by one. At a younger age Tian Long himself had answered 100 questions, which is why he decided that the questionnaire needed to be 100 long.

"The density and harmony." Lan Long answered immediately. Tian long raised an eyebrow and immediately asked another question to which the reply was accurate and instant. After about 70 questions, he and his wife had lost their composure. They were standing with beaming smiles and a proud look in their eyes. After the hundredth question, Tian Long sat on his with an thump shocked out of his wits while Su Ren was hugging Lan Long with tears in her eyes.

"What happened?" Lan Long was confused. The test was mediocre at best which is why he didn't see the reason why his parents were hysterical.

"Nothing." Tian Long immediately replied. He was expecting to punish his son, he was at a loss.

"Father, guide me on how to cultivate." Lan Long as from his mother's embrace. He was quite embarrassed as his mother tried to hug to death.

"Ahem. Hmmmm. Yes. But first you need to know the aspects and power and levels in cultivation system." Tian had stood up again and began to explain. "The Ki gathering realm is the first and the weakest. At this stage, a cultivator can simply Ki inside their bodies. Next is the Ki condensing realm. Here, the gather Ki condenses resembles water. After that comes, the Ki Sea realm. At this stage the cultivator forms a sea of Ki in his dantian. When a cultivator reaches the peak of this realm, a tribulation of fire descends and burns the cultivator. If at some point the cultivator had failed an aspect of his Cultivation, he will be burned to death and his soul will be destroyed. If at some point the cultivator escapes the tribulation, he will lose his primary Body and will need to form another body and continue as a Tribulation student. If he succeeds his tribulation, Heavenly fire will burn out his impurities and gather heavenly energy and cultivator's energy to form a Ki pellet inside the dantian." Tian Long stopped at this point and gazed at his sons face only to find a pair of twinkling eyes gazing at him.

"Cultivation requires time and patience. The talent and opportunities help but they can be discovered and not sought after. The greatest virtue of a cultivator is hard work. The harder you work, the greater the rewards." Tian Long finally saw his sons face turn gloomy as he said the word 'hard work'. 'This lazy piece of shit, he-he I will beat that ignorance out of him.' Tian Long laughed in his mind.

The mention of hard work had deterred Lan Long greatly but his curiosity spurred him onwards.

"Father, when can I begin to cultivate?" Lan Long asked.

"First, you need choose a method of cultivation. Then, we can begin." Tian Long said as he waved his hand, soon many books started to float in the air. There were hundreds of these books, then he waved another time and twelve more books appeared. "These 12 manuals are the best manual of our clan while all these other manuals are low level manuals or incomplete manuals. Choose wisely." He said as he disappeared along with his mother.

"Hmm. Ok time to read." Lan Long said as he picked the nearest of the low-level manual and began to flip through. The first one would help the cultivator till the Ki condensing realm while making their Ki hot. Lan Long flipped through all the low-level manual before stopping. Even though it looked like Lan Long was casually browsing through the manuals, he had memorized all to them word for word including all the drawn Ki flow patter and all the symbols.

"No wonder these are all low-level manuals, the best was only up to Heavenly Pellet realm." Lan Long finally turned towards the final 12 manuals. What Lan didn't know was that he was being observed by all his clan elders. This was ceremony of fate, which often conducted in all huge clans. The young ones would be presented manuals without any guidance and would be allowed to choose one manual off each type of cultivation. The ones that choose extremely poorly would be provided lowest of resources, while the ones that choose better would be given the resources according to their luck.

Even though Tian had helped his son by letting him know the best manuals, he had lied to his son. The Long clan had only 4 core manuals, elemental dragons, only 4 manuals. The rest of the manual in the set of twelve were either high-level incomplete manuals or absolute garbage. This he had done to improve his sons chances of getting the core manuals.

Lan Long had picked up the first manual of the 12. It was of absolute garbage variety. Lan Long frowned as he read through it. He them left the first manual extremely disappointed. The next two he chose were two of the core manuals. Earth Dragon Sutra and Fire Dragon Sutra, Lan Long immediately realized that these were of absolute best quality in their respective elements. He soon read though almost all of the manuals without stopping and sighed when he had read through all the manuals. The Dragon manuals were very enticing but they all constrained the cultivator to a single element. Although, the cultivator could still train in other elements, their speed would be affected. There were many manuals which trained body and Ki simultaneously but each of the manuals came with many drawbacks and constraints. There was one particular manual which had Lan Long's attention, Nature's Way. This particular manual was a high grade incomplete manual as it required the cultivators to train all the meridians and acupoints simultaneously. This would in theory, improve the cultivators Ki and body in proportion to the quality of the Ki used. It was an omni-directional sutra which could train any type of Ki but the process of the Ki refinement was varied from impossibly hard when easy to completely suicidal at the hardest. The Ki was to absorbed from the Divergent acupoints to corresponding meridians to death acupoints and their corresponding meridian and finally through all the dantians starting from the top. The dantians were situated below navel, center of the chest and at the center of the brain. A single mistake during the cultivation could reduce a man to an idiot at best or a corpse.

This manual was available commonly because of the difficulty of it. It was a cheap manual available in almost all common stores. It had another name that suited it even better, the death sentence. The itself was enough to scare away anyone.

Lan Long saw this manual differently, this was a perfect practice material for him. His soul had given him perfect control over his body and the experiment with the Ki fusion had a great success. He was now able to merge Ki subconsciously without any effort. His control over Ki was immaculate which was also the reason he was able to experiment without care. Lan Long made his mind up and choose this Nature's way.

His mother had tears streaming down her face as she tried to desperately stop her son from that accursed manual. His father's eyes were red as he grabbed his mother. The clan's rules were simple and the rule had stated that no one was to help a child in choosing the manual. The only help that was to be provided was the base requirement to cultivate the selected manual. The cultivator could change his base cultivation technique when he had acquired contribution points by accomplishing the missions or by doing great merit to the clan. The guidance could be provided when the cultivator had successfully cultivated first part of the technique.

"Tian Long and Su Ren, you are to be confined in the head quarter cultivation yard until your son cultivates the first level of the Nature's Way or if he cannot improve within 10 years of time or till his death." The clan leader immediately gave the orders. His voice boomed in the ears of all elders.

After Lan Long's parent were escorted away, clan leader descended in front of Lan Long.

"Lan Long, here is the manual you chose." Clan leader handed the manual to Lan Long.

"Thank you, Senior." Lan Long said as he bowed to the old man in front of him.

"The cultivation path is very treacherous. Danger often come from the outside and seldom from within. External dangers needn't be feared while internal ones cannot be over looked." The old man turned silent for a moment and gazed at Lan Long for many breaths of time. "your cultivation resources will be delivered shortly. Cultivate with extreme caution." Old man said with a serious look in his face and disappeared.

"Lord must care a lot for this child to provide him with such guidance." An elder by the clan leader's side mused.

"No really, Tian Long will be affected by his loss and if a little bending of rules could avoid that disaster, then let it be." Leader said with a laugh and left.

Lan Long rushed to him yard and sat on his bed and revised the method of cultivation in his mind. He then immediately began to mix the Ki in the surroundings to make the Invisible Ki. He soon realized that this method would take an impossibly long time to cultivate. First, he needed to merge Ki outside his body and refine it inside his body, the whole process was arduous and tiring to the extreme. If Lan Long could find a way to merge the Ki automatically and continuously, the cultivation would proceed much more smoothly.

Soon, six month had passed and Lan Long was found a way to drawn in and merge Ki by drawing a complex structure of Ki. It worked like a self-sustaining engine and constantly provided Lan Long with the Ki he required. Lan Long had created a Ki refinement formation without even realizing it. If anyone ever found this out they would immediately vomit all the blood in their bodies and ended their lives. The art of formation could only be attempted after decades of practice and hard work. Lan Long had accomplished this in mere six months.

The formation itself had to inscribed on each of his cells individually and each cell would need a total on 16 formation to make a grand formation. Lan Long had noticed that if he placed the formation in certain way the total efficiency of each formation would increase tremendously and would even have a self-repairing and replicating properties. Lan Long immediately began to procedure to inscribe the formation. Lan Long's soul was impossibly strong hence he was able to complete the task in just over two and a half years of time. He was now 7 years old. Most of his peers had cultivated up to peak of mortal's breath. Many of them were able to enter meditative state for a brief period.

Lan Long on other hand barely practiced anything, he was often found near the ponds or on hammock wearing bamboo hat. The method of cultivation required on to be in the most alert and comfortable state, this was the reason why people always sat down with their backs straight and eyes closed. Lan Long was different, he didn't need to do any of that, he was alert to the max all the time. He had broken in to Ki gathering realm a few days ago, and was in constant need of water to clean himself. His body would release impurities almost constantly. As he broke through the first layer, of Ki gathering his body release almost a kilogram of impurities with smelled like rotten meat.

Lan Long didn't participate in any of the lectures or practices, elder left him alone as they knew that he was fated to die as soon as he began to cultivate. They all had great respect for his father and left him alone. Kids soon realized that the elder didn't bother with him, so they all ignored him, fearing that he was a son of some big hotshot. He now had a new name, Lazy Long.