Picking Techniques
As Alex was walking over to where he would pick out his martial arts he heard the voice of one of the family elders. "Please limit yourself to only a few martial arts, at max take four martial arts. One breathing technique, one defensive, one offensive and finally one movement."
Hearing the voice from the entrance, Alex turned his head over and nodded in respect to the advice. To his pleasure, when he opened the first book that caught his attention he got a notification.
[Scanning and storing martial art]
Just like he had expected to happen, the martial arts creation function could also scan and store them as well. So, taking about an hour he went through the whole bookshelf opening some and skipping obvious others. He knew that more explosive arts wouldn't work best for his physiques. After storing information for the most suitable techniques, Alex gave another command to the system in his head. 'System sort techniques according to suitability to water and sound waves.'
Even though Alex had only scanned a portion of the martial arts that seemed suitable there were still hundreds. After an initial sorting by the system, he was able to bring it down to about eighty martial arts. Of them, there were twenty three offensive, eighteen defensive, and twenty one movement and breathing techniques each. Instead of relying on the descriptions in the books he read the descriptions given by the system.
After going through all of them, he finally chose the four techniques that he would rent out physically, even though it was already uploaded to the system. The first offensive was Rippling Finger, The defensive was Flowing Palms Technique, followed by Water Gliding Step which focused on evasion. Finally the breathing technique was called Graceful Harmony Breathing Technique. With the abilities of the Martial Arts Creation section of the system, these foundational arts, with emphasis on the first learned, would become the core of his future path. It would find the core concept of each to formulate and improve them into new techniques.
Having decided on the four techniques Alex grabbed the books and brought them to the elder up front so she could record what was taken by him. After recording them she let him go and continue on back home, where he said hi to his mom before bringing the books to his room. Once he reached his room he put them down on a little stand next to his desk, before picking up the Graceful Harmony Breathing Technique. While he new he could read it through the system, he thought it would be a waste to just let it collect dust. So slowly he started to make his was through the book, reading through each page about three times to fully commit it to memory, another added benefit of a Dao Soul Physique. Eventually He finished the whole book, and after doing a straight read through he went on to do the same with the other books he had on him.
After memorizing them all Alex made his way out to the practice yard outside, first he started to practice the forms of the Rippling Finger. While it had part of the explosiveness associated with finger techniques it focused more on wearing down defenses like rippling waves. After reaching a block he moved onto the Flowing Palms Technique, and eventually the Water Gliding Step. After several hours he finished and made his was back to his room. Sitting down on the mat in the center of his room, he started to put it into practice as the rhythm of his breathing started to become more refined. Eventually he was able to get into a meditative state, where he started to comprehend and solidify everything that he learned today, while comparing it with the books and seeing where he may have gone wrong. After making his way through his insights from training he made his way back down as dinner should be ready soon.
Reaching the dinner table Alex had to wait a few minutes but dinner was quickly finished, and it seemed to be a meat dish again. Thinking for a moment in his head, he figured with the fact he is practicing martial arts they will be having different meals now. After talking to his parents about their day and telling them about his, they quickly finished their dinner. Saying good night to his family he went to his room, and he continued to meditate like earlier to try and comprehend more of the techniques. Eventually he started getting more signals from his body telling him that he needed to get some sleep, and so he followed those promptings. Getting up from his cross legged position on his mat, he made his way toward his bed and was swallowed up by the covers.
Over the next few months, Alex continued to learn and comprehend the first techniques they learned. Finally after six months of consistent practice they were able to bring them to perfection. They had long picked out all the ones that they would learn starting with the next set of techniques, and finishing them half a month faster. As they learned more their foundation continued to build both theoretically, as well as physically. Finally, with one month to spare they were able to bring the final set of techniques to perfection. Along with that they were able to finish the quest getting them the option to be able to merge the arts once they turned eight. With that over the next month they started to spend time practicing all their martial arts, and picking out the breathing technique that suited them the most.