4 Finally, I Can Cultivate

Darkscale immediately realized that he was starting a new Dream.

He had the same feeling hundreds of times: first came dizziness and confusion. Thankfully it only lasted for a couple of seconds.

Then a multicolored beam of light would appear deep in the dark. It would be flowing into the seemingly infinite void, right towards Darkscale at incredible speed. Only when the light would finally hit him, the Dream would start.

Each time it was in a different place, each time he was doing very different things. However he would learn a lot. Feel a lot too.

Yes, feel. He wasn't simply taking the skin of the Cursed Blood owner out for a ride. He didn't only sense what the King was sensing, he could also feel his feelings. His rage, his boredom, his happiness. He felt them all.

This time Darkscale got to experiment pain, which was something that had never happened before. In fact, it was a very peculiar Dream. Normally inside his Dreams Darkscale would feel great, always brimming with energy.

This time instead he felt incredibly weak. Not only: he could tell instantly that he had a very large wound on his torso and many of his bones were broken. There was like a huge weight on his chest that didn't allow him to breathe properly, and also made it incredibly painful.

He lied down on the white granite floor of a great hall, as large pools of green churning liquid formed massive lakes on the precious floor.

"Blood, that's blood" thought immediately the little serpent when he smelled the metallic and poignant odor that the liquid emanated.

All around the hall, tall and finely decorate columns kept a lustrous rainbow colored roof from falling down. Some the pillars had big chunks missing, clawed away by some monstrous paw. Others were burning, enveloped by tall tongues of pallid green fire.

Not too much far from where Darkscale's lied there was a strange pillar. It wasn't white like the rest but green, plus it was way wider and incredibly long. The green pillar stretched throughout the entire immense chamber, ending inside a huge pool of crystalline water at the extreme north of the hall.

An angry and indecent voice came right out from Darkscale's throat "Fucking cunt! This King just wanted the stupid pearl for a while and you fucking went berserker on me! Heavenly creatures my ass, you're just a fucking giant flying penis!"

Darkscale immediately recognized the voice of the King. However he was surprised at how mad he seemed to be. He wasn't sure what had happened to make him so furious.

"Stupid bitch ass flying pickle, you actually dare launch a curse on this King?! If my cultivation drops in any way I will use every female of your family as living cauldrons until the end of times! Do you hear me, motherfucker?"

The King went on spewing insults for what seemed at least a couple of hours, stopping exclusively when he realized that his wounds were rapidly worsening. Only then his insult-spree stopped.

Mumbling discontent, he started to breathe with a very peculiar slow cadence. At first Darkscale thought that he was simply trying to calm itself, then he felt it: it was like a current of cold water running in from his nose towards every single point of his body. It enveloped his muscles, his tendons and his bones in a gelid embrace but it didn't hurt at all or feel fastidious in any way.

Miraculously, the weakness he was feeling since the beginning of the Dream started to disappear, and even the wounds that riddled his body begun to heal at an extraordinary rate.

"Mph, you made me use a technique! You know how much this King hates this shit! Ehehehe, I think I'll be taking the pearl forever as compensation… See ya retard!" A resounding evil laughter came out from his body as Darkscale feel himself become a fast shadow, sprinting towards the perlaceous roof.

A livid voice came from behind Darkscale's as he flew towards the roof " You pushed things too far old cat!"

Before Darkscale could see what would happen next, the images started to fade and he found himself in the dark again.

He immediately tried to open his eyes and he magically found himself back in his own body. His slender serpentine frame twitched slightly, but when he realized that it was still dark outside he stopped moving. There was no need to move around at night. Plus it was incredibly dangerous.

"That was a strange one"

He started to recall what happened in the Dream, his eyes shining with happiness. "Hehehehe, even if it was strange, I learned lots of new words with this one".

Plus, the mystery of what the King was doing with the females he kidnapped has been solved: he uses them as cauldrons. However… "What's a cauldron though?" Wondered the little snake. He never heard of this cauldron thing, but it didn't seem something very pleasurable.

He could still remember the hate and the deviousness that the King used to overbearingly say that he would turn his enemy's family into cauldrons. It couldn't be something good!

"The mystery thickens! I'm still far from discovering all of the secrets behind the King's action! As expected from someone so grandiose as him!" thought the black serpent with a deep pondering look on his face.

After a while passed in contemplation of the many unresolved enigmas coming from the Dreams, a strange flicker of light appeared on the deep violet eyes of the reptile.

Opening his mouth as much as he could, he began to inhale as much air as possible, while also trying to keep it inside of him. After a few moments, the little creature almost died suffocated, so it immediately breathed out the air and started to breathe again normally.

His eyes immediately wandered around, as if he was checking that no one had seen what just happened. The two violet jewels examined the whole area around his hiding place but only discovered a far little family of crows. The mother was teaching the chicks how to move rhythmically their wings, probably in preparation for more serious flight lessons.

Feeling better now that he knew that no one had witnessed to his disastrous failure, Darkscale let a long sigh of relief.

Still, after a moment of incertitude, he decided to keep trying to use the technique. He did so for an entire hour, stubbornly gulping down air and trying to feel the same incredible sensation that he felt in the dream. However, he never even came close to it.

A complex look appeared in his eyes when he realized that the technique used by the King wasn't something that could be easily replicated. When he was inside the Cursed Blood Owner's body he used that strange power easily, as breathing. However, now, he couldn't even do it even after having tried excruciatingly dozens of times.

This was the first technique used by the King that Darkscale thought he could replicate as he felt it completely from beginning to end. However, he wasn't able to feel the gelid energy moving inside his body at all.

"Maybe today isn't the day I become a Cultivator" thought depressingly the little snake. That was incredibly disappointing, especially after having tried to use that power for so long. An entire hour! He was sure that even amongst the most powerful cultivators there was no one who had such an incredible resilience. Still, such a genius was cursed by the Heavens who made him fail again and again.

"The world is such an unfair place"

His eyes wandered sadly around, falling again on that silly crow family scene. There was a single chick that didn't move its wing in the right order: it flapped twice its right wing and only once its left. The mother continued to rebuke it, even hitting it right in the head with its beak, until it started to move them in the right order.

Darkscale wasn't too much surprised by the aggressiveness of the mother: he wasn't a bird, but he could tell that if that baby crow did try to fly with that technique, it would fall down to its death. The mother had to correct what was a fatal error.

"Wait a second…"

A sudden thought flashed through his mind. His eyes widened, while he grinned "…the right order…the right order… OF COURSE!!".

Never before he felt so excited! He busted outside from the crack in the boulder, uncaring about danger, and pounced right on the top of it. His eyes shined with a deep light, while his whole being was telling him that this was the right moment!

" I will become a Cultivator!"

"Beware, wicked humans, for my rage will be relentless! Ehehehe"

Strange sounds filled the night, making many of the creatures hidden in their lairs in the zone shiver. It was like a sipping sound without end that frightened intelligent and unintelligent beasts alike.

Obviously, that sound was caused by Darkscale that was happily absorbing a vast quantity of air, trying to reproduce the same circuit that he felt during the Dream.

At first, he failed, but after a couple of tries, he started to feel something. It was some kind of energy that flowed inside of him and spread all over, covering the entirety of his body. It permeated completely his skin and continued further down on his flesh, but stopped at his muscles and no matter what it didn't go further down.

Plus, contrary to what he sensed while in the Dream, there was no sensation of cold coming with the whole experience.

" Still, it's a success! Finally, I can cultivate!" Darkscale could feel that his skin and muscles were brimming with energy, even more: they seemed way stronger than before! He felt like he could take head on a human and not win only because of tricks and hidden attacks, but taking in on frontally!

"Mph, now I want to see if some stinky human dares to bully me! I will… argh!" the little reptile was in the middle of one of his internal monologues when he started to feel an excruciating pain all over his body. It was like something was consuming him from the inside, burning his whole body in doing so. Instinctively, he moved back to his hiding place. Trying to use the solid rock as a protection from the agony he was feeling.

It didn't work. He didn't even have the time to understand what was happening to him that he already fainted.

He slept for hours, only waking up when the sun was already starting to disappear again. His whole body felt incredibly weak, even worst than the time he fought against that blue-tailed mouse.

"What happened to me?"

Darkscale felt thirsty, almost if there was a giant phantasm sea inside him that demanded to be immediately filled.

He immediately barged outside, not even caring that the storm had started to introduce itself to the forest: rain was coming down from the skies and strong winds were battering the forest's trees.

Arriving near one of the many rainwater pools caused by the weather, Darkscale started to urgently drink, like if he hadn't had a sip in a century.

"Ahhh" he hissed, while his head left the pool of water. He still felt terrible, but he did regain quite a bit of self-control. The first thing he tried to do was to immediately check his surrounding, to control if there was any danger around. That was one of the most important rules for creatures living in the forest, especially those so low in the food chain like himself. He didn't do so when he flashed out from his hideout totally crazed, so now he was in a very precarious situation.

However, instead of doing their job and checking around, his eyes instead remained fixed on the disturbed surface of the pool the moment he saw the image reflected in the waters.

Darkscale's eyes widened in shock.

"Heavens! What's that thing??"