The Fire Manipulation Art

Mayton's group was camping on their way to the Demonic Forest under the summer sun. They opted to travel during the night and camp at daytime to escape the heat. Everything was going as they expected except for the addition of Ghorzhang to the group.

Just after Mayton and Zgar bid their farewells, Ghorzhang came with his personal items all packed up and ready to travel and said that he wanted to join them. Not only Ghorzhang was afraid of the words of the demonic wolf*, he also wanted to find out the truth about his origin thus he joined them.

Mayton was, like he did every day recently, meditating under the sun to rest instead of sleeping. Even though he still needed a few hours of sleep, he could at least use half the time for cultivating. If what he heard from Leyzhen was true, people with higher cultivations could spend months meditating, not sleeping a wink at all.

''Haha! I've done it, I've sensed the qi! Finally, I am a cultivator too!''

Mayton startled awake by the loud guffaw of Zgar. Only then he realized that Zgar, like him, was forgoing sleep for the sake of cultivation. Since Zgar was cultivating a divine cultivation technique, he didn't need to torture himself by sitting under the scorching sun for hours and hours, so he was staying away from the eyes of Mayton, under the shade of his tent.

Of course, the first thing Zgar did was rushing to Leyzhen to show his achievement in the hopes of getting some praise. Unfortunately, Leyzhen was really stingy with praise and sent Zgar away with saying;

''Hmm, you need to wait until we reach the forest before continuing your cultivation.''

Zgar did not get downhearted though as he acknowledged Leyzhen's answer with an enthusiastic ''Yes!'' and went on to brag to Mayton and Ghorzhang. Mayton ignored him with the excuse of having to cultivate after congratulating him, but Ghorzhang wasn't as lucky. That day Ghorzhang didn't get to sleep at all.

After a week of uneventful travel, they finally stopped when they reached a flat place with a shallow stream nearby, at the edge of the Demonic Forest. Leyzhen found this place with fresh water without a single detour, like she was a native of the surroundings. Mayton would have been surprised of her accuracy, if not for her finding out what Mayton was up to, even when he was inside a concealment formation when he met Herdis back in the city, to the extent of the conversations he had.

''We will stay here for the rest of the year. Make yourselves a shelter. As for you, Zgar, I will help you continue your cultivation tomorrow.''

Leyzhen said as she waved her hand and a miniature house flew out from her sleeves. It became bigger and bigger until it was the size of a regular house. Leyzhen opened the door of her new residence and under the envious eyes of the others, disappeared from their views.

''All right guys, stop looking and start working. We can't live in tents for months.''

Mayton said as he woke up from his reverie. After that, they started to build their huts.

Since they didn't have experience with this kind of work, they decided to keep it simple and build crude wooden huts and then cover the top of it with their tents for shelter from the rain. It was still noon and they had plenty of time to work. With the cultivation of Mayton and Ghorzhang's naturally strong body, they were done before nightfall. That night, they slept soundly.

''Hey, Mayton! Wake up if you want to go to the village with us. We will move out soon.''

Mayton woke up the next morning, hearing Zgar calling to him. It turned out that their old village was the perfect location for Zgar's cultivation and he could get twice the result with half the effort cultivating there because the land was purified recently.

In the recently purified lands, pure qi produced as a byproduct of the purification lingered around for a time. Despite its almost negligible quantity, since it took the place of other types qi, the divine cultivator didn't have to spend effort on expelling the impure qi from his body while cultivating. This gave a boost to their cultivation speed and made breakthroughs easier, especially to those who had low cultivation bases like Zgar.

Mayton heard about the destruction of the village from Old Mert, despite that he still wanted to take a look at the place where he spent his childhood as well as the place his parents passed on. Not only because of his sentimentality but also for strengthening his resolve to get stronger to take the reins of his fate into his own hands.

Ghorzhang was feeling the same way as Mayton thus he also joined them. They arrived at the place of the village before long and there, Leyzhen started to set up another formation to isolate the place from the outside while Mayton and the others made a simple memorial for the villagers who died.

''Alright, take these spirit stones and only return for the night. If you can't reach the mid qi gathering phase before our time here is up, I won't help you anymore.''

Leyzhen said coldly, as she piled up a sackful of glittering white gems in front of Zgar, once again taken out of her sleeves. This time, Zgar couldn't hold himself as he asked how Leyzhen did it despite her distant and uncommunicative demeanor.

''Everyone above the core formation phase can do it.''

Leyzhen answered curtly, under the curious eyes of Mayton's group of three.

After settling the cultivation place of Zgar, they left him alone there and returned to their temporary residence near the stream. Now, it was time to arrange Mayton's cultivation.

''Your cultivation technique suits you perfectly so you can continue to use it. But you must be careful of wearing off the seal on your soul. I will check it routinely, but if you feel anything unusual come find me without losing a single second. Don't forget, it's not only your life that's at the stake here.''

Leyzhen warned while looking at the eyes of Mayton intently as if she was trying to see his thoughts through his eyes. As far as Mayton knew, it was possible that she actually was really reading his mind this way.

Despite Mayton having a higher cultivation base would make finding the other parts of the ancient demon's soul a bit easier for Leyzhen, the risks involved were simply too great for raising his cultivation to be a viable course of action. She was helping Mayton to get stronger mostly out of sympathy she felt for him because of the demise of his parents, rather than for her own ends. But if he didn't fully cooperate with her, she would do what she had to do without a shred of hesitation.

''As for the reason why we came here, it's because you need a suitable battle technique to go with your fire qi cultivation and sufficiently strong opponents to practice it on, which you can't find in the Flaming Heart City.''

After stating the reason for their trip, Leyzhen imparted a battle technique to Mayton. It was a basic technique called the Fire Manipulation Art. It consisted of three layers.

If a cultivator wanted to be proficient in the first layer, he needed at least mid qi gathering phase cultivation. After succeeding in cultivating the first layer to the perfection, the cultivator would be able to manipulate the qi inside of him with precision to increase the heat of his body parts without harming himself, to the degree of melting iron with bare hands while not suffering any burns.

The first layer of the Fire Manipulation Art had a potent offense, but the caveat was its inability to conduct ranged attacks. This was remedied by the second layer.

The second layer of the Fire Manipulation Art, when cultivated to perfection, would enable a cultivator to emit fire qi from his body to the outside, burning far away objects without any visible phenomenon in between. But using the Fire Manipulation Art this way, correlating with the distance between the target and the cultivator used up increasingly more qi.

Then there was the legendary ultimate pinnacle of the Fire Manipulating Art, the third layer. It was legendary not only because of its power, but also the difficulty of cultivating it, resulting in less than ten known cultivators succeeding in it throughout history.

The third layer was not that different in terms of usage from the second layer. What distinguished the third layer from the second layer was making the cultivator be able to combust the qi present in the world around him, whether it was fire qi or any other type of qi.

This not only gave the cultivator an increased amount of qi available to use at will but also made the effect almost instantaneous. Even though sending the fire qi you absorbed to the target took less than a second, for cultivators with high cultivation bases, a fraction of a second was enough time to determine life or death.

Unfortunately, it was simply too hard to cultivate the third layer. According to Leyzhen, it needed the cultivator to comprehend the essence of fire, and without having a high enough cultivation base to completely convert to a fire demon, it was simply impossible to comprehend the essence of fire.

When the lengthy explanation of Leyzhen about how to cultivate the Fire Manipulation Art ended the sun was already setting. So she left Mayton to his own devices and entered her house for some rest. They were resting at daytime for weeks now thus missing a day of rest made everyone tired.

''Who cares about the third layer? That's for a later time. Now I finally got my hands on a suitable battle technique. That means I am one step closer to get revenge for my parents and find my sister.''

Mayton mumbled to himself with a determined glint in his eyes, once he was back in his crude hut. He knew that his sister's master said that she will find him when it was the correct time, just to make Angeza less sad about their separation and actually hoped that Mayton would not have any more contact with her in the future. But Mayton was simply too weak to protect his sister from the consequences of associating with him thus he let her go.

Now, with the rapid increase of his cultivation and a good battle technique, he was filled with hope for his future. He could already envision the day he found his sister and protected her from all the adversaries.