First steps

Two months passed since Bai Yun woke up. In the first month after he woke up his mother barely left his side. When he initially brought up cultivation, his mother nearly locked him up. It took him a month to pacify her.

But over the past month, both of his parents had calmed down. After an incessant number of checks by Doctor Mu, and being told that he was fine every single time, both of them finally accepted it. Finally, they agreed to allow him to cultivate. But from the moment they agreed, it was as if a switch had been turned in them. They immediately became cold when it came to matters of cultivation.

Bai Yun had told them that he had reached the first ring stage of soul cultivation, thanks to the soul healing pill. He couldn't say that he had reached the third ring stage as that would have been suspicious. Also, he could only show the strength of someone in the first ring stage even in the third ring stage due to the Infinitude Heavenly Thought. After they heard that, they gave him a map to the technique library of the clan, a token for the library, a list of cultivation techniques, one each for each of the three cultivation systems he wanted to cultivate in, a sword and a storage ring filled with a lot of rations and water.

At first, he was confused by the rations, but a short while after leaving he understood the reason for them.

He had set out on his grand adventure to the library yesterday morning!

The clan's technique library was just too bloody far away! Bai Yun had forgotten that this was a great clan that even had Dao step cultivators, and was the clan headquarters to add. He was no longer a titled god, but a mortal. He could only walk slowly towards the library.

But none of the guards or any of the other people in the way stopped him. But some were looking at him weirdly. After a while, he quickly understood the reason.

When his father first broke through to the dao step, Bai Yun thought nothing of it. He had reached the dao step at a much earlier stage. But it was only later that he realized his mistake. In this current world, the density of qi in the air was much lower. This meant that the rate of absorption of qi, as well as the amount of resources in this world, was much lower. His father was considered to be the most talented person of his generation. Even though his cultivation had slowed down after Bai Yun's illness, allowing others to catch up to him, he was still the only person in his generation to reach the dao seed realm in a great dao.

Bai Yun continued on his way. As he walked, he had to stop every now and then to eat and rest. Thankfully there were many open courtyards in the Bai clan, which were left empty for general purposes. So this wasn't much to him. The thing that was annoying him was the presence of the butler behind him.

Soon he arrived at the clan library. At the entrance of the library, there was a queue to enter. Bai Yun joined the queue. As he stood there, some of the people in the queue started to look back at him. Soon a murmur started to spread around him. He could see many people around him pointing at him and whispering to each other. Even though he was irritated, he simply ignored this. Even more people had pointed at him in his previous life, so he was used to it.

He reached the front of the queue soon enough. There a guard looked at his token, verified his identity, and then allowed him to enter. As Bai Yun entered the library, he was surprised at its size.

In his past life, all the books he needed were given to him, and the library that his parents build was a very high grade artifact. There was no need to physically enter it to get access to anything in there for him. So this was his first time entering a library. Bai Yun quickly made his way through the crowd, to the place where the three cultivation techniques were placed.

The cultivation techniques that his father wanted him to cultivate were basic and simple ones. They were not very special, but they allowed one to build incredible foundations. Both his parents were of the idea that he could change his cultivation technique into a better one in the soul state.

Bai Yun accepted it. After all, he knew the importance of a firm foundation, and he too would have chosen such a path for himself under normal circumstances. But he knew there was no need for him to do so. For he had cultivation techniques created by titled gods.

Cultivation techniques created by titled gods were complete, and he had no need to change them. They were also much stronger and faster than all other techniques. The cultivation techniques created by gods were also this strong. No other techniques could compare. This was because, only gods were in complete knowledge of a dao, and thus any cultivation technique created by anyone below would always have a flaw.

The qi cultivation technique that he was using was one created by his father called the Way of Harmony. It was especially effective in maintaining a balance between multiple powers for someone travelling in multiple paths of cultivation simultaneously. And for body cultivation, he was using the Undying Body created by the God of Battle.

But he still had to get the cultivation techniques his father asked for in order to put up appearances. As he walked over, he felt a perception wash over him. His own perception was still too weak to identify anything about it other than the fact that the person was stronger than him. And his god sense was unable to leave his body due to his cultivation. Besides this wasn't the first time this had happened during the journey.

Then the perception entered his body. The moment it did so, he got a shock. Because that meant that the perception was of someone from the dao step. His god sense quickly followed the perception back to its source.

It was an old janitor. He was standing a short distance in front of him simply sweeping the floor, as people quickly walked past him. He was even being jostled about by them. It wasn't that they were looking down on him, most of the people here did not even realize he was there.

For the love of god, is there any reason to give me a heart attack? Why would someone in the dao tree realm do so? Is there anything wrong with your head?' After cursing the janitor in his mind, and planning to scare the crap out of him once he reached the god realm once again, Bai Yun moved forward, toward the old man, not giving him any sign that he had noticed him.

Suddenly some old memories came into his mind. He remembered that some of the people he met during the war had shared a lot of stories of when they were growing up. A good number of them were people who struggled up from poor beginnings. He remembered one of them telling him that he was only a lowly disciple in some school at first before he met some strange old man. After taking care of the old man for a few months out of pity, the old man suddenly left, but not before giving him some god level cultivation techniques and some resources to cultivate. There were many others who had similar stories of meeting crazy old people. Bai Yun thought that this person must also be such a person. The fact that he was here to defend the library never went through Bia Yun's mind.

Even after recalling this, Bai Yun did not stop even for a moment. As he passed by the old man, he simply smiled and carried on. After all his father was in the dao seed realm. There was no need for him to do anything extra in order to get anything from the old man. The old man pulled his perception out of him after not finding anything different about him. Bai Yun had hidden his cultivation and everything else with his god sense. If a dao tree stage person could see through his god sense, he may as well commit suicide.

Bai Yun quickly found the three cultivation techniques that his father had told him to find. As he looked through them, he realized that the cultivation techniques were focused on building a firm foundation. These techniques were not bad, most likely created by an immortal. But comparing them with the titled god level techniques was an insult.

Now that he had cultivation techniques, all that he was lacking were battle techniques. In his previous life, he had passed the first few steps too fast and did not study any fighting techniques then. He only studied them after reaching the immortal step. Even the techniques he read for inspiration were from the dao step.

In his entire memory, there were only two techniques that could be used in the qi step. They were the movement technique he got from the Assassin God, Specter Steps, and the technique created by the God of Swords, Simple Sword. But the Simple Sword was a way of fighting rather than a true battle technique. It involved finding the opponent's weakness as well as disrupting their rhythm in order to gain an advantage. It was incredibly effective in fighting a lot of weaker enemies, as it didn't utilize much energy. In the later stages, one could use the essence of sword dao to create terrifying battle techniques, but as he didn't follow that path, he had to find proper battle techniques in order to supplement them. Even then it was similar to the Infinitude Heavenly Thought, in that this technique was next to useless in the first few stages in terms of increasing one's fighting force.

Since battle techniques could easily be changed, his parents told him to pick out the ones he liked by himself. Since he already had a movement technique, he decided to pick three techniques, alongside a dummy movement technique to hide the Specter Steps. He quickly found a technique called Shadow Walk, and decided to focus on the other three techniques he needed. He needed a sword technique, a palm, or fist technique in case he lost his sword and a defensive technique. Even though body cultivation would increase one's defenses, since it focused on a holistic improvement, it would always be weaker than a defensive technique.

All in all, he spent three days looking around before he finished his selection. Thankfully the token his father got for him was of a high enough grade. The three techniques he took were the Moonlight Sword, a powerful sword technique that was very versatile, Lions Roar, a fist technique, and false armor, a defensive technique. He was happy with neither the power nor coverage of False Armor, but all stronger defensive techniques required one to change or strengthen some part of one's body, and Bai Yun knew that such techniques would make body cultivation difficult later.

The person in charge of the checkout who was supposed to make sure that the people who entered the library only took as many techniques as their identity allowed was surprised when he saw the seven techniques in Bai Yun's hand. But he let him go after finding his identity. As Bai Yun stepped out of the clan library after three days the sunlight burned his eyes. After blinking a few times, he started walking home. In his hand, he held the cultivation technique for Moonlight Sword, and started to ponder on it as he walked.

"Hey idiot." He heard someone call behind him. Thinking it had nothing to do with him, Bai Yun didn't stop.

"Stop, you cripple." While wondering who was making such a ruckus Bai Yun continued on.

Suddenly he found a few shadows in his way. As he looked up he saw a few children in front of him.

The one who looked to be their leader, a child who seemed to be eleven or twelve, looked up at him arrogantly before declaring. "Didn't you hear me ordering you to stop you cripple?"

Bai Yun was confused. Suddenly realization dawned on him. He became excited.

'Is this that. It must be. This must be the legendary bullying!'