Progress (1)

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In the depths of the bamboo forest, you could see the sweaty figure of an eight or nine-year-old child doing all sorts of movements.

It had already been three days since his arrival in this new world. He was constantly running around, getting more accustomed to his new body while also absorbing a large amount of energy from the air continuously.

On the first day, he had been running around, trying to memorize the routes of this forest, however, it became quite difficult, as there was nothing else other than trees and bamboo. Quickly giving up after finding a small stream of water, he settled down there and tried to experiment with other things about himself.

He had tried to look over a bit more of the memories that he had skipped over, or just hadn't paid attention to, he felt like his head was going to explode. It was like his brain just couldn't store that much information yet.

Seems like he either needs to wait for himself to grow up or attain a higher realm so he can bump up his overall tolerance.

However, even if he couldn't use his brain with full capacity yet, he wanted to at least get used to the finer details of his child-like body. He ran, flipped around, climbed the trees, jumped around, doing whatever he could do to adapt to his body.

With his {Ancient One} and {Natural Ancient Body}, he could easily sense that his body was way stronger than any person he's seen before. He could control his body much more than he thought he could. He was able to contort his body quite easily as if he didn't have bones.

After that, he used the meager energy within himself to create a small glowing aura on his hand. With his tests, none of the bamboo or even the trees could stand his attacks. Even if they were reinforced by the energy here, they fell into pieces under his hand.

Matthew marveled at the power he held currently. However, it still wasn't enough, this was just the beginning of cultivation for him after all. He couldn't feel satisfied, especially knowing that in a world like this, even Gods may descend at one point, why be satisfied being slightly above average?

Matthew shook his head, 'It's just too early to think about right now.'

Gathering the cut bamboo, he built a small hut to stay in before coming back out to train.

Training til night, Matthew had returned to the small bamboo shelter he made from his bare hands, cultivating until he fell asleep.

When the third day came, Matthew spent his day meditating. Since his system had told him that he was ready to breakthrough, he had been mainly prepping his body first before moving to his mind.

Due to the accumulated and purified energy he has been accumulating, he had already broken through the 5th stage of Martial Mortal without any trouble. It was still about an hour or two before noon!

Of course, using that extra time, he had used his skills to quickly absorb even more of the mysterious energy, breaking through to the 7th stage by nightfall.

On the fourth day.

Waking up, Matthew immediately washed up in the water source he found during exploration. Ever since the first time he bathed himself in the crystal clear water, he noticed that it contained the same energy he was absorbing, increasing his cultivation speed. So, every day and night, he had been bathing himself in this water.

While he was staring at the blue panel in front of him, he noticed that he could breakthrough once again!

Drying himself, Matthew prepared a place that was decently far away from the small stream, about 100 feet away, in case his breakthrough destroys the purity of the lake.

Instead of sitting in a meditative position, he was standing up straight like a pole. He had a calm expression on his face. He had done this before, he can do it again.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Huuuuuuu.

Ba-dump~ Ba-dump~

He began to think about his experiences from the past few days. To a person who had such weak physical strength that they couldn't even run for that long to start training himself nearly 20 hours a day, it was hell. But, going through this had its own benefits.

Matthew had noticed early on that it was much easier for him to cultivate while standing. It was easier to process the energy in a straight line throughout his entire body than having it contort to several directions and slowing his cultivation speed down.

In a straight yet relaxed stance, Matthew closed his eyes, focusing on the streams of energy within his body as he steadied his breathing, becoming one with his body and thoughts.

Boom~

Grass and dirt flew everywhere, making a mess of the area, forming a small crater in the middle. This small amount of destruction didn't even faze him in the slightest as his energy rose even further around him, gathering into a small, but stable external aura.

Matthew could feel his body tremble and tense up, with his energy core within his heart becoming one with his heart, massively increasing the amount of energy and purity of energy he can store and use.

With the increase in size, it could be said that the rate of absorption and storage could be increased by about ten times!

Before long, Matthew could see his surroundings again. It was a small breakthrough, only being at the peak of the 8th stage of Martial Mortal, however, he was already able to create a three-foot-long and wide crater below him.

Of course, he didn't have much time to admire his newfound powers as he ran off into the stream of water to wash himself off again.

Splash~

Getting the last bits of the black liquid off his hair, he smiled. "Fwuaaaaah, That was nice. With my progress, I should be able to reach the peak of the 9th stage by the end of the next day."

Fwoosh~

The crater was gone, replaced by grass as if nothing happened.

The scene was normal for Matthew, every time he would breakthrough, it would cause a bit of a commotion. Fortunately, the forest enhanced with energy seems to help self-restoration properties.

In fact, Matthew has noticed that even when the forest restores itself, it lost either no energy at all or a very minuscule of energy like today's breakthrough.

For Matthew this can be a great sign, meaning either the surrounding biomes can lend their own energy or this biome has extremely high amounts of energy, meaning he could stay within this area for quite some time, getting stronger.

He had never seen an animal around here or even a trace of one. Either way, one day, Matthew would need to actually fight with everything he's got, how is he going to grow without real battle experience.

As expected, he couldn't even feel proud of his achievements that would take many geniuses weeks to obtain with ample resources.

However, he didn't know that, hell, he didn't even have a scale to see how strong he is compared to his peers...

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