Eating, unpacking, reading, and picking a path.

Collin had become so engrossed in reading that he almost didn't hear the bird chirping alarm. Putting down his book and stretching his body a bit, he walked to the front gate while trying to remember every word he had read.

To the left of the front gate was the delivery chute, it looked like a light brown box sitting on the bright white outer wall. Only one side of the delivery chute could be opened at one time for security reason and had a space large enough for Collin to fit in, if he squeezed a little.

Pulling at the top of the chute made it fold down and the items inside slide out on a tray. His dinner was sitting on the tray, and it looked delicious. The meat dish was a whole grilled fish, the soup was vegetable, the grain was a large bowl of rice, and the six small sides were a mixture of pickled vegetables, fermented greens, and few slices of marinated pork.

Collin could feel his mouth start watering, he couldn't wait to start eating when realized something and looked towards the main house.

"Shit, I bought forty boxes worth of stuff today and I don't remember which box has the silverware."

After a moment of feeling foolish again he started eating his food with his fingers right from the delivery chute. It was great, the fish had been basted with something salty and citrusy, the soup had a rich brothy taste, the rice was sticky, and the side dishes were a mixture of salty, bitter, and funky.

Before long all the food was gone, and the only things left were the dishes and fish bones. Sliding the tray back and closing the chute cover, he was looking forward to these dirty dishes being replaced with a new meal tomorrow morning.

After washing up, it was back to reading till he fell asleep. Waking up to the sound of chirping birds, the first thing he did was look through the many boxes of stuff he bought. He began to sperate things in to pile according to where they would need to go, bathroom, kitchen, storehouse, bedroom, and etc. That lasted till he was a third of the way through the boxes, that was when he found the silverware, then it was straight to the delivery chute for breakfast.

This morning's meal was an omelet with ground pork filling, the soup was chicken and mushroom, the grain was ground corn gruel, and the side dishes were fritters and breads. While Collin knew that he was supposed to bring the food inside and eat it, he couldn't stop himself from devouring it right there.

He had spent his whole life eating whenever he wanted and mostly whatever he wanted, to having a small bowl of something in the morning and some bread at night, back to having lots of good food. He knew that this new habit was one of the many things he would have to work on, but not now.

He went back to sorting the boxes and after a few hours everything was sorted and in its place. When he was done, he decided to enjoy the simple things. He was able to wipe his ass after taking a shit, and wash himself in the shower, and dry himself after soaking in the bath.

For the next three days his life was the same. He woke up, he ate, he used the bathroom, he read, he ate, he read more, and he fell asleep. He read each of the cultivation books, then read them again, and again till he all but knew every word by heart. He even read the cooking and gardening books, and Alistar was right the books were easier to understand with lots of drawings.

While he wasn't planning to cook elaborate meals, he was confident that he wouldn't stave if he didn't get his daily meals. The only thing that bothered him was more he read the cooking book and the more he found that he hadn't finished his shopping yet. He needed spices and seasonings, plus a bunch of pantry items, and of course this led him to think of a bunch of other things he should get.

Collin wanted to decide which path he would take before going outside the villa to shopping. After reading these books he separated the books into four categories: evil, transformational, external, and technical.

Evil cultivation paths either summon a devil to our world and make a deal with it or use the remains of a dead devil and infuse it into your body to begin cultivating.

To summon a devil requires the blood of three children under the age of one years old to draw a summoning array. To make a deal with a devil requires a sacrifice, most deals use five virgin girls between 13-16 years old. If the deal is struck, the devil will infuse its blood into the summoner and give them a cultivation manual specific to the type of devil summoned. If a blood devil is summoned, then the cultivator will need to use blood to cultivate, if a lust devil is summoned, the summoner will need to have sex with virgins and absorb their vitality.

Using the remains of a dead devil is far harder. Devils are not native to this world, so their remains are rare and very valuable. Most people who own devil remains don't sell them, and hiring a powerful cultivator to kill the devil may end with the powerful cultivator with devil remains and the belongings of an idiot that wanted to summon a devil.

Both paths lead to the same end, the cultivator going insane. All human cultivators that have used this path will begin to become paranoid and violent and will eventually turn to raving lunatics that rape and murder anyone around them.

Transformational paths use demon beast cores to act as spiritual roots and as a dantian. Those who use this method are sometimes called humanoid demons beasts, they can and have been hunted for sport. Starting this path is easy, all you need is the demon beast core of something you want to be like. Then draw a small array on the core with your own blood, then use a spirit stone to power the array to lay claim to the core and absorb it into your body. Then using even, the simplest Qi Condensation meditation techniques to begin cultivating. But with each step forward on this path transforms the body from human towards that of a beast and leads to discrimination and violence.

External cultivation requires great wealth. One needs to buy rare and expensive herbs and pay an alchemist to process them into a special ink. Then pay an inscription master to tattoo the special ink in very specific arrays meant for the human body. Each cultivation rank requires rarer herbs and more skilled alchemists and inscription masters to progress, and injury that damages the arrays can lead to destroying their cultivation.

A different form of external cultivation is body cultivation. To be a body cultivator all one needs to do is use a certain set of exercises in a place with a high concentration of energy or surrounded by lots of spirit stones. Body cultivators don't have the same lifespan as other cultivators and have very limited abilities with spells and techniques that require Qi. Another problem with body cultivation is that everything above Foundation Establishment is owned by certain sects and require joining to learn.

Technical cultivation is using one's own skills to make and improve their cultivation. These paths are the hardest, and failure mostly leads to death.

Treasure cultivation uses spirit ore and other materials to forge a treasure to act as a dantian. The cultivator uses their blood to claim a piece of spirit ore the size of a fist and through cultivation refine it with other materials into a shape of a treasure that the cultivator would find useful. If refining into a weapon shape, the cultivator needs to be careful due to the fact any damage to the weapon will cause an equal amount of damage to their cultivation. To increase their cultivation rank, one simply needs to increase the grade of their treasure. Using inferior materials during refining should be avoided as it can limit the cultivator's growth potential. A final warning to any who would cultivate this path, exposing your treasure is something to avoid as it may incite greed in others and get you killed for the rare, refined treasure within you.

Inscription cultivation uses a spirit stone that has been spent and not shattered to draw specific inscription arrays in the cultivator's blood to create a dantian. Cultivation proceeds like normal till the dantian is completely saturated with Qi and a new unshattered spirit stone one grade higher is inscribed with far more complex arrays and the current dantian in fused into new one. Spent spirit stones that remain unshattered are one in ten thousand and become harder to find the high the grade of spirit stone, and the inscription array patterns become far more complex for each rank. If an array pattern is inscribed on the upgraded stone wrong, it will cause a large explosion equal to the size of the previous size of stone and cause death.

Alchemic cultivation uses spirit herbs to refine a pill within one's body to act as a dantian. Using a simple energy gathering array the cultivator ingests a certain combination of healing herbs while soaking in a medicinal bath of poisonous and toxic herbs, then begins cultivating and moving the various energies around the body before leading them to the lower abdomen to begin the pill refining process. If successful, an alchemic pill dantian will be formed and cultivation can begin, if the process fails the cultivator will die from the poison liquification of the internal organs or body explosion from the healing herbs. To increase one's rank ingestion of stronger and rarer spirit herbs and re-refining of the dantian pill is required.

"So, I will become a cultivator, or I'll explode, or my internal organs will liquefy... yay."