Asuras

Red was reborn. The bizarre cocktail of the blue blood and the silvery metal had forged him a new body as it had forged him a new mind back on Puratynt B. However, he still had questions about what that hand belonged to, but he for now he was happy that he seemed to be able to practice martial arts.

Red looked into the chip from the Vice Captain of the Cruiser. It was full of intelligence from Dwight Kingdom and information about ancient crypts. It also had a list of contacts to other spies within the vice captain's intelligence web. Most of them were in the Dwight Kingdom and the focus of their current intelligence is the mysterious event on Puratynt B. Red realized that the event had sent shock waves not just through the human alliance but the alien races as well.

However, the main focus of this spy seemed to be the extraction of the mysterious red scroll that Red had found. The scroll had been found inside the relic in Dwight Kingdom. From the information on the chips, Red figured that this scroll seemed to be very important to the Asura race, however, on scoping out the scroll, Red couldn't figure out anything much. This was because the scroll was written in a language that he did not understand.

After searching on the internet, Red found that the language seemed to have symbols similar to the Asura language, but it was still fairly different. Interest piqued, Red decided to look more into the history and world of Asuras. He half considered leaking out the scroll so that human could get an advantage, but he decided not to. He first needed to know what the scroll contained. No matter what it was, he thought that it definitely had some secret or the Asura royalty wouldn't have such a massive spy network in the human alliance simply to extract this scroll.

He was also perplexed by what appeared to be an Asura artifact appearing inside a remain found in Dwight Kingdom. As far as humanity's history goes, the Asura had never come to this part of the galaxy. He wondered if the Asura were actually a much older alien species than humans previously thought.

Since the capture of the imperial cruiser, Buckley had left Red to his own devices. The pirates had also decided to lay low after capturing such a major haul to hide their trail. Thus they spent the next two months relatively uneventful directly travelling to planet Redmond where they planned to drop off Red.

Red on the other hand had spent his time reading up about cultivation. He had not chosen any cultivation art to practice in the market, he wanted to find a good stable art to suit his style now that he could cultivate martial arts. Instead he tried to study the process of cultivation and understand the mechanics.

As far as his information went, when martial artists cultivated, they transformed their body gradually to a stronger one. Cultivation essentially had four known paths. Body, energy, mind and soul. These four were not mutually exclusive, but each path was hard in itself and few could succeed in multiple paths. However, the best talents would often be successful in two paths and would be celebrated individuals in their countries.

While Body cultivation was an easy path to begin on, eventually one would be limited by their genetics and it was considered to be a dead path but was still popular due to being relatively easy to pursue in the earlier stages. Energy or qi cultivation was the most traditional cultivation path and allowed for one to transform their body to become immortals by assimilating the energy of the heavens. Mind cultivation was also popular in the earlier stages especially among academics, but suffered from the same limits as body cultivation, eventually one's brain can only improve to an extent. Soul cultivation was a mysterious path and not many even knew the specifics about it. It was thought to be practiced by secretive nobility families with the heritage and certain cultivation halls that focused on soul cultivation.

Choosing the right cultivation art was also important. Many cultivation arts would limit one's potential by going on obscure paths from which it would be difficult to continue. Thus a stable and well trodden path was considered important to consider. This was why Red did not hastily choose a cultivation art to practice. Now that Red had transformed, he realized that his sensitivity to the energy of the heavens had reached a pint of very high talent based on the information that he gathered online and thus he was looking into a potential qi cultivation art he could practice.

He also spent time learning about the Asuras. It was sometime in the beginning of the post stellar age when humans had begun to come across the Asuras in a then unexplored area of the galaxy. Humans were rumored to have expanded from a corner of the galaxy and thus as they began expanding they eventually came across many other alien species which were also inter galactic. The Asura, unlike humans, were very strong physically at a base level. On top of that they practiced martial arts which gave them the characteristic of explosive power.

Asuras were a very war mongering race, much like humans, but they had a strict hierarchical society based on the strength of their genetic potential. Conventional Asuras were humanoid, about a little taller than a tall human, with horn on their forehead. Depending on the gender of the Asura they might have one or two horns. Males had a single horn on their forehead while females had two. The color of their horns often reflected their genetic potential as well as their hierarchical place in society.

Asuras used a gadget specific to them that was supposedly tied to their cultivation arts which was a mask. The mask could form an armor or a weapon among other thing depending on its level. The mask was worn by most battle hardened asuras and was a symbol of their valor. The masks would develop various symbols or patterns on them based on its abilities and that was based on what cultivation art they practiced. The mask was mysterious and humans had mythologized these masks.

The relationship between the humans and Asuras was very hostile. However, humans had technological superiority as well as strong cultivators which often helped them gain advantage against the Asuras, yet the two species were in a perennial war along the borders of their areas of influence.

Red spent time understanding and learning the Asura language. The primary reason for it was to understand the scroll, but also because he wanted to understand them. Humans may have demonized Asuras in popular culture and they were an enemy, but Red didn't particularly care for the political war mongering among species. He was interested in learning about their culture as well as their abilities and gaining benefits.