Broken Adventure

[theaceoffire]

It was good to be outside.

Step.

Compared to being trapped inside that recovery room for literally months, this was a gift from the heavens!

Step.

Something Adam had really discovered earlier in this life: the air quality was amazing too.

Step.

No fossil fuels, no real pollution... made sense, despite living for thousands of years these Cultivators needed plants and stuff for their own improvement.

Step.

Can't get a 10,000 year old Ginseng if the forests all get poisoned and die.

Step.

Not that most of those plants WERE that old, really. They were called '100 year old X' and whatever because it was a rating system.

Step.

Theoretically, if a plant was in a perfect environment and could cultivate without being disturbed...

Step.

And plants CAN and DO cultivate, as do animals. Just part of this Realm. Can theoretically unlock humanoid forms too, even have kids with people. Odd.

Step.

Anyway, once a plant reaches a certain level of refined heaven and earth spiritual energy, it would be classified based on the number of years a plant in a good environment but with only access to ambient energy levels would reach. Actual plants could be exposed to all kinds of stuff that made them the equivalent to hundreds of years of careful cultivation. Bam! Instant heavenly treasure right there!

Ste... stumble. Shit.

Assistant Quan caught his shoulder. "Careful! You are doing great, no reason to rush."

Adam glanced at his shaking leg. The crutch was tight under his left shoulder, his stump secured to it for stable control of the thing... but it didn't make him fast by any measure. Still, better than paralyzed in a hospital bed.

He gave her a nod and resumed the walk.

Step.

What had he been thinking about? Right, herb age. Or spirit vegetable age, or mystical fruit age, blah blah blah. Plants in general were easy to work with, safe to include in most pill recopies, and farmable with little difficulty or danger. The biggest investment with plants was time, really. That and learning what materials and so forth they need to grow properly.

Step.

Animals, specifically Spirit Beasts, cultivated and grew stronger much faster. Though they faced more risk in the process... most plants didn't eat each other. Although until a demonic beast reached Stage Seven and higher, they were not guaranteed to be able to form the rare and valuable 'Beast Cores' with a hundred percent certainty. Until then they ate plants, humans, and each other to try and grow stronger.

Step.

Their meat was edible and the taste was even enhanced by the animals cultivation process, but the rare beast cores were the grand prize. Each one able to provide massive benefits if the Cultivator can get past the dangerous and wild energy/willpower left behind. Though there was a risk. Use too many beast cores to boost your cultivation and it could destabilize your base or even cause cultivation deviation. It wasn't YOUR energy at first, after all. Had to beat it into submission before trying to consume a second one, if you wanted to be safe.

Step.

Could he make a core like a beast? Should he?

Step.

Would it make Adam taste more delicious like a Spirit Beast did?

Step.

...That could cause problems. Best avoid the issue.

Step.

DAMN IT HE WASN'T EVEN A DOZEN YARDS OUT OF THE HOSPITAL!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam tried to smile, even as he was assisted out of his custom crutch and helped onto the chair near the bed.

He was... sore. Even now, he knew some cultivation time was required to increase his recovery rate, otherwise he would need a LONG rest before slumping his way into the nearby bed. And that was after considering the large number of breaks, rests, and stalling he had suffered under heading here.

The Orphanage was... nice. The massive, dormant volcano the Sect was founded on had defensive walls and such around the base, and this building was further from the others with fenced areas for the herbal gardens. Though they could be just called 'gardens', since it had all kinds of fire natured plants back there, not just herbs.

The building itself was sprawling, had many open aired courtyards for the various inhabitants to meditate and cultivate within, and was... maybe two or three football fields big? Hard to tell really. It was odd to see a population level larger than his old village in one place like this though. Though not close to the other residences or facilities, the place didn't seem neglected or needing repair.

Adam saw very little of it. By the time he hobbled over here, any strength he had gained was shot.

His body knew it too. Sweaty, trembling, strained... yeah, some time cultivating sounded lovely.

Quan smiled at the young man, then turned to the guy who met up with them outside. "Juan, thank you for keeping an eye on Adam here. I'll stop by when I can, but I used up some personal leave getting things set up elsewhere... this is a huge help."

The man was visibly around twenty... but in a world of cultivation, that meant little. "Of course, Elder Sister Quan. I'll introduce the boy to the others and make sure he gets settled in properly."

The two men (Or one man and one wounded child) watched her eventually leave before Juan turned to Adam. "This is a bit of a short notice, but please note the rope near the bed and the door. I had a friend design a very, very basic formation on both of them to send a quiet alarm should you need assistance if you tug any of them." He pushed open a nondescript door. "This is one of the few rooms with a separate bathing system and formation, we were told you are going through a complicated cleansing process that tends to have high impurity discharge. Please scrape what you can into the buckets before bathing, we will make sure to check in and make sure things stay sanitary."

Adam awkwardly scratched his eye-patch. His 'eye' was technically healed, but uh... well, Quan suggested covering the thing since it didn't affect his vision one way or the other. Magical fire eye didn't follow normal rules, apparently. The unfamiliar eye covering itched though.

He gestured toward the paperwork.

Juan paused... and after a few charades and a couple of short notes written with the board and chalk, nodded. "Your side of that mess is done, those are just for your personal records. May need them at some point." Seeing how worn the boy looked, he gave an encouraging smile. "Why not take a bit of a rest or even sleep a while? Just pull the cord when you are ready for a bit of a walk about and I can show you the local facilities."

Adam smiled best he could, and watched the man quietly leave.

Everyone was nice around Assistant Quan of course, but he HAD managed to catch some things with 'Research' on the way here.

At least part of the reason this 'Righteous' guild was so accepting to other people? The collection of so many Fire natured cultivators (Of any level) helped pull in Flame energy from outside the Sect and encouraged Flame energy to stay around instead of leaving the volcanic area.

It may not be the MAIN purpose, but each circle of disciples acted like an informal Glyph pattern, encouraging a higher saturation of the Sect's preferred energies. Hell, having so many people in the orphanage probably helped the garden grow faster.

Deliberate? Maybe. Then again, ANY Sect that gathered similar disciples would also begin to attract their preferred types of energy from nature. It sort of acted like a gravimetric attraction, like calling like. On the other hand, why accept people who can't use your techniques or practice your battle abilities? This could be a side effect rather than the main point of acquiring more people.

Back on point, some strangers, as expected, did not react well to his bandages and wounds. More of an 'Eww' reaction than a 'How dare this filth be here' feeling though. Understandable, he wasn't exactly the hunky man of the year right now... Even without the scars and the messed up leg and arm, his body had consumed itself to stay alive during his recovery period.

He was fairly tall, FAR too thin, and it had an alien like effect when he walked. Like he wasn't quite put together correctly.

Hopefully that would go away as he recovered further.

Assistant Quan had scheduled an appointment for Adam to visit the Sect Repository of Knowledge at the end of the week, which had Adam VERY eager and excited. She had offered to share some merit points so he could purchase a copy of some higher level information there, but that wasn't his goal...

The low level, common type of data? Free.

Intro to Alchemy, Intro to weapon refinement, Intro to herbology, book after book covering the basics, all free to view with no cost in an attempt to attract new cultivators into the various less pursued careers and societies! He could feel 'Research' drooling from here!

Carefully pulling one of the buckets closer, Adam began cultivation slowly while using his right hand to try and direct the impurities into the easily moved bucket. There would be more than usual, as 'Research' had an ever growing list of tests to try and develop the 'Flesh Rebirth' technique.

Over HALF those tests Adam had to skip, having promised Quan not to mutilate himself for a while... but it was a long, LONG list. He wouldn't run out of things to try for a while.

The evening passed as the boy did strange tests on himself, bright blue flames following strange patterns on his skin.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Juan waved the group back. "He is resting and healing, there is nothing else to say."

Brother Hou snorted. "Some nobody shows up with Elder Sister Quan and you say there is nothing going on."

He rolled his eyes. "The child is maimed, barely able to stand, and covered in bandages. If you feel threatened that some damaged kid is going to steal away your dream girl, your confidence and chances are far too low."

He hissed. "You don't get it man! It is the wounded puppy technique! 'Oh, I am so weak, Oh I am so hurt! Quick Sister Quan, tend to my needs!' Just you wait, in a month we will find out that kid is secretly one hundred years old and a grandfather or something."

Juan stared at him. "Right." Pushing him aside he addressed the other social leaders. "Aside from Brother Hou's ramblings, I've placed Chongsheng Adam in the recovery suite, and I have been told that his current recovery technique has a heavy toll on his system. We will need to increase cleaning shifts for at least a few weeks, see the chore board for details."

Sister Rong nodded. "He will need broth until his body is strong enough for some real meals." She glanced at her followers, her informal group in control of the orphanage's meals and food supply. "See if we can get some Spirit Beast bones for broth, the extra energies should help him."

She paused. "He IS a Cultivator already, right? This stuff could corrode his organs otherwise."

He nodded. "Only an Initial First Order Warrior, but yes."

A nod. "That's enough to process the soup without issue. Come people, we can't waste time all day."

Brother Zhanfei held back even as Brother Hou ranted on the way out. "IS there a risk of fake identity?"

Juan shook his head. "No, and you can tell your security team that as well. Elder Sister Quan was present before and after he developed a cultivation base, and has been involved with most of his medical procedures. If he is an enemy, he would have to be strong enough to destroy a dozen of our Sects to hide like this. There would be no point."

A nod and Brother Zhanfei waved his people back to their patrols. The gardens here were very valuable after all, and they couldn't risk someone trying to help themselves.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

He should NOT be producing this much impurities.

Most cultivators would produce this level of gunk only a dozen times in their entire LIVES. The idea of one boy spewing this filth every hour or so... what the heck was in his body that was so damn impure!?

Adam's question was answered fairly quickly by 'Research', and the conclusion was a bit shocking.

Himself.

The poison, infection, and many of his shattered bone shards were cleared out by the first week or so. Even his messed up leg was cleansed of debris and such.

No, after that mess was pushed out of his system, his energies were attempting to purify his body.

And the particular energy he had chosen, Binding energy, was... very pure.

So pure, that attempting to use it to temper himself, even after including the lower quality 'Flame energy' as a buffer, was near impossible.

To actually make progress towards such a massively far away goal... well.

His body was improving as far as it could with the energy provided... and then eating itself. A less obvious version of the 'Rebirth' technique, one where his organs and so forth were healed, improved as far as the low quality material could handle, then used as a launching point for his system to consume the part for fuel and rebuild it as a slightly higher quality product. Not all at once thankfully, but as an ongoing process. Cell by cell he was being reformed.

This wasn't a decision by the energy or something. It was just how the body reacted to being stuffed with such good material to work with. Cells too weak to use the new power would be denied resources, die off, and turn into this horrid impurity sludge. The other, stronger cells were reproducing at a massive rate... creating even more gunk as a byproduct.

Adam had no damn clue how many times his body would need to repair itself before his cells could consider 'Binding energy' or even the blended Flame and Binding energy (Blue energy?) to be nothing worth mentioning. Whatever level or stage his body needed to reach, he clearly wasn't done yet.

With a sigh, Adam carefully cleaned the sticky gunk from his left arm stub into the bucket.

When he got access to that library, he would have to research a body cultivation method.

In the local area, Martial Spirits were first, second, and... well, it was the focus. People could find inheritances that taught special attacks or unique cultivation methods sure, but that was all considered secondary to your talent and potential in general. To a near ludicrous degree.

The body cultivation methods were... not really focused on or appreciated. Even before he unlocked his Martial Spirit, Adam remembered getting mocked by others for trying to become physically fit. The effort put into the body was considered time wasted, time that could have been used in cultivation and enhancing your Martial Spirit's development.

Seemed a bit silly really. The highest level of body cultivation could literally transform your system into something far stronger than your grade, allowing lower grade Warriors to punch above their weight level so to speak. At least in the lower Realms, the rules changed pretty quickly as you progressed.

On the other hand, if a Warrior could leave the Houtian Realm, pass the Xiantian Realm, and reach the Saint Realm? All that body cultivation effort would be pointless. At the Saint Realm, alongside many other benefits, the body became immune to poison, was hard as steel... literally! They developed an internal Saint Realm Space, and theoretically the only way to kill such an expert was to literally destroy their soul.

Everything else could be recovered from.

So eventually, all the effort to develop a powerful body would become pointless... but Adam still felt it could be worth it.

Because it would take literally YEARS, probably decades, to reach the Saint Realm, forget the ones above it. For normal people, even longer.

Then again, this information had to be taken with a grain of salt. It comes mostly from overheard conversations and stories, even if it was widely accepted.

With a sigh, Adam moved the full bucket to the side, taking the next one and continuing to fill it with filth.

Some parts of his body, noticeably the sections evaporated by his dangerous regrowth attempts, produced far less impurities at this point. And that heavily suggested that the cells most compatible with his Blue energy and Binding power were the only survivors from the much harsher, more damaging tests. The cells propagated from those experiments and were slowly replacing whole sections of his arm, creating healthy looking skin and so forth that DIDN'T spew grossness while cultivating.

With longing thoughts about catching himself entirely on fire, Adam continued testing a potential body regrowth technique. Or at least, testing the many, MANY sensing techniques required for such a thing to work correctly.

Too much power? No cells would survive, 100% flesh death.

Too little? No cells damaged, 0% recovery.

If the power was too controlled? The regrowth was too structured, and didn't work quite right with his organically created body.

Too little control? Tumor and odd growths. Had to evaporate those.

He had to come up with all kinds of energy manipulation tricks using his Shard. Structures of power that would vibrate certain ways at certain temperatures, waves of energy that would be destabilized when exposed to specific pressure increases, repeating patterns of spiritual power that would be disturbed under certain trigger conditions that could be used as timers or to set off other processes.

Each new trick was allowing 'Research' to have more tools, to be more efficient, to detect issues faster, to determine outcomes with less error. So it wasn't really a waste of time... Probably...

It was just hard not to go the easy route and start burning stuff to see what would happen.

With a calming moment of meditation, Adam tried to relax.

It is not worth burning myself to speed up progress.

I have an entire world of knowledge available in only a few days.

It is mostly not worth burning myself to reduce impurity production. No, it is FULLY not worth it.

No matter HOW much this filth smelled.

Blegh.

 

[theaceoffire]

Attempt to fix the throat from the inside FIRST, not the outside.

Repressing the disgusting memories, Adam again attempted the 'Gentle Rebirth' technique. Version 0.0018. Beta release. Now with the gunk being expelled externally.

It was an attempt inspired/stolen by watching his right arm's burn wounds. The cells that had survived and prospered were slowly replacing the rest of his arm and shifting form when needed... basically they were regressing into something similar to stem cells, the cells that have not yet developed a specific role for the body and can shift into what is needed as required.

So, back to the new trick. 'Gentle Rebirth' would chose a single cell, vaporize it, rebirth it into one of these cultivation cells, then begin providing it energy. Of course, doing this with only ONE target would take forever, so the technique would basically form a grid like pattern, each point on that grid a cell that was being consumed and reborn, then allowed to crowd out the neighbors.

First, the Positives: Very, very little flesh burning. Single cells died all the time, burning a few didn't even warm up the skin in the area.

This was important because, while not technically breaking the rules Assistant Quan had requested, it WAS bending them a little. Adam felt justified, as more cells would be damaged through normal exercise than this experimental technique... but no reason to leave evidence around.

Also, while he had to encourage (vaporize) some of the surrounding cells over time due to overcrowding (No reason to cause cancer or anything), overall this was an artificial way to vastly increase the amount of energy resistant flesh in his body. Without becoming a bonfire, at least.

Downsides, however: This couldn't spawn new flesh. His vocal cords were still missing, and no, his hand wasn't fixed. Also, while the end results would be far less impurities produced, and there would be less sludge overall... this was forming a MASSIVE PILE of gunk as it consolidated a long period of renewal into one massive push.

He had been required to take a break, pull a cord, and have the eight buckets changed.

God this was embarrassing.

Anyway, this method did not promote muscle growth, it didn't spawn new flesh or regrow organs/whatever. More 'Research' would be required for that.

No, this 'Gentle Rebirth' did one thing well: It painlessly and slowly replaced his body cell by cell with new flesh that can handle Blue energy and SOME Binding energy without committing suicide and attempting to become the Hulk. Or whatever the hell his body had been trying to do.

So yes: His left leg was still crippled. But the cells IN those weak muscles and bone were now MUCH more resilient, did not spew black hazard material when cultivating, and honestly were more capable.

These new 'Cultivation cells' could shift form to fill in for other areas when wounded, increasing recovery rate. They duplicated without flaws and required very little energy to do so, and if too many cells gathered in one area they would shift back into that strange stem cell form, move away from that area through the body, and wander about until it found some area needing reinforcement.

Cell degradation (AKA, aging) shouldn't be an issue with these. Then again, this world had conceptual issues... Cellular decay may not be the only cause of 'Death by old age.' Heck, it may even be possible to 'Die of a broken heart' for all he knew. Seriously, needed that library access.

Adam watched 'Gentle Rebirth' spread over his right arm, the Blue energy involved causing his limb to shine a soft blue light itself... so close to the surface, the translucent Binding power and bright blue Flame energy caused the technique to make his body glow.

So now he was a blue glowing wonder.

Interesting to watch though. Made his arm look like it was covered in a strange grid, the tiny glowing blue cells visibly Pulsing with his cultivation technique even as the tiny points began to spread and overcome the surrounding flesh.

Of course, 'Research' was watching closely. Because if the worst came to pass, Adam would have to burn off his whole right arm to remove this testing area... and uh. That would suck. Having only one hand had been a more annoying issue than expected by itself, Adam didn't want to experience losing both limbs.

Thankfully... unusually... nothing went wrong.

Adam was very, very careful to not say anything about that.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The servant carefully balanced the serving tray as her coworker knocked on the boy's door, trying to ignore the wonderful smells. Working for the cooking group had some subtle downsides.

After an awkwardly long pause, the door opened... oh, right. He couldn't talk. No wonder he didn't invite them in.

Trying to keep a professional expression, shame causing a blush she couldn't hide, they entered the room with the boy's gesture.

She quickly placed the tray on the near table, and bowed. "Good evening. We are from the kitchen staff. Sister Rong has requested you focus on more basic foods until we can ensure your system can support more powerful energies or larger amounts of food."

She lifted the coverings. "Please only drink or consume one dish at a time, as each has energies that may conflict with each other. The soup is a bone broth, full of savory flavor and vegetables but without any Spirit Beast meat as that would be too strong for your recovering system. Please drink as much as you can to encourage your body to grow strong."

Her hand pointed to the four drinks. "These contain juice extracts from some plants that encourage healing, but you must wait between consuming each glass, which is a single dosage."

Placing the coverings to the side, she glanced at her coworker head towards the door and refocused. "I would also suggest waiting a few hours after eating the soup before drinking any of the juices, just to ensure you have no issues with the energies involved. Any questions?"

Shit, he was mute. Damn it, focus girl!

Thankfully he didn't seem angry over the slip, and waved her off with a bow of gratitude. "Then have a good day, Brother Adam."

As she slipped out the door, she winced internally. Hopefully the whole thing would be forgotten in a day or so. Just in case, she would remind the guy delivering the boy's dinner about the knocking issue. How embarrassing.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The soup was... very very good.

It didn't look like much, just clear liquid with some vegetables sunk to the bottom, but the flavor was fierce! Even the onions or whatever they were somehow stayed crisp and delicious despite being submerged in the wonderful broth.

How cultivators could spend so long fasting and meditating when the food was this good was beyond Adam's ability to understand.

He ate and drank it all, of course. His Shard sucked all the energy out of the dishes first, processed it, and ripped the results apart to speed up Binding energy production a bit. Thanks to that, this wonderful food couldn't hurt anyone anymore! Useful.

So... om nom nom.

The drinks were odd but wonderful too. One was clearly the orange juice that Assistant... no, Elder Sister Quan. That Elder Sister had shared in the hospital. Another had nearly no flavor, but the aftertaste was like vanilla. The other two were unexpected though... one tasted very similar to pineapple, the other was basically overly sweetened lemon juice.

Which had uh. Been a surprise.

Was there a lemonade plant?

Inquiring Adams wished to know!

Anyway, he was in a wonderful mood at the moment. 'Gentle Rebirth' really was making progress converting his body more fully, and that wasn't considering the rapid cell growth of the already formed cultivation cells in his system. Even better, 'Research' had improved the new technique by leaps and bounds... while much more complicated to activate now, it included a number of safeguards and restrictions to both slow down progress... and drastically improve safety.

Now he (theoretically) didn't need 'Research' to be running when using 'Gentle Rebirth' at all!

Well, Adam did anyway because he isn't a moron and even if nothing went wrong 'Research' could improve from the experience, but the point was this deadly and dangerous technique could almost be taught to other people without making their body rot or explode with cancer.

Theoretically.

Maybe after he got some more information from the 'Sect Repository of Knowledge', he could make it stable enough to be safe to use, then flexible enough to handle any energy pushed into thing rather than the ultra rare and super pure stuff Adam was working with.

Without the really good stuff, it was unlikely others could cultivate their own 'Cultivation Cells', not without a ton of work purifying stuff first. But even really bad results should reduce difficulty cultivating, increase gains, and reduce bottlenecks during meditation and advancement. It would likely be valuable to the Sect, and worth more than a few contribution points to begin building up some resources.

A Pulse of his energies had his body glow blue in various places as his energies cycled. Maybe 40% done by now? The progression rate was exponential, the more cells converted the faster the process went.

A knock had him sigh but stand from his chair.

It was time for another physical therapy session... even if his cultivation base multiplied his physical prowess, ten times nothing wasn't a lot. At least he could have 'Research' test various things while his muscles broke down and repaired. Maybe improve something.

Once his system stopped spewing black gunk and reached full conversion, he could begin experimenting with 'Growth' while his Martial Spirit was still inside his body. Hopefully that would help his muscles improve from 'Horrifyingly Damaged' to 'Pathetically Weak'.

Well, one could dream.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Brother Hou sneered as he watched the sneaky grandpa struggle to walk between the guide rails.

HE wouldn't be fooled.

Look at him. The 'boy' had nearly collapsed just walking from the recovery center to here, yet now after a day or so of being reclusive in his room he was able to progress this much?

Exposing this fraud would take cunning. Planning. The wits of a genus.

Hou sauntered towards the fake, ignoring the Sister helping him focus on his 'healing schedule.'

With an honest face and a pure heart, Hou flawlessly opened dialogue. "Good Morning!"

Grandpa Adam wheezed.

Brother Hou nodded. "Yeah, must be difficult without your cane, eh?"

Adam nodded. AH HA! Classic Grandpa, they always had canes! Trap set and target trapped!

Oh wait, sometimes the centers provided canes, crutches, and wheel chairs for patients. Better gather even more iron clad evidence.

His wise face spewed trust everywhere. "Hey, I bet things were easier back in the good old days, right?"

The blank expression caught Brother Hou off guard. WAS HE TOO SLICK!? Had he exposed himself!? NO!

Wait, maybe this could be recovered. "I mean before your injuries."

A nod. NAILED IT!

Better be more cautious. Subtle. "I mean, back then I had all these kids in the area, you know? Totally disrespectful. Walked all over my lawn."

Brother Hou leaned in for the kill. "Annoying right? What do you think those kids should do, vis-a-vis my lawn? And staying or getting off said lawn?"

Awkward silence.

Sister Wan was also silent. Maybe stunned.

Hou coughed. "Right?"

Adam pointed at his throat.

...Shit, he couldn't talk.

Seeing Brother Zhanfei walking with purpose into the room, Brother Hou decided to get while the getting is good.

He hadn't done anything recently that would get the security group after him, right? Well, best mosey on his merry way just in case.

He gave a firm nod. "Glad to have this talk, hope you have a good day, SisterWanItWasGoodToSeeYou, BYE!"

GET AWAY!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam absently wiped the sweat from his forehead, then reached for the sling and manipulated his slate. Even with one hand, it wasn't that hard to use his left stump to support the thing while using the chalk.

Sister Wan sighed at his note. "No... he's often like that. Seemed a bit agitated today though."

He nodded. It was honestly pretty nice for the orphanage to accept the mentally challenged. And he seemed nice enough.

His weary limb had just returned his communication board to his sling when a guy walked up. "Chongsheng Adam?"

He nodded.

The guy bowed. "I am Brother Zhanfei, head of orphanage security. Aside from introducing myself, I wanted to ensure you could easily recognize my people if you need help, protection, or even just guidance. I know how large the facility is and how confusing it can be to new arrivals."

What a nice guy. Though he was heavily armed, with more than one sword. With a bit of frustration, Adam fumbled with his sling and got his communication board back out.

Brother Zhanfei read the scribbled note. "Hmm... is it a secret process or can we have some security and a medical professional there? I do have some cultivation caves near the orphanage you can use for experiments, but some of your former villagers have expressed... violent suggestions. I would feel better if you had a bit of support when outside the building until you grow stronger."

Hmm. 'Research' was pretty sure this wasn't a threat or some sort of imprisonment attempt.

Still, who did he piss off enough to want to attack him? Most of Forestend ignored him, or took things at the worst. He had never really faced an actual lethal attack from anyone before, if one ignored the accidental damage when fighting that beast or the more physical bullying back in the day.

With careful wipes, he cleaned the slate and wrote a longer note.

Sister Wan pretended to be ignoring the situation, trying to provide privacy while still close enough to help Adam if his body failed him. It was appreciated, even if Adam wasn't saying anything particularly sensitive at the moment.

Brother Zhanfei nodded. "Thank you, I know having a protection detail can be frustrating and inconvenient, but Elder Sister Quan would certainly feel relieved once she finds out. Do you require any resources for these experiments? I understand you haven't had time to build up any contribution points yet."

Adam shook his head no, then gave a smile and a scribble.

His eyebrow raised. "Well, if you are sure. You do plan to go to the Sect Repository of Knowledge first though, right?"

A nod.

He nodded as well. "Good. Get yourself a good look over the various basic Cultivation Techniques there. The real simple, lowest level ones. They aren't the most powerful or the most efficient, but each one can provide a good foundation for you to use when trying to improve yourself later. I focused on the 'Sword Dominion' path, which is dedicated to creating and controlling a number of swords and using them in formation during combat. Elder Sister Quan of course focused on the 'Burning Recovery' path, where they build up control and use flames to help guide others, promote healing, and act as support during conflict."

Sister Wan blushed as Brother Zhanfei gestured at her. "This Sister is trying to follow one of the less explored techniques, 'Flames of Renewal', which relies on improving and enhancing the bodies of those weaker than yourself. It is part of the reason you don't feel like death despite hours of physical therapy."

He chuckled at her embarrassment. "Well, I suppose being surrounded by Healers will expose you to mostly the paths they know, but my point is that even if you feel the techniques are too basic or weak, these common bases can support more valuable or experimental cultivation directions later. Don't get caught up in your own thoughts before seeing some of what has already been accomplished."

Seeing Adam nod, he smiled. "That said, I am sure Sister Rong will have a picnic basket or twelve to shove your way if you aren't careful. Convince her that you are strong enough to even leave the building or you will have a dozen followers trying to force feed you muffins by the end of the day. And it will be even WORSE if you go sneak off to some cave, she may hunt you down, tie you to a bed, and force feed you medical stews for a month."

Adam blinked as Brother Zhanfei bowed, preparing to leave... and gave the man a weak thumbs up.

Strange people, but nice enough.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

As the days passed, Adam found himself bumping into Brother Hou far more often than expected.

Odd guy, but he seemed harmless enough.

So as Adam finally finished his most recent application of 'Gentle Rebirth', the (hopefully for a while) last of the black sludge was scraped off and a warm bath was properly prepared... Adam paused before entering the water and tossed one of the prunes into his mouth.

Not sure WHY he was being given prune juice, dried prunes, and various hard candies by that weirdo... but free stuff was free stuff.

Also, the various one sided conversations about better times and the ways things used to be... well, it was a fun distraction.

Soon after, nude, clean, and recently bathed... Adam cautiously stood on a towel and began cultivating his Pulse Cultivation Technique.

One cycle... two... His limbs had bright, VERY bright blue lights passing complicated patterns as they beat as one. His chest glowed gray as his Shard's 'Research' oversaw the process. All those hours running 'Gentle Rebirth' hopefully leading up to this point...

With a rabid grin pulling his face scars, Adam wanted to yell in joy. No Impurities.

Oh they still existed, he was sure, but as long as he focused on Blue energy rather than Binding power, his body was willing to actually absorb and convert that power into Battle Qi in his meridian routes, rather than being sucked directly into his heavily damaged and weak flesh.

He damn well felt giddy! Cycle after cycle Pulsed, his Shard gathering the built up Blue energy, slowly dripping more power that was being compressed, corrupted, and processed into his own personal energy reserves, ever so slowly filling up his mostly dry meridian rivers.

Tomorrow, he was able to visit the Sect Repository, and it would be a big deal, and he would learn a lot, and so forth. He was prepared to be excited and happy about that.

For now though?

With a thought (and for the first time), Adam activated 'Growth' with his (Now blue) Shard metaphorically (Or literally?) in his heart.

Cycle after cycle, liquid blue fire was flowing through his system... and the amount of power was increasing. What few impurities his cultivation technique still produced was no longer being expunged from his Shard, but was being consumed as fuel for 'Growth' as his Blue energy levels began to swell. The spiritual framework of his Battle Qi network ever so slowly was growing, becoming more stable and robust as the energy within gently duplicated.

Eventually he would be able to directly convert the various garbage energies gathered under his control into something actually usable.

Adam smiled, his left eye glowing with liquid blue flames, lighting up the dark bedroom.

Wasn't progress lovely?

 

[theaceoffire]

The fated library day arrived, and instead of bouncing with energy Adam was rubbing his head in confusion.

Like most of his body, his hair (At one point in the past black) had undergone changes.

While in medical care, it had been shorn off.

Had to be, the left side of his head was wounded and needed treatment... not that his hair follicles mattered much when there was potential brain damage involved.

Honestly, there was a REASON Adam had focused on fixing his skull and head during recovery.

After last night, having finished converting his body fully into cultivation cells, he had assumed many things. Several possibilities.

That his muscle mass would increase faster, now that excess cells could duplicate faster and act as needed material at any time.

That his missing vocal cords would begin to regenerate, no matter how slow.

That his leg would be less fucked up.

No, what he didn't see coming was regaining the ability to grow a full head of hair and the excess cultivation energy being used to generate some initial stubble.

It made his formerly bald/scarred skull all prickly and stubbly. It tickled.

Weird.

No beard, thank goodness. Fourteen was a tad young for one anyway, and Adam didn't want to learn how to shave with one hand in a world that used straight razors only. Reinforced, sometimes mystically enhanced straight razors... Cultivator Hair can be serious business.

Point was, he had assumed that if/when his hair began to regrow, that it would be black again.

It was near cartoonishly blue. As was his eyebrows.

Also, his eyebrows were back.

With a sigh, he focused on cultivating some more before Elder Sister Quan arrived to show him where this 'Sect Repository of Knowledge' was. The Sect was huge, even ignoring the city that grew up around the place outside the Sect walls. He assumed the place would be somewhere closer to the base of the dormant volcano, but walking was annoying enough when he knew where he was going.

Adam felt his Shard sharpen again. Percentage wise, his meridian routes were around 39% full after a long night of concentration and... well, honestly a bit of boredom. It didn't sound like much, but every time he gained around 10% or so his ability to progress would screech to a halt as the Blue energy would 'overflow' the banks of his system and nurture his cultivation cells once more.

'Research' was the golden champion again in this process. The rate of cell division and refinement had skyrocketed after his body was enhanced with the more durable and powerful cells available, and the sensing techniques available to his Shard allowed 'Research' to detect any malformed or mutating cultivation cells with no effort. More importantly, it caught them EARLY.

A quick incineration (It probably would have been devoured by the healthy cells surrounding it, but no reason to take risks), and he was good to go again. Normally these mutations and damaged children cells would not happen at all... this was a side effect of his body vastly overproducing flesh and muscles, enhanced by spiritual energy. That and his own desire to be better NOW, not in a decade or so.

This increase in mass production forced Adam to use his room's call ropes, and request a massive quantity of emergency food supplies... which apparently made SOMEONE happy. After that, every hour or so his door would be knocked on, opened, and ever more food placed on his dining table while past dishes were taken away. The more consumed, the more the kitchens provided... even the servants shuffling plates around seemed overly happy to see his hunger.

Once gathered, a quick domination of the energies embedded in the feast and Adam could eat the (Now purely organic/non-spiritual) valuable and tasty resources without concern or danger!

And even with all the additional food, the physical changes were... subtle.

Like the hair thing.

Oh, his muscles were stronger now. His left leg was even slowly shifting into a proper shape... in a few days the cells down there would finish realigning the various badly healed sections and he would be good to go as far as that was concerned.

But he didn't bulk up. His muscles were getting stronger, but... well, the amount of weight lost and cannibalized to keep Adam alive all this time would take much longer than a few days of good meals to recover from.

Sure, his scars looked older and less inflamed (Ha!), and he was able to walk with no pain and nearly at full speed (No crutch! Hell yeah!)... but he still looked wounded and a bit alien. Which was fitting, he supposed.

With a sigh, he gathered his clothing and prepared for the day. He could worry about looking manly and his blue hair later.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Xiao Quan reached Chongsheng Adam's room with a bounce in her step.

SOMEONE above her had high hopes for the kid. Her requests to grant him access to the Repository was not only accepted, but had come with a thousand contribution points as something like a signing bonus. It was a rare but not unheard of privilege, and she would take some time to hopefully guide Adam towards the most profitable way to take advantage of the extra funds.

She knocked on the door... which opened quicker than expected.

Quan blinked. "...Why is your hair blue?"

He lifted his eye-patch, bright blue liquid flames glowing.

She sighed. "Side effect from your healing then?"

A nod.

Fair enough. "Right, would you like me to help get your crutch set up? I have good news to talk about on our walk to the Repository."

Adam waved her off, walking without issue out of his room and closing the door behind him.

Her eyebrows shot up in shock, and before she could stop herself her Three Eye Crow Martial Spirit was summoned as she quickly began activating various medical techniques. "VERY advanced muscle growth, vast advancement with your cultivation base, your body is now very resistant to Flame energy... no, that isn't quite right. Is it absorbing my technique? Very interesting! Your leg is being restructured, and I think I am detecting some sort of... Huh."

She blinked as her energy patterns just... stopped. Looking back at Adam, she saw his dry expression. Oops. "Sorry! Sorry, I just... you know, wanted to make sure you were alright." And... her energy was moving again.

...How the hell did he do THAT!?

Right, personal secrets, don't intrude, focus. Recalling her Crow and collecting her calm, she coughed lightly. "Right, stuff to tell you, time to go, lets move it I suppose! With you able to walk...?"

He nodded.

She grinned. "Then we will have loads of time to get there!" She stood close as they walked towards the exit in case she had to support him. He COULD be pushing himself to seem healthier than he actually was... some Cultivators had major pride issues. "Right, let me tell you about the extra support someone up above has been throwing at you..."

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Free contribution points? Sweet! No guilt over abusing Sister Quan's generosity either, taking points from her would feel sleazy at this point.

While Adam tried to look calm and relaxed on the walk, inside he was full of happy jitters.

He could walk, he could walk, no more pain! Yeah, his gait was a bit wiggly due to his still messed up left leg, but he didn't need to clutch a stick and struggle with each step. He never really expected to feel such raw joy at the ability to walk in a (mostly) straight line, but screw it this was awesome!

The further they walked towards the mountain (Technically this was what, the Pyroclastic Flow? Or Volcanic Cone... or whatever), the more buildings and paths came into view. Not that it was super easy to focus on that, because the conversation with Sister Quan was fascinating.

For example, while not obvious to someone who has been here his whole life, the 'Burning Sword Sect' was a VERY important Sect in the region. The many, many surrounding kingdoms had to tread very carefully when it came to us, and for good reason!

In many kingdoms, possessing thousands of clans, villages, and sects... most of them might only have a few Cultivators reach Seventh and Eighth Order Warriors. Sects with access to a Peak Tenth Order Warrior of the Houtian Realm had high authority, and in may cases regions with dozens of kingdoms might not even have a SINGLE Xiantian Realm Cultivator... or have ever seen one!

Meanwhile, the Burning Sword Sect had dozens in the Xiantian Realm, with whispers that the current Patriarch of the Sect may be getting close to attempting to break through to the Saint Realm... at which point he would be passing his leadership position to one of his Disciples and becoming an Ancestor to the Sect. And no one knew exactly how many Ancestors there were or what Realms they had reached.

It was why a village like Forestend would be so stable for so long even close to the beast filled forest, and why so many warriors showed up to stop the stealth attack of the Spirit Beast. The Sect had power to allocate.

In a way it made sense. You had to be VERY strong to be 'kind', otherwise the various jerks and selfish people would quickly take advantage of you. It also made Adam more curious about what information such a powerful Sect would have gathered together. What they would feel comfortable making available.

As they passed more and more Sect Members, Adam let 'Research' record and work with the raw data, focusing more on Sister Quan's knowledge. The Sect Repository of Knowledge was in a Pagoda, a multistory tower visible from here on their walk, each floor smaller than the last with beautiful red colored eaves at each level. The walls of the tower was like gray ash, the red eaves like embers on the towering building.

The base floor was both the largest and the most open. While the original jade slips were protected elsewhere, the base level was filled with transcribed text copies on all types of topics. It allowed the most access without risking the valuable jade slips to the general public, as reaching the higher levels of the Pagoda and the valuable information within required being a Sect member, being in good standing, and viewing the data while two very powerful Elders watched you and ensured nothing was damaged, stolen, or modified.

But the base level, so large and filled with data, was supposedly open to everyone. It not only held information about cultivation and careers and techniques, but about carpentry, masonry, puppetry, cooking, sewing, planting... it was literally a mass of raw information that the Sect maintained and expanded as a public service.

Copies from this lowest level would be sent to various sub-clans and allies, and those outside who were very talented and could somehow advance with this basic information would be encouraged to join the Sect and gain access to the higher tiers of information. One could spend a single contribution point for copies of these texts, unlike the ever more expensive slips further up the tower that required hundreds of points to even view for a single hour.

They were discussing how some of the higher level Cultivation Techniques had very few remaining followers, and thus would choose to release introduction texts down on the bottom floor to try and entice more followers... when a group of five people suddenly blocked their path.

Adam blinked as they shoved Sister Quan back, the shock and their lack of animosity towards her catching the Assistant off guard completely.

Then, as one of the strangers did some sort of fire cage attack to keep Sister Quan back, the other four (Men? Hard to tell.) all made various motions... and waves of bright red fire smashed into Adam's body, swirling up into the air as various gasps and surprised screams from witnesses rang out.

...Huh.

Adam glanced down at his flaming clothes, his prunes in his dissolving shoulder bag turned to ash and his writing slate fallen to the floor.

Apparently the Sect clothing was fire resistant. Made sense, it WAS the Burning Sword Sect. Only resistant though... yeah, there it goes.

Blinking, Adam absently had his Shard dominate the still incoming attack energy and store it in the crystal itself for future use... even as his flesh began to glow slightly blue as it absorbed the flames directly into his cells as nourishment.

Several seconds later, Sect security (probably, they looked official) had appeared out of nowhere and bound all five attackers, even as Sister Quan yelled for help and tried to manipulate the fire covering her walking companion. Unsuccessfully, of course.

Because it was Adam's energy now, and he wasn't going to just give that up.

Sister Quan's actions slowed to stunned silence as she watched Adam breathe deep... the flames sucked into his lungs as black smog drifted from his lips as he smiled. "Are... are you alright Adam?"

He gave her a thumbs up.

She looked aside, removing her outer Disciple robe. "Uh... here."

Right, he was previously on fire. And was thus now naked.

With a sigh, he covered himself and looked at the melted slate he had used for communication. How... frustrating.

And quiet.

Blinking, he looked up. Several Sect Security guards were supposed to be getting the crowds under control, investigating who these people were, yadda yadda... but most people were just staring at Adam's now covered body.

Oh, his hair was still on fire.

It was such a common situation he honestly didn't notice it as unusual.

With a quick gesture his hair (Shouldn't it be dead cells? Only the hair roots were alive, right!?) absorbed the fire and got longer. Somehow.

So now he had inch and half long blue hair. Whatever, situation handled.

With an awkward cough, Adam gently stepped out of the ashes that had once been his shoes and tried to pull Sister Quan towards the Repository and away from... all that mess.

Didn't work, because she had to answer questions to Security. Especially as Adam had lost his communication chalk/slate. So she had to interpret for Security while someone went to get a replacement chalk and slate.

With a sigh, he regretfully resolved himself to have to deal with this whole situation.

...Man, he wanted underwear.

 

[theaceoffire]

Third Elder Cho blinked as her meeting was interrupted by her people.

That... That REALLY shouldn't happen.

Making some quick excuses, she moved into the side room. "Well?"

The man was on one knee. "Subject was targeted by five mercenaries during his trip towards the Repository. Low level Cultivators, one managed to restrain Assistant Quan while the remaining four attacked with various flame attacks."

Her eyes widened as he continued. "According to initial interrogations, they avoided using their weapons and ability based techniques in an attempt to shift blame towards other flame based cultivators. They were all apprehended within minutes and will answer... all our questions. Expect a full report in eight hours."

She glared. "Those... those bastards. Find out who sold our Sect member out, and if that damn village was involved I want to know who, when, and to what degree. This is NOT acceptable." She took a deep... slow breath. "What is the estimated recovery time for the boy? I assume his protection detail stopped most of the damage in time?"

The wince she saw was... not comforting. "The guard on duty was drugged, though we are still investigating who, when, and how. We suspect internal sabotage."

Her heart skipped a beat. "...We DID save the child, yes?"

The man stayed still. "Reporting to Elder, he received four flame based attacks simultaneously. Though his clothing and equipment was damaged beyond repair, the child was unharmed."

She... blinked. "What?"

A nod. "If anything, his health seems to have improved after absorbing the fire. The two victims are currently being interviewed as we find appropriate replacements for his clothing, carrying sack, and writing slate. As far as we know, they are still planning on visiting the Repository."

Elder Cho nodded... "What?"

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

With new shoes and less exposure, Adam was FINALLY able to see this mysterious Repository of the Burning Sword Sect!

...It felt like a busy market.

The lowest floor of the Pagoda was covered with massive doors that were all thrown open, dozens and dozens of tents and stalls were set up all around the place, hundreds of shelves were covered with all kinds of texts and scrolls... and the people!

Masses of color and noise bustled in every direction. People yelling for friends to view various documents, others outraged that someone else took the remaining copy and they had to wait for new ones to be brought in, interesting facts shared between people at high volumes so they could hear each other... it was glorious chaos.

Absently ignoring Sister Quan, Adam fell into the mess as he drifted closer to the tower.

Get everything valuable enough to be stored INSIDE the Sect building first, THEN come back out here and consume, consume, consume.

'Research' flared bright gray in his chest as Adam reached the first bookshelf inside the doors.

Without even a pause he began pulling down material, viewing each page for a moment, and replacing it. Book after book, scroll after scroll, row after row... He felt reality fall away as 'Research' became swamped in ever growing oceans of information and data.

He never even noticed the exasperated woman standing next to him, Elder Sister Quan thankfully understanding to some degree how important this was for Adam. Though if he HAD paid attention, he would have seen her eyes growing wider as book after book started to pass through his hands, his left eye glowing bright blue around his eye-patch and his body releasing a barely visible gray light.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Xiao Quan wasn't sure what to do.

Adam barely walked out of the orphanage, was SET ON FIRE, then... this. Just sort of ignored the whole issue and fell into the mountain of knowledge like a thirsty man in the desert finding a clean stream of potable water.

Her heart had nearly exploded out of her chest when she saw those massive blazes hit the child. Only his lack of screams or visible pain kept her from attempting some of her stronger techniques to put the flames out, ones that could have damaged the boy by itself.

She glanced at the nearby Sect Security Guard again, finding comfort in his presence. Her life was normally in the medical wards, not so close to the 'action' as it were. It galled her to feel so useless, so helpless as her companion was 'burned alive' next to her.

Thank everything that whatever strange healing trick he did involved adapting to flame energy. If ONE of those bastards had used Sword Qi, his body would have fallen to pieces like tofu. It made her shudder at the thought alone!

Her thoughts had distracted her long enough to see Adam had moved on to a second Bookcase. Maybe he hadn't found anything interesting enough to focus on yet? He clearly was driven by some goal, if his manic grin and rapid but agile movements were any sign.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Seriously, this language was stupid complex.

If one was a big enough ass, it was possible to write five symbols to represent an entire speech! Sure it required reading the same symbols in different orders and patterns dictated by the material and the placement of the characters, but it was doable.

As a result, a 'thick book' that covered all kinds of interesting textile machinery maintenance tips was only five pages thick. DENSE five pages, but yeah.

It really made the thousand page cultivation books come into perspective, that was for sure.

'Research' was actually burning a bit of actual energy it was processing so fast! Thankfully he had Battle Qi so he didn't need to pause and cultivate more power to keep going.

His memories were being stuffed with data to be 'Researched' later. Even the useless crap was helping his ability to decode the (stupidly complicated) languages, and later when he had time to analyze these things all kinds of stuff should turn out to be usable in one way or another.

Absently Adam felt some sort of wave pass towards his body, his Shard bending the power around his body and letting it go on its way. Probably wasn't important. Ooh, medical texts! Well, medical texts related to farm animals, but still!

Without thought his Shard would ensure that each of those odd pulses would pass by without interaction as he moved from shelf to shelf, gathering data. Valuable, delicious data.

Humming tunes that didn't exist in this Realm, Adam continued bookshelf by bookshelf, spending fractions of time on every document available. Since the more popular items had several duplicates for people to consider buying, he was making good progress scanning the first floor's contents. Heck, at this point he was only decoding the titles and front covers! He could translate the rest later.

He frowned as he reached into his pouch. Right, those bastards burned his prunes. Wonder if that mentally unstable guy had more.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Brother Juan sighed. "Look, Brother Hou..."

He waved his arms. "I'm serious! Why won't anyone listen to me!? I must have bought a HUNDRED contribution points of prunes at this point, look at my receipts! LOOK AT THEM!"

Juan sighed, Brother Zhanfei silent at his left. "Yes, I see them."

Brother Hou nodded. "NO ONE likes prunes! I should know, I bought like a bazillion of them! But that fake disciple grandpa is eating them up!"

Brother Zhanfei blinked. "I like prunes."

Hou waved a hand. "Fine, no one who is NORMAL likes prunes. Point is, that old man is just moments away from using his ancient wiles and fake young face to woo Angel Quan! Look at all my evidence!"

Brother Juan groaned and rubbed his headache. "I seem to remember you claiming that you would prove he was a Grandpa based on his cane usage."

Hou frowned with past rage. "Must have left a hundred of the damn things near his room, but he was TOO CRAFTY to fall for it."

Juan winced. "Well, I'm sure the dozen or so Brothers and Sisters that DID fall over those randomly strewn canes would have to mean something to you then."

He sighed. "Look, Brother Hou. I need you to calm down a little. No more littering, for one thing. It is dangerous to others. I've seen you having a nice chat or two with the boy, why not more of that? It would also save you some finances."

For the first time, Brother Hou seemed remorseful. "I'll be honest, I didn't expect this to get so expensive. Who knew Prune Juice was so hard to supply the Sect? I thought it was 10 points an ounce, not 1000." He slumped in his chair. "Didn't even taste good."

Juan nodded. "So for now, maybe hold back on the antics a little. I'm sure eventually you will find out that Chongsheng Adam is more normal and simple than you suspect."

One of Brother Zhanfei's people dashed in. "Sir! Brother Adam has been caught on fire and requires additional fresh underclothing!"

Juan's head fell to the desk as Brother Hou lept to his feet. "Ah HA!"

As the room fell into an argument about whether being fireproof or naked counted towards or against being a secret grandfather, Juan considered just going to his room and sleeping the rest of the day. Might be less stressful.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The touch of a hand caught Adam off guard. What!?

Sister Quan chuckled. "I think we should stop for the day here."

Adam's attention was fully awake now. NO! He had only read half the books outside the tower! Just a few more hours...

Despite his frantic gestures and scribbled notes, Sister Quan was unmoved.

Her look was dry. "Unlike the Repository, this outer area is not restricted and does not require appointments. Not that I am sure you had enough time to even absorb half the stuff you've glanced at today."

She gestured at the tower. "It is late, we can come back tomorrow... and then you can figure out what to spend your contribution points on. I would suggest getting a copy of the Cultivation Techniques you feel the closest connection to, for reference later." Glancing at how dark it was getting, she sighed. "Tomorrow anyway, It is getting a bit late."

With longing eyes staring at the tower, he let the woman pull him away and back towards the orphanage.

Soon, my precious! Wait for me!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Blinking back in his room, Adam felt he... might have over-reacted to leaving.

...Did he really throw a hissy fit like an actual child?

Clearly his body's age was affecting him. That was his argument and he was sticking to it.

With Pulse circulating, he activated 'Research' and dove into the massive mess of memories.

The walk there, the fight, the noises and stuff... push that aside for later review. Convert each text into the concepts and translations that they represent... eugh, what was THIS!?

The people here were so... damn... ARTSY.

It had to be a cultural issue, Sister Quan's notes were not this pretentious and flowery. 'In the twixt of time doth flower the seeds of possibilities, like a larch full of fowl expectations.', which after giving 'Research' some time translated into 'Wait a bit before the next step.'

It was hard to follow, hard to translate, and near useless anyway. No WONDER making your own notes was a popular past time.

And why was Adam having such a difficult time? He too was raised in this culture.

Simple.

When reviewing his memories, EVEN THE PRE-AWOKEN VERSION OF HIMSELF marked that stuff as trash.

As the night progressed, Adam grew more and more exasperated as the massive volume of data began reducing in size significantly. If the initial raw data was the size of a mountain, it had squished down to twelve feet or so tall just from cutting out the fluff and removing the weird examples. It was both a sign of great personal progress and a massive disappointment in literally several lifetimes worth of previous cultivators experience. He was sure SOME of this drivel was only written this way because the stuff THEY learned from was equally as crappy.

What does the attack value of a duck's foot have to do with slapping someone anyway? What in the WORLD had they been thinking where that situation even came up to be considered as an actual example? It was wrong anyway, once 'Research' calculated what the hell was going on. Though the 'Duck Slap Hat Attack' sounded fun in general.

Point was, Adam's study material had dropped from 'unbelievably huge' to 'mildly massive', and that was fine in his book.

Right, Cultivation Techniques. Focus.

It was a bit tricky to notice without reviewing all the low level techniques at the same time, but the overlap was useful. There was a bare minimum meridian route that HAD to be cycled for anyone to reach First Order Warrior, and any extra ones had various benefits or reduced potential issues in different directions. A spiritual network or framework that everything else eventually would be based on. He made a mental note to document this thing and see if a similar minimum cultivation pattern showed up at higher levels.

Some routes on the various technique documents were... unexpected. But 'Research' suggested the odd squiggles and unneeded paths would make more sense once the next levels of those cultivation techniques were purchased from the Repository.

Oh, some issues with his own technique was addressed by the documents, but his method in general was just so unusual that Adam wasn't surprised that he didn't make much progress in that department.

More interesting was the large number of simple techniques that could be practiced. VERY basic ones, used for camping and quality of life issues. Cleaning, moving small amounts of water, dirt, or plants... even tricks that helped preserve food or clean wilderness kills. The collection of small techniques seemed fairly useful, and it was sad that the dust collected on those scrolls showed that most Cultivators gravitated to the more flashy stuff.

And uh. There WAS a lot of flashy stuff.

Attacks with amazing names (God piercing ice spear, Mountain crushing elbow, etc), that required years of dedication and work to get any results... way more popular than a simple method to clean stains off cloth.

Didn't help that these useful techniques had been ten times more complex and given stupidly obstructive documentation, but 'Research' fixed all of that... So Adam had actual choices at this point.

Considering his recent past, the various cleaning tricks would likely be the first techniques learned. Not smelling bad was awesome.

Sadly, the vast majority of information (Even after simplification and removal of fluff) was waiting to go through an initial pass of 'Research'. Including the medical tricks, animal care techniques, and human anatomy documentation... basically all the building blocks for a new healing trick or two. He also had a lot of sensing related texts that would need decoding... sigh.

As he felt his energy slowly improve his cultivation base in the background, Adam sighed even harder. Focus.

He had time, there was no rush.

Just... Just consider the 'Gentle Regrowth' technique to be a more long term project. His new body would live long enough to do things correctly.

Glancing at his stump, he sighed... and chuckled.

Hopefully, this soon-to-be-reviewed data would give him a hand.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Brother Hou grinned hard as his ultimate plan began to come together.

A cane. Covered with plums. With a old school black and white portrait of the 'good old days'. On fire. There was even a cup for the fake's dentures when he went to sleep!

No secret grandpa could escape the charm and stereotypes so carefully constructed!

Brother Hou's cackling was cut off when he realized the flaming cane was a bit too close to his previous 'ultimate cane' attempts, and that he had apparently (accidentally) created a pile of wood (Canes), covered in fuel (Previous fire attempts), in a well ventilated area (His room windows were open because of the fuel fumes).

He dived from his bedroom as everything lit on fire.

...Well played Grandpa.

Well Played.

 

[theaceoffire]

After a massive breakfast the next morning, and Adam was checking his right arm.

The massive amount of (Cultivator refined) Flame energy had been a great meal the previous day. It allowed his Pulse Cultivation Technique to really feed his Cultivation Cells, nearly doubling his mass over the night while Adam had been distracted.

Of course, doubling his mass brought him up from skeletal thin to 'Needs a few more meals' looks wise.

Clenching his fist, he grinned as he watched muscles actually bulge in his arms. Thin, swimmer like muscles... but it wasn't just formless wimp arms!

Adam could probably walk ALL OVER the place now! This was tons of progress!

Unfortunately, his excitement at having something like a semi-normal body had him using up all the stored attack energy in his Shard with Blue energy in an attempt to push his improvement forward.

So uh. Yeah, the free energy refined by four separate cultivators was all used up now. Whoops.

Meh, could be worse. Plus, he learned a few interesting things after a night of review.

First of all, while it should be obvious, it is easier to absorb energy when it covers the body.

Instead of just relying on the Shard to inject Blue energy directly into his meridian route, Adam split half the power and had it coat his skin like a gas blanket. It allowed his heavily wounded skin to get direct access to the purified power, Binding energy allowing it to soak directly into his scars, hairs, and surface cells.

At this point his meridian routes were just barely at 96% saturated, the 'open aired rivers' filling with power and overflowing nine times now, every 10% overwhelming his spiritual network and escaping to nourish his system. He wasn't sure how that lined up with normal Cultivators and their 'Initial', 'Mid', and 'Peak' levels when they were improving, but it was probably related somehow.

This massive jump in progress was DIRECTLY related to his new cultivation practice method: By soaking his external system in power, this 'Overflow' process was massively sped up, as power was being soaked internally and externally simultaneously.

There uh. There were however more side effects due to the 'Soak my skin with power' attempt though.

His skin, never sun tanned to begin with and certainly not improved by spending so much time inside recovering, had grown even more pale. And his scars...

Adam glanced at his left arm. The scars were technically gone, as Blue energy encouraged his Cultivation Cells to slowly fill in the various pits and grind down ridges.

Now he had a network of slightly glowing, dark (near black) blue tattoos everywhere.

...Real subtle.

Since he couldn't direct the Cells manually (yet), they gravitated towards areas that had both energy and healing (Surface of the skin at this point) and areas of high use (Muscles counting as both as improving them involved damage).

So until his muscles reached some unknown level or he gained the ability to prioritize healing locations, no hand, no vocal cords.

With a sigh, he stopped checking his muscles out and gathered the cleaned dishes into a pile.

Last night's 'Research' had gone... strangely.

Oh, he had all kinds of things to test, his ability to scan and detect things through his Shard had reached high levels, and his ability to read the local script was near or at mastery levels.

But most of it was useless until he reached higher cultivation levels. MUCH higher, like Seventh Order Warrior.

The fact that he had made such leaps in improvement so far was through multitasking and stupid levels of energy control through his Shard, but from what he could tell after reading so much material?

Cultivation Levels were more than just a power indicator or a 'threat level' determination.

Each Order was, as far as 'Research' could determine, a separate spiritual network. Once someone hit the next level, the previous one shifts from an 'open river bed' to a 'closed spiritual tunnel' formation. This not only allows the gas like Battle Qi to be stored without risk of 'overflowing the banks' but was used as structural support for the NEW meridian route, or 'river bed'.

Each 'major bottle neck' (First one for Adam was between Third and Fourth Order), though Adam couldn't prove this yet, was the establishment of a NEW spiritual network. It was why people felt 'walls' or 'barriers' when ascending, as they were tearing new paths using existing meridian nodes as reference points to construct the next cultivation routes. Possibly by tearing through their own Soul. Which seemed nostalgic.

It was why each batch of cultivation levels hit different body parts as well, because the new spiritual networks were metaphysically connected to different points of the system.

So... he had to wait.

Oh 'Research' would keep running, no issue there. And he had lots of non-cultivation related stuff like Battle Skills and stuff to research, but there was no real point in making theories or working with advanced stuff until he was able to do some real research on these lower levels.

Because documentation and data sharing abilities sucked here. Bad.

Hell, investigation, research, and experimentation was horrible as well!

Battle Skills for example were so risky to mess with, that making new ones was a near legendary feat! ALL of them were inherited from a distant past, when species and cultivators of a stupid advanced level shared their glorious works with the weaker people stuck on this Plane. These Battle Skills had various power ranges: Human, Earth, Heaven, Saint... and more. But on this sad Plane? Heaven was the best one could hope for, don't waste time looking for Saint or higher skills.

And yeah, this Plane of Existence was considered backwater and pathetic.

There where whole realms where background energy levels were almost solid, and the terrible cultivation environment HERE had kept the strong entities that existed from wandering around and taking over. Being a crappy area was almost a defensive technique of this Plane according to the historical documents, and allowed people like the Burning Sword Sect time to grow strong enough to somewhat defend themselves. Barely.

None of that really mattered right NOW though.

With a sigh, Adam opened his door... and paused.

A dude was bowing deeply.

Huh. Oh, wait, he knew this guy!

Brother Zhanfei was a bit hard to understand due to his genuflection. "I offer sincere and complete apologies, Brother Adam. My people were defeated through devious means, unable to protect you in your time of need."

Adam reached into his new sling, got his slate out and started marking on it.

Yeah... and... there!

Turning the slate towards the man, Adam gave a reassuring smile.

...

...

This was getting awkward.

His smile turned into wry grin as he tapped the slate.

Brother Zhanfei jerked slightly and looked up... ah, there we go. Yes, Adam can't talk, glad you remember now.

Professionally the man took it in stride. Reading the text... "No, I can not let this go without some form of compensation. What would be more helpful at the moment? I know you have access to the Repository and contribution points, is there anything you could use at the experimentation location we are constructing in the reserved cultivation cave?"

Adams instinctive 'don`t worry about it' scribble paused... and he erased the text.

Another slightly awkward pause continued as he carefully wrote a series of strange symbols. Because while Adam KNEW the language well enough to write near anything at this point, his body was not trained to WRITE that scribble mess. One wrong scribble didn't make text hard to read easily, it turned all of it into unreadable garbage.

With satisfaction, he flipped the finished slate for the Brother to read.

Zhanfei hummed. Then raised an eyebrow. "Research subjects?" The look Adam got was... not warm. "Oh really?"

Adam rolled his eyes and wiped the text, his scratches taking longer. Damn it, he missed being able to talk.

Brother Zhanfei carefully read the new text... and his expression shifted to confusion, then shock. "You... you think you can share your recovery method with others!? What... I thought your recovery ability was something passed down from an Elder, you created your OWN technique!?"

Nod.

He was... stunned. "That... that is astonishing!" Still, he forced himself to focus. "But if my people are going to be involved with this, I will require full oversight. No hidden surgeries, no secret methods, I will NOT allow my people to be abused."

Nod. Easy enough.

Negotiations took so long that eventually Sister Quan showed up... and when Brother Zhanfei got Adam's permission (A nod), she was equally shocked at Adam's request.

She began tapping her chin. "Actually... I think my Department Leader may be of help here. If you are willing to include him, not only can he provide witness to the procedures involved and verify that they follow Sect guidelines, but he should be able to detect issues that may occur to the subjects before they become critical. Or even suggest improvements!"

Sister Quan began pacing. "Healer Jin is respectable and reliable, so he won't abuse your trust. Plus as the Head of the Medical Center and the Healing Branch of the Burning Sect, his word has heavy weight among the higher members of the Sect. If he agrees with your methods and findings, you will find many roadblocks fall away."

Brother Zhanfei nodded. "I would certainly have no concerns about you mistreating my people if Healer Jin was invited. Though I would still appreciate being allowed to verify myself... my people are important to me."

Adam nodded. Witnesses didn't matter, this was just going to be an attempt to document the 'Essential First Order' cultivation technique that 'Research' had designed and some experimentation to get 'Gentle Rebirth' (Version 0.4380, Beta release) usable by people WITHOUT absolute energy control.

He attempted to hum as he tried to keep up with the conversation, his notes messy as he tried to scribble faster.

His progress was messed up when Sister Quan grabbed his left limb. "WHY ARE YOUR SCARS GLOWING!?"

Oh. Right.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Eventually he... well, no, he didn't explain it all. Adam basically convinced her it was a side effect of healing... which was easy enough to prove, his skin was now smooth and almost painfully white at this point, the 'scars' were just glowing blue... freak marks. Or whatever.

Point was, they had gotten her calm enough to go out and head back to the Repository (This time with no interruptions or assaults) and Adam was now being forced into making a painful decision.

As a near initial Second Order Warrior, buying ANY of these documents were not worth it.

Adam either needed a LOT of these cultivation methods and weak Human ranked Battle Skills for comparison, or none of them. Without the other documents for comparison, 'Research' would end up doing raw experimentation to get what was needed... and waste tons of time in the process.

No, it was better to finish gathering the free stuff downstairs, finish development of the new Cultivation Technique and 'Gentle Rebirth' body refinement technique, and once wealthy start using the royalties from selling those to the Sect to build up enough funds to splurge buying data.

Right, interesting trivia: after giving a rough description of his new ability to Sister Quan, she confirmed that such heavy body modification would certainly count as a Body Cultivation Technique, since most of the existing ones involve body nurturing and improving defense and power through a similar (If worse) process.

It did also explain why all the body refinement techniques on the first floor of the Sect Repository Pagoda were such shit. Aside from bad writing and straight up misinformation, those documents were only the introduction steps to a much more complicated process. One that may require UNDOING previous steps in the attempt, as early steps may be needed to build a foundation but might get in the way of later ones.

For example, using information from one of the near abandoned body cultivation methods shared on the first floor in hopes of finding followers (Blood Bone Body, a pretty epic name at least), Adam found that this one process was split up into 12 completion stages (Ranging from initial to mastered).

Other body cultivation methods might need even MORE stages, the final ones granting absurd benefits like having skin like leather, early immunity to poison, higher defense compared to those at the same cultivation level, bones like metal, and more.

Adam's technique was both easier and harder. It (so far) was a single process (No multiple stages or sub-steps), and the results had little to do with your talent or comprehension... but more the type and purity level of the energy one was able to supply to it.

Right, the energy types. Turns out those were important.

Adam sighed as his body automatically ignored the random energy pulses and continued to read the free texts outside the Repository.

Right, so your cultivation technique, aside from controlling how much heaven and earth spiritual energy you can attract and how it changes your body to process more, had another purpose: To help filter (and later transform) the energy types to specific variants.

Why did this matter? He got a bit lucky asking one of his security people (He and Sister Quan had four at the moment) about the issue.

Apparently, when one reached the Xiantian Forth Order (A whole Realm above poor weak First Order Houtian Adam), one's Battle Qi would take shape into something called 'Mandates', figures or creatures or objects that represent a specific energy type.

These 'Mandates' would live in your Spiritual Qi Sea (Don't have THAT yet either) and by their very existence drastically increase the quantity of a specific energy type and the rate of absorption for the Cultivator.

So Buddhism Qi could from a golden Buddha, or Demonic Qi could make a hungry Demon, etc. No idea what his enhanced blue flames would form into, but that was a concern for much, MUCH later.

...Considering how odd Binding energy was, could that stuff even FORM a Mandate? No clue. It wasn't documented in anything he read so far either, but then again considering the documentation style that wasn't saying much.

Anyway, this unmentioned goal of reaching a 'Mandate' was why most of these body cultivation techniques were so quirky. Each stage was attempting to mold the body towards a specific form of energy, some even requiring Spiritual Beast blood, liquid magma, or evil stuff like human souls to be cultivated correctly.

In comparison, Adam's skill didn't care. The special effects would change based on what energy you normally worked with.

On one hand, this was a huge negative. The outcome was unpredictable, and thus designing special techniques or attacks to go with the Body Cultivation Technique was pretty much impossible. It also made promising certain outcomes much less reliable, as there was a difference even between 'Heat energy' and 'Flame energy', for example.

But on the other hand, this was a huge positive... No reason to waste cultivation time learning how to gather a new energy type or search for expensive supplements, just use the stuff your existing Cultivation Technique generates and gathers as the preferred energy source! Problem solved!

It would slow your cultivation progress initially as you redirect the energy away from standard use, but would make your whole body more compatible with your own personal method. That was surely enough of a benefit for most people to find it valuable, right?

Probably.

Adam blinked as he suddenly felt a dozen energy pulses pass through his body like it was crystal. Whomever was doing that was being a bit of a dick, seriously. Oh! The last five shelves!

He couldn't wait to finish this mess and head towards the Sect Store, set up so close to this massive square so conveniently.

Because while he didn't have enough contribution points to buy or rent copies of the Second Floor material, he did have enough to buy something needed for his future plans!

Adam grinned as he absently stepped to the side, a massive blade of Sword Qi digging deep into the street.

He was going to buy his very own Jade Slip!

Leaching power from the next ranged attack as it got within three feet, he felt the stolen energy fill his Shard even as it swerved off target. And away from the delicious data, of course. Sword Qi was odd stuff, he COULD control it but it had a certain amount of existence inertia due to being previously fused with a weapon, it was easier and safer to just... redirect it.

Adam blinked as an unrelated attack almost damaged a bookshelf.

And frowned.

This... this was unacceptable.

He lifted his left arm stump around chest height. With a thought, his Shard faded into existence over his missing hand...

And his Domain expanded.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Xiao Quan was pulled away by her Guard even as another three circled Adam... who seemed to ignore everything.

Even as she called her Three Eyed Crow and prepared her Fire Lance, her Guard had already taken four of the masked attackers down.

Unlike last time, THESE attackers were far stronger, easily Seventh and Eighth Order mercenaries. Any stronger and they would have attracted attention from the elders... and how had they NOT!?

She fused with her Crow, increasing her flame control, even as she flung the spike of flames at one of the masked people... But it was slashed away with ease!

The man had already soul transformed with his Burning Tiger Martial Spirit, his body covered with muscles and dark red fur. She was only peak late Fifth Order Houtian, she wasn't meant for this kind of danger!

A glance at Adam showed that his three guards were actually being overwhelmed... apparently the mass of attackers had focused the strongest on the child alone, showing a fanaticism that was unreasonable to any degree.

Before she could do more than focus her energy into another Fire Lance, the smaller and more controlled form of this technique used for medical procedures, she saw Adam dodge two attacks... and then look furious.

Still distracted, but enraged.

Even as she tried to do... something. Anything...

The wounded boy raised his left limb, a glittering metallic glass shard appearing... his Martial Spirit?

---PULSE---

...dry.

Dry.

It was... so dry.

Her flames vanished, and she could feel her subconscious energy detection methods vanishing into the void.

Even as the screaming crowds grew confused, even as the fights became more and more odd... it all seemed dull. Dry. Too quiet, too dim, too weary.

The Guards were... put off. Because while their attacks worked like normal in this odd environment, the masked figures seemed to struggle to force any attack at all, with blades of energy and waves of fire going off course, spiraling, then vanishing into the dry, dry void.

With no way to defend themselves, the attackers were subdued completely in moments.

And the blue haired boy with (now bright blue) scars continued to read documents, one hand floating that strange glass shard, the other struggling to hold a book's pages open, his frustration clear.

Sister Quan moved her wary protective detail aside and moved cautiously to the reader. "Adam?"

She blinked at how quiet it sounded even as the boy turned in confusion.

Her hand waved in the air. "Can... Can you stop that please? The bad guys are all in custody now."

Adam's confusion cleared, and he nodded.

The metallic gray glass vanished... And a wave of energy flooded the area, noises picking up and the wind blowing again.

Ignoring the mess caused, Adam tugged her sleeve towards the next bookshelf, his focus untroubled and his goal still clear.

She sighed, motioning the boy's freaked out guards aside and preparing to answer what questions she could. This was going to cause some commotion.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Hmm? Oh, right, whatever that was seemed to be over now.

Able to use his stump to support his reading choices again, Adam felt much more relaxed. It hadn't been hard gathering all the random energies being flung around the square, the massive area much smaller than his normal domain that stretched skyward when cultivating, but it had been frustrating trying to continue reading. At least his Shard had gathered the most pure energies and stored it within for later processing, it should help in cultivation later.

The rest of that energetic mess he just hurled upwards. Easier than trying to gather it or what not, and he was busy getting stuff done.

More importantly, let the guards do the fighting and get all the credit and Adam can focus on the important stuff, Books! They could have the credit or whatever, the important part was Adam hadn't lost any information due to some moron flinging fire the wrong direction.

Finally finishing the last book on the last shelf (He was getting better at this!) He gave a huge grin and absently grabbed his slate, making some notes and turning to get Sister Quan's attention.

...Why was she so ruffled!? Her outfit was way too dusty. He glanced at his own outfit... huh. Maybe he had zoned out a bit too much if he had missed such heavy wind and stuff. Whatever.

He tapped the board, Sister Quan blinking as she glanced at it. "Huh?" She took the slate to read it better. "Why do you need a Jade Slip now? You haven't even begun research, right?"

Adam took back the slate and scribbled some more.

Reading it quickly, she nodded, thankfully not looking at his stump. "Right, it would make sharing notes and ideas easier. Maybe you should buy two, one for the final product and one for personal use? Only Cultivators could interact with them, but it would still be much faster than the chalk board when working."

With his 1000 contribution points, he was already planning on getting a few of them honestly. Couldn't afford more than five, and he wanted points for unexpected material needs, so Adam planned on going with four for now.

One for 'Houtian Realm First Order Essential Cultivation Method', the second for 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique', the third slip for the as yet undesigned 'Gentle Regrowth Technique' (Wouldn't be a Body Cultivation method, attempting to use it everywhere would cause all kinds of disgusting growths), the last one for his own notes and stuff.

His path was blocked though. Oh, good day Brother Zhanfei!

The man was clearly furious. "I am glad you are unharmed, Brother."

...What?

 

[theaceoffire]

Adam pouted, even as he waited for whomever was supposed to show up to this meeting. The waiting room had no windows, almost no furniture, and definitely no style.

He never even got to walk into the Sect Store! No, there were 'security concerns' and 'safety protocols', yadda yadda.

In the end he shoved his scribble covered slate to Sister Quan with his shopping list and had to hope for the best.

And really, it felt like a rip off. He had heard interesting things about the Sect Store, and while he was going to be restricted to the first floor (Like the Repository Pagoda), there was supposed to be all kinds of neat stuff!

With a sigh, Adam relaxed back into his chair and had 'Research' do something useful, and begin unpacking all kinds of information related to formations.

Like Glyphs, it used not only symbols (Either lettering or physical objects) but conceptual placements to enact reactions in the world. A number of similar objects (Ink/blood Glyphs, swords, flags, even cultivators) would stand in a specific pattern, causing energy to naturally flow into that pattern. This caused the power to begin connecting and enhancing the members of the formation and the effects that are caused by it, a multiplicative effect.

These formations can create illusions (The ropes in his room made the illusion of sound, for example), deliver attacks, set up barriers, seal or confine objects or concepts like time or space... There existed all kinds of patterns and setups that allowed Formations to do all kinds of things!

Downside, it required both critical thinking and artistic abilities, two skill sets that did not normally cross paths. Especially in this culture. And the terrible documentation procedures in this Realm were not helping anything either. Any enhancements or advancements were often hidden from the public too, as expected by now.

Also, like Battle Skills, most formations were inherited from distant ancestors. Though (Thankfully) UNLIKE Battle Skills, it was more than possible to study existing formations and make new ones or modify old examples... hence things like Adam's 'call for assisstance' ropes being possible to design. And the many basic formations used to preserve food, to create storage rings, to protect Sect structures, and so on and so forth.

Adam settled into a meditative form, his Shard glowing metallic gray as it extended the domain vertically to gather energy. He had lots of new interesting energies to study at the moment as well, by the way... the attacks he stopped were similar to each other mostly, but one of the assailants had some sort of poisonous flame attack. Maybe because of his strange fire snake Martial Spirit? It was generating some combination of 'Flame energy' and 'Corruption energy' within the Sword Qi attacks, neat stuff.

Though to be honest, he mostly loved it because that poisonous fire needed a lot of Binding energy to exist at all, and ripping that power source apart released a lot of the good stuff to make more Blue energy! Thankfully, this time Adam thought ahead and had stored most of the generated Binding power into his Shard for later use rather than just shoving it into his system to turn into more muscles and weird markings.

Back on point, as Pulse cultivation progressed and supported his abilities, 'Research' started ripping the stupid language shackled information free from the mess he had read over the last few days. Seriously, how could anyone learn anything when the instructions 'Make a circle' took thirty minutes to convey? THIS formation documentation for example was massive, and boiled down to 'It doesn`t work and I don`t know why!' How useless.

Adam had more respect that these Formation Researchers could even gain a basic understanding of their craft, just from how terrible the learning material provided was.

Like this one, a binding formation that required refining (also known as soul stamping or attuning) over 100 flags so that the pattern could connect together and activate. Not only was it hard to understand the various steps but it ALSO required some stupid expensive materials to make each tiny identical flag needed. It did retroactively make some level of sense, as rare materials apparently handled energy better. Expensive though.

'Research' tore this stuff up.

Half the time the expensive materials and complicated patterns were only needed because of exposed faults in the patterns! Using rare stuff apparently allowed you to brute force the broken formation to function, even if at lower performance ratings. In fact, many of these flourishes and odd patterns were added (As far as 'Research' could tell) because the creators felt it didn't look professional enough.

So yeah, like with his exploration of new cultivation techniques, this literal mountain of material vanished down to something around waist height. Because (Thankfully!) unlike with cultivation techniques, Formation patterns overlapped. A Lot. And followed certain underlying rules.

It was a field of study that had a solid, near scientific structure behind it. Once you stripped off the 'cool' flourishes and started learning the patterns needed beneath it, the only tricky parts were the sections that were used to gather or generate energies, as well as the components that were used to define various targets. Those had to be a bit flexible and artistic due to the nature of the process.

There were a near infinite number and types of energies after all, but by comparison only a few defined ways of connecting formations, transmitting signals, stabilizing input and output, etc.

Which all circled back to his first experiments.

Sighing, Adam glanced at his chalk. With Sister Quan having his slate board, he was pretty much mute again. Still, he had previously written down his requirements.

A number of new Initiates that had NOT reached First Order Warrior Houtian Realm. Preferably, a series of Initiates with Martial Spirits of specific talent levels. He didn't expect to get the 'Sect Seeds', or those with grade 10 or higher Martial Spirits... but if he was lucky, Adam would get some volunteers with Grade 7, 8, and maybe a 9 or two.

Of less concern was his request for Initiates with the lowest Martial Spirit grades that were still members of the Sect. There were many, and most became servants of the Outer Sect or became villagers within the city formed outside the Burning Sword Sect's walls. In his opinion, at least a few of them would have enough hope to volunteer as Adam's research material.

After all, his (to be verified) body cultivation technique didn't require a powerful Martial Spirit to operate. Oh, it helped of course... but as long as you could summon ANY heaven and earth spiritual energy into your system, you would eventually complete Adam's technique to some extent.

He wanted to study that. Because theoretically, after the Cultivator's body was aligned with whatever energy was accessible... Their newly formed Cultivation Cells would not only improve their cultivation progress, but be able to attract more powerful energy than before. USABLE, more powerful energies.

Thus they could temper their body again.

And it should be EASIER the second time, as the Cultivation Cells may not fully form the first time like Adam's had due to low energy quality/density, but every attempt would make their Cells progress ever closer to the ideal form Adam had crafted for himself. Closer and closer to that strange, Stem Cell like near-sentient material.

Again, those poor bastards may have to undergo the Body Cultivation Technique like... a dozen times. Or more. And it would take them decades or even centuries to reach Adam's level, since they couldn't control or filter the energy in the same way... still, some degree of benefits should show up fairly quickly.

Point was, Adam had a plan to make this entire mess less boring for his research subjects as well as not time consuming for everyone else. And thankfully, the designs of Formation needed to impliment this was dead simple! Well... relatively simple. After a bit of refinement and stripping out the garbage.

One exclusion circle, a pipe with a couple of one way energy restriction fields (Normally used within Cultivator prison cells, not sure why this was available for reading), and a... pretty terrible energy sorting formation. Like... very terrible. It was almost embarrassing, but on the other hand there were few examples of energy manipulation formations to begin with.

According to 'Research', the designed 'T' shaped pipe would shove the most common detected energy down one direction, the rest of the mess flowing out the other choice.

It couldn't filter out specific energies, it was unable to determine which path the 'mess' would take OUT of the pipe, but... well. It would at least NOT change which output was which after or during activation. That was good enough, with a bit of logic he could use this.

Adam would have to document the process heavily though. And at some point, get a couple of pipes. Did plastic exist here? Maybe not, beyond a certain point Cultivators learned how to reshape bone pretty easily (Spirit Beasts were handy materials after all) so the need for plastic probably never took off. If worse came to worse, he could use a metal pipe or whatever. Once someone came by this meeting room. This boring, boring room.

Right, the process.

While Adam was there in person, everything would be easy enough. One energy restriciton circle, suck all power out from it, and then carefully add in the 'Research' suggested custom energy mix. He was planning on creating an artificial cultivation zone, one where each available energy type was equally represented as minute wisps instead of one or two dominating powers overwhelming the area.

Then the subject Sect Initiate would cultivate. The trace energies most compatible with his body and technique would vanish first, thus Adam would know what he needed to work with to help the subject, and they could progress! Practically no effort at all!

After that annoyance, one that would be far worse WITHOUT Adam being around and making it simple, then they could get started. And THIS process would hopefully be designed to not need Adam at all, as he didn't want to spend his whole life doing this stuff. He had better stuff to do, after all.

Craft one restriction circle (The Cultivation Circle) with the Sect subject inside, use the designed 'Transfer Pipe' to empty all energy within to the 'Raw Power' formation.

Use the crappy 'Filter Pipe' to split the power into two new restriction circles.

While determining what specific energies are present would still be tricky for most people, any Cultivator could easily tell which circle had more TYPES of energy within. Bam! Now we have a circle of (mostly pure) power to work with! If the Subject feels a connection to the extracted power, add it to his Cultivation Circle, return the rest of the mess to the 'Raw Power' formation, and repeat the steps.

Eventually one would have some mess of a ratio of compatible energy trapped inside with the future Cultivator, which should drastically decrease cultivation difficulty in general and allow them to progress much faster with Adam's 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique'.

It was easy enough to judge progress with his technique, assuming 'Research' doesn't find any additional issues. Their power should visibly spread through their body using Adam's grid replacement technique, much slower than Adam's progress of course since he didn't want to risk tumors and stuff doing it the fast way. Should be an interesting light show, depending on what power works best with them.

Once their body was at least 10% or more converted, they would begin to test his second experiment: Attempting to reach First Order Warrior cultivation using Adam's 'Houtian Realm First Order Essential Cultivation Method'.

To be honest, THIS was why he wanted research subjects. The 'Rebirth' process was (in comparison) easier to test and craft and verify. It didn't require a cultivation network, or rely on Martial Spirit talent level, or rare materials... without all those unknown effects, the work was causing very few issues during development. It was the carrot, the bribe, to get people to test his 'Essential Cultivation Method'.

According to 'Research', it SHOULD be a much faster method to become a cultivator, as well as a VERY stable foundation to grow from. Unlike Adam's Pulse Cultivation Technique, which required seven complicated meridian routes and large quantities of pure energy to progress and develop, the 'Essential Cultivation Method' was theoretically beyond simplistic. Bare bones, no frills, cultivation progress!

Instead of attempting to make future cultivation methods easier or focused on specific energy types, the 'Essential' technique had stripped out ALL the flourishes, the extra meridian nodes, the redundant or extraneous paths. If most cultivation methods were generic and sprawling networks, designed to support everything and anything with as little effort as possible... this one was instead a consolidated, rock solid foundation of support.

Hopefully this would translate into something awesome once said foundations were established, but until then it would make progression in other Cultivation Methods frustrating. The 'wiggly bits' that would normally tie into the popular and wide spread techniques commonly practiced would have nothing to grab into, as the 'Essential' method was focused only on providing a solid spiritual support system.

Basically, it traded away flexibility and some neat tricks for an incredibly stable Cultivation base and a high chance of few if any bottlenecks in the future. Probably.

Adam blinked. Oh... he had been scribbling a needed materials list on the wall.

...Meh, their fault for not replacing his slate.

The Initiates would have various weak foundations previously established most likely, from whatever attempts they had made already to advance to First Order Warrior. Studying that and how his 'Houtian Realm First Order Essential Cultivation Method' interacted with other people was the biggest boost that 'Research' was looking for, data wise. And with Adam in the room, any unexpected issues would be easy enough to address.

That ALONE would be enough to determine the 'Second Order' and 'Third Order' patterns before they form... and to see if any changes to the Cultivation Method were needed during those two stages. Though his progress towards Second Order would probably answer a few of those guess on its own pretty soon, more data is good data.

Adam would still have to wait until he reached Forth Order and give 'Research' time to record and examine the process though. He was unsure how the new spiritual network would be constructed after all for himself, much LESS for his newly designed 'Essential' method.

His thoughts and sprawling wall note making was interrupted as the door opened. Oops.

Oh thank goodness, it was only Brother Zhanfei.

He blinked. "Why did you scribble on the... no one replaced your slate did they."

Seriously, this man was competent! Good job Brother!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Third Elder Cho had cleared her schedule for the next week.

She glared at the device. "This... no village should have access to something like this."

Her people was knelt to her left. "The bulk of the attackers were Forestend Warriors whom were convinced by an outsider that Brother Adam was bent on vengeance, gathering people to destroy the soon to be built village, and using demonic cultivation techniques to heal his body. The instigator was a young woman, but investigation clearly shows he or she was wearing disguises. A corpse similar but unlikely to be the target was reported to the Sect after a cultivation harvesting trip and the case was closed... suspiciously quickly."

She sighed. What a mess. "Was it Sixth Elder Hawn?"

He hummed. "The Elder was suspiciously innocent. At the time of attack, he was at a meeting scheduled at the last moment with the Second and Seventh Elders."

Cho scoffed. "So he just HAPPENED to be having a conversation with the only two Elders who would normally be close to the area under assault."

Her person nodded. "The meeting was concerning a valid topic that WAS urgent, but it is suspicious, yes. Our network suspects he was the one who also caused issues with the recent herb retrieval mission and the blood ruins investigation."

Her face frowned darkly. "At least further attacks are unlikely. Chongsheng Adam has attracted the attention of most of the Elders at this point, and most of Elder Hawn's people are under surveillance?" He gave a nod. "Right. It was likely another attempt to discredit me, and our luck won the day after the child displayed his mutated Martial Spirit."

Seriously large amounts of luck. Unlike the normal grading system procedures, mutated Martial Spirits were always odd. Valuable variants could look like worthless rabbits or mice or (in this case) glass... then display all kinds of oddness and potentially valuable abilities.

It was so rare that such a talent would go undetected, so unusual for it to be as useful as Mr. Chongsheng's displayed talents... the possibility never entered into Elder Cho's calculations. Or ANYONE'S future plans, for that matter.

Some sort of energy suppression field, one that could restrict Cultivators almost a whole Realm above himself... near instant activation as well.

Valuable indeed.

As the boy was considered under her protection, she was swamped with transfer demands and data requests. All denied of course, and she had the head of the Medical Center, Healer Jin, notified about the strange situation so he could support young Mr. Chongsheng as needed and keep his people out looking for potential trouble.

With a sigh, she examined the device again. In a way, she was incredibly lucky.

This mess of formations and materials created a... a static bubble. A field of random information to distract and block spiritual detection. It was not meant to be used by people below the Xiantian Realm, which was the most lucky part of the story... the strongest fighter, a peak-Tenth Order Houtian Warrior from Forestend, had to stay out the mess entirely just to be able to fuel this criminal object and keep the Sect uninformed for as long as possible during the assault.

With a sigh, she sent her people the object for future study, and focused on the other notes.

When her fellow Elders began nosing around her protected Sect Candidate, it had initially been idle curiosity. However, when they found out that the boy was attacked in the MIDDLE of gathering research to document and share the SAME ability that had displayed such amazing recovery benefits? One that may be responsible for his displayed fire immunity?

Her high level support surged straight through the roof. Any chance Elder Hawn may have had to topple her well earned position was truely shot at this point, really.

More importantly, she was no longer using her own private resources to support such a 'long shot' and 'useless cripple'. Jerks. She was openly permitted to use her divisions resources directly at this point. Especially now that his Martial Spirit's mutation was so publicly renown at this juncture.

No, the Sect as a whole was much more willing to invest in this fresh new member's attempts and requests.

Which was good, because his first list of requirements had been a doozy.

It was only his open willingness to allow witnesses and outsiders to examine the entire process that even let the conversation continue without her slamming down on the kid like a mountain. Experimenting with the future Sect Brothers and Sisters would have NOT gone over well by any measure, and even after a full explanation she STILL demanded full oversight.

On the other hand, rephrasing it a bit might prevent future issues... After all, he was attempting to share what he believed to be a revolutionary new Cultivation Method and a supposedly unheard of Body Cultivation Technique! One that would improve cultivation ease in general and even more benefits in the process... supposedly.

It wouldn't be enough interest to give the child access to an Initiate with a Martial Spirit grade 9 or higher until his theories and techniques were proven, but with some politics and a few favors maybe she could get him permission to work with some of the children that had an 8th grade Martial Spirit but terrible background support. Outside the sect, even a 7th grade Martial Spirit was celebrated... but with the amount of talent here at the Burning Sword Sect, such people were not nearly as valued.

As for Initiate with lower grades than 7th, there would be a swarm of applicants. Most had fears of never reaching Fourth Order Houtian Warrior, forget breaking through to the Xiantian Realm... The possibility of working with someone respected or supported within the Sect would be reason enough to attempt to volunteer.

She couldn't attend herself, unfortunately. She was supposedly too 'important' to see the young boy who was rocking the Sect and already being used as a political piece. Stupid cultural norms, it was hard enough forcing herself to be valued and appreciated as it was without all this unending posturing and constant wastes of time.

Elder Cho waved her people away, turning back to the paperwork that was always building up on her desk. The treasure child was secured, in a defensible position, and would hopefully be undisturbed as the cultivation cave requested was upgraded significantly. The various attempts to steal him away were lost in paperwork hell and she was a few steps ahead of the far more laid back Elders who might want to cause an issue.

Mr. Chongsheng didn't need to know how many resources were being spent to ensure future progress would be hidden from spies and outsiders. And a few extra defenses wouldn't hurt anyone. Anyone important, anyway.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam was back in his room, grumbling as he ate a DELICIOUS shepherds pie. Seriously, he had pestered the servants until one admitted that it had been baked by Sister Rong's personal disciple Chefs themselves! He HAD to make sure to return such care at some point. Even as he took more bites, he pulled the raspberry pie closer, Shard ripping the spiritual energy out of the way of his hunger.

He was eating so much because his progress towards Second Order was at 99%, and before progressing he wanted as many calories as possible just in case his system required them. As it was, holding back his Pulse Cultivation Technique was almost hurting, it was so close to progressing to the next stage. Every so often a pulse of blue light would shiver through his skin, almost begging to advance.

Pushing back the plates and sitting down on a large disposable blanket (No idea how the impurities situation would go, this was much more than basic Cell replacement), Adam sat cross legged, his left arm stump cupped by his right hand... and focused.

His skin lit up as the seven cycles began accelerating, blue dots lengthening to white lines as his Blue energy threads gained even more speed. Adam's meridian nodes were stretched, each spiritual route swelled, pressed against his Soul and flesh, solidifying and twisting...

His left eye began to drip liquid tears of glowing blue fire as something inside clenched and strained. The open rivers of cultivation were growing sluggish, the gas of energy flowing rapidly building up a thin and weak shell, ever so slowly enclosing the entire route as the power cycled again... and more... and faster...

With a conceptual shatter, his flowing energy smashed outside of the now enclosed meridian route, carving a strange networks of new channels of open river cultivation above, below, and weaving through the existing Spiritual Network! Within moments, the sharp and familiar pain wore away as the wounds shifted, a new meridian route stabilizing and restructuring as it swirled in impossible shapes, weaving through and wrapping around the glowing blue tubes established by the Pulse Cultivation Technique.

Even as the new seven paths stabilized, the gas of Blue Energy and Battle Qi began 'overflowing' the newborn banks, flooding into his flesh. The clouds of Blue energy were forced to swirl over his skin, then was also pulled inward... his body soaking in power like a dry sponge.

It felt amazing!

Like a painful spasm that had finally passed, or diving into a deep, cool ocean pool on a boiling hot day... the Blue energy flooded his body and Soul, reinforcing the fragile 'river banks' and forcing the new meridian routes to become more standardized, more aligned... more symmetrical. This pattern may be an effect of him creating new meridians and 'balancing' his spiritual network, but with the exception of his left hand the new network being carved into his body was growing more and more structured.

His gaze fell on his pulsing Shard, the former clear 'glass shard' now covered with lines, cracking...

With a loud SNAP, the Shard fragmented, exposing a slightly larger crystal, edges somehow sharper, the visual ghostly image less ethereal and more realistic. The glittering Shard seemed... heavier. A weight in the world.

...Was that supposed to happen? This didn't count as an Evolution of the Spirit, right? That wasn't supposed to happen until Forth Order Warrior.

Yeah.

Yeah, this was probably alright.

The Evolution was documented as being much more dramatic anyway. Animals gaining extra limbs or changing shape, that kind of thing. And technically the Shard just grew a little, right?

Yeah, that was probably normal.

As the Shard floated down and returned to his heart, he felt his energy Domain settle... his range had doubled from a three foot radius to six, a two meter range normally centered on his body where he could direct and control all energy without calling his Shard Martial Spirit out. Useful!

The storage 'space' within the Shard had increased as well. The solid material could now store way more power than previously, around ten times the former amount... more useful than doubling his domain range, in Adam's opinion. Hopefully when he reached the Third Order, the storage would increase by a factor of ten again! He'd have to wait and see.

Speaking of which, his reserves (Blue energy, Binding energy, and previously stored energy from the earlier assault) were all pretty much empty.

He was going to have to Pulse cultivate some more to recover and stabilize. Which was going to be boring. Ah well.

With a sigh, he opened his eyes... and saw black.

...Shit, he was covered with impurities again. Damn it.

 

[theaceoffire]

Calm. Stay calm.

She glanced at the rest of the children. They were all just at or beyond seven years old, but most of the children here were with family or friends.

Calm. Everything would be fine.

There WERE children like her, without support or witnesses for this important day.

Her hands clenched.

Unlike most of them however, she was still ostracized. Because unlike most of them, who grew up here in the protected city outside the Burning Sword Sect, she came from a small town in a distant corner of the kingdom.

Another boy stepped up. The Sect member again glowed, his Ninth Order power lighting up the hexagonal ritual pattern before beams of light glowed over the child... and moments later an orange furred flaming wolf appeared.

The Martial Spirit Awakening Ceremony.

In a way, she was lucky. Because her town was so small, it didn't really have a name... it was more a rest stop that others found mildly convenient. There weren't even that many Third Order Warriors, forget someone strong enough to work the Ceremony.

This time it was that jerk, the one who mocked the other kids without parents or outside prestige. She watched him strut to the front of the group.

Yes, it was luck. Because from a very young age, as she heard stories told in the orphanage, she had felt a calling. A pull. A purpose!

She, Qianzai Tianshi, was going to be a cultivator.

The self-confident boy stopped glowing... and a Blood-Eyes Wolf appeared. She blinked... it LOOKED pretty impressive.

Not to the Disciple leading the ceremony though. "Grade Six Martial Spirit."

Tianshi winced. It wasn't a BAD Martial Spirit, and it wasn't like he was going to have Cultivation issues for a long, long time... but to a Sect as powerful as the Burning Sword Sect, anything below Grade Seven wasn't really worth mentioning. Anything lower required vastly more time, resources, and effort to reach similar level of results.

And that wasn't considering the monsters with Grade Ten or higher. THEY could accomplish in a month or less achievements that would take this poor bully literal years to catch up to... Just a side effect of his lack of talent.

She watched the stunned child slump and walk to the side, where a sympathetic member of the Sect quietly suggested options. Even though he didn't meet the high standards of the Sect, it was more than possible to become a servant or hopefully one day an Assistant to some more powerful Cultivator. Maybe even get a lucky encounter or two and change one's fate!

Calm. Peace.

She wouldn't need that though. She had a calling, a destiny! Tianshi knew that her path, her Dao, was to reach the heavens! To become one of the powerful people and see the worlds!

More children came and went. More than a few had Grade Eight or higher Martial Spirits, as they were children of Cultivators living near the Sect, but a large group from the farther towns and villages had no clue how their ability would shine. Thankfully no one yet displayed NO Martial Spirit, which was possible...

Not that she was worried. Because she wasn't. Everything was fine.

Calm.

At least the Orphanage Matron had supported her dream. Even younger than she was now, the old woman had listened with a smile about her dreams and goals.

It took a second to realize it was her turn, but she stepped up to the strange hexagonal lights.

The strange colors and stuff... didn't really feel like anything. Was that normal? Then again, none of the other children made any odd noises, so maybe she wasn't supposed to feel anything.

A black light swirled around her body... and floated behind her head. A ball of black light that... compressed.

Head sized. Fist sized. Palm... sized?

Smaller!?

With numb emotions, Tianshi felt her heart jump with shock as the flowing black energy consolidated into a tiny obsidian object.

...What was it?

Theoretically she should know automatically, but she was too stunned to reach out to her own Martial Spirit as it gently floated in the air.

The Sect member leading the ritual at least was fascinated. "Hmm."

One of his assistants spoke up. "Is it an ember? Or a chunk of coal?"

She felt her pulse quicken. If it was fuel, maybe the Burning Sword Sect would find it useful! Maybe... well, clearly not a Grade Eight, but a Grade Seven was possible, right? Maybe?

The ceremony guide tilted his head. "It is a Betel Nut. A variant black version at that."

What did that mean? WHAT DID THAT MEAN!? Betel Nuts were common snacks, chewed like tobacco and spit by commoners on the street... but it was a variant, right!? And just because it was well known didn't mean it was a low Grade, right?"

He leaned forward, nodding. "A standard Betel Nut would be green or yellow, and only reach a Grade Two evaluation at most, but this... this variant isn't simply a color change." His power reached out and... tapped her Martial Spirit, a weight of mountainous proportions almost crushing her existence. As brief as it was, she had seen the gulf between those with cultivation and those without. A massive barrier to the heavens.

A thin, faint light glowed over her Spirit.

The guide grinned. "I thought so... It is a Flaming Black Betel Nut! Much more rare, very unlikely to see one of these."

Her eyes widened. Yes? YES! Of COURSE it was a special case!

The man turned to his fellow Sect members. "This is a good learning experience, let us take a few seconds. Normally, a wood elemental Martial Spirit formed from fruits, nuts, or seeds would of course require nature, water, and plant type spiritual energies. This variant, while uncommon, uses the wood-like nature of the Betel Nut to fuel a flame elemental nature instead! It is one of a small category of Martial Spirits that go against their own natural state."

He waved at it. "The Betel Nut, or to be more accurate Areca Nut, is a seed from a fruit that grows on a palm tree, which I'm not surprised goes unknown to most. Oceans and such are located far from here after all, even if this particular item is shipped many places."

The Sect member gave a wise nod. "It is difficult to judge the quality of the flame this Betel Nut supports. If she is lucky and the flame has some additional unexpected effects, it would mark her variant Martial Spirit as Grade Four instead of the expected Grade Three!"

...Tianshi felt the world fall away as the bastard kept talking.

Mistake. It... there was a mistake.

With a thought, ignoring the powerful man destroying her future in front of her, she pulled her Martial Spirit into her palms.

It was... so tiny. It struggled, but it could barely spark the weak flame that clung to it.

...Would she even be able to cultivate with this? It almost felt like she was using trace amounts of energy just to keep it stable.

What should she do? What COULD she do!?

With fear, she spoke up, interrupting the powerful man. "Excuse me, but... but is there a way I can still become a Warrior? Even with... even so?"

At least his eyes held no ridicule. "Of Course! It may take a lot longer, but variant Martial Spirits like yours can have all kinds of fascinating surprises behind them! My fellow Research Department members may even snap you up before you can enter the servant training courses."

He waved her to the side, letting her ignore the expressions of the other seven year olds as he gently pushed her towards the nice lady on the side. "Regardless, just having a Martial Spirit at all is a grand thing. Your children are more likely to be even more powerful, and you will be stronger than normal people!"

She tried to hold back tears as she walked towards the other failures.

Wasn't... wasn't she going to be a heavenly warrior?

Her Martial Spirit faded away as her focus stayed on being stoic. This wouldn't break her. She would find a way.

Somehow.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Assistant Quan bowed. "Greetings, Department Lead Jin!"

The grandfather like figure waved her off like usual. "Just Healer Jin, please Sister Quan. Now, where is the boy of the hour?"

Her gaze fluttered toward the cave. "Still preparing, sir. He's gotten approval to select ten volunteers, and wanted to ensure he had living areas in the research cave for those chosen."

Jin leaned heavily on his cane. "I've heard the general gist of the situation. Any thoughts?"

She nodded. "He has two separate versions of his healing trick, one is a body cultivation technique and the other is unstable and not ready for testing. In the process of repairing himself, he also claims to have developed a rapid cultivation method for Stage One Warriors, which is mainly what got the Elder's attention."

He hummed. "Not another of those strange lads who ate odd mushrooms and had 'breakthroughs' again, correct?"

She nodded. "It is real, based on what he has shared with me so far and my observations. The fact that he has already broken through to Second Order Warrior is even better evidence."

The Healer's shock was obvious. "Didn't he only establish a cultivation base a few weeks ago!? What grade Martial Spirit does he even have!?"

She sighed. "Unknown. By anyone. Doesn't show up in records either." She glanced at the cave. "As for his rapid progress... In my opinion, he has actually developed three Cultivation methods. The Body Cultivation Technique that enhanced and repaired most of his body, his own personal 'Pulse' Cultivation Method, and this new one which seems much simpler and less dangerous than his OWN progress."

Sister Quan handed him some of her notes. "His personal method seems incredibly deadly and risky, while the various versions he has shared for his future research subjects is vastly more basic, even if they are ALSO slower to progress."

Healer Jin's eyebrows wrinkled as he read. "Seven simultaneous routes? Impossible."

She nodded. "Yep. Just attempting to understand what he was doing to himself scared me. His genius was obvious enough when he displayed his ability to comprehend so much information so quickly, yet his multitasking skills are far more monstrous. He tried developing a single meridian route that duplicated his own 'Pulse Cultivation Technique', but it NEEDS the other simultaneous circuits of power to remain stable."

He snorted. "He needs all seven simultaneous routes simply to prevent explosion! If THIS was the technique he was planning on sharing, I would shut this farce down now." He hadn't gained a reputation for nothing, after all. This mess was straight suicide for almost every Cultivator! What an amazing young man.

Their conversation was paused when thirteen people left the cave.

Correction: Twelve body guards and a VERY exasperated Adam.

Sister Quan tried unsuccessfully to hold back her giggles.

Thankfully, Department Lead Jin had more experience... but it was fairly amusing.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Qianzai Tianshi felt empty.

In her hands were far more options than expected, the several documents listing offers and potential future paths of advancement. The Research Department had made an impressive offer of resources and such, and several supplementary departments had suggested entry level positions.

But... none of them led to becoming a fighter. A true Cultivator, a warrior defying the heavens to explore the world!

These gifts tasted like ash.

She was pulled from her melancholy as a disturbance filled the room with confusion.

From the main entrance, a number of heavily armed Sect members were silently entering and examining the area for threats.

...The hell?

Three people finally entered wearing more normal Sect clothing, but if anything the chaotic scene only got more confusing.

The Ceremony leader flashed from confusion to awe, dropping to a knee. "Greetings, Department Lead Jin!"

...What!?

Before her mind could do anything remotely useful like BOW BEFORE THE POWERFUL GUY, the grandfather like man was waving. "Stand! Stand, none of this silliness now. How are you doing, Outer Disciple Gerard?"

As the Sect people talked, her gaze fell on the other two that entered. An odd boy, and the woman beside him was probably an assistant or something, since she didn't have the air of a leader... but why so many guards?

The... the heck was going on!?

The old man leaned heavily on his cane. "I've come today to offer something of a rare opportunity. The Sect has recently acquired a very talented young man, this Chongsheng Adam here."

A man with a bandaged left arm and an eye-patch waved.

She blinked. He had blue hair. That she had somehow initially missed. Huh.

The grandfather continued. "He requires volunteer Initiates whom haven't reached the First Order Warrior stage of Cultivation, so you can understand why we are here today. If his work succeeds, it will mean vast things for our Sect. Regardless of the outcome, I and others of my Healing Clinic will ensure your safety and health... and those who agree to join his work will be considered Outer Disciples, no matter the outcome."

He paused, raising an eyebrow. "I don't have to explain what kind of benefits that brings, do I?"

Based on crowd reaction, no. Some Parents and Initiate Supporters, so recently disappointed in their children's failure to be accepted, now glowed with the flames of hope.

However, no one shone brighter than her.

A chance. A CHANCE!

Healer Jin gently waved off their questions. "It is up to young Brother Adam to select ten of you, and he has requested to only work with those with Martial Spirits Grade Six and below." Based on the wince from the female medical assistant, that may be a polite fiction. "Please line up and display your Spirits."

There was a rush! And Tianshi was unable to reach the front of the new line! Damn it!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam hummed as he looked at the various Martial Spirit creatures (And a couple of weapons, neat!) arranged in a line before him.

Contrary to what some may expect, he wasn't THAT put out that he got no Grade Eight or Grade Seven talents. It would have been nice, but such opportunities would be available after proving his abilities.

That said, after talking with Sister Quan and Brother Zhanfei, he had made some internal decision.

THEY may be worried about his abilities, the SECT may fear about the outcome... but he had 'Research'.

Since failure was very improbable, the question became: Who would benefit MOST from being under his guidance?

Almost instantly, that discarded most higher grade flame related Martial Spirits. The Sect LOVED those types of Initiates, because their lack of talent meant that these people would eventually fail at cultivation, yet end up mingling with Cultivators and city civilians socially instead! Most would eventually get married and thus increase the chances of more flame related Martial Spirits showing up a few generations later. Sometimes the Sect would even help establish careers and jobs inside the city just to encourage such people to stick around!

He waved off over half of the children on that criteria alone, leaving those with Grade Six and below and making sure to note the children with other elemental affinities other than fire. Their future was much less stable.

As Adam moved down the line... he felt a tug.

...Really Simmy?

He paused, pulling out his slate (And confusing the group.)

Sister Quan cleared her throat. "Please be patient, Brother Adam is unable to talk and needs to write notes to communicate."

The pale girl in front of him didn't calm down at all. Her large, frightened blue eyes were darting around, her blond hair shivering from her nerves. In Sister Quan's opinion the child showed signs of eventually becoming classically beautiful, but right now seemed closer to having a heart attack.

Adam finished his scribble with a grin, flipping the board.

The girl gazed blankly at the slate. "I... uh. I can't read. BUT! BUT! I am willing to learn!"

Adam blinked. Right, she was only seven.

Turning the board towards Sister Quan, the text was finally read. "He wants to know what your name is."

The girl shuffled. "Oh. Oh!" She bowed. "Greetings, I am Qianzai Tianshi, please take care of me."

Adam carefully did NOT face palm. Because 'Qianzai Tianshi' with some extra symbols translated from Chinese to 'Potential Angel'. Because of course it did.

What. The. Hell. Simmy.

Glancing at the black wrinkled seed in front of him, he felt it attempting to pull at something unseen.

A bit of energy redirection, some freely provided Binding energy because why not... and the tiny black thing pulsed bright blue flames for a moment.

Sigh.

With a nod, Adam gestured her to walk over to Sister Quan, who broke into a welcoming smile.

Healer Jin (Because the Department Leader insisted anything else was too formal) stepped closer. "She is the first research subject?"

Adam sighed and shook his head, writing a note.

The man blinked. "What do you mean, 'potential student'!?"

Seriously Simmy, dick move.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The walk back to the research cavern was... odd.

A Department Lead, a Healer's Assistant, a Crippled Child (Mostly not on fire, stupid eye-patch), a potential student, and nine research subjects.

Plus twelve guards glaring at passing plants as they moved onward.

Sister Quan gave the small child a smile. "No, Adam is just... different. He was badly injured only a few months ago, before he even became a Cultivator... and using only his own abilities, was able to develop a method to recover from most of his wounds. He even is optimistic about regrowing his hand and fixing his throat, and I wouldn't bet against him."

Tianshi blinked up in wonder, the entire Sect seeming like a wonderland to her. "And... the research?"

She checked with her spiritual sense... none but the guards. Still, best keep to generalities. "Adam wants to modify his healing ability into something you children can learn."

That got ALL ten kid's attention. She smiled. "That is why the head of the Clinic has joined us, to make sure that the abilities Adam teaches you will not cause problems or hurt your potential. The Sect is also helping to fund the endeavor, and a few from the Research Division has shown up as well... it is all quite exciting!"

The 'potential student' (What did that even MEAN!?) was now looking at Adam with wonder in her eyes. "That... that's amazing!"

Quan herself agreed, even if it was a bit startling how many parents had tried to have their Grade Eight talent children or even higher avoid becoming a Disciple to join in this interesting 'experiment', mostly because a Department Leader was involved. It was even more odd considering that (if Adam delivered on his promises), that was the CORRECT attitude to have!

She guided Tianshi around some rocky footing. "Now the biggest issue is that learning the advanced form of writing Adam uses is normally done after you Initiates reached First Order Warrior... but Adam is unable to talk and thus communication will be a problem."

A quick glance... good, no kids were falling behind. "Normally I would be quite busy with my work at the Clinic, but Lead Healer Jin has requested that I assist Brother Adam for the foreseen future. So I will be acting as a middle person between your confusion and Chongsheng Adam's directions... please feel free to ask any questions or clarifications you have or need, and I will attempt to assist you."

One smaller boy raised a hand. "What... what exactly will we be doing?"

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Tianshi tried to keep her eyes opened.

Apparently (For the first few days), they would be sitting in circles.

Fear and apprehension had long turned into apathy, then beyond boredom.

Sister Quan had tried to explain what was going on (Something about pipes? And moving energies and... something), but Tianshi got lost quickly and was too embarrassed to clarify the situation. So after Brother Adam had everyone stand in special circles... they had to stand in other, apparently MORE special circles.

They were allowed to take breaks, eat snacks, even sleep... but she had to prove herself. To show everyone she was WORTH investing in!

...It was just SO DAMN BORING.

Her eyelids nearly shut again, so she forced herself to focus again on the strange 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique' she was provided. Verbally, because again, can't read yet.

Eyes closed, her Betel Nut ghosted into existence before her, the obsidian lump glowed with visible but dim blue fire. Somehow everything was SO MUCH EASIER now that she was trying stuff inside her personal circle!

Probably meant something important, but she didn't know what.

With renewed determination, she began moving her energy (Little as it was) in the strange patterns. Apparently the first attempts to share this ability had failed spectacularly because Adam was somehow able to manually target individual specks in the body with astounding accuracy... and he had to modify his technique to do that automatically for people like Tianshi.

You know, non-freakish, non-genius people.

Though much more complicated and less simplistic than the initial starting method, this expanded 'Gentle Rebirth' automatically targeted the... cells? The small body parts for the rebirth process. With focus and what little energy her Betel Nut could gather, she carefully opened her eyes... and watched the soft blue specks speckle her skin.

It was pretty.

To be honest, it also stung slightly... but compared to actively catching yourself on FIRE like Brother Adam had apparently done, this was FAR less painful and annoying. At the very least though, she could observe REAL progress even after a single day: now her small black seed could easily support the tiny blue flame that danced on it!

Still, the greater motivation was the promised 'Houtian Realm First Order Essential Cultivation Method' that the children would be given access to once they reached a certain completion level with 'Gentle Rebirth'. Even the nice old man had been impressed by it, and he seemed to know a whole lot! Nothing would stop her now! Woo!

She was unaware when she fell asleep. Thankfully someone had moved her to the bed against the wall and gave her a cover blanket against the cold.

...She would do better next time.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

In ten separate rocky rooms, ten children glowed with dots. Elemental energy, Beast energy, Plant energy... all slowly reforming such tiny parts of these bodies into more powerful Cultivation Cells. Department Lead Jin had called in his personal Disciples to both assist and experience the strange situation, their techniques and tricks actively recording the improvement in each subject as fast and accurately as possible.

It would take months to complete the process according to Brother Adam's calculations, but even after a single day there were visible improvements to the various Martial Spirits. Not an evolution or mutation... more like some unseen choker or leash was loosened.

The concept of a single process able to improve these Initiates regardless of Martial Spirit ability or element alignment had the Research Brothers and Sisters frothing with fascination, to the point where Healer Jin had them moved to a more distant room to work and not get in the way. Their objections had been epic, because HERE in the main cave was where the most interesting things were happening.

Young Brother Adam was actively modifying his techniques and methods. No secrecy, no attempts at subterfuge... And willing to answer questions at every step.

Jade slip after jade slip passed his fingers even as he would seem to randomly enter one of the children's meditation rooms, tap their foreheads... and return to work. Somehow he was able to map their entire meridian node network, give a full biological diagnostic, and mark down several issues that may cause Cultivation issues in the future! When asked, he freely provided detailed notes of how he did these things and the process he used... No one else could duplicate it. Too much accuracy, too much control... it was astounding.

The Healers were fascinated by the data, to the point where they went and purchased many types of jade slips for Adam to work with, as well as to encourage him to make more records for others to review.

In nature, jade would show up in naturally green, red, yellow, lavender, black, and white. To ensure data organization, Adam was keeping raw info in red, processed and commented data in yellow, and all the finished stuff developed in the green Jade slips.

Well... sort of finished. Over a dozen times now he had taken the green information stuffed treasured slips, had the other Sect Members give opinions, then make major modifications and shove it all back into a red slip! As if all that work was only preparation material, worthless on its own!

While guest Elders and Sect members who could be trusted came and went, asking questions and making suggestions, Adam was a lone boat in a calm sea. Chaos swirled in his wake as he smoothly researched each child, made minor modifications to his 'First Order Essential' method, and so forth. He had a clear path no one else could see, and he would not be turned astray... no matter how powerful the Sect member making suggestions was or how advanced their cultivation based had climbed.

It was nearly a week later that Adam paused with a huge smile, his slate marked. He handed it over to his friend.

Sister Quan's mouth was wide open. "What do you MEAN you are ready to get started!? The kids progress is already astounding!"

The boy blinked before he noticed that at some point the cave was full of desks, paperwork being done everywhere, and that Department Lead Healer Jin had apparently moved his administration office into Adam's work area. Oh, and that the dozen or so people were ALSO staring at Adam in shock.

The grandfather man saw Adam's deadpanned expression and shrugged. "I'm old." He gestured. "Need to be here, need to get work done... and it didn't seem to be getting in your way."

...Fair enough.

Adam grabbed the white jade slip he had been using for random conversations he WISHED he could have verbally.

Passing it to Sister Quan, she blinked. "Oh... Adam meant that the children had progressed far enough through 'Gentle Rebirth' to benefit from attempting the cultivation of the 'Houtian Realm First Order Essential Cultivation Method' safely."

Her look turned a bit odd. "Because WITHOUT using 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique' first to a satisfactory level, progress will take too long."

Blinking at Adam, she ignored the stunned audience. "How long is the estimate for gaining an initial cultivation base following this method? To become a First Order Warrior?"

He held up four fingers. She gasped. "FOUR WEEKS!?"

Now ADAM had the strange look. He scribbled on his board. Sister Quan read aloud. "Uh... 'That would be forever, I feel bad enough about this needing another four days as it is.'"

Dead. Silence.

...She glared at Adam. "It took me a year and a half to reach the First Order Warrior Cultivation Level. You have anything to say to me!?"

Missing her mood entirely, he gave her a compassionate pat on the shoulder and went back to work.

 

[theaceoffire]

Adam idly flipped the most recently completed 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique' (Version 1.0122, Official Release! Woo!) jade slip in his right hand as he relaxed in his chair.

He was feeling fairly vindicated at the moment, really.

As expected, the grade of Martial Spirit didn't affect the process much. Not according to 'Research' anyway, the sample size was too small without superpowers to cheat out eventual answers.

Since Simmy was likely behind guiding his future Disciple towards Adam's neck of the woods, that left nine remaining positions for initial testing. Harsh limits. So rather than fixate on grabbing the highest Grade talents to increase success chance or the lowest to prove the prestige, Adam aimed for three animal, three plant (Or plant like), and three... other... Martial Spirits. More rare, he had ended up with a boy who's spirit was a club, another with a dagger Martial Spirit, and a girl with what seemed to be an ice cloud.

In total, Adam ended up with three boys and six girls, leaving out young Tianshi. Mostly chosen because he knew the girls were less likely to find good careers in this sexist Realm otherwise, at least according to his memories: His mom had been talented after all, and still ended up begging for help.

Pushing back the spike of anger, he replaced the 'Gentle Rebirth' jade on the desk and then began to fiddle more with his slightly worn white jade slip of personal notes and ideas.

Right, unexpected differences. The boy and two girls with beast or animal Martial Spirits found it easier to convert their normal cells into Cultivation Cells, much more simplistic than expected. It also took less energy to increase the cell reproduction rate without creating personal risk. However, they needed more energy density than projected in their cultivation circles and it needed to be resupplied more often as well.

The three girls with plant like Martial Spirits (One girl had a mushroom, but it acted similar to the flower and the tree-sprout) found it harder to convert their body into Cultivation Cells. Took twice as long. On the other hand, gathering energy and controlling it was vastly easier for this group, and it helped balance things out. Maybe because of how Plants normally work with Sunlight energy? Nature DID cultivate in this Realm, after all.

The last two boys and girl fell fairly close to the expected progression rates. So theoretically weapon users, random object Spirits, and pure elemental users should also follow this pattern in the future. Even so, Adam made sure to note the issues within the technique itself so future followers would be aware of potential issues related to it.

Adam glanced at his produced pipes, the newest ones made of some sort of Spirit Beast bone and FILLED with various formations. And one on the surface made of gibberish to mess with people.

Those devices... had turned out annoying.

The initial design? Way too optimistic. Not the energy restricting circle pattern that he got from the Sect Repository Pagoda, which he HAD asked about. That one worked like a charm!

Side note, that pattern was widely shared because it only blocked ambient energy movement... any structured attack could smash through, and people could walk right out of the circle with ease. You needed all the other, HIDDEN and RESTRICTED formations and physical barriers to make the thing useful as a prison, which is why that particular pattern was shared so easily by the Sect.

Anyway, back to his design flaws.

Take the simpler 'Pump Pipe': A tube with one directional energy formations at both ends, that is able to attract energy when provided Battle Qi, thus sucking all power from one end to the other.

Simple, easy to calculate, and... wrong.

Because even when made from Spirit Beast Bones, at the end of the day... spiritual energy doesn't care about pipe walls. It would swirl towards the patterns, pass into the pipe, exit the pipe walls, and loop around to do it again. Pointless. Frustrating!

The eventual, successful pipe required a custom repeated formation string Adam created, spiraling within the pipe walls to make it ACT like a pipe to non-physical things. So. Annoying.

On the plus side, Healer Jin had been super helpful! It was while covering his issues and problems with the man and listening to the following conversation that he had a big breakthrough with his 'Filter Pipe' idea!

See, there was no existing or easily developed method to detect the types or number of spiritual energy strands within a streaming flow, or at least not one that he had found on the first floor of the Sect Repository Pagoda or that Healer Jin had ever experienced... but the grandfather-like man DID know a basic formation that could detect the ABSENCE of spiritual energy flow!

It was used as part of a redundant security formation, to detect when someone was attempting to block all outgoing signals and energies when trying to break in. It was perfect!

Because with his first prototypes, Adam found that the previous 'Filter Pipe' took in a mess (And spewed it everywhere, but the spiral 'Please act like a pipe to energy' formation works now) and split the most abundant energy detected down one of two exits, the other getting the remaining gunk. As expected.

No way of knowing which was which either, not unless a Cultivator tested the results and verified it was only a single energy type. As designed.

And uh... that was where Adam fell into an issue.

Apparently, most Cultivators COULDN'T detect all the types of energy they collected. Not unless the difference was so huge that the scenario may as well be slapping them in the face. The concept of being so blind alone confused Adam until Sister Quan explained more about what a somewhat normal person could detect when working with heaven and earth spiritual energies.

Summary: Not. Much.

Not until way higher cultivation levels did their spiritual sense get that sensitive. Even then, the Cultivation Techniques used could have a heavy impact on the sensing abilities of the Cultivator in question.

Anyway, THIS was why the conversation with Healer Jin became so important: A formation to detect nothing!

Step one, a Filter Pipe. But instead of pumping the outputs to two circles... he had each outgoing pipe connect to their own, NEW Filter Pipes!

This gave two pairs of outputs instead of the original double result.

One pair would both output SOMETHING, while the 'Pure' output would have one with the good stuff and the other without something to produce.

Bam! Slap on an illusion formation and whichever result DIDN'T have the good stuff would glow red!

Then you could let the junk escape back into the air, return it to the original mess circle and filter other energy types out, or whatever.

His support people still couldn't detect what TYPE of filtered energy they had gathered, but at least it was known to be a single type. The Research Division people were even now still playing with the various prototype pipes and formations Adam had shared, seeing if the system could be improved further.

He glanced at his personal paperwork. And his new financial reports.

Yeah, at this time contribution points were not an issue.

Over forty modified and designed formation donations to the Sect, his being granted credit on seven different prototype versions of 'Houtian Realm First Order Essential Cultivation Method' and three stable versions of 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique', his submitted custom commentary on the differences and changes between them... Being the source author was still classified to outsiders, but he got paid the same amount either way.

Honestly, Adam was shocked that the Elders had approved all the subsidies and continuous royalties he had qualified for. And startled that they were actually willing to follow through with their debts, even after seeing the bill!

Yeah, Sect currency wouldn't be an issue. Not that he was going on a spending spree yet, any new data from the Pagoda would be useful later... it was simply far less relevant and interesting than the experimental stuff being done right now.

His Pulse Cultivation progress had already reached 9% towards Third Order, which was pretty darn quick considering how little time he had for cultivation recently. To be honest, he was cheating a bit: A cultivation circle was being stuffed with Blue and Binding energy when he was too busy to cultivate, 'Growth' helping the energy density grow over time.

Acted a bit like a personal holy land when he had time to actual work on his spiritual network.

Might want to mention that to others, now that he thought about it. Using a Pump Pipe, a Sect follower could empty a circle, then slowly fill it over time with their own personal Battle Qi. Create an environment of purified energy for breakthroughs or whatever, far more dense than could be stored in their own body.

...Hmm. Might also cause an explosion, if too much energy was stuffed into a circle. Especially without Adam around to notice the issue, since everyone else seems blind to energy in general. Maybe best to hold off on that.

Adam added the new thoughts to his white note jade and focused on old man Jin walking over.

The Department Lead leaned on his cane, his face frowning. "There may be a problem. Your 'potential student' isn't following the advancement rates of the other subjects. It may have been only a couple of days, but her progress is almost nonexistent."

Adam sighed but nodded.

To be fair, he expected this.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Another frustrating hour, but Tianshi was grinning. She had made progress!

It was hard, stressful, and the air felt so... so dry. But compared to cultivating OUTSIDE her circle (curiosity and fear of being potentially sabotaged prompted the attempt) this was a bazillion times faster!

Outside the circle, it was as if existence ignored her. Only fragments of spiritual energy, if any, came her way.

But here? She could feel whole strands of power, and manipulate an entire wisp in only an hour or so!

And according to Brother Adam, in only two more days she would be able to be a real, genuine Cultivator!

Absently she wiped more sweat from her brow, her weary body too hyped to relax. Who needed sleep!? Not with progress to be had!

She almost missed the door opening, as two people entered. A calm Brother Adam and... a concerned Sister Quan?

A spike of worry hit her gut. With a smile, she bowed. "Greetings Brother Adam, Sister Quan! I have managed to gather an entire eight wisps of energy today!"

It... well, it was only seven. But she was about to finish her eighth so... that counted, right! And it only made sense this would be so tricky compared to the much easier 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique', as this 'Houtian Realm First Order Essential Cultivation Method' had to rely on her Martial Spirit directly. It still took a bit of additional concentration to ensure the weak blue flame glowing on her Burning Betel Nut Martial Spirit stayed stable.

Brother Adams smile lifted her spirits... but Sister Quan's wince dropped them through the floor. "Sister Quan?"

Before the woman could talk, Adam pulled out another of those odd jade slips, passing it to the Sister to read. "Right. Ahem... 'Sister Tianshi, I have predicted that you would struggle following the standard cultivation method I provided to you and the others, correct?'"

She felt her breath catch. "ah..." No, calm. "No, I may have had... a few problems getting started... but today, I feel I can easily reach a dozen wisps of power!" Just... just stay up later, do a few more attempts, skip one night of sleep...

Sister Quan looked miserable. "That... that's great. But if things were going as designed, you would be working with strands of energy at this point... hundreds, possibly."

...What?

Her despair was derailed by Adam clapping her shoulder, with a smile.

It didn't look like disappointment. Of seeing a failure.

Right, this man was a genius!

He had been worse than her, a cripple with almost incurable wounds! And he made all these amazing abilities while high on drugs and near death, fixing all his problems without any trouble! He had a solution! He had to! He... He had to.

With desperation she watched him casually pass the jade slip back to Sister Quan... whose expression blanked back to something odd. "Adam says your progress, or lack there of, was expected." She turned towards Adam. "Why did you choose her if you knew she was going to have so much trouble?"

Noticing his dry look... she chuckled, embarrassed, and returned the slip so the boy could actually ANSWER her question.

Tianshi hung on every movement. This... there had to be a reason.

Quan accepted the updated slip and sent her Qi inside. "Oh." She blinked... and looked astounded. "Adam says that he believes you have the same odd energy affinity that HE had. Which is why he wanted you to become his student in the first place."

She blinked. His what?

Sister Quan also caught up with her words. "POTENTIAL STUDENT! I mean, I didn't say anything!" She glared at the little girl. "You heard nothing. I didn't spill anything and this never happened."

A heat burned in her chest even as tears tried to fall.

Hope.

How long had it been since true hope had supported her? Even after being selected for this rare chance, she had secretly worried about not measuring up, about falling behind... and reality had seemed determined to enforce the worst case scenario.

The older woman accepted an updated jade slip from Adam, her face blushing red from her blunder. "I suppose that makes sense." She walked over and gave Tianshi a half hug. "Right, so like Adam wrote earlier, he expected you to have cultivation issues because you need access to a very powerful and pure energy that doesn't naturally occur here at the Sect. So that is why you are not being included with the other children when it comes to the various tests and documentation we've been doing."

She blinked. "What? They were going through that?"

Adam nodded, and tried to grab the jade slip... but Sister Quan held it up high. "Uh uh. You could have told me this stuff before I walked into this room and looked like a moron. Promise me to explain the situation in FULL before I continue."

With a pout, he nodded and accepted the slip... then passed it back.

It was really amazing to Tianshi that such little time was needed to put so much information on those things.

...It was also amusing watching Sister Quan's expressions change so rapidly.

She watched her older friend turn to Adam in shock. "What do you MEAN you can control all spiritual energy!?"

What?

Adam shrugged. So... it must be true.

Huh.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Elder Cho was rubbing her forehead in exasperation... and a potential headache. "And... no one had bothered to ask him directly?"

While Cho herself had advanced at a young enough age to even now look like a woman in the prime of youth, poor Department Leader Jin still wore the age of his life like a proud badge. According to him, while possible to modify his form to appear younger, he had earned those wrinkles.

And the bastard looked pretty amused. "Indeed. Everyone involved just assumed he had the ability to suppress Cultivators within a specific area. Which... to be fair, is technically true."

She glared at the jerk. "Repressing energy in a battle is different from ABSOLUTE CONTROL OF SPIRITUAL ENERGY. How the HELL is that related to glass anyway!?"

He grinned. "No one asked what his Martial Spirit was either. Not even his old villagers, according to Assistant Quan."

Elder Cho felt her eyebrow twitch. "...and I assume then, it isn't a glass shard?"

"Nope."

The eye twitch got wilder. "Just...go ahead and tell me."

Department Lead Healer Jin chuckled. "Chongsheng Adam's Martial Spirit is an energy Crystal. Spiritual Energy given solid form."

She glared at nothing. "And until we stuffed the brat full of medication and spiritual energy while being in our Sect with its improved spiritual energy concentrations, he had nothing to jump start his Spirit. And the army of morons didn't feel he was worth wasting time on, or that his Spirit was worth investigating."

Healer Jin chuckled. "Basically, yes."

Her eyes glowed slightly. "And he found a girl who may SHARE the same odd energies that HE requires? Out of the hundreds of thousands of Initiates we get per year?"

He nodded. "Some people are bound by fate. Even a few days earlier or later and he would have missed her completely."

She snorted. "Not on my watch, I've experience not underestimating those with variant Martial Spirits. She wouldn't have been abandoned." She glared. "Ensure that she gets our full support, I haven't gotten this far risking a bet on the boy to let some other Elder swoop in and steal away his possible successor."

Elder Cho waved the man off to work as she turned back to the full pile of various techniques and documents that were NOT released to the other Elders.

Reading them with fascination, she couldn't help but murmur. "I still can't believe how amazing young Adam is. The various donations to the Sect have already gained him a lot of political power, whether he knows it or not... but these..."

She lifted another green jade slip. An entire library worth of detection methods, identification tricks, energy matrices... this one jade slip alone, while the contents were nearly impossible to be put into action by others, exposed so much about how spiritual energy worked, how the body of a Cultivator adapted to changes of the spirit, just... so many gold nuggets of treasure scattered over the massive floor of knowledge, as if worth nothing.

Simply spending time around Adam had helped several Elders and those people who could be trusted to gain various enlightenment moments and advances, to the point where she was very cautious to release ANYTHING he provided without her people carefully examining it first! It was bad enough he had possibly increased the recruitment volume for the entire Sect by accident, but that could be glossed over and hidden.

If other Sects saw him for his true worth, there would be war. And the war would be WORTH it.

Even now, people were secretly calling him the 'Burning Sage'. His glowing blue wounds, strange hair, and odd mannerisms only encouraged it, really...

She made another note to increase the amount of personal funds she was allocating to the boy's budget. These recent slips were, again, a bit too dangerous to submit to the Sect officially without going through the Patriarch himself, and (thankfully) the man himself found the entire situation fairly humorous.

Dozens of high level Xiantian and even Saint Cultivators begging to idly talk to a single, Second Order Houtian warrior... it was odd.

She glanced at the green slip SHE had requested be made, after seeing how much easier it was to comprehend the documents produced by the boy. It was supposed to be a basic combat manual for new initiates, as seven year olds would not necessarily know how to punch or kick safely.

Apparently, according to Healer Jin, Adam had felt a deep appreciation for Elder Cho's support...

So that one green jade slip was thereafter STUFFED full of documentation.

A full retelling of the standard fighting style provided by the Sect... torn apart, analyzed, and examined. It separated what she had always considered a fairly well made document into categories: Unarmed Style, Single Sword Style, Multiple Sword Style, Improvised Style.

Obviously as the Burning Sword Sect, the martial arts were focused on blade work, how to survive until you could get your blade BACK, and keeping your options open so your free hand or whatever could launch various fire based attacks. Anything not blade related was restructured into the new 'Improvisation Style' catch all... and it was pretty pathetic compared to the others. Expected really.

But after tearing apart her childhood memories, he then rebuilt it from scratch.

Footwork martial arts were described, more than one. Some better when unarmed, some that stabilized a person holding a single blade, another for those who felt two or more blades were the answer (Some Martial Spirits grew additional limbs for the user during Soul transformation).

Fighting Stances that were both better defined and even modified from Sect standards were provided, again focusing on what one had available as a weapon. Training routines were designed, that would create (over time) a set of reflexes to allow Cultivators to react without thought in dangerous situations, potentially saving lives!

What martial arts Elder Cho could remember that were not directly related to her own fighting style didn't go this far. They allowed the Martial Spirit to fill in holes in their forms, to compensate for a lifetime of cultivation rather than years of body training and physical exertion... but if her Sect members trained with these methods, then they could focus more on Battle Skills and techniques during a fight, their instincts protecting them from more simple attacks!

Most intriguing however, was the inclusion of formation work into the footwork, the body stances, and the exercise routines. Simplified, custom formation patterns were explained in easy to understand terms, where the odd patterns made while walking or fighting would cause actual effects! For example, one version would cause opponents to be distracted or lose track of their attacker, another would build 'momentum' so the Cultivator could sacrifice a dozen 'attacks' and produce one massive spike of damage...

There was even one move that sacrificed all chances to attack or retreat to bind an opponent of stronger cultivation to a specific location for a period of time. It could be enhanced by more participants... a dozen or so high leveled Houtian warriors could operate this formation together to capture (or at least delay) a Xiantian Warrior for some time, which could drastically change a major battle alone!

Elder Cho had seen effects like this before. Some Battle Skills or innate abilities from Martial Spirits let one walk on clouds or fade into shadows, teleport, and so such. She had just never heard of someone achieving such a feat using basic formation patterns... did ALL such abilities work like this!? How would one even know?

And Adam had passed it over with a smile and no concern. Using only information freely available on the FIRST FLOOR of their OWN Sect Repository Pagoda! While he never came out and stated anything, she firmly believed the Patriarch considered the boy a high priority Sect Treasure at this point. And he would be correct to do so!

Financially, she may never be able to pay back the boy for the advancements he was bringing to her Sect, her family.

Politically though, she would be his rock in troubled times.

Another glance at the metaphorical mountain of treasure so innocently laying on her desk...

It was the least she could do.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Brother Hou couldn't hold back any longer. "WHY WON'T YOU LET ME THROUGH!?"

The twelve guards outside the cultivation cave stayed silent.

Though one or two were gesturing towards his most ingenious trap to date.

He blinked. "What, this?"

Hou waved a hand roughly towards the Cane of Wisdom.

And quickly swore, putting his hand out. These flames were a major hindrance.

A few warriors nodded.

Brother Hou puffed out his chest. "Well, it may look a bit odd, but... can you keep a secret?"

...The silence meant yes, right?

He nodded. "Right, I had to add the extra five canes for structural integrity, but the slippers down there have real rabbit skin. No grandpa could resist that, they are too fluffy! Also, note the artificially aged paint on the... well, not there, you can see a bit around the fire. Near the bottom of the... yeah. It is reminiscent of an old house right? Worn?"

Brother Hou carefully pointed towards one of the safer edges. "The prunes may have boiled a bit, but that just means it has that old dude smell, you know? Not sure where the candies went. I think they melted. Right, and I added a hoop! I figure the canes could act like a stick, so the memories of playing hoop-stick should bring back some nostalgia. That was a thing, right?"

More silence.

He grumbled. "Look, it was hard enough building this thing and getting it here while it was on fire. I am THIS CLOSE to finishing my task, can't you give me a break?"

One of the guards spoke up. "Why didn't you build it first, bring it, THEN set it on fire?"

The guy winced as the other silent Warriors glared at him. Not sure why.

Brother Hou blinked. "Oh." Looking at the raging inferno... yeah. "That would have saved me a lot of time."

With a sigh, the largest person (A woman? Hard to tell under all that armor) leaned closer. "Look, why are you trying to burn up this cave?"

He spewed confidence like a god. "I am going to uncover a fourteen year old secret grandpa and his dastardly plans to seduce an angel by being grievously harmed and catching himself on fire!"

Again, silence.

...Right, quiet meant 'Yes' or general agreement or understanding. That was established at some point earlier. Probably.

He winced as the Cane of Wisdom collapsed, portions compromised and becoming ash. "Ah... on second thought, I... may have to modify the design first." Suddenly a thought made him brighten right up! "THIS time I can build it BEFORE catching it on fire!"

The leader glared at the embarrassed guard near the back. "This is why we don't talk on duty, Shu. I blame this on you."

Shu's neighbor smacked the back of his armored head. It didn't hurt, but it was the thought that counts.

 

[theaceoffire]

Time progressed. Supposedly.

Right, should mention that. The sun was conceptual.

Adam glanced at the pulsing circle of power in the room... unstable a bit, but not ready to 'pop', so to speak.

Anyway, the reason why there were no clocks in the room was two fold. First, this wasn't an Earth. Or even a planet.

That was VERY important.

Basic rules of physics and geography didn't really work correctly here. Which was a bit odd, as one of the requirements to reach the revered Saint Realm through cultivation was the ability to comprehend the domain of Space and Time. To both understand it, AND manipulate both directly. It was part of how the internal 'Saints Space' used for defense and attack was created within the Cultivators, supposedly.

Anyway, Adam's knowledge of planets and orbits, yadda yadda? Useless.

This plane of existence was a god damn PLANE. It went on literally without end in every direction, including up and down. Gravity shouldn't work right, as there was too much mass. The Sun itself only rose and set because the mass of humanity (and sentient beasts and planets) ASSUMED it would. Same with the moon. Stars... not sure what they were. Hell, they may literally be the souls of powerful Ancestors looking down on their descendants, logic didn't seem to matter here.

There were no time zones, as impossible as that was. The sun always rose and set at the SAME TIME, at some place that (if you could travel there) that otherwise was normal solid land. Or ocean, or whatever. And if you got there without pause through teleportation or whatnot, you would notice the sun setting... somewhere else.

A strong enough Cultivator could and WOULD modify the actual sky, sun, moon, and stars in a local area during strong enough attacks. It wasn't just a visual hallucination or whatever, because technically that was the NORMAL state of the skies: An illusion. Similar changes could occur during major breakthroughs in Cultivation, or when Treasures were born, or if a powerful creature sneezed. It was crazy.

No, if someone with a powerful enough level of cultivation desired, their beliefs or attack methods would subconsciously convince everyone else that whatever effect was desired actually happened. So it would.

And if there were no witnesses? The plane itself seemed to be convinced. It wasn't as aware as the planet of Remnant, but something existed that set certain rules and paths to advancement.

Probably whatever that thing is was exactly what Adam needed to examine for his own System. Meh, long term goals for later.

He glared at the circle until it settled a bit, blue fire glowing within. Almost exploded that time.

Where was he? Right, time. And how little it mattered here.

Aside from the issues with the sun, and the lack of interest in engineering and precision gear-work, this Realm was dominated by Cultivation. And once in a lifetime breakthroughs, revelations, or whatever... they could easily get interrupted. If one was so unlucky, you may lose your one chance to ever advance again! So even if time devices were cheap and easy, no alarms, or schedules, or tight time schedules existed. Too risky.

In consideration about respecting the advancements of others, it was beyond acceptable to miss something important because you made progress in your cultivation. Or were attempting a breakthrough.

So when you boil it down, there were really only a few 'times' of day in this society: Dawn, Mid-Morning, Noon, Mid-Afternoon, Sunset, Late Night, Midnight, and Early Morning.

'Research' wasn't sure that all added up to Adam's expected 24 hour day, and even if it did or whatever it was fully possible that hidden Realms, other planets or planes, or even small areas affected by abilities or techniques would have faster or slower time manipulation. Somehow. Without the whole mess tearing reality apart.

His frown sharpened as the circle nearly collapsed. More energy over here? No, made things worse.

Shit.

Sister Quan seemed a bit hesitant. "Brother Adam, is everything alright?"

Seeing the other Sect members in the room also looked interested, he sighed and passed over his communication slip. And waved at the others.

She blinked, and fell into the now practiced communication mode. "Ahem. My experiment has hit an issue: I am unable to properly fill this formation with the amount of personal Battle Qi desired without causing it to explode."

...Everyone else backed away from the circle as she continued. "My original goal was to attempt some tests on my initial 'Regrowth Technique', which eventually will be studied to form a slower and less painful 'Gentle Regrowth Technique' like the others. Theoretically less painful: It may require partial body destruction to ensure the new growth connects correctly."

She blinked and handed over the white jade slip. "What was the issue?"

Sister Quan accepted his response and sent her Qi inside the message. "Attempting to use spiritual energy to power the ability is massively more difficult because the non-attuned energy just gets absorbed into my system, requiring that I run my 'Seven Pulse Cultivation Method' or let the energy rampage around my body."

Several others in the room nodded, ambient spirit energy needed processing after all. She continued. "To address this, I wanted to empty an energy restraining formation and fill it with my Battle Qi, giving me a massive amount of energy my body ignores to fuel the new technique without fighting my own body in the process. This stored energy would also allow me to temporarily act as if I had the energy reserves of a higher cultivation level, thanks to the control from my Shard."

They glance at the pulsing pattern on the floor. "My formation design skills are apparently not qualified to accomplish this. While I very much desire the regrowth of my limb, this low density of energy would not even be enough to fully repair my throat." She blinked. "Well... can't you just try more than once?"

He sighed but nodded.

Without a word and ignoring the alarm of the others, he thrust his left stump into the boundary of the formation. Hopefully limiting the area touching the gathered power would help direct and focus the process.

Unlikely to be heard by anyone, he still attempted to talk.

'Regrowth Technique.'

It sounded like a wheeze at best to the concerned observers, if anyone heard it at all. Right, this was dense enough personal 'Battle Qi' to be visible slightly, if ghost-like... lacking the structure of an attack or technique made it much harder to see.

Activating this new ability wasn't like his old powers, or 'Growth', 'Research', or 'Purification'. Abilities in this world required complicated patterns and methods of applying energy, sometimes even physical movement to be associated with individual parts of the trick. And Adam didn't have time for that.

Right now, he had associated the entire pattern and all steps required with a carefully stored memory of the phrase 'Regrowth Technique', creating a mnemonic trigger to activate the entire process with less difficulty and with no variation so that 'Research' could gain more data with fewer variables. Because everything would be easier with more hands.

His left eye flamed blue light as his focus and 'Research' deeply examined his shifting arm.

Target cell: if needed convert to Cultivation Cell (Luckily he could skip this step). Force rapid cell duplication: attempt to force new cells to stay in the target area instead of regressing to 'travel mode' and exploring his body. Simple enough in concept, at least for a starting process. However, even with the massive amount of control his Shard add to his natural ability to control his own Battle Qi, even with his stored power NOT vanishing into his body constantly, it was a struggle.

Simultaneously, he targeted the scar tissue and healed end of his stump. These cells needed to be regressed into 'storage mode', the form where his Cultivation Cells could go dormant and be stable for long periods of time till needed. AND they needed to be restrained into the designated healing area, to be used by his technique during his regrowth attempt.

Unlike his more polished techniques and tricks, this was... difficult. Adam was basically trying to nail down four abilities: Cultivation Cell Duplication, Cultivation Cell Regression, Cultivation Cell Restraint, and Cultivation Cell Direction.

Duplication was no problem, it had been figured out a long time ago as part of the 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique'. Regression was tricky, but a natural process of his body... 'Research' had a lot of gathered data and general progress on that front.

No, the focus and effort was dedicated to Restraint and Direction.

Restraint actively fought his body's natural distribution process, where excess material got sent off to find other areas needing healing or enhancement. In a way, forcing too many health cells in one spot was similar to forcing a cancerous growth, something his body actively fought! What little success he experienced (Less than 8% of the cells actually moved in accordance to his will during this attempt so far) fell apart as the compressed cells instantly converted into 'storage mode', assuming that they were excess material and not needed.

Once they went dormant, his grip on that small fraction of material fell apart and they vanished into the rest of his body, to activate and heal something else when needed.

Direction should theoretically stop cells from going into 'storage mode', directing them instead to follow the internal genetic instructions and regrow the area under focus (His stump). Eventually, if Adam's control grew powerful enough, he could modify his body as desired rather than just encourage the natural process. In actual practice? It nearly ignored his efforts entirely!

With a glare, his stump began to glow blue... and regrow a fraction or so.

Yeah, this ability needed work.

With a sigh, he pulled his slightly improved stump from the now energy drained circle. The formation would need to be wiped and redrawn, the process of filling it so much had also damaged the containment functions. Damn it.

His attention was pulled as Sister Quan grabbed his left limb. "It... you did it! Let me verify nothing went wrong, this is so amazing!"

Adam nearly fell over when he realized how CLOSE everyone was! Department Lead Healer Jin was nearly touching his shoulder he was so close. "I couldn't follow everything because of the interference of the formation, but however small this IS progress! I assumed designing the new ability would only take a decade or two considering young Brother Adam's talents, but this is astonishing!"

He ended up throwing a jade slip full of notes and details documented by 'Research' like chum to the sharks, dashing out of the excited room as the mass of researchers and assistants began frantic discussions.

Attempting to straighten his... eww. How long had it been since he cleaned up, had a real meal instead of snacks, and took a nap?

With a nod, he headed back to his room for a break. And tried to ignore the thirty-six guards that formed a strange defensive pattern as he left the cave.

Glancing at the overly protective armored Sect members, he shook his head. Honestly, this was just getting silly.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sister Tianshi tried to stay focus on her cultivation... but her smile just couldn't stop.

Compared to before, the dry, weak wisps of power being fought for and lost over so much effort...

It was a deep dive into a cool oasis. A pond of pure, crisp, unseen energy... this 'Binding energy' was everything she wanted in life. Everything she desired!

Honestly, the last few days she had developed a habit of just summoning her Martial Spirit and meditating within the Binding circle. Oh, she still followed the 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique' religiously, but had been told by her new Master and Teacher that until she completed that technique entirely she could take her time trying to follow the 'Houtian Realm First Order Essential Cultivation Method'. That the more effort she put into converting her body NOW, the less time she would waste cultivating LATER.

Her Betel Nut now had a bright blue flame dancing on the surface, easily a few inches tall. It had achieved some sort of internal change, no longer requiring her assistance to help that blue light thrive... and relaxing within the Binding circle only improved things further!

Even outside the circle, it was easier now to summon and manipulate energy wisps... and after so much exposure, she was even able to detect that she WAS trying to call forth Binding energy by default.

A few times she almost saw it directly, while bathing in the stuff in the circle... a translucent fog that danced over her body.

Nothing compared to it, her seven years of existence hadn't prepared her for such a thing.

So... she just relaxed in the energy mist. It caused her skin to slowly release some disgusting sludge, which she was thankfully ready to handle. Master Adam had warned her a long time ago, and had provided some buckets and cleaning supplies: Until this process was completed, it genuinely caused a Rebirth of her flesh, and this waste was a byproduct of it. The concept of this filth being valuable had caught her off guard though... The idea of earning contribution points by handing off her sludge... so strange.

Her thoughts were distracted by a patterned knock... Master!

A frantic few wipes to remove the most recent goo, and she dashed to the door, bowing. "Disciple greets Master!"

Adam looked bemused like always, even as he gave her a wave and entered the room.

She winced at the mess... more focused on trying to improve than to organize her recent acquisitions. "Sorry about the mess..."

He waved her off, and pulled a strange colored chalk from his robes with his right hand, rapidly making a new circle on the ground next to hers. Was he making some sort of upgrade to her design?

The new pattern completed far too soon, his hands... uh hand... having made no flaw in his quick work, and he tapped his foot.

Her old Binding circle vanished, the faint energy patterns she could detect surging forth and then swirling in the air. Within moments, a black smog seemed to form from nothing... and as Adam's strange Crystal was summoned, the black smog twisted and flew out the window even as a wind filled the air.

The Crystal Martial Spirit suddenly shifted from metallic gray to glowing white! And for the first time, Tianshi saw a faint fog form that called out to her, Binding Energy forced into visible patterns!

Her awe was strengthened as Adam nodded, seemed to toss the new energy into the redesigned Binding Circle, and then shoved his Crystal into the formation as well... and it glowed Blue, just like her flames and the fire in his eye! The fog within the formation almost seemed to pulse, like a heartbeat, as it grew thicker.

She was drawn closer, missing Adam nod in satisfaction and then leave the room, his Martial Spirit vanishing on his way out. It... this refined power was so clear. So easy to hear, to feel!

As she almost fell into the formation, her Blazing Betel Nut was called forth without thought, blue flames raging with joy and supporting her amazement.

'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique' automatically activated, thick strands of power cooling the stings of the process even as a slow whirlpool formed, cleansing her body and settling her mind.

Truly, as the waterfall of purified and grown energy flowed through her spiritual system and reinforced her expanding Cultivation Cell clusters, she was experiencing a Rebirth.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam squinted. And pulled out his slate. Writing with one hand still sucked, but he had to know.

Weren't there only thirty-six guards earlier? Where did these others come from!?

Despite reading his question, he got no answer from the silent watchers. Creepy.

Whatever, he still needed to go take a bath and a nap.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Elder Cho frowned. "I may save time if I just commissioned some custom stamps for the boy. His paperwork levels are reaching annoying levels of density."

MOST Sect members who earned royalties for Sect contribution did so rarely. Not just... spewing fifty or more advancements and works of progress within days. The system wasn't built to handle outliers like this, the paperwork expected one to fill it out maybe once a month at MOST, not dozens in a day about ONE PERSON.

She already had a template formed that her people were duplicating to speed the process up, but even with the new methods the child was just too productive. And that was only concerning his random, valuable observations about energy, training, and low level cultivation.

Him designing and successfully TESTING a healing method, no matter how slow, was a whole new issue of contention. Even the Patriarch sat up and took notice, and was astounded when little Adam easily tossed full, detailed, and comprehensive notes about what he was doing, why, and what the end goals were.

She wasn't technically a Healer herself, but Elder Cho had been very amused at the frantic joy shown by what few Healers were allowed to view the provided jade slip of data. If fully developed, it would allow Healers to convert dangerous growths or unhealthy materials into raw supplies for other injuries or weaknesses. The final product would even allow fat or extra material to regrow lost organs or more! It might even allow those who were heavily injured to begin cultivating again, a treasure to any Sect.

The Patriarch was wise though.

For now, any advancements were being carefully regulated. Even supporting Adam and his work, it would take years to train enough Healers and Sect Members to properly test, verify, and teach the new methods being developed here. After Adam made enough progress with his new abilities, a second round of testing would need to be done without the boy being involved to verify that the Burning Sword Sect could apply the changes without forcing Adam into a life of dull, repeated chores.

He was far more valuable exploring his own ideas after all, so a delay in deployment for these new advancements would ensure the Patriarch could rely on these new improvements, even if Adam suffered some unfortunate situation. Hinging the Sect's future on one man, no matter how talented, was too large a risk to take.

Elder Cho waved her people over. "Problems?" All shook their heads no... good. "Protect the boy, his student, and the people around him. If he seems to need supplies or resources, submit a list for approval and we will do what we can." She paused. "Any attempts on him so far?"

Her face fell as she read the hand-signs. "Two!? Related?" Again, no. Good. "Tear the information out of the idiots, things were supposed to be more calm after all this mess... but SOMEONE clearly needs some reminders."

Grumbling she waved the people off. Take a damn hint, she would NOT regret killing a village if they were THIS insistent on killing children. The previous attackers were already dead, and yet they still wasted her time like this?

Morons.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Clean clothing, a long, long nap... and a pile of food provided by Sister Rong's people, one of the best ways to wake in the morning!

With a satisfied sigh, he fell back into his chair, dishes piled on his table.

Right, progress.

Growing his stump however little had provided 'Research' all kinds of useful information. Communicating WITH those individual Cells however, stressed Adam's spiritual senses. Heavily. A few at a time? No problem. Millions or Billions of Cells? Good luck! His first attempts were clearly not the way forward.

In the end, 'Research' had suggested something unorthodox: The spiral.

Just like with his energy manipulation, Adam would force the newly created Cultivation Cells into something similar to the mutant baby of his energy swirls and a meridian cultivation route. Using his blood veins instead of a spiritual network, he would create a short circular path that would ensure the massive growing number of 'storage mode' Cells would stay local and available for future steps. Enforcing a path was far more sustainable than attempting to control all those cells directly... at least while a lowly Second Order Warrior.

This new method would cause body damage however, as existing pathways in the body did NOT approve of old blood traveling without passing through the rest of the system. But that damage was very mild and easy to repair, especially on a body that had been attuned using the 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique' already.

In HIS body, the new pathways didn't tear his flesh open, but just convinced the Cultivation Cells to get out of the way temporarily. It didn't really even require additional energy for the wounds to close.

An odd method indeed, but it theoretically would work.

With some more tests, hopefully allowing Adam to directly shove Cells into and out of 'storage mode' as needed, he may finally have a stable path to fix the few remaining flaws of his body, gain the ability to talk, and move ON with his research. Maybe even directly improve his muscles and so forth without all that annoying training and such. It should work great!

Or make his stump explode into a mess of hibernating body cells.

...Maybe he should test this one alone first, Sister Quan would NOT be happy if he exploded.

Again.

 

[theaceoffire]

HELL YEAH! Whose got a wrist? ADAM'S GOT A WRIST!

Turns out practicing this in private was a GREAT idea, because his first attempt made five inches of his left stump liquefy. Luckily 'Research' was able to direct the mess INTO his system instead of all over his floor, and in an hour or so he was able to force the mess roughly back to where it was supposed to be and fix it all.

Because apparently HEALING from messes and wounds was far easier than convincing his body to REGROW something.

The Cultivation Cells would develop a sort of stability. The longer those cells stayed in one area of the body, the better the cells 'liked' it, so to speak... forcing dormant cells elsewhere was tricky, but returning cells to a location they previously existed? They nearly jumped at the chance, and watching the process sped up 'Research' data collection by a ton.

Now, he had a dozen or more glowing blue strands of Battle Qi circling in his stump, actively expanding his wrist-stump in the process. The meridian nodes sorta appeared in random places, but compared to the REST of his difficulties... Well, learning how to realign and move a few spiritual nodes was a cakewalk.

He had to stop now though, or the constant swirls of Binding energy and Blue energy he kept spinning like discs behind his back would destabilize and collapse. Setting those up again would be frustrating, and having a few external reserves of useful energy had turned out to be a great idea several times this week so far!

A thought had his Shard glow blue with 'Growth' and slowly consume the local waste energies to have both swirls regrow behind him. Yeah, using all his power towards this regrowth ability WAS a heavy energy commitment, and his cultivation was STILL stuck at 9% progress towards Third Order... but damn it, he wanted two hands and he wanted to be able to TALK.

Having a wrist, covered in strange blue embers as it was, STILL was a quality of life improvement. Made holding his message slate far easier for his right hand to write with, which would make the process easier.

With a sigh, he glanced again at his longer arm and hand-stump.

In a way, he was lucky to start with his hand first. If he had tried to fix his throat and IT had liquefied... yeah, bad. Not to mention that until this process was refined further, using this method would have literal flaming coals inside his neck. Which was stupid.

Right, changes and side effects.

His dark blue glowing scars did NOT vanish when he made his new limb extension, which was not expected. For some reason, his skin seemed to LIKE the markings... his new growth now had a complicated spiral pattern of 'healed' blue scars glowing away, all over the skin down to his newly grown wrist.

Adam held back a chuckle. To get his arm back, he had finally 'wrist' the new procedure!

...Puns were less fun when you couldn't share them.

He blinked, a chill going down his back.

Right, Sister Quan was going to freak out over this, wasn't she?

Glancing at his slightly growing arm and the STILL BURNING blue embers just past his wrist covering his new hand-stump, he winced.

Yeah... yeah, she was going to freak out.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam winced at the loud noises, shouted questions, and disappointing looks thrown his direction.

Well, there was a bit of a freak out. And a few rants. And Sister Quan had fallen into some sort of self-fueled frustration scream/argument with Healer Jin, who was listening with a calm look and years of practice.

There were five Healers and eight researchers poking Adam right now, testing the heat of his hand-stump embers, examining his scars... it was awkward, but the crowd of professionals examining him had made Sister Quan rant more quietly and express only frustration rather than panic and fear.

...Apparently his argument that he was worried his body exploding would be disturbing to others wasn't a good excuse to test his attempts in private. Not according to these people.

Live and learn, he supposed.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sister Quan just... couldn't not now. "You don't understand, Healer Jin. I've tried everything! It took four days to stop him from just burning himself, I felt I was making real progress, but now!" She gestured with both arms. "HE IS CURRENTLY ON FIRE!"

The Department Lead chuckled. "He seems to be handling it well enough."

She snorted. "Of course he is, burning alive is NORMAL to him on some level. It has to be, it is almost his first INSTINCT when trying new tricks. 'Time to put on pants? Why not try fire!' Absolute moron, that stubborn, easily distracted jerk!"

Healer Jin wanted to stay out of this, but something encouraged him to poke the situation. "Well, rebirth and flames are historically related..."

She glared at him! "That energy he and his Disciple use is strange, and he told me it may be Soul power." She stabbed her finger towards the boy being fussed over by people. "I think he might be BURNING HIS SOUL! That CAN'T be good! For anyone!"

He frowned. "Now, we don't know that."

She threw her hands up. "Of course we don't! And neither does HE! I asked Brother Adam if he was burning his soul and he said 'Maybe'!"

Sister Quan ignored the stunned man and fell back into her worry. "The worst part is I don't even know if his tests being done with supervision even matters. We have NO techniques or abilities to properly repair any mistakes he makes, barely any method to even observe his progress... and HE was the one to develop what few methods we have! If there was a flaw in our tools, would we even KNOW until it was too late!?"

She held back sniffles. "I... I need a break. I will be back soon, but... I need some time to center myself."

As she left, Healer Jin hummed. "She may have a point." But... did it matter? Only little Adam himself knew the risks involved, and he had shown several times that he felt those risks were worth the goals he aimed for.

He nodded. "I can at least ask for some new methods to observe and hopefully assist in his progress."

After all, asking had turned out far better than expected a few times already. No reason to throw out a working process!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

She gone?

Sister Quan was gone!

Quickly, Adam motioned the others away even as Healer Jin approached. He had to finish healing his hand or she would continue to feel worried about him during the process.

The grandfather hummed even as energy filled the room. "I think you can settle some of Miss. Quan's many concerns fairly simply, you know."

He paused, his hand embers glowing.

The man nodded. "She feels helpless to help, unable to detect how dangerous your progress is, incapable of documenting changes or finding warning signs." He made a gesture, a dozen of his people fading into view with some... restricted... black jade slips. "I am not allowed to share these with anyone who isn't my personal assistant."

He gazed dryly. "Congratulations for becoming my assistant for the next hour or so."

Department Lead Jin waved the slips closer. "These are all my methods of detection, abilities to inspect bodies, and more. Unlike your other achievements, if you improve these in any way I request allowing me to review them first before simply releasing them to the Sect, as... these are literally my life's work. Some of these techniques I spent centuries perfecting, and each of my students are tasked to defend these original black jade slips to the death."

His gaze was serious. "I trust you understand the level of importance I place on these, my greatest work? And will treat this with the respect they deserves?"

Adam blinked at the... beyond valuable data.

Well... Holy crap.

...Yeah, he could take some time to look these over.

'Research' nearly made his Shard glow from anticipation as he reached for the first jade slip.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sister Quan was walking back and forth in... well, frustration really.

Of course a little boy who was THAT SMART would chafe when told NOT to repair his own body. His massive and near impossible success rate would make that feeling even stronger.

Asking for maturity and logical thought was a large request from fellow Sect ADULTS, much less a kid who had such a rough childhood. If he had waited for help or attempted to do things safely, he likely would have died years ago from neglect or abuse. She shouldn't let her fear for his well being direct her actions.

But every time she looked at him he was hurling himself towards amazing but treacherous waters... well. She had personally censored some of the slips she had passed on, the short notes about Soul recovery and consumption. Couldn't even easily explain to him how dangerous such ideas were, not unless they could find a secret way to communicate. Too many who could hear, too many who could spy.

She was fairly sure he figured out her message anyway when she included a subtle hint in one of her slip responses, and his own comments about Soul manipulation vanished from all future jade slips... but then he pulled things like this.

Quan could only remember watching his limb Pulse with his Cultivation Technique, blue embers of charred flesh slowly growing.

It was so... so close to raw organic manipulation. Flesh harvesting, Organ refinement, so many dark methods started for such horrible reasons, all paled when compared to this technique.

It was probably fine, since he already lived within this Righteous Sect and was guarded... but an Evil Sect? If they found a method to regrow limbs as strong as the original owner, body parts aligned with high leveled energy...

Captured victims would be harvested for puppet parts, their body carved and healed forever.

Sister Quan shuddered. Thankfully Department Lead Jin was there and knew her fears, it was something that most Healers considered at one point or another... how their art could be misused or abused. He would ensure the Elders knew how important it was to protect Adam.

Her thoughts were distracted by an unexpected and quiet curse... and what seemed to be Brother Hou. Sneaking into the room through a custom carved tunnel through the cave wall. Some sort of expensive device was holding the defensive formations back even as the man was pushing and dragging some sort of complicated, wooden structure made of canes and flame accelerant into the room.

What the hell? "Brother Hou?"

The man jerked. "SHH! You fool, do you want to attract those evil guards! What if they... they..."

His eyes grew huge. "Si... Sister Quan!?"

She blinked. "Yes?"

The strange Brother yelped and dove back into the hole in the wall... before his upper body reached back in and slowly dragged the heavy and cumbersome wooden object. "Gah, so heavy... URGH!"

And the wall closed up, the faint shouts of 'Beware Grandpas!' echoing quietly in the now mostly empty room.

Well... she was certainly distracted now.

...She should tell Brother Zhanfei to verify that Brother Hou was taking the correct medications.

Healer Jin himself entered the room and managed to catch her attention. "Department Lead Jin! Were you able to stall him!? I was running out of ideas!"

The grandfather like man nodded. "I distracted him."

She sighed in relief. "Thank goodness, I already sent Elder Cho an emergency note, but anything to keep him from succeeding too soon. This information is too delicate, it could put him at a huge risk! The Elder should be able to ensure he won't be used as a political marker within the Sect."

The grandfather sighed. "You say that now, but I fear your reaction when I tell you how I chose to get the job done."

She blinked. "...You didn't drug him like your other problem patients, did you?"

He chuckled. "No, not this time..." Jin's face grew serious. "I technically accepted him as an Outer Personal Disciple and shared my arts with him."

Sister Quan's breath caught. "Your Healing Arts!? WHY!? That boy nearly rewrote the medical journal using only children books and a few scribbles I made! He remade the Sect's history of progress by visiting the base level of the Sect Repository of Knowledge Pagoda! And you thought it was wise to hand him one of your famous techniques!?"

She slid back against the wall. "Which one? You normally won't share anything above your 'Nerve Numbing Acupuncture Technique' until they reach Fifth Order Houtian Warrior at least. I'm terrified what he would do with that one on its own, really."

He looked towards the door, eyes off in the distance. "All of them." He pulled out a cigar, custom made with medical herbs, and lit it in the night. Clouds of smoke rose. "Unrestricted access."

Sister Quan's eyes blanked... then widened in horror. "WHAT!?"

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

This was good.

This was VERY good!

He had to take a break after absorbing all the information from the slips just to parse it all. For hours Adam stared into the void of nothingness, ignoring Sister Quan (Was she concerned about something?) and Healer Jin (Later, need to focus on Data.) It was... so interesting.

The highest level stuff? Not that useful. After all, this was a world of concepts... the understanding granted by the lower levels ALLOWED the upper levels to be built at all. Reality itself was changed as the Cultivator progressed.

But even the stuff that was impossible or useless on its own had value.

It helped 'Research' understand the path of progression for abilities, for Cultivators.

Most of it was tossed into 'To be further reviewed' memory banks, and ignored for now.

More time passed. He ate absently and ignored sleep, 'Research' exploring with abandon.

So... profits.

Adam completely rewrote 'Gentle Rebirth Body Cultivation Technique', with 'Research' able to drastically improve the thing. The new medical scanning techniques were reliable, tested, and efficient. The new abilities allowed Adam to adjust body sensitivity and increase his control over how it implemented itself.

With pain numbing, he was able to vastly increase the rate of improvement by users. The low levels of damage were repaired by the technique itself, and the enhanced process would cut the time to completion for his ten subjects by half at least! The automatic parts of the Technique were also expanded and made more reliable, the entire mess in general would be safer from now on.

He threw it onto a green jade slip like trash, falling back into the data. Someone took it, but he was already thinking again.

And don't mention the 'Houtian Realm First Order Essential Cultivation Method'. Adam now had so many abilities designed and refined for several levels and Realms of Cultivators... High stuff was less useful, but they were already made as efficient as possible by decades and centuries of Cultivators. Several internal medical checks were now reviewed and eventually included in the updated Essential Cultivation Method Adam built.

This should reduce the chance of damage when users suffered a setback while following the new Method, as well as decrease the wasted energy during cultivation itself. It would all require testing though, lots and lots of testing.

Several slips were filled with data, the finished green slip set beside several slips filled with notes and ideas and theories. He had a different focus, a pull forward... something was close. So close.

Was this enlightenment?

His 'Regrowth Technique', it was unrecognizable. Mutating constantly, improving and changing.

Nerve and spiritual numbing, blood flow redirection, vein manipulation... If his previous attempts were trying to stitch a scarf in a boat during a hurricane, NOW he was practically using a sewing machines in a hermetically sealed room! Or something.

More features, enhancements... refined, abilities removed, streamlined... customized to match his body, his cultivation, his unusual energy types...

'Regrowth Technique' slid through development until it became something different. It clicked, a harsh sound that didn't truly exist, but somehow fell into Adam's domain, into his waiting hands.

'Flesh of the Avatar', to sculpt one's body and soul.

His flesh FLOWED as the ignored room bursts into stunned conversations and shock. Bones stretched even as his ligaments lashed out and bound his new fingers into function, fat and skin nearly crawled forward...

It was gross to watch, but Adam couldn't hold back a smile as his FULLY HEALED left hand flexed. He barely noticed as his new technique moved and grew meridian nodes until his left and right arms matched, his 'Seven Pulse Cultivation Method' suddenly growing in synergy.

This wasn't new material, not converted energy nor grown mass... 'Flesh of the Avatar' directly allowed Adam to move his Cultivation Cells into his ideal form. More 'Research' was likely needed, as he was still physically fourteen and his scars ignored his desires... but for a basic ability, it was beyond capable of his needs.

He could barely detect the others surrounding him when Healer Jin spoke up. "Well... that's it then, is it? Your healing method worked?"

Adam nodded, absently, using both limbs (FINALLY!) to write on his slate. 'The first success, yes.' His right arm reached out and took a Guard's short blade with no haste, the action missed by the owner. Now for the testing.

Mid swipe, one of the other Guards caught his wrist before he could slice his own left arm off. "Damn it Shu! You let some Second Order Warrior steal your GOD DAMN SWORD!? I'm sending you back to basics."

Adam blinked. What? Oh.

Shit, there was an audience. Ah. Right... he had been here a while? Huh.

And... Hello Sister Quan. Very... very angry Sister Quan. "Adam."

Eep. Nod?

The Sister's glare was fierce. "No cutting body parts off to test your healing techniques." Her eyes flickered. "In fact, no harming yourself in general without discussing it with me or Healer Jin first. And then waiting a full hour while we think about it." She looked quite put out, honestly.

She loomed over the boy. "If you must, ABSOLUTELY MUST, further test your ability to regrow parts... I want you to ask us for a prisoner or two slated for execution. At least if THEY die, nothing of value is lost. Hell, most of them are so vile your good Karma may actually be increased if they die."

Adam winced but gave a weak smile and thumbs up. With both thumbs! WOO!

Damn, being young made it hard to notice the little things like thirty or so people.

He blinked. HAD he ever been this young? For all he knew he was BORN an adult back in those Canadian woods way back when.

Either way he was busted and 'Research' would have to wait.

Meh, learning to use his techniques on others may provide better data anyway. No way was he risking healing his neck until he knew his spine would survive the attempt.

Sister Quan blinked. "...Did you know you have bright blue fingernails now?"

...Damn it.