After I stood up, did I follow Master to the training ground where she handed me two small books. She said, “After you learn how to use both of them, will I give you a mission.” I just nodded and began to read through them. The first book was named “Earth binding technique” and true to its name, did it contain an explanation on how to use earth Qi to manipulate the ground with the goal of binding the legs of somebody else. I immediately tried to move my Qi as I read through the technique. It took me a few moments to get used to the feeling of pushing Qi out of the crystals into the ground and control it.
After it reached the ground, I simply had to shape it into what the technique described. Though, the technique used a few different steps in between the pushing the Qi into the earth and the shaping which I did not understand. It described specific feelings and thoughts I needed to push into the Qi, it also needed to follow a semi rigid path. After I succeeded in creating the first binding with the technique, did I try it out again without following the technique manual.
I still managed to move a bit of dirt around, but it was by far not as sturdy nor was it as fast. I asked Master, “How come it does not work as well, if I don’t follow the technique? Also, will I be learning how to fight? I never actually had a single fight in my life.” She watched the structure I had made and said, “I won’t teach you how to fight for a while, for two reasons. Firstly, it is simply inefficient to teach you before you can perfectly control your body and still think this slowly. And secondly, you should develop your own fighting style at least to a degree before you learn anything from me. As for the technique, it didn’t work as well, simply because it was not supported by willpower. Before you ask, the path it made you follow gave the worlds willpower.”
I nodded and accepted the explanation. It sounded like I would be able to change the technique, if necessary later on. The second technique was simply called, “Stone skin”. It would pull the earth from under me to form an armour made out of stone. It turned out rather easy to pull off, since I was doing something similar constantly with “Earth’s bounty”. The only problem with it was that I was trapped in a good centimetre of stone and could no longer move.
I took a few seconds to pull of the stone around me as to not suffocate inside the stone trap. I read through the technique again and realized that with better control I would at some point be able to compress the stone into a thinner but stronger layer and that I would actually be able to move by manipulating it. But for the time being it would most likely be just a last fail save for me.
I turned to Master, “I can now use both of them. Should I keep practicing or should I take the mission now?” She took out a piece of paper and handed it to me, “Kill the bandit leader. Also, take three of the other direct disciples with you. It won’t do you any good to be surrounded in your first proper fight. Other than that, I leave it at your discretion when to start the mission and what to prepare.” I took the piece of paper she had offered me.
It barely had any information. It just stated a village who requested the aid and that they were being attacked by mortal bandits. It also had a danger rating line, but it was left completely empty probably because it should not be any danger to cultivators. I read through it to memorize the contents, when it dawned on me what Master had asked of me. I was supposed to kill the bandit leader. I was supposed to kill another human.
I swallowed, I knew that I would need to kill, simply due to how Master had described the world so far. It would be impossible to have life or death fights, if one participant didn’t fight to kill. There was no use thinking about it now, I would cross that bridge when I got there. I began to think of everything that I would need, when I noticed that the village was most likely outside of the sect walls. So, I asked, “Am I allowed to take the cultivation manuals with me? I only read the parts to start cultivation, so far.”
Master sighed and said, “Give me the manuals and come back here before you go. I will figure something out, so that you can take them along on your travels.” I handed her the manuals and began to make my way out of her abode. While I began to the library in the hopes to find a map, so that I could find where to go to, did I begin to think about who to take along. I decided to visit the Grandmaster first, because I knew two of his disciples already and didn’t want to waste any trips.
As I made the decision, did I change my path from the library directly to the tower of the Grandmaster. If any of my companions already knew where the village was, would I save a trip to the library. The tower of the Grandmaster could only be described as luxurious. It seemed to be lined with gold and metals that glinted in strange ways. There was nobody guarding the entrance, so I simply walked inside. The Grandmaster suddenly appeared before me, seemingly teleporting.
I performed a bow, since I had seen others do it as a sign of respect and asked, “Master Garlou gave me a mission and asked me to bring along three other disciples. I wished to take Devi, Artius and one of your other disciples along.” The Grandmaster thought for a moment before he said, “You can take Devi, Estilla and Pargo along. I think it would be against your and your masters wishes to take Artius along. He simply is too strong for such a simple mission.”
As he spoke, did he wave his hand, teleporting the three teenagers to his side as he spoke. Estilla was a tall girl who was currently in the middle of a swing with a sword. Pargo, a smaller but well-built boy, had seemingly been disturbed in the middle of cultivating and Devi was reading something. All three of them immediately performed bows before the Grandmaster and greeted him in unison. He smiled kindly and said, “Do you wish to accompany Elder Garlou’s disciple on her first mission? I believe it will be a good teaching opportunity for you.”
Devi straightened out of the bow and looked at me, immediately smiling. He answered first and said with an excited grin, “Yes I will accompany her.”. The other two also agreed shortly after. I asked, as we made our way towards the cafeteria, “Does anybody know where the village is?” I handed the mission paper to the others, while we walked. Pargo responded, “I know where it is. It should only take a few days to reach. Should we introduce what we can do while we walk?”
We introduced ourselves to the others as we got rations in form of more nourishment pills and various supplies. Pargo was a fire cultivator and planned to mostly provide ranged backup to us. Estella was another body cultivator and focused on speed and being flexible. And lastly, Devi used water and knew a healing technique. I introduced myself as a dual cultivator, without mentioning what it had cost.
We were done with the introductions, by the time we got all the necessary supplies for the journey. I went to visit Master again, since she wanted to figure something out regarding the manuals. When we arrived, did she hand me a single book and said, “I copied both of them into one manual, without changing anything. Let your Qi travel through the book once with the intention of opening it up. This should be fine to take out of the sect.”
I did as she asked and opened the book. It skipped past the introduction to the manual and the start of cultivation. Instead, it started with the actual cultivation part of the Path of the inhuman. I skipped through a few pages and found the start of the Earth bounty’s manual. I closed it and put it in my bag. I still was not comfortable enough with using the pockets inside of my robe for storage. Since we now had everything prepared, did I turn to leave and heard Master say, “Good luck. If you cannot go through with this, change your goal. There might be a path to power without bloodshed, but it is not one I can show you.”
I didn’t stop and just continued walking. We began to jog out of the sect grounds. It only took a few minutes until we left the sect and were back in the city. And I finally noticed the changes in my body. I was just a bit out of breath from jogging down a mountain and I felt faster than before. I could also feel myself recover faster. While none of these changes was drastic, it still felt good. I still was not really past human limits in terms of my body, but I felt myself approach them.
It was then that I finally realized how giant the city actually was. It took us almost three hours to reach the western gates, while we all jogged at an extremely fast pace. I also began to rethink, if I had actually broken through the limits of what was humanly possible. I was sure that we had covered a lot more distance than the length of a full marathon and all of us were only slightly out of breath, with me and Estella being the best off. It seemed that cultivation made stamina recovery extremely easy no matter if you were an elemental or body cultivator.
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While we waited at the gates to be led through, did Pargo ask me, “Is there any reason why you are in such a hurry? We have been hurrying for most of the way here. Does your family perhaps live in Toh village?” I finally decided to remember the name of the village and considered how best to answer this. I doubted that they would care too much about fulfilling my personal life goal, so I needed a different appeal for them to keep up the pace.
Since they were all still teenagers and essentially kids, did I say, “I just know how bandits are and the longer we delay, the more people will suffer. I don’t think I could sleep well, knowing that we arrived a day too late and that it cost another life. Of course I don’t plan to rush headlong into danger, we should still rest up in the village before we face the bandits.” This seemed to convince them, although Estella did not seem to care too much, while the boys seemed excited now.
The other three then started talking amongst themselves again, while I listened with half-heartedly. It was strange to be surrounded by teenagers again, and I was busy with trying to prepare myself for actually killing another human. I was ripped out of my thoughts, when we exited the city and I saw the full glory of this world for the first time. A giant forest seemed to stretch across the entire horizon with occasional mountain bases breaking through the green. The rest of the mountains were never visible, simply vanishing behind the clouds. Then I spotted one of these gigantic mountains, and it had a clean hole through it.
I could not even estimate how big these mountains were, and I could not stop myself from imagining, what could have held the power to create such a giant hole in one of these mountains. I quickly snapped out of my trance and caught up to the others. Estella turned to me with a slightly mocking voice, “Never seen the outside world?” Which earned her a small chuckle from Pargo. I was unsure how to respond to this, since it could be rather obvious that I had not seen it, but I also did not know enough about to lie confidently. In the end, did I just grin and responded, “I was just getting excited, since I will put another hole in one of these mountains sooner or later.”
I hoped that this was enough of a distraction to not force me to bother explaining how I had never seen this. She looked stunned and then said with a laugh, “It seemed I misunderstood you. You are not as stuck up as I thought you were.” She then caught her breath while we jogged and said, “You are right, each of us should put one extra hole into these mountains.” She then pulled her sword out and pointed it at one of the mountains and declared, “That one will be pierced by me!”
Pargo followed suit and pointed at the closest mountain declaring, “This one will be exploded by me!” Devi joined soon after pointing at the seemingly smallest mountain, and grinningly said, “I will cut this one in half.” Then they all turned to me, and I looked at the mountains, “I am going to defeat whoever puts holes in these mountains. Afterall, mountain can’t fight back and that would be rather boring.” This earned me a few chuckles from the others while Pargo said indignantly, “You were supposed to pick another mountain, not declare that you would fight us in the future.”
Still, the mood seemed to be lifted, and I began to try to talk more during the journey. I still did not feel confident enough in my body to run while reading, and I was guessing that I would do quite a lot of missions with other people, since it would be easier to force duels like this. We reached a road in the forest by the time evening fell and I could see how tall the trees all actually were. All of them seemed to stretch for well above a hundred meters into the air.
This made me wonder how tall all these mountains were, but I put these thoughts to the back of my mind as we slowed our travel speed down slightly as we jogged through the path in the forest. Apparently, the forest belonged to the spirit beasts, and this path was the only part on which we would be safe. When night fell, even if it was hard to notice due to the ambient light provided by the flora emitting light around the path. Still, we were starting to feel tired and set up camp on a clearing near the path. We planned to keep watch throughout the night, even if it was not necessary according to Estella.
Still, they decided to be on the safer side and while I did want to finish the mission as soon as possible, I also wanted to read through the manuals. I did not feel strong enough to take on a group of regular humans in a fight. I offered to take the first shift, which the others agreed to and began reading through the Path of the inhuman.
It first explained the changes that had already been made to my body. My muscles would grow faster than those of a normal human and I would not get exhausted anymore if I didn’t push my body too far. Then it began to describe how to cultivate. There were two parts to cultivating my body. Increasing the energy contained in my cells. This could be achieved by pulling Qi into the body and dissolving it in the regions I wanted to strengthen.
The second part was the modifications. The first goal of the manual was complete and perfect control over every part of my body. To achieve that I needed to change my brain slightly. This was not an operation, like I first suspected. Instead, I needed to take a poison over the course of a few months. After I took it, I would be doing everything manually, although it would technically function unconsciously. The last step for this goal, was to purify my body of any natural and unnatural poisons and slowly adapt to doing everything manually. This would take another few months according to the manual.
I planned to take my time with this, since it mentioned that the more thorough this step was done, the easier later modifications would become, since I would be an actually blank canvas. I suspected that cultivation would take longer and longer the further I went, so a few months extra in the beginning would hardly matter. I would focus more on cultivation speed later on, when the end would come closer.
I stopped reading for a moment and tried to feel how tired I was. Like the manual had said, I was still feeling great. I decided to continue the night shift, even though I was sure that it was originally time to wake somebody up. I still went over to Pargo and woke him up, so I would prevent any dissatisfaction in the morning. When he woke up and asked groggily, “Is it my turn now?”, did I consider for a moment and say, “Technically yes, but I wont sleep tonight due to my cultivation manual. So, if you want to, I will cover your shift as well.”
He thought for a moment and then turned back to sleep. I sat back down and read the first part of Earth’s bounty. I did not really need to do anything for it to progress. I only needed to make sure that a line of earth Qi would form between the different crystals and that it would never disappear. Other than that, it would function completely on its own. It then had a small chart attached which described how long it would take me to form these Qi lines. It was based on my aptitude, and it too would take me a few months to complete, although it would likely finish before my body would be ready.
Since I didn’t have anything to do and felt awake, did I begin to do sit ups and push ups. I also considered running, but I would need to abandon my night watch for that. Since the others could just sleep and were recovering there stamina fast, did we start travelling a bit earlier than expected and continued our way along the road. It didn’t make a difference if it was night or not either way, and we could not tell with the trees around us. The path led us out of the forest by the time it was evening again. We apparently had taken a path along the edges of the forest, although I wondered if it had not been faster to travel outside the forest.
Pargo said with an excited voice, “We should make it to the village around midnight, if we keep up our pace. I really underestimated how fast we are able to travel now.” He seemed to be proud of these, for him, apparent changes. I considered this for a moment and asked, “Would the rest of the way be on the edges of the forest, because if so, do I think that we would have enough light to finish the journey like this. Of course, only if everybody agrees to it.”
The other two agreed easily to the plan, after Pargo confirmed that the rest of the way would be well lit. We arrived at the village a few hours later and were greeted by the sight of a few people patrolling. Although, none of them looked threatening or had any weapons, outside of a torch. These were most likely not the bandits, but we still waited for a moment, so that everybody could recover their stamina, just in case that we were wrong.
We walked into the village and were quickly spotted. The patrolling group raised the alarm, and the entire village woke up. Luckily, we didn’t cause a panic since we quickly proved our identities. An elderly woman came out to greet us, after one of the guards relayed our identities to her. She was apparently the village head, she performed a deep bow, although her body did not allow her to keep that pose for long. I decided to do the talking, since I was the one with the mission.
I said, “No need to bow, we should apologize for our late intrusion. We just travelled as fast as we possibly could after we received the call for help, which led us to this unfortunate situation. Could you perhaps brief us on the situation, so that we may put an end to this blight in the morning?” She nodded and led us into a small house. She lived alone, even though there was an additional bed in the room. She went over to one of the shelves and pulled out a map. She rolled it across the table and sat down.
She sighed and began to speak, “The bandits are somewhere around here in the forest. We could never actually follow them into their hideout, so I cannot guarantee this information.” She pointed to a clearing on the map, “Other than that. There should be around twenty five bandits including their leader. They have taken ten hostages from us. Six children and four women. I do not know how many of them still live. They have some weapons but to my knowledge only the leader has a mystical weapon. I have seen it shoot a blade of wind, cutting through a third of a tree.”
She seemed exhausted after this and took a few moments to gather herself before she began to provide details on each bandit she had seen. I was guessing that one of the children or women which had been taken, were related to her and that she desired revenge. It took her an hour to finish the collection of information, and the woman seemed to have aged a decade after it.
She left us alone afterwards to talk to the others. The others were not ready to sleep anymore, wanting to attack the hideout as soon as possible. I didn’t mind the idea, since it would hardly make a difference in terms of when we attack, with all the lighting in the forest. Still, I stopped them from immediately running of and said, “Our task is to capture the bandits, so make sure that they survive. Okay Devi?” He just nodded and I continued, “If they use hostages, do I think that we will need to still attack. They most likely won’t survive even if we surrender and we have a lot of ways of keeping them alive. And lastly, I want to make one thing clear. I will fight the bandit leader alone. Even if there is an opportunity for a two versus one for us, don’t help me. This is the path I have chosen for my cultivation and I would appreciate it, if you allowed me to follow it.”
The others agreed to it rather easily and we finished the last few preparations and began to make our way back towards the forest.
