Augus’s cultivation technique entails striking the impurities in the dantian with either strong but precise strikes of electricity or weaker but less precise strikes. Augus had long decided to go for the first method, as he would need that practice when the cleaning reached the 50% mark. As such, he used that method as the base for his cultivation chamber, strong currents of electricity from which he could pull, but that didn’t intersect so that he wouldn’t pull too much at once.

  While planning the layout he figured he could also add a lightning rod, that way he will have lightning available for when he started the last 9% of the cleansing. This last stretch was considered the hardest in any cultivation technique as it required the most potent energy (be it elemental or not) and a surgical precision. An early access to pure lightning would even help him in his control of the energy, so there were less possible accidents.

  While designing the cultivation chamber he failed to notice a little but important problem that he only noticed when confirming the dimensions of the finished simulation. Where the hell would he put the cultivation chamber? This wasn’t the ancient cultivation times where one could construct a cultivation chamber anywhere, in the current times if one tried to do anything outside a city’s walls they would be swarmed by Siphon monsters.

  So a space inside the walls was indispensable, space he didn’t have as the cultivation chamber wouldn’t possibly fit inside his parent’s small courtyard, he also didn’t have the money to buy a plot of land, as these were at a premium inside a walled city.

  “Well, friends should help each other, right?” With these words as an excuse he dialed Jean’s number.

  She picked the phone after the second tone. “Augus? Did something happen?”

  “Hi, Jean. No, nothing, I just called to ask for some help.”

  “With what?” She sounded a bit annoyed and Augus hoped it was the typical annoyance from being asked a favor, instead of ‘I was doing something important’ annoyance.

  “I want to install a cultivation chamber I constructed but I don’t really have the space, as a resourceful Nascent Soul cultivator I imagined you might know of a solution.” He tried to butter up to her with his pathetic sucking up abilities.

  “Why not rent a space inside a small world?”

  “I need natural lightning for my cultivation.” He wouldn’t reveal more than that, as anything cultivation related was not for sharing, even with friends.

  “Ah, I see. You can rent empty plots for that then.”

  “Isn’t that expensive?” Though he had money thanks to his Worlds, it wasn’t nearly enough for a plot of land, no matter how empty it was.

  “If you were to buy, yes. But if you are going to rent then the prices drop a lot and you aren’t planning to rent for a long time, right?”

  “Three months at most if everything goes right.” With a cultivation chamber on he didn’t know how quickly he could advance but he expected to reduce the time needed to advance by at least half, so that made it three months.

  “Quite confident in your design huh?” She sounded a bit impressed, that gave him confidence in his estimate, at least it was achievable.

  “It’s personalized for my cultivation technique after all.”

  “My advice then is to check for empty plots that won’t start construction for at least a year, wouldn’t want a sudden reschedule that catches you a month in.”

  After a profuse thank you session, Augus ended the call with Jean and got searching for nearby empty plots with at least a year left for construction, there weren’t many. The ones closer to him weren’t waiting for a year and the ones that did were far enough that he would need to live there considering how long the travel time was.

  He could do a redesign of his cultivation chamber and go for a smaller plot of land, originally he was going for a simple but big room with a lightning rod on top, ugly? For sure, but practical. Now he would need to go for something more narrow, have the lightning and electrical currents travel up and down instead of sideways as the original design entailed.

  A tower shaped building took shape as Augus deconstructed his original design and, maybe because now he considered how his design would look around the rest of the buildings, he made it look quite nicer than the cube he had made before.

  It wasn’t at the quality of an actual designer but now it wouldn’t stand out like a sore thumb, while he made this changes he contacted the plot owners to see if any of them would be willing to rent him the plot for three months. Of the four he contacted, the one who answered an said yes wanted the payment in spiritual crystals to buy special materials for the department that would go in the terrain.

  Even though Augus had two, quite successful Worlds in his name, he barely made enough each month to pay the rent, as the Central Government encouraged the exchange of cultivation resources and techniques instead of currency exchanges. Sadly they didn’t offer special materials or Augus could have payed in those instead of crystals, it would have probably been cheaper.

  With the mundane matters settled, Augus refocused on his cultivation chamber, formations had to be remade to adapt to the different dimensions and the buildings on the sides that Augus hadn’t considered before.

  After finishing the new cultivation chamber Augus refocused on his cultivation, the plot owner wouldn’t finish the arrangements for his stay until tomorrow and that was mostly because the owner would earn extra money for basically no loss.

  Cultivation from an outside perspective was boring endeavor, seemingly a tedious process of absorbing energy and circulating it before, in the case of a Golden Core cultivator, cleanse some impurities just to start again. And it would be a boring experience if not for the refreshing feeling that cleaning ones Golden Core gave. Some cultivators described it like a bath of the deepest parts of the bodies or a cleaning of the soul, because anything else would be an understating of the experience.

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  If Augus had to describe it, the cultivation process was in general a process of perfecting oneself. That was why it brought such a deep sense of satisfaction and refresh. The next realms were supposedly even more addicting as they involved an improvement of the soul and later the whole being. Augus would be lying if this effects weren’t one of the main reasons why he wanted to improve his cultivation.

  The only reason why cultivators didn’t spend every waking moment cultivating was because regardless of how good the effects were, cultivation was tiring for the mind. One had to spend hours upon hours focusing on delicate tasks that could leave one dead or worse, crippled.

  And that wasn’t counting the always present danger of the heart demon, an insidious affliction that attacked some cultivators with seeming innocuous frustrations just in the middle of cultivation. From what Augus had learned the heart demons plagued a cultivator’s mind with distracting thoughts and hallucinations to incite the person to commit an error during cultivation. Specifically one that would kill them outright so as to posses the dead body.

  That was what Augus guessed happened to the guy who appeared outside his window, he had the telltale signs, red eyes because of exploding veins, a chaotic energy circulation and most troubling, a pathological need for killing. Even in this dangerous situation Augus could do little, as the enemy caught him in the middle of his cultivation, just when he needed to trike some impurity with electricity.

  The only saving grace was that the house came with protecting formations and Augus had installed some of his own, he could only hope they would last until he finished his cultivation. He couldn’t really hope for a helping neighbor as most were out working at this time of the day and the ones that did wouldn’t be a match against a Golden Core crazed cultivator, even Augus wasn’t sure he could with him, he wasn’t a Fighter after all.

  Instead of focusing on the impending doom, Augus focused on his respiration. “Oooo... fuuuu.” He then made a seemingly stupid decision of cutting his spiritual perception of his surroundings, so as to not be distracted while he ended his cultivation. Augus focused all his attention on guiding the electricity to his dantian and striking a lump of impurities that he knew would consume all the electricity he sent. That made it so Augus’s body was free of foreign energy and could therefore fight freely just in time for the enemy jumping at him.

  Augus got off the lotus position and made a sitting jump to the side that barely dodged the enemies attack. Mostly because a cultivator consumed by a Heart demon loses most of his intelligence and can’t perform most techniques a normal cultivator can. That and Augus’s inexperience when it came to fights gave him the almost blind confidence that he could win, almost because he was a Golden World cultivator despite his inexperience, that and his combat technique that only now Augus remembered.

  As such he immediately retrieved his sword from his Inner World, thanking his past self for not dismantling the transfer portal after the military assignment. With a sword in hand and the muscle memory of his training returning Augus got into the first stance of “Lightning sword”. Which proved to be a mistake as the first stance wasn’t designed to defend and instead attack, and Augus really needed to defend himself of the enemies powered fist coming straight to his face, he wasn’t trained to see the openings his opponent’s beastly attack carried. Augus made a hasty defense that was him placing the flat of the sword in the middle of the fist’s path, which resulted in him being launched to the wall behind him.

  Before the enemy’s next attack though, Augus recovered and launched a cutting attack that vaguely resembled one from the “Lightning sword” combat technique. The problem was that in his haste and the battle’s abruptness he had forgotten the most important characteristic of the technique, the “lightning” that should have course though his arms was nowhere to see. As such his attack carried only enough power to push the enemy a few meters back and left him in an awkward position to react to the cultivator’s following attack, which left him back on the wall, again.

  In an effort to buy time to course electricity through his arms Augus focused on dodging until he could jump out through the window from which the cultivator had jumped in. Using the little time his ‘strategic retreat’ bought him, Augus produced electricity on his Inner World, sent it out and absorbed it into his body to be used on the combat technique. While Augus did that, the crazed cultivator jumped out of his room into the street where Augus was standing. Noticing this Augus took the opportunity and shouted to anyone who could hear. “A crazed cultivator has appeared! Report it!” Crazed cultivator being the name used for the ones consumed by heart demons.

  Focusing back on the fight, while the enemy descended onto the street Augus didn’t waste the chance and before the cultivator had time to plant his feet on the ground he launched an attack.

  This time a horizontal cutting that was in the combat technique, as such the attack came at a speed and with a power that caught the enemy off guard.

  Augus inexperience showed again as he wasn’t prepared for the blood that followed, as the enemy was caught off guard and they didn’t have a defensive technique on, either because the cultivator originally didn’t know one or the demon heart couldn’t perform it was irrelevant. The relevant part was that Augus partially disemboweled the cultivator, while a combat adept Fighter would have pressed his advantage Augus was left frozen from the effects of his attack. Although this wasn’t the first time he had seen blood it was the first time he was the cause of it and on a human to boot. The other times he had participated in a fight was against Siphon monsters that didn’t bleed or in short spars that didn’t result in heavy injuries like these.

  So Augus retreated instead of press his advantage, which gave the crazed cultivator the opportunity to recover and hastily cauterize the wound with a summoned flame. This meant the cultivator had a combat and cultivation technique related to flames as Fighters didn’t need to summon the elements from their Inner Worlds like Makers. Even though Augus prepared another attack the effects of the previous one left him hesitant and the enemy used that hesitation as if some combat instincts remained despite his condition. They launched an attack that this time did connect, a flaming fist directly on Augus’s side that awakened him to the danger of the situation. A few more punches like this and Augus would have flames coursing through his body that will quickly kill him.

  After the first successful attack the crazed cultivator pressed on, this time aiming for a punch in the gut maybe judging that Augus would be defending his injured side, leaving his stomach open. But Augus got serious after the scare the attack gave him and used the clear openings the attack left to make a quick stab on the enemy’s shoulder. The stab left him unbalanced so Augus pressed on this time and delivered another quick stab, this time on the cultivator’s chest. Though it couldn’t reach their heart as the enemy reacted and hastily made distance, this gave the enemy two open wounds that Augus wasn’t going to let them close.

  The next attack wasn’t with the sword though, as Augus recognized the opponent’s bad posture as they attempted to guard against another slash on their badly cauterized stomach. Using the attack he received many time during spars, Augus got close and then made sweeping attack with his leg. The attack caught the enemy off guard as their limited intelligence didn’t consider an attack that wasn’t a lethal sword to his body.

  Using this Augus made another attack on their heart, the enemy barely managed to roll on their side which may have saved their heart but left their lung punctured. Seeing that a successful attack on their heart was hard despite his clever tactics, Augus used the “advice” from his least favorite teacher, the combat teacher. “Do a faint for once in your life Augus!”

  As such Augus prepared what seemed like another horizontal slash like the first one, the enemy in response blocked their torso with his arms to avoid another disembowel. Augus then launched his attack but when he should have continued the slash in a normal attack he instead extended his arm and straightened his crouching posture, changing from a sweeping low slash to an upwards stab. This left the enemy no window to react as Augus’s sword penetrated their forehead, the disgusting feeling that followed marked Augus’s first human kill. While his vomit that came after marked his wish for it to be the last.