Cultivation

1 month went by, trees began withering, showing the signs that autumn had arrived, leaves of all colors could be seen flying about across the city, people began preparing for the coming winter, Astar was observing the city, his eyes were blank as if his soul was not with him.

He felt homesick and alone, he felt like a foreigner, a lost man in search of the warmth of his home, despite the fact that he had found some friends, sold some books and made money, created a stable foundation for himself, he even had a bit of fame and everyone respected him as a Grand scholar, he knew that he didn't belong in this strange land.

3 more month went by, he sat inside a Chinese mansion that he had recently bought, the first snowflake of winter arrived and fell on the book he was reading, it melted and so did his heart, he couldn't hold himself back and cried that night, he dreamt of home, sweet home.

The next day he finally finished all the books he could get his hands on, in terms of knowledge he was no different than a Grand Scholar, all this time no one doubted him and thus he wasn't found out.

He learned many things and understood the world better, he now knew what cultivation was, and how it was done.

Cultivation in this world relied on spiritual Qi, a Cultivator was a person who would use this Qi and evolve himself to achieve immortality, the requirement to Cultivate was a spiritual root, which was used to manipulate the Qi of the world and was used to absorb Qi into the body, every one out of 100 people had a spiritual root, there were different grades in spiritual roots too, most people had a low mortal tier root.

information on cultivation realms was restricted to mortals, Astar could only get his hands on the first stage, even still it was incredibly detailed.

The first realm was called Mortal Transformation, this stage was more about tempering the body, it had 9 stages, Qi Sensation, Qi Gathering, Qi Condensation which had 3 minor stages, Blood Purification, Flesh Tempering, Bone Tempering, Organ Strengthening.

the purpose of this stage was to prepare the body to withstand liquid Qi, liquid Qi was the signature mark of the 2nd realm, only those who had entered the 2nd realm could be considered true cultivators.

besides these matters, Astar also learned many things about alchemy, plants, and many types of beasts he had encountered in the wild when he read about how vicious and powerful they were, he broke out in cold sweat, he felt very grateful to the cultivator who gave him the compass.

he originally had a basic understanding of the human body and was very curious about the nature of a Spiritual root, that's why he especially focused his research in that area, to his surprise there was not much known about it.

his main reason for doing all this research was a way to get a Root and begin cultivating, thus he had no choice but to consider experimenting on cultivators and see what made them tick since it was impossible to get a living cultivator, then he had to go get a corpse.

He knew it was an immoral thing and because of that he had hesitated till winter arrived, and today was the day, he had made his decision, at last, standing near the balcony and watching the snowfall, he muttered to himself "I am going to pull a Da Vinci here, Get corpses, study them, figure out a way to get a Spiritual root, that's all, why should I be nervous? I refuse to back down."

He nodded his head and continued "yes, it's not wrong at all, I mean they will benefit me in death, they will go to heaven for sure, I am doing them a favor actually, yeah, that's right, a favor.", he nodded his head again and looked into the distance like a sage and thought 'if I am going to do this, then I need to prepare.'

the same day he went and bought a remote house for a cheap price, there were rumors that it was hunted but he paid them no mind, he had gotten fairly rich due to his books.

then he went outside the city to the location he had buried the compass after he found it, he went to the wildlands searching for cultivators, he brought a sack with him too.

he moved around and the beasts ignored him, not long after he began searching he heard the sound of a battle, he instantly ran towards that direction, when he got close enough he saw 3 cultivators who were engaged in battle against a giant wolf, they all flew around on their flying sword and constantly unleashed magical techniques on the beast.

the cultivators won the battle and divided the spoils between themselves and flew away ignoring Astar, he was disappointed at this result but paid it no mind, he would eventually find a fresh corpse.

a week went by like this and he didn't find what he was looking for, he would occasionally encounter cultivators but they ignored him, not even once did any of them die.

he went in and out of the city so much that the guards became used to it, they even chatted like friends occasionally when they saw each other.

Astar scowled if the situation continued like this he would never get any corpses to experiment on, so he ignored his morals and formed a sinister plan.

he went out again and found a group of cultivators fighting a massive centipede, they had the advantage, Astar's eyes turned cold and ran away, the cultivators that noticed him sneered and ignored him.

Astar went to the nearest beast he had seen and when he found it, he shouted: "Hey, you ugly snake, there is a bunch of cultivators in that direction, they are cursing you and swore to kill you, I can lead you to them."

The massive snake looked at him with clear contempt in its eyes and ignored him, Astar was stunned at the level of intelligence the beast had, he tried several other methods but the beasts didn't respond at all.

he clenched his hands ' okay then, damn this, I am going for broke, Plan B.', he ran to the direction of battle and patiently waited, when the cultivators won, he ran towards them and yelled "I have found a heavenly treasure elder brothers and sisters, I will guide you to it, I hope you can instruct me on the path of cultivation a bit in exchange."

the 12 cultivators looked at each other, and one of them asked " are you sure? If you lie you will be severely punished."

Astar nodded with vigor and made his tone as sincere as he could "of course, elder brother, I wouldn't dare lie to you." and smiled innocently.

the same man said " Good, lead us, we will reward you accordingly.", Astar beckoned with his hand to follow him and sped off, they flew after him.

when his back turned towards the cultivators a smile appeared on his face, 'I will turn all of you into corpses, then I will get my root by researching your bodies.', his smile was very sinister, it makes one wonder, to what height would a human go in order to achieve his goals.