Finally

A year later Richard finally felt he had started to gain some understanding of this world. For starters the "immortals" as the "mortals" liked to call them internally called themselves for either cultivator or daoist in general. A traveling scholar who had previously wanted to become a cultivator had been kind enough to enlighten him on a lot of things after having a few drinks at the local tavern, a few wooden tables low enough for you to sit on the ground while having somewhere to place your drinks.

Together with having learnt the language after a few months, he was after all a wizard who had learnt dozens of languages and this worlds language was fairly similar to two other languages he had learnt from the eastern continent and another ancient language from a long lost empire.

So with the scholars words and the books which were filled with notes from his previous owner somethings had become apparent.

While there were many different ways to cultivate some seen as orthodox or righteous while other as unorthodox or demonic all of them worked in similar ways and had stages that each and everyone had to pass through.

The first step was to gather the worldly energy which was named Qi in this world. Simply by eating, drinking and breathing one would gain minuscule amounts of Qi that would then enter the body. This was however extremely insufficient and not even with a persons whole lifetime would one be able to gather enough Qi to even enter the first step of cultivation.

Instead one needed a spiritual root with which one would unconsciously gather Qi from their surroundings. Even then it would normally take more then a persons lifespan to reach the first step with a cultivation manual one could actively use the spirit root to gather Qi and depending on a persons aptitude with the manual and strength of their spirit root it would on average take a several weeks to a few months to reach the first step.

The first step was to enter the rank of Qi gathering which had nine steps, after that came the Qi refining stage with another step and then the last stage mentioned was the foundation establishment stage with another nine steps. The old mans notes in the manual he had found talked about the next stage being called the core formation stage. From Richards interpretation the stages were similar to the first to fourth tier of a wizard.

The largest of the pamphlets carried by the old man was a cultivation method that explained the way to cultivate all the way up to the foundation stage. A large part was focused on the explanation of the three dantians and the bodies meridians. The three orbs he had observed before were known as the muddy pellet, the crimson palace and the golden stove.

The muddy pellet which was located between the eye brows was where the spiritual root was located and its major function was to gather worldly energy into the body. The crimson palace was located next to the heart and was used to pump out the Qi around the body while also filtering it of impurities. The golden stove which was usually referred to as the dantian and was located below the navel and was where the worldly energy was gathered and then transformed into Qi which the cultivator could use, it was also the place where Qi was stored and almost all of the cultivation manual was centered around this place.

It portrayed how to quickly gather, transform, and purify the worldly energy while also focusing on how expand the dantian and cross each stage. In short the Qi gathering stage focused on gathering Qi to slowly expand the size of the dantian, the Qi refining stage looked to refine and purify the Qi. The foundation stage looked to use this pure Qi to transform the body.

It was quite an ingenious way and Richard had no doubt that thousands of years and an uncountable number of sacrifices had been made to perfect this.

There was also some explanations about the inner networks he had seen and they were apparently called meridians, they were channels through which the Qi could travel inside of a persons body. The one's that were mentioned were the eight extraordinary meridians and the twelve principal meridians. The eight were the network that ran across a persons body while the twelve were associated with a persons organs.

Reading the manuals it was made clear that while every creature had meridians only humans had the three dantians and were thus capable of cultivating.

While Richard was a human he very much doubted if he had any of the three dantians and even if he did it had already been stated that he lacked a spirit root and was thus unable to cultivate.

Still amongst the items he had previously pilfered he had found two small crystals while he had no way to confirm having studied them for a week he was pretty sure that they were what the manual called spirits stones. They were crystalized worldly energy and could rapidly increase the speed of cultivation.

To become a wizard knowledge and a large influx of mana was needed, after weeks of hesitation and deliberating Richard was more then ninety percent sure that if he swallowed one of the crystals he could use that as his influx and then make his mental space linked to this worldly energy instead of mana. The influx was after all just a spark that would accustomed the mental space into gathering and digest the surroundings mana and thus needed to be created from mana.

Having mentally prepared and sitting down in an empty clearing far into the forrest he was now ready to test his hypothesis, worst case scenario this would be the end of his journey.

Resolutely he picked up the spirit stone and then proceeded to put it into his mouth before swallowing it with a loud gulp, it was a good thing it was only the size of a grape or he would have had no idea how to swallow it.

After the uncomfortable feeling of it traveling down his throat to his stomach Richard readied himself for the incoming tribulation.

At first nothing happened but after a few minutes a great heat started to emit from his stomach, shortly after it spread all across his body and his veins started to bulge while a searing heat made him feel as if he was being burned alive.

This was it.