A true cultivator at heart

After he finished the paperwork, Aki finally spoke to the tall old man in front of him again. He was about 1,81 cm or a bit bellow 6 feet tall, but this old man was at least a head and a half taller while having broader shoulders. He was mostly jealous of the man's beard though, it was volumous yet behaved, and that was just not on his genes.

"It sounds truly ludicruos that you would suddenly stumble onto a one time jade slip with a blood art manual on it, but i've actually heard of stranger stories. I am willing to take you in if you have Melissa's recoomendation, but i'd like to point out that the training i intend to give you is way beyond what a normal human would be able to handle. I won't accept you if you couldn't hold on to it for at least one week though.

Aki grinned. He'd just gained a quest to do exactly that.

"Don't worry sir, i've been ready to become active my whole life, i just didn't have a way to control my impulses. With this, i don't think i will have the time or energy outside of practice." He said while holding his fingers to his palms with enough strenght to hurt them and make popping sounds. His anticipation burning in his eyes.

"I see." The old man nodded with a glint in his eyes. "Then your first task is to follow Xiao Xiu in her training regimen and combat practice. Someone starting latter should at least learn by practice and with the help of their seniors." He sagely said.

"I can fell there's a lot of malice behind that, but i will certainly do my best." He got up and searched for the irritating little girl, finding her hitting a sand bag. "Senior sister Xiu, the master has ordered that i follow your regimen and help with combat practice." This sentence shocked the little asiatic girl for various reasons. She could literally fell this guy would be too weak to keep up with her, but...

"I see, i will do my best to help this junior who doesn't know better." She proudly said. Aki had guessed right, he'd been the first to think of calling her senior sister. Grown man simply have too much pride to have the thought of such. "First, i want you to demonstrate how much you know on this sand bag." She told him while going to the other side to hold the thing in place.

Aki didn't exitate to show his meagre idea of what martial arts looked like. He was barelly cordinated enough to keep a stance while doing the unfitting punches and kicks though.

"Yeah, that was terrible." She said with furrowed browns and getting a nod from Aki. "Ok, i will first demonstrate a simple series and then i want you to show me your battle prowess. Though i don't really get how you'd be any good without martial arts." She murmured the last part and began, but he only smiled while trying to pay attention to all of her petite and cute body contrasted with the smelly hanfu, suddenly feeling the need to doll her up in cute dresses but quickly coming back to the task at hand.

After a bit of practice, durring which Xiu was surprised she had to point out very fell details that Aki didn't originally try to correct himself, they went for one of the empty battle tatamis. The area was mostly empty since the dojo only housed so many people and it's bussines hours were after lunch, but whoever was there imediatly stopped what they were doing and went to watch, thinking someone else was going to underestimate Xiu before getting beaten.

"Begin." Was all that she said before going for him in a speed very hard to follow.

His eyes became blood shot. There was a pop sound and there Aki was punching very close to the little girl's head. Her dodge stopped her momentum though, so he kicked with the leg opposite to his punch and ended up dislocating a couple of joints by lashing out so fast and for actually hitting her defense, sending Xiu back.

"Can you even keep going like that?" She asked.

*Pop pop pop*

"Like what?" He grinned while everything went back to place.

"You a zombie or something?" She asked with a bit of disgust.

"Or something." He said and charged.

Going even faster, Xiu jumped and hit his head with a kick.

There was a crack and he fell. Everyone imediatly understood what happened and were shocked. One guy even jumped to try and put his neck back in place, since it was almost doing a one eighty. There was a pop.

"Au. Hahahaha, that actually hurts a lot less than the looks would indicate, I'm fine." His head was already back in place, but he just laid there and laughed a deep laugh. A moment later he got up and back in stance. "I'm ready for more, but if you hit my head again then I'll probably die for real." He smiled at the child who thought she'd killed him.

*****

"He's a crazy masochistic zombie!" She complained.

"Xiao Xiu, I know that blood art users can be a bit exentric, but..." The old man tried to sooth her, but was imediatly interrupted.

"You don't! I broke his neck!" This highly surprised and alarmed the old man. "And he got back up like nothing happened." And this too. "Then I had to beat him five more times before he passed out!" This... Was actually inside expectations.

"Sweety, why did you go hard enough to break his neck?" The headmaster kneeled and seriously asked while looking in her eyes.

"Well, I began with only rank 2 strength, but then he suddenly reacted and attacked in rank 4, so I panicked and used too much power." She answered, downcast. "Father, that man is scary." She said and hugged him. Which he returned and lifted her up. Looking through the one way window of his office, he could see that the young man was actually in a chair position while holding barbells and obviously cultivating.

He'd was already at the door of the third stage after this noon of training. A monstrous growth speed. Suddenly he opened his eyes and determination burned in his visage.

"It's fine little one. If you say he shouldn't stay then there's little he can do to convince me otherwise. Go clean yourself." He said and let her down from his hold before she ran away. "You may enter." He told the young man standing by the door.

"Sir." He gestured for the chair in front of the man and sat after getting confirmation. "I will be direct and say that as you might have guessed, I don't know only blood arts. The story of coming in contact with the martial word in accident is true though. I would like to be able to prove so, but that is hardly possible with normal matters, nevermind when cultivators are involved."

"Please, say what you want to say. It's getting late. " The old man stated with a tone suggesting he wasn't kin on this conversation. Aki nodded.

"I wish to join this dojo, not just as a subscriber to the training, but as a cultivator as well. For that i would like to offer my meager knowledge of alchemy recipes and my fists." He said and bowed.

This actually shocked the old man. For this, one must understand, it is mostly through partial methods found in ruins of 'forgotten' times and experimentation that humans have come to reach any semblance of expertise in any crafting art with energy rich materials.

Besides, not every human has the patience and personality to learn such things when they can litteraly go around punching flying tigers or shit.

Aki himself had the information and theory shoved in his head, but even he didn't exactly want to be a crafter for several reasons. He really wouldn't if the advantages weren't there, but they were, so he had no choice but to learn how to produce his own consumables and how to at least utilize enchanting to his favor at the very least, because he was NOT going to be doing spiritual cooking or any other shit people might think was a rewarding crafting class.

Back to a reallity that wasn't clogged with his desire to ignore all crafting professions, Aki noticed that the old man, whose name he should really ask, was considering his possition very deeply. That ment they didn't really want him after the stunt he'd pulled.

"I can see the choice is hard for you, and i must say that i am not terribly offended by this result, however if i am not desired i shall take my leave." He said and did as such while ignoring any further call from behind himself. It was a shame, but he was never too ansious about joining any faction.

It's not that he did not understand the benefits of backing, but more like at the moment those things were just useless. It's not like there was anyone outside of the brothel that knew about his involviment with the killing of all those weak guys during the last night after all. He'd exploded the last guy with a charge of arcane lightning through a connection of the blood in his blade and the man's whole body, killing some other people that were near him, all cultivators acording to the system, so he was confident that even if they'd gotten a description of his because he'd not actually killed one of the weaker goons of that night, they'd still have one so bad it would be enough trouble reaching him that it simply wouldn't matter when they actually did considering neither of those mentioned had even the chance of looking well at his face, nevermind other defining features.

Quickly cheking on Melissa, there wasn't anything happening yet, so he decided to go buy groceries so as to cook some of the alchemy easier recipes before actually cultivating since he was practically blowing up already. At least it'd be a quick session considering how much internal energy he effectively actually had.

*****

As Aki took the blow torch away from his practically melted hand, he noticed that yes, burning alive wasn't that frightening or painful anymore. It was something he'd read a long time ago, but this kind of training actually made him feel closer to one of his heroes. Granted that she was a crazy bitch with literall imunity to pain and a healing even more frightening than his, but that was one of his most humane inspirations, so that was fine.

{ATTENTION! Affinity has reached breakthrough. Fire affinity is now trash tier.}

[Hidden quest: Nature's student (X)

Requirement: Increase one affinity.

Rating: Mythical (SS)

Reward: Grand fiend's supreme blaze scripture. (X)

Description: This is still disturbing but ok i guess. The big guy asked me to tell you you're one though fucker and that he is very much interesting on you, so try not to embarass me, ok?]

"I'll try, but i can't promise shit. Your ugly mug hasn't even introduced itself after all." He muttered while his hand reconstructed itself and he started cleaning the burned off skin and blood from the stone slab of a table. "Water affinity is off because i don't have anyone to help me the timing or my loss of counsiouness, i'd need to book sky diving sessions, there's no tornado incoming, burrying myself alive would also need another person..." As Aki listed off ways to increase his affinities, his patron couldn't help but wonder how the fuck he should react to this. Sure, his chosen was choke full of potential, but even he didn't consider this to be a healthy amount of preparation.

Mind you, he'd just chosen the guy who had the best affinities and highest chance of survival after integration in the planets inside his scope, but this was definetly scarier than any of the top ten chosen even though their talent, speed, resources and ruthlessness were higher. I mean, sure, there's this one guy who is scheduling a fight against a living storm to better develop his ice affinity, but he is already at spirit realm and has a completly diferent attitude to this maniac who is only trying to fill a bathtub with ice cubes so he can frezee himself to near death alone.

Later though, when Aki finally defrosted himself by turning into a warm human flame, he had another idea thanks to the Ice affinity's inate ability.

[Fire Lv 1

Fire manipulation I: Heat and flame are easier to understand and manipulate to you.]

[Ice Lv 1

Temperate body I: You better resist extreme temperatures.]

'I can just kill someone and burn their body to ashed then try to understand 'ash' itself until i suceed with warm ashes!'

That was going to be a terrible plan for right now though. He was already in a warm bath though, so he just closed his eyes and passed his internal energy through his skin like the all the manuals suggested. He'd need to not just strenghten his body, but also turn it the best possible version of itself if he wanted to cultivate correctly.

The stages were separet into skin-human (or whatever your race is called), flesh-pawn, bones-soldier, marrow-warrior, organs-knight and cultivation pathway-general. Each had it's functionality and maximun power they could sustein, so Aki could litteraly have the same stats as someone on a higher stage if they had either chosen to upgrade thenselves at the soonest they could or if they had simply just recently advanced one stage and he was a maniac who went to the brink of his capacity before breaking through.