Chapter 34: Powering up

With the visions over and knowing the current situation of the kingdom right now, I feel refreshed and I don’t seem so lost anymore. Something I could do for now is to look at new books in the Library and try to assimilate the knowledge they contain. After the first bestowal, aside from my own personal collection, there should also have been more books accessible to me. Upon checking, I saw that I have gained access to books on mana cultivation up to the 9th rank of the mortal realm. Before looking at other books, I decided to increase my base mana cultivation first. This will be of great help to me because each increase of rank would mean an overall increase in my speed, strength, reaction time, and wisdom. The effect of the rank increase on a cultivator is different from how it affects warriors and mages where only a selected prowess increase. An increase in the rank of a cultivator can increase both the selected prowess of warriors and mages: body strength of a warrior and wisdom of a mage. Some things that were confusing for me when I was at the 1st rank makes perfect sense to me now that I am at the 3rd rank.

I easily started the 4th rank of mana cultivation that involves making the mana stored in the 3rd rank to overflow from the Dantians and travel all throughout the body, enriching the organs, muscles, and flesh. At 4th rank, the cultivator is no longer classified as an ordinary person, but as someone who is on the path to immortality. Without facing any issues in ranking up, after a little while, I reached the peak of the 4th rank. I then carried forth with my mana cultivation onto the 5th rank. This time, the mana would flow outwards, enriching the skin and the bones, further increasing the strength of the physical body. With each minor increase in rank from the Primary, Intermediate, Advanced, and Pinnacle Stage, the cultivator receives an additional 1 megagram of strength or 1,000 kilograms of force. Again, without any hindrance, I easily reached the peak of the 5th rank.

I continued onto the 6th rank that involves opening up my various acupuncture points. These are the points that are used in the Chinese tradition of acupuncture. Acupuncture itself was used a lot in the olden times for most people believe that it works like magic. Unlike western medicine where humanity has taken the scientific approach, there are energies in acupuncture that help unlock human potential. I used to think acupuncture is a scam, but with magic becoming existent, who’s to say that acupuncture is not real? When I looked through the books in the Library, I found discrepancies between two books that contain information about acupuncture. The novel I picked up listed 108 as the maximum acupoints to unlock while my cultivation manual states that there are 361 acupoints to open.

Every opening of an acupoint comes with immense pain, but also an increase in strength of 1 megagram. Cultivation in ranks before the 6th rank only took me around two hours but opening all 361 acupoints took me around five hours. The first few acupoints were really painful to the point that I felt my mind and heart were also being tempered. After reaching Rank-6 Pinnacle, I fell asleep, and when I woke up, I saw my body covered up with gray goo coming out of it. I cannot help but feel disgusted, honestly. I did blow past the 4th rank which cleaned out defects and other impurities from my organs. I also went past the 5th rank which did the same to my skin and bones. This pile of gray goo must be the impurities that had to come out of my body. I hurriedly took a bath, and when I stepped out, I felt like a new person. Everything seems so simple and bright. I guess ranking up brings with it a totally new mindset in and of itself.

I went out of the courtyard and asked the house AI to let me test my strength. A training dummy materialized after being quickly built by the nanobots present in my manor. I first wanted to see how my strength is. I used the Heavenly Fist Arts to throw out my strongest punch which felt really great to throw like it is something I've been wanting to do since forever. The effect of my punch manifested like a mini tornado with a strong gust of wind had hit my courtyard. Well, of course, nothing moved or broke since this is created by the technology developed by Son. Everything built by people these days is significantly more durable, and the AI has already prepared and reinforced everything. It showed my strength to be at 500 megagrams with 90 Mg coming from my body cultivation augmented with 410 Mg from mana cultivation. If I were to face the old knight again who was at 6th rank Primary, a casual punch from me could turn him into a meat paste.

My strength is already on par with people who are at Rank-7 Pinnacle and right now, I am only at Rank-6 Pinnacle. I then sat down in the courtyard and continued my cultivation onto the 7th Rank that involves connecting the meridians with the newly opened acupoints for more strength to flow into the body. Unfortunately, before I could even start, I felt really pale and out of strength. It seems that I’m already out of mana before I could even connect the first acupoint to one of my Dantians. When I activated my eye of wisdom, it saw that the mana in the air had disappeared. I seem to have absorbed it all. Because the Heavenly Way mana is so pure and condensed, the energy I need to increase my strength is much greater compared to all of my peers. I need to find a source to get a chunk of mana so I can easily improve my cultivation. I guess I can put that off for now since I haven’t seen what the rest of the books are in my Library.

When I looked through the Library, I saw books on professions. The professions in the novel were described in an entirely different way. A painter, for example, doesn’t have many capabilities, but in higher ranks, he or she can even paint out his or her own dimension to be a world of its own. When I looked through the professions available to me, I found the beginner Heavenly Guides to becoming a physician, alchemist, formation master, painter, and beast tamer. I quickly assimilated them all to myself. The physician, as the name implies, studies the way of healing others. The information contained by the book on becoming a physician is of no use to me since I already have the Heavenly Way mana that I can use to heal just about anybody. But I guess acquiring the knowledge on how to heal people would be a great addition to my skills, so no one will know the property of my mana. The alchemist, on the other hand, is focused on creating tonics for consumption to help people. An alchemist can create a pill that can help people train with exerting only half the effort but acquiring twice the reward. An alchemist can also work with other professionals like physicians and help them solve problems by offering to come up with different formulations of almost anything. For example, when a physician comes across someone who is poisoned, the alchemist can help by formulating an antidote for the poison to relieve the symptoms. Technically speaking, all professions can depend on each other to solve different matters. As for a beast tamer, he or she studies the anatomy of different creatures that would help in controlling and healing them. The information on painting is just a guide on how to paint, but a masterfully drawn painting can help someone looking at it to clear doubts in their head and help focus their mind and increase their training speed. And finally, what I need right now is the formation master. The formation master deals with putting formation flags into the ground that would complement the energy in heaven and the earth to produce specific phenomena. I guess the nearest example of this would be magic circles specially created by mages to augment their spells. I can make a mana gathering formation from the knowledge I have acquired from the books in the Library.

With all the books on professions gathered and assimilated, I can finally proceed on to the rest of the books that have opened for me. The final books here are combat tactics books. Unlike the combat techniques that just taught me how to perform the different Heavenly Arts like the Sword and Fist Arts, these combat tactics books help me learn how to truly fight. Now that I have assimilated these, I can already be considered as a veteran on the battlefield, supposedly. My head hurt from all of the rank increase, cultivation, knowledge assimilation, and strength testing. I called out to Max so we could leave, and when I saw him, I couldn’t identify his strength with my eye of wisdom, which is odd. Max came in and shouted at me, “Hey! You promised to teach me a technique. Let’s do that today!” Right, I suddenly remembered my promise to him. I replied, “Sure! If you can beat me, that is."