Chapter 9

Layan walked for the morning through the quiet forest and decided to rest once the sun was at its peak. As he walked the normal signs of life were absent and it made for an eerie experience. There were none of the small flying insects around, no flies or gnats buzzing about. It had him on edge, a constant feeling as though something was wrong. Everything that he was used to seeing was missing.

Chewing on some jerky as he sat with his back against an ancient pine tree, he could imagine eyes watching him from the shadows. The sensation that something was wrong building up as he let his imagination run towards some of the possible changes that the flux wave had produced. Looking around carefully he couldn't find anything. Even straining his senses to the maximum there was nothing to find.

Putting aside the feeling and getting comfortable Layan focused on the ball of energy swirling in his center. He reached through his connection to the energy and slowly started to try to pull the lightest tread out from the raging mass. He wanted to weave the energy slowly through the cells in his body. The flux energy supercharging each cell as it passed through. If he could control the process as he used to with the tiny amounts of energy from before the wave then he could make himself stronger and faster. Even improve the way his mind functioned once he could control the threads to change his brain.

It was a struggle to separate that first thread. The compressed ball of power kept trying to explode out and he had to maintain a constant amount of pressure on the main energy while still pulling out a single thread to use.

He finally succeeded and started to thread the energy in a looping path through his heart and lungs. Once the energy had settled completely he slowly started to increase the amount of power flowing through the loop.

The hair fine thread quickly thickened until it became painful. Layan lowered the energy until he could feel a slight burning but the pain was not too bad. This was the key point for powering up his cells without destroying them.

Running the energy through his heart and lungs would give him a boost to his stamina and the energy would also improve the blood flowing through his heart. This would help with everything he planned to do to himself. Once he started improving things like his muscles and nerves he would require a more potent blood to carry the extra oxygen he would need.

He only knew the basics of what was happening within his body as the flux changed things. His grandfather had been the one who knew more and worked out the basic path to start the process.

Now that he has started the most important step for becoming stronger. Layan studied the width of the energy flow and found it to be a couple of millimetres wide. He was shocked by the amount of energy in the path. Back when he had finished his final cycle of flux cultivation before the flux wave hit. This was at least double the amount of power flowing to his cells and it was only the first channel.

Layan's heart beat faster with excitement, he did his best to keep calm as he tried to maintain the focused meditative state he needed to send his awareness into the smallest structures of his body.

'This much energy should mean that my body's cells have at least doubled in strength.' The thought disturbed his state of mind making it hard for him to focus his sight.

His imagination filled with feats of strength any young man would only dream of doing. Breaking down trees with one punch or lifting boulders with one hand. It took him some time to regain his calm and slip back into his trance state.