Setback

Back in his room, Alex began to carefully go through the Fundamentals of Body Tempering book. He took out a Runic dictionary by the side to decipher the text as he went along.

For a fundamentals book, there was considerable amount of theory pushed into it. The book went into detail about the human physiology, the process of tempering, how exercising improved regeneration and how the manual was a method to slowly improve the limits of the human body.

The exercises were designed to maximize the breakdown of the body's muscles, tissues and wear down the bones. The breathing exercise was in tandem to absorb the spiritual energy of the heavens to amplify the body's regeneration mechanism. There was some details about stimulating ribosomes at the cellular levels and creating stem cells that Alex didn't quite understand. But the broadstrokes were fairly clear to him.

According to the manual, there were various stages of body tempering. The first stage, tempering of the skin. The second stage, tempering of the muscles. The third stage, tempering of the tendons. The fourth stage, tempering of the bones.

Each stage had its own sixteen exercise forms. Alex could only find the first sixteen forms pertaining to the tempering of the skin familiar.

"Looks like Dad gave up trying to force me to learn this, seeing how lazy I was." Alex thought to himself. He began to copy the exercise forms from the book, and suddenly his body began to move from muscle memory on its own. His breathing suddenly became arthymic and aperiodic. The regular breathing shifted to one following a particular pattern synchronised with the one in the book. Yet, he felt like there were minute differences in this breathing than there were in the fundamentals...

The first form took almost no effort, but then shifting to the second form caused his skin to gently tingle. Shifting from form to form gradually continued to increased the tingling sensation all over his skin, until Alex found that by the tenth form he was sweating like a pig and his skin was burning like he had been thrown into a boiling pot of oil. Alex felt both shocked and embarassed as the pain in his body was something beyond his bearing capacity.

Once he transitioned to the eleventh form, he couldn't hold it anymore and collapsed onto the floor of his room. His entire body was drenched in sweat and his body was flushed scarlet. His skin continued to feel an intense burning feeling that made him both afraid and paranoid. He tried remembering as a kid whether this had happened to him.

The memories slowly began to become more vivid. A four year old chubby version of Alex was crying as he was being coerced by his dad to perform this bizarre exercise. The burning feeling was still present. It was, however, much less than what he felt right now. That burning feeling was still enough to make his four year self bawl out in anger at his dad.

When Alex felt the pain subside, he returned to the book. Perhaps, he thought, the reason for the burning feeling might be present in the book. After reading the book carefully, Alex was thoroughly confused. The book seemed to suggest that the fundamentals... were a common training tactic for children because it was a gentle and painless method. Why, then was he feeling such a burning sensation?

His skin felt like he was being bitten by millions of fire ants every millisecond of his performance of the stances. In order to clear his confusion, he decided to seek guidance from the old hag who taught them about the body preparation stage. Alex used the map scroll to make his way to the hag's teaching office. Luckily, it was still during her visitation hours.

Before he could knock on the door, however, the door automatically flung open. "Come in, mortal brat." The old hag's voice croaked. Alex gulped and took a silent step inside as the door shut behind him with a bang.

"You have something to ask?" The old hag looked at him with a curious gaze. Alex observed her trying to balance her hunched body on the aging wooden stick. She looked britlle and about to fall, yet Alex felt an undertone of subtle pressure emanating from her.

"Professor, I seem to have incurred a problem." Alex explained what happened. The old hag frowned and suddenly grabbed Alex's wrist. Her movement was so quick that Alex was startled and didn't even have time to react. She ignored his reaction and closed her eyes while tightly clasping his wrist.

After a few seconds she unclasped her hand and let out a deep sigh as she opened her eyes. Alex noticed a glint within her eyes and slight hints of confusion.

"Try to perform the forms here." She croaked again, ignoring his questioning gaze. Alex could only agree and began to perform the exercise forms. However, the pain was so bad this time that he could only perform five forms consecutively before collapsing into a heap of sweat and burning pain.

The old hag slammed her stick into the ground and turned around. She slowly walked over to her seat and crumpled into it. Her eyes were glaring at Alex with even more curiosity than before.

Alex could only get up after a good fifteen minutes. He was exhausted.

"You cannot cultivate." The old hag finally said. However, her eyes had already left him. She seemed to be looking into a revolving globe on her desk. Alex could see that she was looking into his files. He also noticed her eyes widen a bit.

"I don't understand." Alex replied.

The old hag nodded. "There's nothing to understand. Your body is not suited to be tempered in the manners that we humans practice. Your physical body is heavily contaminated. Your capillaries blocked. Your cellular engines throttled. You feel the burning feeling because your body is warning you that if you try any more you will die."

"Then..?" Alex was dumbfounded and confused. What was he supposed to do in this situation?

"Don't bother trying to transcend. You can't do it. Just spend your time enjoying the sights of the first sky and return back to the mortal world at the end of the year." The old hag said decisively.

"You can't be serious?" Alex was shocked. "You said that the methods to transcend are as varied as the stars in heaven. Yet you are now saying I can't?"

"You have a terrible constitution, brat. I am not trying to dissuade you for malevolent reasons. If it were not for the account of your parents, you wouldn't even be a student at Dantalian. You cannot proceed on the immortal's path." The old hag sighed, this time her eyes filled with pity. "What a shame. To have begotten a cripple for a son. No wonder they decided to shelter you from the truths of this world."

"Who are my parents exactly?" Alex asked in frustration.

"You better ask them directly. If they haven't told you, it's probably because they have their own considerations. Though, I don't understand why they sent you to Dantalian knowing your condition." The old hag sighed and shook her head. "You can return to your dorms. Pay heed to my words. Don't kill yourself by doing something brash."