Basics of Cultivation

"Cultivation is the process of acquiring skills and techniques. There are 3 main parts to cultivation: Body, Mind and Energy. Each are vital on their own but they also influence each other in different ways. Cultivating the body helps increase your vitality, power and survivability. Cultivating the mind helps increase intelligence, rate of reaction and comprehensions. Cultivating energy helps with longevity, recovery and paths. However, all 3 of these paths require energy, such as qi, sprit qi and other evolved forms of qi. Qi can be refined and upgraded by many levels so we bunch them under the term energy instead to make it simpler. Without energy the body cannot become stronger and the mind wider. Those in the lower realms, lower level worlds, treat this as an excuse to neglect the body and mind over a stronger energy cultivation as they believe cultivating qi will help with the other 2 aspects anyway but this is because they don't truly understand how the 3 aspects influence each other. If you train your body you can carry more qi and even stronger qi. It also helps purify qi although the effect is barely noticeable at lower levels of body refinement and thus they leave out this aspect. Cultivating the body is difficult and painful but it gives constant long term benefits and is key to the balance of cultivation . You will be starting with body cultivation so I will explain the other 2 aspects when the time comes."

"Why am I starting with body refinement mother? Wouldn't it be better for me to start with qi practising since I'm only three?"

"If you were a normal 3 year old then maybe but your a Basil, Lucius. Plus you've been drinking spirit milk and eating spiritual food since you were young. Although they have very mild natures and won't harm you, if it accumulates too much and you begin gathering qi from within you it could tear your body apart from the inside. So instead you will start by refining the energies accumulated inside you. This just means using the energies to strengthen your muscles and bones. This can be accomplished by simple but effective exercises."

Acacia then told him how to perform the exercises such as push ups, squats, crunches, pull ups and running/sprinting. Due to all the energy rich food and drink Lucius was consuming his body was quite chubby, these exercises would cut down his fat and tone his body but on a scale much greater than the human psyche. Lucius was only 3 but he was already the size of a 7 year old and after all this training he would be physically strong enough to beat a 10 year old.

After half a year Lucius had already become a muscular looking child. He had a toned body and his hair was becoming long . He also began learning literature at a secondary school level, his complete memory helping him progress in his studies at a rapid pace. He also began learning math and he was given a task to make his own exercise routine that would effectively train his muscles. This engaged his mind and helped him build time management, organisational and problem solving skills. He had already begun using weights that his mother had procured for him, slowly and steadily increasing his strength. Although it was painful and he found it boring, he would always have his mother to hold and hug him after a training session and she would help bathe and clothe him, filling him with a feeling of warmth and love.

When his fourth birthday came around he was already accustomed to the routine of training his body in the morning then learning about math and literature before ultimately falling asleep in his mothers' arms. He had only grown to the size of an 8 year old as he had refined the energies in his food instead of allowing it to be used to make him grow.

Since he was pretty busy with his training and learning he had completely forgotten about how he now met the requirements to enter the room of cultivation. He entered the School of Generality and sat in the room that he now knew was a class room, although his was the only desk there and his mother could conjure paper and such from thin air so there wasn't much that filled the room. Acacia appeared from thin air, as she sometimes did, with a beaming smile and shouted happy birthday bringing a cake before him and cutting a slice for him. Although Lucius didn't understand the custom he loved the cake and he loved his mothers smile even more so he radiated joy too. After a short celebration Acacia reminded him to visit the cultivation room.

Lucius left the room and after going to the toilet in the nursery, it had always been there and when Lucius was a baby there was another bot he didn't notice that cleaned up after him and disposed of the waste into this toilet, he ventured through he corridor that he had once considered colossal and found the cultivation room after 5 minutes of walking and he put his hand to it. It opened with a swing and he entered into a room that was coloured in a soft light blue, a sharp contrast to the monochromatic rooms and corridors he was used to, immediately noticing a soft cushion placed in a corner of the room . After that he looked around but there was nothing else so he stepped inside, gaining a better view and after some concentrating he noticed a strange pattern on the floor. He traced the pattern with his eyes becoming dizzy after a few seconds because of the complexity of the diagram. He stopped concentrating on one bit and took in the diagram as a whole and he realised it was just a bunch of squares, circles and triangles piled on each other in a weird mess with random letters and symbols dispersed throughout.

" Why don't you step out onto it?"