23. Back to cultivation 3.

"It's definitely all your fault!" After fruitlessly wasting half day Onataka finally managed to find Runamata and immediately accused her.

He caught her next to the main warehouse and there were quite a few people around to witness their argument.

"I don't know what are you talking about!" She calmly replied, "I gave you all the teaching materials you need! What else do you want from me?"

"You think you're so clever, huh?" Onataka grinned and Runamata instinctively took few steps back, "Don't worry, I won't hurt you! But it's not like I can't get to elder Faluno and tell about everything that happened. He might not believe me straight away, but I'm pretty sure I can ruin your life since you are trying to ruin ours!"

Initially Runamata thought that the two boys will desperately try their hardest and in case of a failure present the results they had while obediently accept the punishment. It was not like the kid couldn't say a word – one could speak with him about simple things like food, for example. The only problem was that he stopped learning the new stuff.

Unfortunately Onataka showing up and making a scene in a broad daylight was not according to her plans, therefore after a bit of hesitation she hissed back, "Fine, we'll try to think of something in the evening! And don't you dare to come over here ever again!"

That was all Onataka wanted to achieve. Either they will actually 'fix' the kid or both would have their way with her to relieve the stress. In any case it'll be some kind of a solution.

When the evening came, Leo was already impatiently waiting. He followed all the necessary procedures – kept silent, tried to pout as much as he could as well ignored everyone throughout the day. When the other sect members left and the two guys began to prepare another bath for him everything was still fine, but then Runamata showed up.

Either she was simply angry or it was her female intuition that told something was off, the first thing she did after arrival was to tear off Leo's skirt, put him over her knee and spank until his butt turned red. When Leo bit her other hand so hard he almost chipped his teeth, she kicked him in the face and the boy fell over unconscious.

Meanwhile Bimpo and Onataka stared at them in disbelief and only regained their senses when she shouted, "What? You also want some?"

"You do realize he won't speak to you anymore?" Bimpo asked with a sigh to what Runamata snorted in return.

"We'll see about that!"

She kept her angry appearance up until Leo woke up. Actually, she wasn't confident at all, but she got this advice directly from elder Faluno and because she was out of ideas there was no other way than to follow it.

The old man heard her out and said, "Children need to be taught how the behave obediently. I usually like to use my cane. How about you?"

Runamata was not ready to hit a child with a stick, but she figured a nice spanking with the palm should suffice. Of course, she didn't expect for the damned kid to bite her, but no one could know he had lived with wild apes for months and picked up some of their habits.

Leo woke up with his butt sore and pride badly hurt. Even his father had never laid a hand on him, to not speak about strangers. He stared angrily at his abuser trying to think of the most painful way he could get back at her when she spoke first.

"Here is the deal! You'll start learning properly once again or I'll spank you till you won't know your name anymore!" She said with a calm smile.

Leo stared at her for a moment then looked around, picked up a knife he used to peel fruits for dinner and said back with similar smile, "Good."

He had no clue how to properly say 'come at me, bitch, if you dare' or something similar, but everyone should understand the idea especially because he waved the knife few times in front of him as if checking out if it was good enough to cut her.

Seeing the two had reached an impasse, Onataka suddenly had an idea.

"Leo, listen! We very much want you to learn to speak." He tried to phrase as simple as possible, "What do you want?"

Leo didn't need to think for too long. He pointed at the tub the two were preparing just now and said, "Cultivate."

"Ok, so you'll learn if we let you cultivate there?" Bimpo verified.

"Cultivate at night, learn – day." Leo seriously said.

He had clearly reached some breaking point and their mom was not willing to go through with supporting his advancement. On the other hand he didn't want to simply learn a useless language free of charge.

Fortunately the conditions were acceptable for both parties and a moment later Leo was inside a tub.

To the great disappointment of the two youths, Runamata disappeared right after Leo got in the tub so they were left to smoke alone while keeping an eye on the annoying kid.

She came back early next morning, passed over a sack with herbs to Bimpo and said, "My friend gave me these. It'll have a stronger effect, but just watch the dosage. This should suffice for seven nights and afterwards we'll be done with the lessons."

"What if he needs to learn more?" Bimpo asked furrowing brows.

"The next seven days have to be sufficient. Afterwards the little f*cker will run out of juice." She said with a cruel grin, "But if he becomes forgetful again, we'll knock some sense into him."

After yesterday's performance it was clear the boy was playing them. Especially after he bit her, her pride was injured almost as much as her hand and she went over to Nara to ask for help. Fortunately her friend didn't let her down. The medicine she got should fully deplete the physical potential Leo had while for a while strengthening him intellectually. In a month or two he'll probably die, but he was their responsibility for ten days, maybe fifteen at most.

The only downside was that she had to make sure he kept learning thus she had to continue to come here every morning. The nice bonus was to watch the kid get thinner by day while his main dialect continued to improve. Nara's recipe turned out to be miraculous.

Meanwhile Leo was delighted he managed to hoodwink the clueless aborigines in providing him with free cultivation resources. While he could not step into the real cultivation stages yet, he was making proper preparations.

He noticed how by day, or rather – by night, the amount of the lightning bolts within his consciousness one after another got directed towards the dantian and he finally felt like a master of his own self. Of course, there was still a lot of work to do, but Lyam always said that the cultivation was a long and hard road to walk therefore Leo never expected quick results.

The fact that he was loosing weight at disturbing speed didn't worry Leo one bit. First of all as a child he didn't care for his own looks and secondly – he already slimmed down once and this time the process was exactly the same, albeit much faster. Obviously he attributed that to his diligent cultivation and took it as another sign he was doing everything correctly.

Leo had almost forgotten, but Runamata, Bimpo and Onataka could never guess that the kid they were teaching and taking care of actually had feasted on the meat of the rank seven nightfeather griffin for almost half a year, beforehand having its egg for an appetizer and seven fruits of Divine tribulation trees as a garnish. His tiny body couldn't process the enormous amount of energy hidden within these treasures and a large part of it was stored on him in a form of a thick layer of fat.

Now, when the three people from the Voodoo sect intended to increase his intellectual potential while directly dipping into his life force and killing him in the process, all they did was to provide Leo with enough boost and proper conditions to finally absorb everything he had previously stored.

Of course, if it lasted long enough they would've actually killed the boy, but the luck was on Leo's side and there were only at most twelve days left until the one month limit set by elder Sigfried was up. And since Runamata had no clue what their sect leader had agreed upon, she pressed the deadline to be at least six days earlier and tried her hardest to teach as much as possible during the last days.

As the result Leo got the unique opportunity to process the accumulated Qi and was even rewarded with free lessons of the main dialect that was spoken throughout the immortal realm and in the highest echelons of mortal realms as well.

There was another thing neither Leo nor Runamata suspected.

No one could guess that the boy had forcefully gone through the body refinement stage long ago. When he was caught in the Omar's tribulation storm, only because of series of lucky coincidences and the fact that he was a helpless child he managed to survive it. His luck was bad enough he got tortured by lightning throughout the night, but the blessing in disguise was that the pure Qi the tribulation lightning carried cleansed his flesh, forcefully pushing out all toxins and filth.

Another process that inevitably occurred during that event was the forceful formation of the Qi pathways in Leo's body. Any cultivator would prefer for the Qi pathways to be formed naturally at a slow and steady pace, but while dangling in the rigging of the main mast and being washed with streams of tribulation lightning Leo had no freedom of choice.

The Qi pathways were formed without asking if he wanted it or not, but even though they were a bit peculiar, they were slightly strengthened in the process and fortunately didn't start deteriorate right after. Of course, the Qi pathways were thin and brittle and if nothing was done in few years they would collapse along with him inevitably dying.

Leo's misfortunes with the lightning continued during his stay on the island with the two Divine tribulation trees. As the name implies, these trees naturally emit lightning energy that closely resembles the actual Heavenly tribulation.

Advanced runemasters form the Golden Hand society in the immortal realm tens of millennia ago developed rune formations that allowed the cultivators to familiarize themselves with the Heavenly tribulation and increase the chance of stepping into the Nascent soul stage by forming their Nascent souls after cultivating in such formations from three to five centuries. Obviously the time required was way too long for regular humans, but the lucky few rank seven beasts who managed to make a deal with the owners of these formations gladly used such opportunity.

As a part of manipulation of the lightning energy, around the Divine tribulation trees naturally formed bodies of water in the form of lakes, in one of which Leo thoughtlessly fell in and on purpose at that. The goldenglow tiger who witnessed the scene was correct to assume the human child would die right after, but it couldn't have known that he already had a fateful event that forced him to experience the Heavenly tribulation lightning and his Qi pathways were formed in a way that allowed the lightning Qi to naturally flow through.

Not only these circumstances allowed Leo to survive the electrocution in the water, but after tempering his flesh and bones for a whole day it forced out the remaining impurities both from the muscle tissue and organs, and even from bones and bone marrow. As the result Leo once again unknowingly stepped further in the road of cultivation and cluelessly became a Qi gathering stage cultivator way earlier than he was supposed to.

It all might sound great, but there were incredible risks and even after surviving electrocutions of the Heavenly tribulation lightning or the lightning from the Divine tribulation tree Leo was unlikely to get away unscathed. Rapidly stepping through the early cultivation stages was already damaging enough and might have serious implications in the future, but what was even more important – forcefully forming Qi pathways left them brittle and unstable and even though they got tempered over and over again by Leo swimming daily in the waters of the Divine tribulation tree, they actually were on a brink of collapsing.

This is where Runamata, Bimpo and Onataka did Leo a favor he would never be able to repay. The baths they let him enjoy allowed to transform the previously accumulated Qi and if not for them, his Qi pathways would've completely collapsed in a year or two.

Neither the 'mother' nor her two 'tuckers' could ever guess that they helped the little fatty immensely and as the result he actually stabilized his cultivation at the same realm as them. Of course, he was physically incomparably weaker, but that was expected by the age difference and because at this stage the bodily prowess still decided everything.