Chapter 5: Start of a new Journey

Kian was shellshocked by the interior of the plane as it was something he has seen never before. The plane had numerous rooms and it operated on a very advanced AI. There was no need to even pilot the plane as it was fully automated and even the caretaking of the guest was done by some humanoid robots which operated on the AI of the plane called Falcon.

Kian saw Rafael bringing him some snacks which he happily took and ate. After he finished eating he asked Rafael about everything he saw on the plane to which the man answered everything patiently with a smile.

Unknowingly they had started to form bond and in no time Kian was able to let his guard down and talk with this man who had features of someone at 50 years of age. After taking for some hour and half they began to play games in the plane which was a great way to smoothen their bond. As the time passed the boy slept soundly to which Rafael put him in the bed and covered him with a blanket. As the boy was still holding his hands he felt bad for leaving him alone and asked for a tool to sit beside the boy and watched him sleep. To Rafael he was like his own grandson as he had watched his father Avian grow up with his own eyes.

After some time he also began to drift slowly into sleep and dreams came alive.

*Violent Coughing* and uncontrollable twitch jolted Rafael up awake. The man immediately turned vigilant as his instincts as a warrior acted up and he immediately looked around only to see the boy has turned red with pimple like bumps showing everywhere in his body the only thing they were different than a pimple was that it was more red like filled with blood and more bumpy and also the boy was unconscious.

"Oh fuck, not now boy, not now",cursed Rafael as he immediately knew just by looking that the disease has acted up and well he knew just exactly what to do. He channeled his spiritual energy to the boy by placing his hand in the chest of Kian and starting to circulating the energy. In the response Kian woke up and started to scream because he felt all his body excruciatingly hot.

"Aaaaahhhh...aaahhh...ahhhhhhh" the scream was incessant he was not able to withstand the direct assault of spiritual energy in his body. Rafael immediately asked the AI Falcon to ready the medipod,"Falcon set up the medipod with an emergency and SS ranked condition."

In a middle aged man's voice the AI responded,"Roger that Enforcer Rafael, please take the boy and come to the infirmary."

With that being said he picked up Kian and directly went to the infirmary. Upon entering there was numerous pods lined up and the one closest was ready to use.

Rafael put the boy in the pod and the it closed its lid and Kian who had calmed down considerably but was still slightly nervous slowly started to sleep inside and after some time the pod was filled with a viscous liquid. Rafael stood there with nervous and panic because he knew the identity of the kid but he was more nervous because he had started to like the kid even while spending so short amount of time they spent on the plane.

Nonetheless after 3 hours the pod opened with all the liquid vanishing just like it was not there in the first place and even the clothes which Kian had wore did not even have a slightest evidence of it being soaked in a liquid for 1 sec let alone 3 hours but the miraculous thing was all his bumps were nowhere to be seen and it felt like he was very much comfortable in the solace of deep sleep.

Rafael upon noticing this asked the AI to prepare a detailed report on Kian's physiology which he was handed in seconds by the AI in a transparent device(similar to what he had left in the suitcase). After reading that he got the reason why the disease had acted up so violently and so suddenly.

The main reason was that he was not cultivating as simple as that. And yes the only counter to this rare disease was to start cultivation at the earliest and try to mitigate the damages as much as possible. So from now he would have to start cultivation as soon as possible any delay and the results could be catastrophic. But it was not so simple either with virus of the disease being in your body because it feeded on the spiritual energy that you accumulated and the more you advanced in the realm the more powerful the virus became. This leads to a problem now because whatever a cultivator would cultivate most of the energy would go to the virus leaving nothing for the cultivator. So what is the possible way out from here?

Nothing you just need to absorb more energy than others and after the virus has been satisfied you would get your share to advance your realm.

Rafael sighed while looking at the boy and thought why an 11 year need to go through so much. But nature was nature. Cruel and unforgiving. So now he made a resolve: that was to make Kian learn how to cultivate in these 2 days and he would get down on business from today.

Slowly Kian opened his eyes the thoughts that came to his mind was," Am I alive?, Where is this place? Is it where people go after they die ? " He turned around his head and saw Rafael their and he was washed with relief."Hey Grandpa Rafael." he called.

Rafael was stunned because he had not expected Kian to be awake for maybe another hour and an half. He immediately turned around and saw Kian smiling drowsily as he was still being affected by the medicines. He thought"My goodness this is some god level recovery."

He was right in thinking like that because he was just a kid with no spiritual energy and in the absence the virus or disease had started to eat up its life force which could be detrimental to any cultivator let alone an 11 year old kid. Rafael came closer to Kian observed him closely and for a split second he was drawn to the left eye of the kid and list. He immediately snapped and just saw a red hue in the kid's eyes that immediately disappeared as if it was hiding.

Noticing nothing as unusual and seeing Kian smiling innocently he forgot and thought he was seeing things but his back was drenched in sweat that he was not even aware of.

He examined Kian and gave him some meat porridge to satiate the kid's hunger as he had not eaten anything other than the snacks after boarding the plane. Then the man said "Boy from today your cultivation journey shall start and I will be your first master. And I will teach you the basics of cultivation world as well as teach how to cultivate spiritual energy."

Rafael looked at Kian directly and asked "Are you ready to take me as your master?" To which Kian responded "Yes Grandpa.. Ahh Master Rafael *smiling cheekily*." Looking at his antics Rafael laughed loudly as he had loud voice and said "Drop the formalities you can call me whatever you want."

"Okay then Grandpa Rafael."

"Now we shall start with our basics. See the first thing you would want to know about is why is cultivation necessary? So for this I will just briefly answer: To keep our standing with other races. As other races are inherently stronger than humans we need to have some strength to back us up and protect our interests. So our ancestors started to cultivate as a way to protect ourselves and protect our lands. And also because on this universe only strength respects strength. So to make our footing strong and to make sure that we are not bullied and we can retaliate our ancestors made a pact with The Formless. You need not know about all of it because eventually you will understand everything. This is good for now."

Listening close Kian nodded. Seeing this Rafael said "So let's start then. Focus on my breath." And he sat down cross legged and started to cultivate and Kian was curiously watching his breathing rhythm.

After some moments passed by Rafael opened his eyes and retrieved something from his spatial ring, it was a booklet, which he passed to Kian and asked him to follow it.

He observed the booklet it had *Kosha Scriptures* written on it. It was a unique body cultivation scripture. Even though body cultivation techniques were only necessary till Body Metamorphosis Realm because after that you are not required to train the body because it cannot be trained any more. It was like filling a bucket. And this required the cultivator to choose different techniques to cultivate different aspects of themselves. Like they would need a separate technique to cultivate in each major realm. For example Body Metamorphosis Realm means you could only train body and Ascending Realm meaning you could cultivate Energy body and senses and so on and so forth. But for every rule there exists an exception this universal law applied here also, The Kosha Scriptures was a special technique which encompassed all these cultivation techniques in one single book or rather method. There existed other similar kinds of techniques also in the lands but were very rare.

In the cultivation world the human body had five aspects which are beautiful described in the Kosha Scriptures which has divided the body into 5 parts namely:

1. The Physical Body: Strengthening of the Flesh and Bones. It's completion would make you invincble in Body Metamorphosis Realm.

2. The Energy Body: Strengthens one's meridians and cores where the energies are stored and transferred. Makes one the master of the Energy.

3. The Mental Body: As stated deals with mental faculties.

4. The Wisdom Body: Deals with wisdom and intellect.

5. The Bliss Body: One can only achieve this when he completes all of the above four without any shortcuts.

Now Kian with resolve on his eyes focused solely on the Physical Body part and started to cultivate following all the instructions given in the booklet. At first he was faced with unimaginable pain that felt like somebody was hitting his brain with a hammer in full force but he didn't give up as he had seen his mother cry his father's sad eyes when he was departing he could never let them down not now nor in the future. While gritting his teeth he kept on persisting and after what felt like eons to him he felt like something broke in him and lo and behold he had completed the first cycle of running spiritual energy in his body which made him the elusive called a cultivator. He was now officially a cultivator because he had just entered The Body Metamorphosis 1st Rank.

After some times Kian slowly opened his eyes.