Kael rolled the Verdant Spirit Herb Body Purification Pill between his fingers. It was small and perfectly round, its sweet medicinal scent rising up to tickle his nose.
He should have had many more like it. They were part of the allowance owed to him as an Heir Disciple.
As things stood, however, he depended entirely on his stepmother for every resource.
Fortunately, he had the System now and wouldn’t need to bother her over something this minor.
Without hesitation, Kael popped the pill into his mouth.
It dissolved almost instantly, a cool sweetness spreading over his tongue before sliding down his throat.
He then pulled out the Burning Sky Body Cultivation Art, a crimson book with a hard, well-crafted cover. Twin fire dragons coiled across its surface, their carved scales shimmering faintly in the light.
That technique belonged to one of the four forms of martial arts that existed in this world: movement techniques, combat techniques, production techniques, and finally, body cultivation techniques.
The last was the most essential, forming the foundation of any cultivator.
With a strong body cultivation technique alone, a cultivator could still crush mountains. Without one, they were nothing more than mortals pretending to be superheroes.
Although Kael had never cultivated, he’d been taught the fundamentals from a young age.
His memories remained largely intact, and on top of that, he now carried over ten years of training stolen from his father.
In essence, he likely held more cultivation knowledge than any other young talent in his sect.
A faint smile tugged at his lips as he settled down cross-legged on the wooden floor of his room and opened the book.
His eyes fell on the first page, committing the mantras written there to memory, his voice echoing softly through the room as he read.
"A thousand hammers cannot forge like the inner heat,
a thousand blades cannot cut like one’s own blood.
Burn the body like firewood in winter,
be reborn from the ashes, harder than steel."
Heat surged through him at once. His body warmed rapidly as Qi raced along his meridians, sinking into every fiber of him, and the pill in his stomach began to take effect.
Kael guided the heat carefully, shaping its flow with focus.
Within minutes, a prickling sensation crawled across his skin as the first impurities began forcing their way out.
His skin glistened with a black, foul-smelling slime, nearly twenty years of accumulated impurities oozing from every pore.
It beaded along his arms and trickled down his neck in thick, sluggish streaks.
The stench was acrid and suffocating. His eyes watered and his stomach turned, but he kept his concentration locked in place.
His newly activated meridians cleared, the smoothness of his Qi flow doubling almost instantly. Even his reserves expanded by a significant margin.
With a sharp crackle, his clothes burst into flames. He didn’t care, not even when he found himself completely naked among a ring of ashes, his body hot enough to make water boil on contact.
Only the book in his hands remained untouched by the searing heat.
By the tenth page, Kael found himself struggling to grasp the deeper meanings and closed the book.
At his current cultivation level, pushing further without care wasn’t wise.
When he rose to his feet, the first thing he did was sniff at himself. His nose wrinkled instantly at the foul, rancid stench clinging to his skin.
He hurried to the bathroom and scrubbed himself thoroughly, watching the water run black again and again before it finally came away clear.
Returning to his room, he stored the book in his spatial ring and slipped into a fresh set of clothes.
After cleaning the soot and grime from the floor, he pulled three other items from the ring. The spear caught his attention most.
Its shaft was crafted from a silvery metal known as cold iron, wrapped in blood-red fabric that ran from the base up to just before the blade.
There, the wrapping ended in a small banner of fluttering threads, ruffled and elegant, like a battle pennant.
The silver, star-shaped tip stretched roughly thirty-eight centimeters long, sharp enough to tear through flesh and bone, perfect for both thrusting and slashing.
From end to end, it measured nearly two meters. Kael hefted it once, feeling the cold weight settle into his palm. Without a doubt, a powerful weapon.
Setting the spear aside, he turned to the two books, studying them carefully and committing every form and mantra of each technique to memory.
Strangely, his mind felt much sharper than it had on Earth, almost as if he possessed a photographic memory, recording everything he read with perfect clarity.
He simply chalked it up to his improved cultivation and continued studying.
And so, silence reigned in Kael’s room, broken only by the soft rustle of turning pages.
The next morning, Selene brought him a hearty breakfast, looking more radiant than usual.
Her cheeks carried a soft glow, and her eyes shimmered with something between pride and quiet satisfaction.
Sensing the improved purity of his cultivation, she set the tray down and pulled him into a warm embrace before he could even greet her properly.
The soft, heavy mounds spilled around his cheeks and molded themselves to the shape of his head, pushing the pillowy flesh against him until he was smothered completely, her scent the only thing he could breathe.
After a few long moments, she finally loosened her arms.
She stepped away with a satisfied smile, telling him she had important matters to attend to.
More specifically, she was going off to announce Kael’s awakening to the sect and demand that the Finance Pavilion prepare the funds locked away there, since he would soon be claiming them.
Left alone, Kael threw himself back into training.
Day and night without pause, he drilled through the many forms of the Fire Emperor’s Steps and the spear art of the Seven Flaming Claws, the cold iron shaft whistling with every thrust and sweep.
He even considered trying his luck with his stepmother again, but quickly discovered there was a cooldown on talent theft: one session per week.
The moment sex ended, stealing talents from that specific woman became restricted until the week was up.
A little disappointed, Kael pushed the thought from his mind and focused on organizing all the knowledge he’d accumulated.
At dawn, with the sky still dark, he stepped out into the courtyard of the pavilion where he lived alone with his stepmother and a handful of servants.
The morning air was cool against his skin.