Yousti was drinking some scalding hot jasmine tea.
He did this to train defense of his internal organs using his internal energy.
The woman standing aside however had an expression between astonished and concerned.
“Silk Spirit the tea hasn’t cooled down yet.”
“Nonsense it’s the perfect temperature for me.”
He tilted the cup and gulped down the rest of the scalding hot tea.
“…you’re really a spirit?”
“That’s my title but I’m more akin to Heracles in your understanding.”
Yousti grabbed a piece of wood and threw it into the campfire.
“Have you met any gods?”
Yousti looked up at the sky for a moment.
He had travelled far and wide but despite finally achieving martial arts and gaining supernatural strength he had found no other supernatural existences in his travels.
“No.”
The traveler looked confused.
“Not any monsters, beasts, wandering gods in human form?”
Yousti looked down at his hands performing cats cradle with silk strings.
These questions had frankly dampened his mood greatly.
He thought that with his supernatural power and reputation as the Silk Spirit he would attract some kind of attention that might get him into contact with any kind of secret supernatural society.
But that had never happened.
‘I wish’
He remained silent and shook his head.
“That’s weird, I’ve encountered tons of them among my travels. I even met the Athena herself.”
‘…What?’
Yousti furrowed his brows and looked intensely at this stranger he had recently met.
“What’s your name?”
“Oh I’m nobody, I used to be a great weaver but my look at my hands now.”
She held up her hands to the light of the fire.
It was an ugly sight with some of her fingers half missing, her entire hand down to her wrist was extremely scarred and she had either no or broken fingernails.
Even her thumb was bent at a wrong angle.
Yousti grimaced at the sight.
But he decided to keep things light hearted and spoke with a bit of sarcasm.
“How mythical… nameless woman. How was your meeting with Athena?”
She chuckled at it like a joke.
“Oh I was simply a bit too outspoken and she punished me for it.”
Yousti raised an eyebrow.
“You gave her a piece of your mind?”
“That’s a new metaphor but I suppose I did.”
“…”
“…”
An awkward silence spread between them.
The woman who claimed to witness the supernatural in front of a spirit who had never seen such things.
The irony was quite apparent.
“It’s dark now. You should go to sleep. I’ll stay up.”
In response she walked into the tent to sleep.
Yousti shook his head at himself.
‘You always meet the weirdest people in the wilderness.’
Through the darkness he travelled to a clearing lit up by the stars and moon.
‘This should be a good training spot.’
He had reached the middle stage of a first rate martial artist.
Meaning he could freely use his martial arts, understood its essence, and could project internal energy.
He began training in a dance like manner.
Countless strings of silk flowed behind his every strike and shot forward in a cutting motion.
He had even woven thin strings across the surrounding trees in an invisible spiderweb that he could use to seemingly walk upon air by using his internal energy to strengthen the strings.
Eventually he grew sweaty and took of the outer layer of his clothes revealing that his body was wrapped practically skin tight in silk.
Nearly covering all his skin except for just above his neck.
Yousti trained like this every day and night as the bandits he met simply didn’t challenge him to progress properly.
If it were not for the Martial Record he would’ve hit a wall due to a lack of stimulation.
Asides form training Yousti also used this time to think, contemplate, and even reminisce as his steady progress in martial arts as he was training allowed him to connect with the martial record to his mind.
‘How am I able to draw qi from the plane of soul to create my own internal energy.
The martial record is just that, a record.
It doesn’t grant me anything other than knowledge and enlightenment over martial arts.
So what exactly am I doing that allows to gain this energy in a world without it?’
He contemplated this question while training in hopes that the martial record would give him an answer or at least a hint.
But nothing came to him.
‘Well I’m already doing it.
So maybe I already have the answer?
Physical things become more abstract when you move them into higher planes.
An idea in the plane of soul becomes a physical object that represents that idea in the plane of qi.
So perhaps my enlightenment was so profound that it became a physical thing?’
Yousti shook his head as he stopped practicing.
He sat down with crossed legs and began stroking his chin.
‘Maybe it wasn’t martial arts?
Martial arts at least as I understand it is the combined movement of the body and internal energy.
Though it clearly gets more complicated in the peak realm but that’s not something I know about.
So if I’m doing something that involves no movement then it’s not martial arts?
But everything I learned came from the martial record.’
He looked around him at the trees that were invisibly wrapped with silk.
‘Trees…’
“No. I haven’t learned everything from it.”
He suddenly felt as if a dam had just burst within his mind.
‘I haven’t just learned martial arts.
I’ve learned yoga and all kinds of philosphy from Phaedo.
And more from others.’
But then he felt as if he had immediately hit another block in his thinking.
‘So what did it lead me to?
How would those teaching lead me to internal energy?
Do they even do that or am I delusional?’
He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples as he thought even harder.
‘Let’s go back to what I remember.
What was the enlightenment that allowed me to ascend?’
He remembered.
‘Use your intent to establish the heart of heaven through the heart of man.
But have I truly understood what this saying means?
My body exists in this world and my soul exists within the plane of soul.
But my heart…
is somehow equivalent to the heart of heaven?
Heart heart heart.’
Yousti clicked his tongue.
He was on the verge of a breakthrough he could feel it.
‘If the heart of man is akin to the heavens.
Then haven’t I through enlightening myself and clearing my heart and focusing with obsession used the power of the heart to influence the heavens?
To twist the principles of the world with nothing but my heart.’
The Martial Record flared up in what could only be described as it glowing within his minds eye.
‘Yes that is what is called Immortal Arts.’