I arrived home earlier than usual. Stepping into the house I yelled.

“Mom, I’m home!”

Taking off my shoes, I walked straight into the kitchen and found mom there cooking food.

“Mom, can I go out tonight? I have something to do.” I called out to her.

My mother who is currently cooking turned around to stare at me.

“Young man, I just scolded you this morning after you’ve gone out for two days and now this!? Just where did I do wrong?”

Now, she is crying. Well, I’m not buying her tears. She may be old, on her late thirties but my mom knows how to joke unlike my grumpy father. Let’s just comfort her and she might let me off.

“You didn’t do anything wrong mom. Look at me, aren’t I the most filial son around these parts?” with exaggerated hand movements I conveyed it to her.

After she calmed down, she returned to her cooking and I hugged her from behind. I was easily taller than her so I saw what she was doing. She was cutting meat strips so I hope dinner will be good today.

“Don’t worry mom, I’ll return late tonight so I’ll eat even more this dinner. Sounds good right?” I coaxed her.

My mother is the kind of mom that gives effort to her cooking so she is happy when I enjoyed eating them. Actually, her cooking is good; it’s just that I didn’t have the time to humor her on it due to how avid I am to fictional novels. And now that I learned that the fictional books that I read have some truths on them, I became desperate enough to consider ditching school. Fortunately I squashed that thought and focused on my studies and not put the cart before the horse.

Although school isn’t giving me headaches due to the help of Google-sensei and own stock knowledge gained from the many years of browsing internet, it is still inefficient compared to entirely giving my all into it which gave me my current conundrum. Exactly how can I focus on schooling when I’m distracted by the prospects of my interface? An idea shelved for another time.

My musings were interrupted by my mom’s giggles and I smiled back at her.

“You’re getting good at flatteries young man. Alright, I won’t be taking liberties from you but return before midnight, understand?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Mom brought out the plates and served dinner.

“Eat up, your father will be coming home tomorrow due to some work-related stuff so he won’t be with us, I’m sure you understand. On a side note, you’re lucky tonight.”

“Thanks mom!”

With a quick peck on her cheeks, I sat down and waited for mom to do the same. We ate dinner and exchanged some talks about dad’s work and my pranks today. She scolded me when I told her that my classmates didn’t have lunch because of me saying things like, “a man shouldn’t let a girl starve” or “you should ask for an apology tomorrow”. I preferred not to meet them again but if we do, I’ll just make it up for them.

After eating, I washed the dishes and said my goodbye to my mom and left the house.

Our house was situated beside a mountain at the fringes of the suburb. You might find it questionable to build suburbs near a mountain where wild animals roam but it is not without reason. The simple reason was, the suburb was built beside a freaking mountain range, embracing the suburb from the left side slowly curling to its south and turning to its right, resembling the letter U with the suburb inside.

Its design was developed by our country to propagate the idea of being one with nature. It was implemented around thirty years ago and we lived here since I was three.

The geographical location of the suburb also protects it from bad weather and after a major landslide twenty years ago; the mountainside was riprapped to prevent the incident from happening again.

I followed the mountain trails until it became forest trails when I entered the forest. Tall trees lined my sight and the chirps of birds and bugs assaulted my ears.

The putrid smell of rotten bark and leaves might have been disgusting to others but to me, it was nostalgic. I often play here when I am bored of playing computer games. Every inch of this land was marred by my footprints; every bark was marked by my hands. The forest was there watching me grow up.

The rustling of leaves woke me up from my trance. A gale blew up the strands of hair in my face and I smiled. Yup, it’s nice to be free.

An invisible wind stirred up the area and a soothing aura enveloped the vicinity. I released my self-inflicted shackles and outstretched my arms and inhaled. The stifling sensation vanished and leaves whipped away from me.

I grinned and muttered, “It’s good to be back.”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

***

After a thirty minute long run, the clearing came to view. By the time I arrived, the sun was currently setting. It was the same as always sans the sunlight.

I approached my polished and glorious throne – one I begged dad to build for me when I was a child – and sat down crossed-legged atop of it.

But before I closed my eyes to meditate, I heard a roar of a beast followed by a girl’s scream. I dare say it was a girl and not a woman because of its pitch high enough clearly released by a young girl.

Thinking that the girl was in danger, I swiftly stood up and followed the noise. At the distance, I saw a middle schooler cornered by a bear.

My eyes narrowed to take a good look and saw the bear positioning to pounce at the girl.

I sprinted with all my might and broke a twig from a withered tree along the way. The whole branch easily snapped from my grip imbued by my desperation and promptly threw it towards the bear.

Sprint has leveled up.

The bear flinched from the unexpected object losing his chance. I arrived in front of the girl and blocked the bear from eyeing her. I didn’t have the time to check on the girl before the bear growled at me.

A dangerous idea flashed into my mind but I squashed it away. Fighting the bear while simultaneously protecting the girl is outright stupid. Even without her behind me, it would still be difficult to fight a hulking 350 kg mass of weight. A single swipe of a bear would break my bones and might even cripple me. And that’s without assuming that my meager cultivation would help reinforce my body.

This time, I circulated my chakra, imbued it with my Dao intent and released it towards the bear, masking its effects with a scowl.

“Back off!”

The soothing and calming effect of my Dao coupled with the staggering force of chakra made the bear woke up from its mindless frenzy.

Touch of Life has leveled up.

Upon seeing that I intervened and sensing the danger I emitted from my body, the bear decided that attacking us aren’t worth it so the bear promptly left.

I spent a couple of minutes staring at the direction the bear left, ensuring that it was nowhere to be found. Once I made sure that the bear was out of our sight, I swiftly check the safety of the girl.

The girl was trembling and tears were pouring out of her eyes. I approached her slowly and hushed her.

“Now, now. Don’t cry. Look, the bear’s gone.”

Which, once again, made the situation worse. Why does every situation goes downhill every time I run my stupid mouth? Is the world that merciless against me?

Better wrap things up and bring her home before someone finds out. It would very bad if a new title will be birthed next to the fool – the lolicon. Thinking about being branded as a pervert sent shivers down my spine. My infamy would go straight down into the drain.

Thus, I comforted her but before I made an attempt the girl suddenly hugged me.

My eyes went wide but her cries made me realize that I’m not hallucinating. I pressed down my confusion and hugged her back.

“Hush, don’t cry. It’s alright. Nothing’s gonna hurt you now. Don’t worry, big brother here will protect you.”

I brought it my all to coax her. Alas, my efforts bore no fruit.

After several minutes of coaxing and wiping her tears, she finally calmed down to form words.

I inspected her once again.

The first thing I saw is her eye-catching silver hair. Her hair even from far away glistens in the moonlight and is most likely the reason the bear saw her.

Next, I inspected her face. Her eyes, red and puffy from crying show how afraid she is. Her eyelashes were even faintly trembling. The smooth cheeks that lined her face were red from embarrassment. Thinking that her eyes were mesmerizing, I averted my gaze from her.

I helped her stand up and realized that I was a head taller than her. Her legs were still trembling so I brought her to the clearing and let her lean on a log I rolled over in my younger years. Then, I ignited the campfire that was placed beside it by my father seven summers ago.

We sat there in silence and after several minutes and mustering up the courage to speak, I tried to ask her.

“Um, are you alright?”

For a few seconds there was no answer. Nay, make that a minute.

I sneaked a peek at her and found out that she was already fast asleep. I guess the brush with death took a toll on her.

Deciding that I consumed too much time, I stood up and jumped over my meditating rock.

With closed eyes and crossed legs, I began to tackle my bottleneck.

***

Within my dantian drifts 10 strips of gaseous qi. These qi were congregated inside my dantian, creating a dense ball-like structure of qi. During circulation, some the required qi will disentangle themselves and circulate on the pathways across the body called meridians. The meridians were the points on the body where qi can pass through in order to reinforce the part where the meridian is located.

A full cycle of a single strand of qi will increase the body’s output by 10%. This means that my speed, strength, kinetic vision, reaction speed and many others will rise by a whopping 10%. A whole droplet of qi will raise it by another 100%, essentially doubling my capabilities.

That’s why for a cultivator, more qi means more power. Sadly, being a mortal, the body can only hold so much qi. So they devised a way to counter this problem.

If more qi equals more power, then what would better qi means? Using this ideology, cultivators attempted to compress their gaseous qi to create liquid qi which takes up lesser space but contains greater power. Their experiments were a success and thus, cultivation stages existed.

Cultivation stages divide Qi Condensation into 10 stages. Each droplet of qi in a cultivator’s dantian represents his cultivation stage. 1st stage with only gaseous qi, 2nd stage with a single droplet, 3rd stage has 2 droplets and so on.

On the other hand, the bottlenecks were there to stop cultivators from taking shortcuts and combusting themselves due to high influx of qi so it is very important to condense them and thoroughly build the foundation. Quantity over quality.

I slowly prodded my qi and with a clamp of my will, they condensed. The resistance they exerted at my current stage was minimal but due to my inexperience, I had a hard time compressing them.

Every time I tried to grab the strands and coerced them to form a ball, they somehow slip from my grasps. I tried various ways to trap them using my will but no matter how hard I tried, they would still escape.

Frustrated beyond words, I mustered my all my will to move a single strand and lock it in place. Surprisingly, it obeyed.

There was only one logical explanation. My will is weak. It needs to be united and is only enough to move a single strand instead of ten.

But strangely enough, the locked qi didn’t move. Only after several minutes did it began to once again drift. This gave me an idea.

Once again, I mustered up all my will and pushed the strand at the corner of my dantian towards its center and locked it down. I did it to all my qi strands and after two hours of concentration, I made a breakthrough.

Congratulations on making a breakthrough, you are now at the 2nd stage of Qi Condensation.