His impromptu attack had been unexpected, but I gave it little thought. What happens in the minds of others is not easily deciphered. What matters is the outcome, and clearly, he had failed in his endeavor.

That's how I had grown to see life. It was an oversimplification of my actual belief, but that was the general gist of it.

Whatever his reason for attacking, it made no difference. It's not like I could kill him, nor did I want to. He had given me a lot of benefits. After all, he had lit the path of cultivation.

A path that I intended to walk down myself.

That was something I was grateful for.

The rune on his forehead wasn't really a punishment towards him. It could have been made less painful, but that was really the only thing I had done as a reprimand. In fact, if it panned out, it would be more of a boon towards him.

A boon that could end biting me in the ass, though I was prepared for it.

What did interest me was how he would interact with a world that had only lost him for a day. To them, it was a miracle, but to him, this was an event decades in the making.

It was rather unfortunate that I wouldn't be there to witness the aftermath.

My current priority was to start cultivation. Gaining a concept fragment was pushed to the side. That road to power was shrouded in darkness, but the pathway of cultivation was not. I would return to it eventually, but now I needed to gain any form of power I could put my hands on.

I would be implementing his findings as well as that of his son. They were both pathways with great potential. One was, of course, more mapped out than the other but shouldn't be too much of a hindrance.

William's chimera art allowed him to fight someone many realms above him. I had a feeling that it would make regular cultivation harder, but the cross-stage punching power was too tempting.

Any additional length to cultivation caused by the chimera pathway could be overcome with time.

But I intended to start with regular cultivation just in case they couldn't interact.

The spirit bonding method had interested me, but that was even less understood than the chimera path.

My only real question was what core would I use.

It was at this point that I realized that I should probably hold off on that pathway. The only beasts that I would be interested in using were still alive and kicking.

They still had vital roles to play in this world, and I wouldn't be using any random beast just in case there happened to be some limitations later on.

That was an unfortunate revelation, but I took it in stride.

I then teleported to the planet or Malum as Alexis had taken to calling it. With the time differential, I intended to cultivate up till the level that Arnaud had been at.

That was why I found myself currently hidden deep within a random mountain. I needed no distractions while I would be meditating. Food wasn't necessary for me in my universe. The only thing I was worried about was boredom.

It would take longer for me as my actual body wasn't superhuman or anything of that sort. In fact, with a regular human body, it wouldn't be possible to even sense qi.

That problem didn't apply to me since I could move the external qi as I wanted. All I would have to do was concentrate it in the area where I would be meditating until it was thick enough for me to feel it.

That was risky since I could potentially absorb too much qi, but I had accounted for that.

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At this point, there nothing left to do but actually start.

Only 2 hours in did my fear come in to play. I was bored out of my mind. For 2 hours, I had been attempting to sense whatever qi was in the air, but nothing had been felt.

When I drew in more qi to the mountain, I started to feel it on my skin, but I didn't feel it in the way I was supposed to. I continuously attempted to meditate for 6 more hours, but still, no progress was made.

I hadn't expected to make much progress in that timeframe, but the sheer boredom had not been understood.

I found myself stopping every couple of hours and walking around to ease the boredom.

I knew that I couldn't continuously mediate for a century.

I would legitimately go insane if I did.

Things were not looking up for my road to power. Firstly I didn't know how to go about acquiring a concept fragment, and next, I didn't have the patience of sage. So my path of cultivation wasn't looking all that good.

It only worsened when I realized that I would need to meditate for a longer time to acquire a concept fragment.

I needed to find a way to solve this issue.

The powers granted to me in the universe didn't help me in any of those aspects. They were more for dominating my universe. They didn't provide much benefit to me internally.

I ended up worrying about the issue for several hours with no progress made. I tried to create an artifact to reduce my boredom, but that was when I figured out that things made by me couldn't affect me.

There was really no shortcut for cultivation.

I would need to manually do it and endure the boredom.

I took the time to slow down and try and come up with a gameplan. Not being able to cruise my way to absolute power was annoying, but it wasn't as if the world was ending.

The path of cultivation was very much still available to me. It would honestly be pathetic if I gave up because it took too long.

The issue of boredom simply meant that I would have to take breaks between my sessions. I didn't want to constantly be going in and out of the universe, which means that I would have to live in it.

There was still the worry of what effect a century of solitary living would have on my psyche. I wasn't too worried as I could always mess around with humanity or any of my creations.

In fact, that was the plan. I intended to take this century of cultivation to establish another character and move the world forward.

So I created the persona of Tena, The living storm. As the name implied, I took the form of a storm. Whenever I went back to meditating, I simply created a neverending storm and gave it slight intelligence.

The first couple of weeks of my attempt was filled with me failed attempts at meditation and constant exiting of the cave to explore the world. This was a series of events that followed me for a whole year.

A year that hadn't been easy at all. While being allowed to go out had eased up my boredom in the short term, in the long run, it hadn't been that useful.

This is why during that year, I ended making contact with Deventus. It was an event that would have happened, given there was an ever-present storm made by me.

The meeting in of itself had been uneventful as she had simply observed the storm from a distance in a mortal form. I had then created another storm in that divine realm that was linked to the one on Malum. That was where the first actual meeting took place.

It had been of cofusion. It's hard communicating as a storm, even more so when the being you're trying to communicate with is suspicious of you.

Her inability to see the future of the storm had made her paranoid. That paranoia had eased after a couple weeks of communication. Overall the relationship was heading in a positive direction.

This staved off the boredom during the second year. That was the year in which I finally managed to sense qi.

Unfortunately, I had been so excited that I immediately lost it, and only months later did I manage to regain that feeling. It was halfway through the 3rd year that I managed to sense it consistently.

I then reduced the qi density back to its normal levels, and unfortunately, could not sense. It took an additional two years before I could do that.

I could've ignored that step since I planned on cultivating in a qi-dense environment, but I wanted to be able to sense qi without a crutch.

During those years, a friendship bloomed between Tena and Deventus. It was t that point that she introduced me to the humans. They had made only a little progress in those few years.

That had been expected. There were, of course, a couple more feet running around the territory. Then there was the fact that one of Alexis's plans had panned out. William was now leading the tribe with a council of the eldest siblings.

They had started to establish the first proto-versions of school. The pathways of the [The numerator] and [The Oracle of The North Wind] had been recorded into books.

They had created training regimes that they taught the children to allow to acquire those titles. Though none of them actually were able to get the originals, instead, they got weaker variations of the two.

Though no false titles appeared. William had apparently learned his lesson. Even the abilities granted by his title had been recorded and were being taught. In fact, a quarter of them had taken to using that pathway. The others either stuck to the regular cultivation, or they bonded with the wind spirits.

Each method had its pros and cons. It seemed like no single method was more favored than the others. Though regular cultivation had more participants.

They had also expanded their territories again but not by much.

It was at the start of my 7th year that I finally managed to absorb qi. It was a rather odd feeling. It felt as if I was full from eating, but my whole body felt like that. By the end of that year, I had attempted and succeeded in my first refinement.

It hadn't been a pleasant process. I could have ignored it and jumped right to making my meridians, but I wanted the most solid foundation I could get.

I hadn't felt too different after it. It was only once I started to move about the difference became pronounced.

My body felt so light, and my senses were much sharper than they had ever been.

I didn't doubt that I was stronger than before. I intended to continue refinement until I reached the peak of what my body could achieve.

I couldn't endlessly refine like the furnace lobster, and my limit wasn't as high as the perfected humans.

That was also the year in which Deventus started to cultivate. She was, of course, a natural. In that singular year, she had performed over 50 refinements, and she didn't look to be approaching her limit any time soon.

While her divine powers didn't grow, her physical capabilities only continued to grow. Though I had a hunch that this would have consequences later on. At the very least, it should. No one should be able to do that.

Perks of being actual divinity, I guess.

The refinement did not boost any of my other powers in any way. Which makes sense as it's simply an optimization of the base body.

It was during the 15th year after 12 refinements that reached the limits of the regular human body. That was the year that an official calendar was created.

During that year, Deventus completed her 500th refinement. That was also the year in which William stepped into the second realm of cultivation. The so-called Verdant Realm.

So in the year 0000 BF, I reached the first stage of cultivation.

Finally!