A girl, the same girl Aren dealt with around an hour ago. Her name was Xu Su, Aren was an irregular. She was standing infront of a man exuding great pressure, her father Xu Ha. He was angry, his daughter went against his obvious order "I told you you're aren't allowed to leave the compound, what do you have to say for yourself?" Xu Su was nervous to say the least, the presure of a exarch rank cultivator does that to people.
Xu Su looked at her mother in fright, she was always the one that got her out of trouble "Xu Ha, can you please let her off, she's scared shitless." Xu Ha had enough of Xu Su's trouble, he thought it was time for some tough love "No, she has to take responsiblity for her actions. She won't grow if we let her off the hook all the time, she doesn't train in the slightest." Xu Su would finally have to pay for her disobedience, she was having a bad day.
Xu Ha already knew the punishment he would give her "You are grounded! You're not allowed to leave your room until your body refinement rank reaches the level of body cleansing." Xu Su found this, very unreasonable to say the least. Going through to the second realm of body refinement for a mortal, that'd take her a few years in the least! Even with her inheritance of pulse condesing stage martial artists! She felt greatly mistreated, but she couldn't say anything to her father.
But there was something more important to talk about, the dream, the other conciousness "Father, I need to talk to you about something!" Xu Ha was in the groove of tough love, and wasn't in the state to listen to his childs worries "Not now Xu Su." He unleashed his aura slightly and Xu Su got knocked out, the mother; Xu Lian, said "Dear, I think what she wanted to say wasn't related to her being grounded."
Xu Ha relaxed "Oh, really? I'll just ask her after she wakes up, servant!" A old man ran in, he was also a cultivator, but a mere qi gatherer "Yes, what is it you need great exarch?" Xu ha told him "Take my daughter into her room, put up some peak body condensation servants to stop her from leaving." The servant nodded and went to pick his joung lady up.
In the sewer systems Aren was reading through the sword techniques, there were two; one with a back-handed grip and the other with a front-handed grip. He wanted both at the same time, but how could he do that? First he thought of dual wielding two swords, both using a singulair technique. But then he remembered that dual wielding was for those who had mastered the blade, not some street rat that just entered the trade.
He had the idea of switching his grip whenever he wanted to change the technique, that was the most senseable thing he could think of. But there was a problem with going back and forth, when he changed to a front-handed grip he would need to pause his attack for a moment or two. The path the blade took with changing its grip would go against the momentum he used with it, making the slash weaker. He gave up and started to exercise again, he did it as much as he could, the feeling of strengthing himself was extremely nice for him.
He had heard of people that didn't want to cultivate or refine their bodies, and he just doesn't believe they exist. Like a fairy tale, seemingly true to someone without some know how. After he got to tired to exercise he again trained his techniques, this became his routine for the next week, except for looking for trash. Suprisingly the robbers didn't run away the moment he turned his eye away, he complimented them on it and let them do their own thing. Their job was to protect my turf while I did other things, what they did other than that I didn't care about.
At the end of his week of constant training, he realized something. His old fighting technique got in the way of the new, not to an extreme level, but it took one or both of the arms he used in the old one. He had thought of a stupid thought, but that combo he used on the girl was really good and he wanted to improve apon it, his thought; throw the sword into the air and catch it based on predictions. If done well he would be able to catch the sword in the air at the end of the combo, and it would be really cool. He didn't think he could do it though, he just got a sword.
He still had to look at that martial hall, there may be a few useful things there. but he wasn't sure he could enter without being in the first stage, so just to be safe he postponed it. It would be just a month or two away, that was what he felt. He now looked like an average mortal, but was still much stronger than one. When his body's limit was reached he would truly start refining.
He didn't have much to do everyday, and slowly days turned to weeks. While he was doing that Xu Su was having a bad time, her father wouldn't listen to her and wouldn't let her mother contact her until she wasn't gounded anymore. And whenever she wanted to stop training for a day, she would have those nightmares. Everyday she cursed the other conciousness for their bad treatment of her, can't she have a break once in a while?
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She was about 90~% in her path to the body compacting realm, but her old beautiful appearance was gone and exchanged for a muscley body. Whenever she looked at the mirror she felt a sense of loss, but her old body would comeback to her when she reached the first realm. It was the only reason she didn't fall into a state of depression, that was what she thought.
Her manual was obtained from the sect's core library, her father had a lot of influince in his youth and was able to obtain this manual for his children. There was a problem, the manual used frigid raw primal ice qi to train the body in the beginning. And it hurt so fucking much, she screamed in pain everytime she practiced. She only staved off the nightmares by training in martial arts, couldn't she just have one of those manuals that used refined ice qi? I know that this was the cheapest core manual, but all the other manuals use refined qi, or if you where looking hard for it maybe some regular raw ice qi.
The primal stuff is unstable and hard to control, like a wild beast. It takes way longer to refine and use, though it is far more powerful in the same volume and purity. But that doesn't mean a thing, almost no one gets to a 100% purity and no one using primal qi has ever gotten to the point of purity that it takes over those regulars with a 100% in power. Maybe the extemely rare raw qi cultivator can get to that point, like one in a billion raw qi cultivators can get to that point. Let's not get started about raw primal qi, that stuff has a few internal manuals that were easy to obtain, even a pure mortal servant disciple can get the best one with a few months of hard work. Only for the beginning part for qi gatherers of course.
She once asked her father for refined ice qi instead of the raw stuff, but he exploded in anger for her ungratefulness. The one time she tried to refine the primal qi before using it, when using it it made a gigantic explosion because she used it wrongly and refined it badly. She got scolded for an hour, litterally an hour. She was only able to refine it through an array she made/copied from a book about refining qi without being a cultivator. One thing that did make her happy was that through the night there were no nightmares, it seemed the other guy thought trying to innovate was training.
As for aren after the month passed by with constant training at every possible moment he got to around 80~% to his body's limit, while Xu Su got to 90~% it with a maximum of once a day for a slight amount of time with her body refinement technique. If he knew he would call bullshit so hard, her talent and inheritance was worse than his but she still walked infront of him with little work. But him chasing after her coattails was already a great achievement, the difference between techniques was extremely large. He had the worst, while she had a royal grade one using raw primal qi.
Well one day something intresting happened, a goon yelled for his help while he was collecting trash. He ran over, before he entered the camp he made sure there wasn't an ambush. You can never be to careful, actually you can but he wasn't. There was one man that had defeated all the goons, he quickly made a plan. It was dangerous but getting the suprise on him would be worth it.
He ran towards him in rightious fury, yelling his battle cry. In a second he arrived and strook at his foe, he blocked Aren's strike, the sound of swords clashing reverberating across the battlefield. But right at the moment the man thought aren would fully commit, Aren let go of his sword and got his face extremely close to the man's face. And spit on one of his eyes, the man already faltered at this moment albeit slight. The moment obtained was enough for two muscled fingers to enter the man's eye sockets, drilling into it and making him permanently blind.
Aren stole the sword out of the man's hand with ease, he got into his stance and readied for a thrust at the man writhing in agony. I strook once and missed, the man changing position constantly. After a few more missed strikes, he got a sword stuck in his throat. Aren quickly took it out and thrust it in vital areas all over the body, making sure death had happened. But before that he took off all his clothes and stuff, getting blood on his new stuff wasn't a good idea.
He started to drag the body onto the still lit campfire, you could call it a cremation. Although there wasn't a buddist priest to regulate the procedings, Aren made a praying form with one of his hands "I wish thee a great reincarnation." Although he didn't care about the man, he still needed to do something for entertainment.
Slowly the robbers started to wake up, I didn't care to give an explanation. I took everything and ran, and I mean everything. I had taken some useful stuff from their camp, it's the price for protecting them. He'd use it for a noble cause; whatever he wants.
In his little hidey-hole he looked at his spoi- I mean, his donations. There were a few crystals that were emitting an element, or qi if you will. They were the base elements for western fantasy; fire, water, earth and wind. There was one giving of lighting qi, and all of it's raw btw. There was a body refining manual called 'elemental refinement', it used elemental qi in the surroundings to refine your body. The setup was still the same though, but he didn't really care though. There was another book he really liked with 'Qi 101' on it, the greatest book to ever exist to him at least.
He got the man's clothes and sword, an extra set of stuff never hurt anyone. What he rightiously obtained from the robbers was a clay bottle with pills in them, ingraved in it was 'Body refinement pills'. Aren knew what they were, and they were what he thought they were. But he didn't trust it, there were quite a few pills so he could just give one to the robbers as an experiment.