After some chatting, Jin was calmed down and ready to go back to practice. He was quite a bit ashamed that two youths had been laughing at him in such ways but he couldn't have helped it. He had really gotten scared there. For an old man to be ridiculed by two youths was still humiliating...Fortunately, as they only thought of him as a kid, they didn't consider it unexpected.

They ended up telling him about their own first times...absorbing spiritual energy of course. Turned out that both of them also got scared shitless and even grossed out. That's the average reaction when kids suddenly feel themselves in nothing but darkness with single dot of life. Especially when they are no longer in a physical body but solely a body of consciousness.

By the time they started rambling on these ethereal topics, Jin's mind already left. He couldn't understand shit. His previous life didn't prepare him for a lengthy psycological and metaphysical talk of this level. He was never that kind of guy. After being bored out of his mind for a dozen minutes, he politely found a way to leave them and go back to cultivation. That is if what he did can be considered cultivation.

The process was to be very different. The individual was supposed to sense the energy, contact it through his will and forcefully have it go to himself to be absorbed. It was the step of willing the absorption. Jin had, without knowing it, reproduced what the ancestors did in the old days. Consuming energy. It did have to start from somewhere after all. As for the reason why it became a forced absorbtion through the will? It seemed better.

Whether you consumed it or absorbed it thanks to your will, the energy was the same. The only difference was how it was done. Willing the energy to move required patience, concentration and talent in controlling energies. Not only that but it was also helping reinforce those aptitudes further.

In the end, the question was to distinguish from which one would benefit more and to cultivators of old, it was obvious. They would rather pick the method that also helped them build their mind and control abilities. Of course, such truths were long forgotten as they weren't a must to know and preserve. As long as the 'right way' to absorb energy was passed on to later generations, did it matter that an obsolete one was lost? No, it didn't.

But that aside, considering how they made a joke of how he got his first spiritual energy, Jin wasn't considering replicating his first success. He wanted to use the correct method! Oh, how powerful was the crowd thinking. Still, Jin soon came to realize one very important thing.

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He couldn't, for fuck's sake, will a single grain of energy to be absorbed.

After spending an hour more trying, he gave up. What if it was unsightly? What if it wasn't 'right'? What if they made fun of it? If it worked, then it was better than fucking failing again and again. In the end, he gave up and just began to jump around his room gobbling up the shining lights.

If someone had seen him, he would have likely earn some very impressive dumb nickname and rumors about him would have spread. Fortunately, he was home alone... Yes, no one could see his shameful act! So, he kept it up as he grinned. But after some time, he realized something. There had been a small fixed number of enerdy dots in his room.

And there were no more...

He decided that the dozens he ate should be enough so he laid down on his bed and tried to enter that so-called soul sea. It turned to be very easy after the first time. And less creepy. There were also many more dots of light. Now, he had to start on to the next step... which was to change the shape of this dots into strands.

...

Meanwhile, in the neighbouring houses, two inner sect disciples of certain cultivation who heard something funny earlier were testing things out for themselves. The two of them were Han-Bi and Sang-Min. They both tried to 'eat' the spiritual energy. And they both reacted in different ways.

Han-Bi was rather collected as she found it fun that it worked.

Sang-Min, on the other hand, couldn't help but be shocked about it. It had taken him months before he managed to absorb his first spiritual energy...If back then he had known he could just eat them... He got frustrated just thinking about it...

...

The next morning, after an entire night trying, obviously, Jin had failed. Not only did he not manage to trace a single line, he also noticed how the spiritual energy left him from time to time. By now he didn't even have one speck of light left in his soul sea.

And absolutely nothing to show for his efforts.

He decided to go out for a slight jog to regain his calm before going to bed. He would sleep through the morning once again. Cultivation only brought him frustation up until here. Fuck. He didn't want to spend his life playing with lights in a dark place. He wanted to fight strong people! He wanted to be acclaimed and recognized for his abilities!

As he kept running absentmindedly, he didn't notice the guy until he ran straight into him. Both of them ended up to the ground with some dizziness. As he regained his senses, he saw that he had bumped into an outer sect disciple. That was quite strange... They were in the inner court after all? Then, he noticed the very unhappy gaze of an older guy to his right. That one was wearing the robes of an inner court disciple. And he seemed angry as he coldly said: "What do you think you're doing, grappling my little bro by behind like this? Uh?"