The training menu that Kairos has prepared for himself can only be described by one word: Inhuman.

He held high-regards to those who lead at the forefront and strove to be such a guild master for the Snowdrifts.

With the copiousness amount of resources he prepared, he aims to rush two grades and reach Peak D rank before the manor is built.

His training menu was filled with all kinds of unreasonable goals because of a sense of urgency that had been building in his heart.

Every day he infuses great amounts energies from the spirit stones he prepared beforehand into his flesh. With the Snowdrifts shop now in operation, he could afford to have a handful of spirit stone per day. The glittering crystals are made of Heavenly Energies solidified and could help greatly in the cultivation process. Each spirit stone is separated into different grades depending on the amount of energy contained within.

The crystals that Kairos is using are considered low-grade products, mined from the exterior of a spirit ore mountain. Their appearances were a murky blue, filled with grey specks that made them looked like they were covered in dirt. After extracting all the energies within a stone, about eight to nine out of ten parts are left over that crumbled into dust.

Invigorated by the energy, the hidden runes within his body surfaced once again and enveloped his entire body, strengthening him and tempering his flesh.

To increase the speed of his physical training, he fought the land wyrm every day while in this state. During the sparring as a way of practising, Kairos only use the defensive methods of the formless style, and every time he will sustain numerous injuries.

However, it wasn’t that he did not improve in guarding against attacks, but the purpose of fighting this way is so that he could make use of the body tempering method to speed up the recovery process while strengthening him at the same time.

After returning from his physical training covered in wounds every night, he used recovery pills and other resources to increase his cultivation speed.

The Heavenly Scent pills that Small and Smaller had sponsored became a great addition to his resources. With the reputation Kairos had built upon his new runic weapons, the Mountain Cat family was glad for the chance in forging a relationship with the boy.

Huge amounts of ambient energies flowed into him, more than what he could summon by himself. Those wild and unrefined powers mingled dangerously, but when they entered his body, the twin dragons within him flew out of his Dantian like little tyrants and started suppressing the foreign substances.

After absorbing enough energies, different elemental Ki started appearing in his Ki Centre. They are differently coloured, and each gave off a unique trait with sixteen of them in total.

With the help of the twin dragons, he is free to focus on another training. Perhaps, the boy is the only cultivator in the world that do not need to focus on assimilating the energy he draws into himself.

While his internal energy slowly strengthened, he started training his Origin Energy. The cultivation method was similar to his initial awakening and separated into three parts.

The first part is to concentrate on his five senses with all his Origin Energy, making each of those senses to become inhumanly powerful. This process is called the pure-self cultivation method, where Kairos gains temporary complete mastery over his body.

While this may seem like an incredible advantage to use in battle, but unfortunately the amount of time and concentration needed to activate it make it infeasible. For now.

However, even though the improvements are momentary, it will still prove beneficial in the long run. Should he continue to practice this way, after a while, he will realise that his five senses have become much stronger than before.

The second part is to seal off every sense of himself, making his presence fade into nothingness. This part is called the pseudo-selfless training. It is half a step before the true selfless state.

In this part, Kairos will experience complete isolation from the world, slowly losing even the sense of himself. This complete isolation method is meant to train and greatly improves his soul strength, his mental strength, life force, and his Dao.

The third and final part is to enter Selfless State.

As all practitioners know, it is something that one chances upon, instead of entering by will.

Thanks to his connection with the world, Kairos will become one with his surrounding like before, becoming one with the grand mountains, the seven seas and the very stars itself should he succeed.

He will slowly acquire a part their great strength and the knowledge from their ancient memories, making his techniques and cultivation speed improve by leaps and bounds.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard he tried, this third part of his cultivation training did not occur even once as planned.

Nevertheless, he continued practising this way day and night, while his father, Vouno, also did a similar training by his side except with their huge difference in ranks, many of the things Kairos did is unsuitable for Vouno.

A month nearly passed but after all his fierce hard work and the extravagant training resources used, Kairos had only found a small improvement of one minor stage in his cultivation, reaching Mid D rank.

Sighing, the boy shook his head realising that his target of reaching Peak D in such a short time was rather optimistic. Without the life and death situations as stimulus, it was already an achievement that he could feel the borders to the next minor stage through his efforts, but to cross over is another thing.

Unexpectedly, the change he wanted came from another direction. That day, Aisa came to him with great enthusiasm. The young dragon that was bored with waiting for him to finish closed-door cultivation had gone out for a long trip and just returned. She refused to tell him just where she had went but it appears her trip had been fruitful.

She carried a bag of odd-looking fruits and gave it to him. They were cubic in shape and smelled like meat, but even if it looks terrible, the powerful spiritual energy emitted from it is more than anything Kairos have seen before.

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Kairos, you have to eat this fruit! It’s sooooo yummy!

“F… fruit? This is a fruit?! Aisa, where did you go? How did you get this fruit?”

Hehe! Aisa went to play~ Quick, eat it! It’s losing its life force after Aisa plucked it.

Without waiting, Kairos immediately took a smaller one and threw the rest into his space-time ring. The slower flow of time within his ring will protect the fruit from losing too much life force too quickly. Holding out that precious fruit in his hand, he took a deep bite into its flesh. The juice that came out of the fruit tasted like salted caramel and flooded into his mouth, but before he could enjoy the taste, shock flashed across his face. The energy from such a small thing was beyond his imagination. In a moment he felt filled to his limits and sat down in his cultivation stance immediately.

A serious frown etched on his brow as he concentrated in distributing the energies that came from the flesh of the fruit from his stomach to all parts of the body.

It was delicate work, requiring him to split his focus over a hundred thousand things that are happening in his body at the same time. If even one spirals out of control, things could turn dangerous.

The rampant energies that once threatened to burst his meridian channels apart ebbed like the morning tides. He heaved a sigh of relief, but his eyes were filled with excitement. The fruit’s life energy was sweet like nectar – not that he knows how actual nectar tastes like – but more than its potency, he could feel his body improving rapidly. It was as though he had re-entered the womb and his flesh had reforming to become stronger, and more gifted than before. The difference wasn’t considerable, but it was sorely needed.

He looked at the fruit in his hand again with amazement and delight but was alarmed at once. After biting a mouthful off, the spiritual energy was escaping swiftly from the flesh, and in his panic, he immediately consumed the rest.

A poor decision. But for someone who had been poor all his life, it cannot be helped that he did not want to waste anything.

The energy from the fruit flooded his meridian system like a tsunami and filled his Dantian until it’s about to burst apart at any moment.

Even the twin dragons within him are having a hard time suppressing such a dominating amount of power.

A frightening imagination of him exploding because of the vast flood of energy entered his mind, and that image became more and more realistic every moment. Even Aisa has rushed over, strengthening his body with sacred runes like she did for Vouno. Unfortunately, while it might’ve worked for Vouno, it does little when Kairos is quickly reaching the limits his body could contain.

“I need to rank up right now!”

With urgency, the boy immediately maximised the activation of his body tempering runes and fully unleashed his cultivation technique. The energies immediately found a new avenue to enter, and they poured into his flesh snapping his muscles, burning his blood and fracturing his bones. At the same time, the excess life force from the fruit pooled into his Dantian, forcing it to expand like a water balloon.

From his Ki Centre, they flooded into his thin meridian channels that immediately started breaking apart, but any part that was broken was just as quickly rebuilt and strengthened by the body tempering method.

A cycle of destruction and recovery happened rapidly within his body. It was beyond torturous, and Kairos had to maintain his focus to direct his Origin Energy for healing.

It soon turned into a struggle between strengthening or dying from a loud explosion, and his entire face paled as sweat ran down his forehead.

A minute turned into an hour, and an hour turned into a day.

The excruciating pain of having every part of his body smitten from the inside, and the following relief he felt as it healed, was not something that Kairos could get used to.

Fortunately, his mind is already incredibly resolute after practising that inhumane pseudo-selfless cultivation. He continued to hang on to life by a thread, trying to keep his healing at the same pace as the fruit’s energy destroying his body.

Finally, on daybreak the following day, he felt an incredible urge to roar out. He felt that his physical strength is about to break past Man rank, Heaven Grade and enter into the fearsome Beast Rank, Huang Grade, and at the same time, his cultivation is also about to reach Peak D rank!

Elsewhere in Saint Empire, after a powerful struggle against a group of soldiers from an unknown group, a young boy rest against a tree bitterly wounded.

His body is a wreck from the almost-constant battles, but he managed to survive, for now.

He has faced worse conditions in a small hill against the great Orc armies, and in his proud heart, the current plight is nothing in comparison.

His tiny companion rest exhausted on his side. A beautiful ermine with a spotless coat that gleamed like the snow has now been pelted with blood and dirt; evident of the harsh battles the two had been through. Its endearing face, wide-eyes, and a tiny mouth filled with baby fangs cause those that lay their eyes on it to be filled with adoration but at the same time, those features determined that its combat abilities will be closed to zero. Yet, the little beast had a courageous heart that let it stick to its owner in battle, even trying to distract their enemies by risking its life.

Because of its actions, the boy had evaded capture for now and gained short respites like this. This boy is of course Jones. He was ambushed by a powerful group of practitioners on his way back to the Solitary Blades clan. His assailants were mysterious with their faces covered, but each individual was unbelievable, and not people he could defeat even one-on-one.

No doubt if their identity is revealed, each of them will be someone famous; at least practitioners at their level cannot be unknown.

Having to run for his life, and face constant ambushes for the past month, have drained Jones beyond all measures.

The only thing that gave him hope is the fact that not only is his contract beast capable of healing itself from even life-threatening wounds while sharing with him its bottomless life energy. If he drags the fight out long enough, perhaps they would run out of resources and give up.

As an Origin Energy user, Jones could immediately absorb the life force he receives and keeps his heart beating strong. The tiny thing sticks to him every time they are out of combat and infuses him with its life force generously. There is a reason why Aisa called it a million years Snow Stoat.

“Little one, thank you. I’m about to rank up. If things look grim, escape by yourself,” Jones gently stroke the back of his fluffy companion with a helpless smile on his face.

The stressful situation he is in has shaken his bottleneck. He had been stuck at Peak D for a while now, but the urge for him to rank up is growing stronger constantly. On other days, he would’ve rejoiced, but this place is too dangerous, and entering C rank would cause a large disturbance in the ambient energies. Noticeable enough to give away his hiding spot.

Unfortunately, the pent-up Ki that he had suppressed within is now threatening to explode outwards, and he knew that he no longer have the time to find a better venue.

He must rank up right here, right now!

The snow stoat shook its head stubbornly, then pounced onto his shoulder. It tapped him twice on his head, and its intention was passed along to Jones through their bond.

“Hmm? You wouldn’t flee? …. No that’s dangerous. What? You can escape into the contract bond?! Won’t they be able to find you? Haaah, don’t lie to me, I can feel your doubts. But… I also can feel your determination. Alright, we will stick through all this together.”

As the boy and his contract beast prepare for the worst, a few men creep over undetected from the shadows. The Heavenly Energies in the area have started reacting, and he was instantly found.

They had laid out snares ahead of time for their prey. If he takes in any ambient energies to restore his Ki, they will find out at first instance, and unfortunately, going towards the next rank in cultivation would also pull Heavenly Energies into his body and trigger the trap.

This time, they must not allow the boy to flee, although even if he did, there would be more reinforcements lying in wait.

What Jones desired – to have his enemies tire out in a battle of attrition – was futile from the beginning. They have completely sealed up the entire area, and their number will ensure there is always fresh blood hunting down Jones until they completely corner him.

At the exact same time, in two different places, loud roars of Kairos and Jones breaking through their ranks stilled the very air.

…..

Far beyond what people call the Mortal Realms, eight pairs of eyes suddenly widened.

Even though the eight of them are far away from each other and each used a different method, they arrived at the same conclusion from divining the future.

Almost simultaneously and with the same words, they whispered in disbelief, “Someone destined to replace one of the eight has appeared?”