Azreal slowly opened his eyes, finding himself sitting in a lotus position. 'I swear I was lying down to sleep when I logged off…' he thought before standing up.

Azreal moves to the wooden window frame that overlooks the private garden of his dormitory, slightly tilting his head up to look into the sky. "Seems to be the same time as on Earth, I am pretty confident to say it's a little after 1 am," Azreal muttered to himself. 'Status Window!' Azreal thinks, trying to bring up the system. His eyes widen when he realises his Qi Accumulation amount has increased since he last logged in.

Azreal can't believe his luck; his Qi went up by over eighty-five points while he was logged out! 'Hey, System! Do you know anything about this?' Azreal questions internally.

The System responded with a screen slowly moving closer to Azreal's face. 'I missed you too…' Azreal responds, thinking it a bit strange that a system could miss him, but he wanted to placate the emotional system. 'Do you know anything about how my Qi increased while I was logged off?'

'Wait, you know this is a game world? Do you know anything about a message you sent me in the other world asking me to inject Qi into my phone?' Azreal asks.

A small sigh from Azreal and a dejected look scares the system.

Azreal reads the message and moves his hand to swipe the message away. 'It's not your fault, I had thought it wouldn't be this easy, after all, I’m starting to think anything worth doing isn’t easy'.

Azreal nods, 'Please…'.

'So, all I need to do is sit in the lotus position and try to accumulate more Qi in my body?' Azreal asks the system.

Azreal nods and fixes his posture, beginning to try and comprehend the cultivation method given to him by the system. A few minutes pass in the blink of an eye, before Azreal screams out in pain, "ARGH!". His upper body slams forward; he uses one arm to hold himself up and the other to clutch at his side. 'What is this extreme pain?!?' Azreal screams internally, trying to overcome the agony he is currently feeling.

Azreal didn't have the ability to see or read the message as the pain he felt was truly immense and forced him to close his eyes and grind his teeth in pain. Another five minutes pass, the only movement and sound being made in the room are Azreal's heavy breath and occasional grunts of pain.

Then suddenly, like a dam breaking, a similar energy began to swell in Azreal's body, like a wall that was previously there had suddenly disappeared. A light yellow cloud began to swirl around Azreal. With every breath he took, Azreal could feel himself absorbing the abundant Qi present this high up the mountain.

A notification from the system that Azreal had not seen before suddenly appeared, which made Azreal smile once he read the notification. Over half an hour, Azreal saw the notification a few more times.

Feeling a surge of power course through his body, Azreal immediately wanted to check his stats. 'Status Window'. What he saw made his heart rate increase, and a large smile plastered across his face.

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Azreal assessed his stats, realising his spirit had increased the most, by over twenty points! His other stats had seemingly gained ten points each.

'This is amazing! Every breakthrough seems to give me a huge boost to my stats!' Azreal grinned to himself. After his post-breakthrough glow began to dim, he looked around his room and found that he had destroyed most of his bedding and clothes. However, his sense of elation was replaced with one of enquiry. 'Every time I breakthrough, my soul cultivation also increases.

'Do all cultivators destroy their rooms when they break through to the next level? Maybe I should’ve done this in a training room or outside…' Azreal thought to himself while he quickly cleaned the room and fixed the lantern. Azreal returned to his bed and resumed the lotus position, before he asked the system a question. 'System, do I need to sleep if I can cultivate? I am feeling incredibly refreshed after my breakthrough, and I am sure it’s very late into the night.'

'Thank you for the praise system, but you didn’t answer my question,' Azreal smiled and asked the system.

'Thank you, system, I think that would be amazing; let’s set that up and ensure that whenever I log out or go to sleep, you can continue to cultivate for me! I can already see the benefits of this being extremely helpful!' Azreal said internally.

'Again?' Azreal asks before answering his own question. 'Don’t worry, I know you can’t answer me,' Azreal begins to laugh. Calming his mind down, Azreal began to cultivate, and he did so for the next three hours before he saw another notification that shocked him.

Once again, like last time, a gust of wind blew outwards from his body, tearing up what was left of his bed and knocking the lantern over again. 'Fuck! I forgot about that… I was too caught up in my stats and getting to the next level,' Azreal cursed himself, as he quickly put his room back together and went to check his stats. 'Status Window,' Azreal said internally.

Azreal noted that this time, his stats developed in a similar pattern to his previous breakthrough. 'I wonder what affects how many stats I gain from my breakthrough?' before his eyes went wide.

'2000 Qi required for the next breakthrough. Fuck me! Talk about an exponential increase! The previous amount of Qi had only doubled… Why did it suddenly triple my Qi requirements from the previous amount… what if it keeps increasing every time I break through! Getting to the next level would take forever!' Azreal felt a crushing feeling internally at this thought.

'If I’m considered to be a genius, how slow must it be for normal cultivators to break through!' Azreal's thought made him a little happier; at least he was faster than most!

Azreal sat in the lotus position for another few minutes, investigating his stats before deciding to test out his body. He began to do push-ups, and after he counted them out to over a hundred. Azreal noticed that his strength had explosively increased compared to his previous body, and he couldn’t even compare his current body to his real body, the difference was simply the difference between heaven and earth.

Azreal decided to test his agility, finding himself much quicker in moving around the house, and his reflexes had improved. 'Vitality… I wonder if this is my body and endurance like in other games?' Azreal thought before moving over and opening the lantern, 'I won’t know until I try'.

Azreal moved his hand inside the lantern, bracing himself for immense pain, however, the pain initially was nowhere close to his expectations. It felt like he had his hand in mildly warm water. Another minute passed before it got too painful to hold his hand in the fire of the lantern.

'Wow! I am much tougher than I was; I wonder if I could take that spider and wolf in a direct confrontation now,' Azreal's massive smile couldn’t be wiped from his face. 'Now… how do I test intelligence and spirit; I wonder if these have to do with my ability to cultivate and understand techniques?' Azreal pondered for a few moments before he heard a knock on his door.

He finally snapped out of his thoughts and quickly turned his head to look over at his small garden, seeing small rays of sunlight hitting the plants and ricocheting off the small pond, 'Morning already, huh?' Azreal thought to himself as he stood and made his way to the door. Opening the door, Elder Juhee stood there with a beautiful smile on her face; quickly her cheeks became flushed. "W-why aren't you w-wearing your disciple robes?" Elder Juhee stuttered.

Azreal had not realised that most of his white robes, which were already torn to shreds and covered in blood and dirt that he had been wearing all day and last night, were completely destroyed in his last breakthrough. As Azreal looked at Elder Juhee with a quizzical expression, he looked down and gasped when he saw that he was standing there in a loincloth and nothing more.

"I am so sorry! Elder Juhee, I didn’t know my clothes were destroyed! I broke through twice last night, and I think the energy destroyed my clothing and bedding…" Azreal said with red cheeks, with an awkward smile on his face as he also rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment.

Elder Juhee's embarrassment quickly faded, and shock on her face became evident. "Wait, what did you say? You broke through twice during the night? On your first night here? That's not possible".

Elder Juhee quickly deployed her divine sense and gauged Azreal's cultivation, and her face became paler, and her jaw dropped further. "How could you possibly do that with such a terrible technique!" She spoke with a stern voice before pushing him inside and closing the door behind her.

"Elder Juhee, what are you doing?" Azreal asked, finding the situation a little strange but knowing there was nothing he could do to stop her questioning.

Elder Juhee quickly regained her senses before responding. "I am sorry, Azreal, I don’t know what overcame me, it was just a surprise… Here, put these on, using her spatial ring and removing a set of purple outer disciple robes. You will find me at the small table in your garden once you’re ready. We need to talk".

Azreal nodded and took the deep indigo robes and moved back into his bedroom. He unfolded the robes and gave them a once-over before dressing himself. The robes were of deep purple and had a golden trim running across the edge of the robe, with the sect symbol of a golden tree, etched into the robes over the right chest.

"These robes are amazing; thank you, Elder Juhee, this means more than you can imagine," Azreal said with sincerity surprising Elder Juhee, before taking a seat next to her at the small table in his dorm's garden.