Xiong Liliang regretted his decision as soon as the strike hit his body.
The attack wasn’t at full force, but it was still enough to instantly kill him.
He had never felt such excruciating pain in his entire 14 years of life.
He was born into two extremely poor parents who sold him just to survive another day. Every time he thought of it, his rage wouldn’t stop.
He couldn’t understand…
Why give birth to a child and then sell it before it was even able to think for itself, before it even knew what a mother and a father was.
The first vivid memory he had was working at a rune mine. He was given only enough food to survive and a small blanket he used to sleep.
He and many other children were in this sort of condition, sleeping next to each-other, filled with bugs, disease and death.
Every day was like torture to him.
He hated his parents, he hated the people that would use children for labor. He hated the world itself, because it was so cruel.
He hated the rich and even those that were just able to get by the day with the only worry being what they would eat tomorrow.
Although slavery wasn’t allowed, there were a lot of methods to get over that restriction.
Many people had a large amount of debt and the only way to pay that debt is to either sell their house, if said house existed, or children.
Selling children wasn’t that uncommon, since there were a lot of families that would struggle to feed even an extra mouth, no matter how big that mouth is.
Selling children to mines and large industries to be used as labor was illegal, but there were illegally run mines and companies. Not everything was as alright as it looked like on the surface.
The only reason Xiong Liliang was able to escape that horrible nightmare was due to the crackdown on such mines in the last few years, turning him from a mining slave to a beggar.
He went from being tortuously worked to death to begging on the streets for any measly money and food he could get, resorting to the pettiest crimes one could commit, such as theft and pickpocketing.
His days were numbered and the only saving grace he had left was being able to awaken with a rune.
Although he had gotten a lot of disgusted reactions when he awakened, he couldn’t care less about what sort of rune he had awakened.
To him this was a chance to gnaw at the world that treated him so poorly. A chance to take life into his own hands.
As such, he took every single shot he got into getting free from the shackles of his life.
He had heard a sentence by one of the mining children that were with him.
He didn’t know as to what that child had gone through, but his eyes were much more hollow than his own and it seemed like he had given up on life long ago.
He seemed to have some background, as the knowledge he had was far broader than any of the other children.
The boy had said, with a luster in his dull eyes.
“In this world, there are those with wooden spoons, those with silver spoons, those with golden spoons, those with diamond spoons and those that are literally fed by the gods. But we are none of those, if I were to categorize us into a spoon, I would call us dirt spoons. No, not even dirt spoons, those are for beggars. We are rugged, dried and callus hands that can only eat the dirt from the ground. We are people that envy the world, but also hate it with all our heart.”
He resonated with this sentence to a spiritual level.
It felt that everything in this world existed just to make him miserable.
However, he found a way out of this horrid life of his and it was an opportunity that would only come once.
So he wasn’t afraid to sacrifice even his future, since without the talent he currently had, he was nothing. He wanted to become the greatest. He aspired to be someone who was free of any shackles.
The impact was great.
In fact it was so great that Xiong Liliang felt that his whole body had become paste. He could feel his soul leaving his body, but a strange force put it back together, as if he wasn’t yet destined to die.
Suddenly, the dust faded and Liliang’s disheveled figure was standing there proudly.
Although most of, if not, all of his clothes were gone, his body was perfectly fine.
He had gained over twenty centimeters in height in just a few seconds, his hair getting much longer, along with his muscles and nails.
He appeared like a wild beast that would lunge at anyone who came close.
Witnessing this scene, everyone stared in awe.
The image of a beast, resembling a bear with countless spears anchored on his back appeared behind him.
This was the visual the War God physique induced.
Although it was called the war god physique, the ancient name for this physique was Thousand Pierced Divine Bear Physique, gaining the notorious name of war god physique since the people who had it were known to be great war machines that knew no bounds.
The crowd dispersed as Liliang started walking towards his ground in a dazed state. It was clear that he wasn’t himself at the moment, but he still possessed some clarity.
After arriving next to the group, he smiled and with triumph collapsed on the floor, instantly falling asleep.
His body slowly returned into its previous appearance, however with a loss of muscle mass.
This was the side effect of using this physique. It would use all the energy in ones body to explode into sheer strength but then lose over 90% of its muscle mass in the process.
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Time passed as the days went by peacefully inside the academy.
After the physique test the classes didn’t change a lot, the only main difference being that Laohu Shen transferred to the S-class.
Although all of them knew each-others physiques, that information was pretty much useless, since none of them sparred with each-other for real.
The only form of sparring was done with protection and a teacher witnessing the process.
Exchanging pointers was allowed but on a much milder scale. The academy wasn’t a sect after all, it was an institution where the next generation of rune masters would be taught how to properly cultivate their energy based on their unique situations. Fighting would come later.
Rui had continued his daily routine, gathering attribute points and cultivating.
He had successfully entered the rune gathering stage.
Just as the teacher explained it, the rune gathering stage was quite simple. All one had to do is create the image of a rune in their body.
One would create a rune(bowl) that would be used to store the runic energy absorbed. If one didn’t create this bowl, it would be impossible to collect the runic energy, unless it was directly infused into the blood and flesh, which was a process that would be done in a later stage of cultivation, at it was much harsher to do so early in cultivation.
Although Rui had yet to complete his bowl, just the initiation of it made him enter the rune gathering stage.
As soon as he got into this stage, a mission was created.
[Quest (perfect bowl) has been generated]
[Perfect bowl]
[Create the perfect bowl to house your energy.
One may think that any bowl is a good bowl, but the greatest bowl is the one that can hold the most and is able to withstand it.
Quest requirements:
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Create a perfect Bowl
Rewards:
An upgrade to your bowl]
Seeing this quest, Rui couldn’t help but take a deep breath.
He had indeed heard from class that a bowl was important and the quality of the bowl would determine your future, but he had never heard of a perfect bowl.
‘I’m not against this quest and the reward sounds extremely interesting. What if the perfect bowl was upgraded, what would it become then? However the question I should be asking now is how do I even complete such a task.’
He had never thought as to what a perfect bowl would look like. He could try to create a mental image, but a bowl that stored runic energy was different from the bowl you used to eat soup.
They were fundamentally different in every way.
‘What sort of shape could hold boundless runic energy but at the same time its durable and also doesn’t effect my body.’
He thought of geometrical shapes and patterns that defined perfection in his previous life.
The Golden ratio was something that embodied perfection, however, it was impossible to create a bowl with that rule, as the bowl wasn’t something truly physical, but something spiritual.
It was like a fourth dimension where energy was stored and followed the laws of this world.
He thought of the four dimensional objects like the tesseract, but that wouldn’t be the optimal, or perfect bowl.
He needed the perfect shape, a shape that could contain an infinite amount of energy but at the same time be able to scale and evolve with him.
This thinking turned him from geometrical shapes to planetary shapes.
‘Why were all celestial bodies shaped into spheres? It’s of course due to gravity. Whenever enough mass gathers close together, the resultant gravity, which follows the inverse square law, pulls equally in all directions and results in a spherical shape. ’
Of course, he didn’t think of this himself. This was something he had once read on an article about celestial bodies. Although, the concept was foreign to him, he could understand the gist of it.
Basically the force of gravity puts equal pressure, thus resulting in a sphere.
So a sphere was the perfect shape when the forces of gravity were interacting with enough mass. Although the celestial bodies weren’t perfect spheres, unless black holes were true perfect spheres due to the incredible pressure of gravitational force.
Thus he decided to use a sphere as his cup. He would use the force of runic energy to mold it, just like gravity molded the celestial bodies.
The process was incredibly hard.
He had to first create a mold out of energy, literally using his body as an anvil to hammer out the bowl.
It was much harder than he initially thought. The creation of a rune (bowl) was much harder now since he had a goal that was practically much harder than before.
In the beginning he thought of just creating the image of a bucket, to fill it up like one would fill water from a well.
However, the quest completely changed his thinking. It was clear that the better the foundation the greater the results later on. Building a stable foundation was important.
Making the perfect foundation would be something that everyone wished for, having his previous life’s more scientifically advanced knowledge put Rui in a slight advantage over the others. Although, there was a chance his conjecture was incorrect and he would only create a horrible bowl.
After the physique assessment, classes were now gone for the most part, as most of the important stuff was said and if the students wanted more information, self-study was advised. They of course could ask any teacher for matters of cultivation.
All of the students put their focus on cultivation.
Rui was the first to get into the rune gathering stage, but he was the last one to finish.
It took him over a month of rigorous forging to finally complete the last part of his sphere.
He used all the runic energy he had vigorously gathered and applied pressure to the scrap of a bowl he had created.
He didn’t put much thought when creating the bowl and just stacked energy on top of energy, just like clusters of meteorites. What he wanted to do was recreate how planets formed. After all it was impossible for him to create a black hole phenomenon with his current capacity and abilities.
The cluster collapsed on itself as equal pressure was applied on all sides and it finally formed a sphere. Now all he had to do is use the energy he had gathered and continue applying it to the sphere, constantly forming new layers.
[Quest Complete]
[Perfect Runic bowl has been created]
[Giving Rewards]
[Upgrade of the bowl initiated]
Suddenly Rui felt a large suction force. All the energy in the area gathered towards his bowl and constantly transformed it and reshaped it.
The sphere absorbed the energy like a black hole, its shape constantly shrinking and at the same time getting darker.
It now truly resembled a black hole, as it constantly absorbed energy passively.
[Supreme bowl has been created]
[Supreme Bowl]
[A bowl of the supreme. Known to be the greatest feat of foundation establishment, able to absorb energy passively and is able to evolve and get stronger on its own. However, its still not the limit.]
Rui sucked in a deep breath. This was an absurd upgrade for him, but what made him more shocked was that there was a stage even higher than this. This meant that his bowl wasn’t at the peak yet.
Although Rui didn’t understand what he had accomplished, he had taken a major step that many who wanted to break through the barrier of first rank rune masters where never able to accomplish.
Polishing the bowl and refining the body were the two main things one did in the first stage of rune masters, also known as foundation establishment.
After the foundation was completed, the runic bowl would collapse into a core, which of course was a sphere created in a similar way to planets. The more perfect the sphere the more perfect the core.
----------------------------------------
Rui was now done with his rune gathering stage and had now entered the body refining stage.
Unlike the rune gathering stage, he had to use his own body as the bowl and constantly nourish and reconstruct his body.
Medicinal baths, rigorous exercise and an abundance of pills was required in this stage.
Thankfully the academy had already prepared an area with all the required materials on a training site.
Rui entered the area as all of the students looked at him.
He was the last to complete his rune gathering stage, so all of the S-class and even some of the A and B class students were already training here since a week ago.
The body refining stage was split into 5 different stages, depending on the amount of force one could exert with his blood and flesh. It was basically, the stronger the body the higher the stage.
Of course, depending on the individual, one could become much stronger than the rest even being on the same stage.
The first stage began with using the energy that was stored in your bowl, to use as nourishment for your body.
You would drive the runic energy into your bones, marrow, muscles, tendons and blood. It was a tedious process that required a strong mind, due to the excruciating pain.
Pills would be used to speed up energy expenditure and medicinal baths would be used to make the body stronger and recover faster.
The second and third stages weren’t much different, but you would use the energy of the outside and not the energy you had already absorbed to change your body.
It was far more painful and also required the assistance from medical pastes that would harden the body even further.
The whole process of body refining was like taking a piece of metal and continuously forging it to perfection. One might say it was cruel to do so to a human body, but it was impossible to progress further if one didn’t increase the strength of their blood and flesh.
They couldn’t just absorb energy without consequences, that would result in an energy explosion, due to the body not being able to sustain it.
Gender did not matter. Even though the skin “hardened” it was more like the body got infused with energy, its texture and appearance didn’t change in the slightest. That’s why most runic masters, be it male or female had extremely fair and beautiful skin, even if they weren’t that fair looking before cultivation.
Cultivation would change ones countenance matching the stage they individual wanted to reach. Of course the face didn’t change much. If one was extremely ugly, they could master other forms of transformation to change their appearance, but ugliness is something that is in the eye of the beholder. Not everyone finds the same things beautiful and the same could be said about ugliness.
The fourth stage was the stage where major change would occur.
Just like a statue, this was the stage where the main image would be almost finished. The body would approach closer to the golden ratio.
The fifth stage was considered the end, but of course one could continue forging their bodies further.
At the fifth stage ones strength surpassed a normal humans by at least twenty times.
The stages were measured depending on the amount of force one could exert on a measuring stone.
The stones were constructed with unique formations and used the kinetic energy from the fist to calculate the final score with jin (0.5kg)
50 jin for the first stage and from then on it would double at every stage.
So for second stage 100 jin, for third stage 200 jin, for fourth stage 400 jin and for fifth stage 800 (400 kg/882~ pounds) jin of force.
It took an average of a week for the first stage of the body refining stage.
Two week for the second stage, four weeks for the third and eight for the fourth. As for the fifth, It took ten weeks.
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Time went by in the blink of an eye and Rui had finally reached the peak of the fifth stage.
The force he could exert was now beyond 1000 jin. It was clear that the 800 jin applied only to those with normal foundations and Rui felt he could still continue to improve his physique even further, getting a much greater foundation.
He glanced at the mirror inside his house.
His body was now beyond what of a mortal could have. In fact it was too perfect. It was like a sculptors life-time masterpiece of the perfect ratio.
He couldn’t help but sigh. Time had went by way too fast. His already long hair was beginning to bother him, he of course did not cut it, he wasn’t going to ruin the family rules just because of an annoyance.
He braided the ends of his hairs to make them shorter. This is how the family elders taught them to do it.
He would only be able to cut his hair to the length he liked after his coming age at 16.
Unlike earth, 16 was the marrying age in this world. They would hold a ceremony in the family grounds for his coming of age. It was like a ball of sorts, to introduce him to future bride candidates.
He was against it all, but he could do nothing about it.
Grumbling to himself he called out to Yue.
“How Is the weather today, is it good for a stroll? I want to go check on my parents.”
“The weather is brilliant master and there is no chance of rain or cloudy weather.”
“Great, thanks.”
This was a function Rui had found for this extremely useless artifact of his. It was basically like a really downgraded smart-phone with no interface. It could tell time perfectly, predict the weather and even play music it had heard once.
He wondered if the Heavenly demon created this thing to make fun of the fools that wanted to find his inheritance.
Rui had no intentions of searching for it. The rewards he had acquired and the cultivation was more than enough for him. Although the cultivation method was useless to him after the first stage of rune masters, he could find another method with the help of the system by then.
He had reached level 7 not too long ago and was prepared for level 10. He couldn’t wait to unlock all the new functions.
Leveling up got subsequently harder the more he leveled. It took him double the XP each time, which meant reaching level ten would take him at least till the end of his academic life.
His current goal was the reach the sixth stage of body refinement and then enter into the new stage, the energy gathering stage.
Why enter the sixth stage?
The reason was quite simple.
[Quest (Perfect body, Perfect mind)has been generated]
[Perfect body, Perfect mind]
[The refinement of the body doesn’t end with just the fifth stage. Achieving further results is possible. Do not just wish for a perfect body.
Mission requirements:
Sixth stage of the body refining stage
Reward:
Upgrade to your physique]