Creatures Whisperer

"Bring her here," Ciemnosc said after giving the young woman a look, and after the clamoring students quieted down. It was... pretty unusual to hear of someone crippling their own cultivation, even more so from the words of a little kid who had just become a teacher. So it was no wonder that the notice of something like this happening would create a commotion in the class, let alone when the rest of the world knew about it.

Step… step, step… step, step…

Once the young woman was brought below to the podium, she finally managed to raise her chin just a little bit to see the reason, the person behind her younger brother’s ecstatic and suddenly studious changing persona. It was… just a kid, basically. In her eyes and mind, though he looked older, she could tell he was really just a kid and couldn’t help but show glints of despair in her eyes. Had she perhaps… made the wrong choice? Is she done, or…

“Hand.” Ciemnosc commanded, giving the young woman a glare that was casual; yet flat and even somewhat cold as well. She didn’t think much of it and gave her hand to Ciemnosc. Ciemnosc took it and twisted it to reveal her wrist. His left hand held her left wrist as it faced the sky. With his dark Power Energy surging from the tip of his fingers to her skin, her veins began to be seen as… her entire left wrist began to be ‘illuminated’!

“Gasp…” She was immediately amazed, for she didn’t feel any Power Energy that wasn’t hers entering her through her skin. It was more like…he was conducting her body without invading her with his! She looked up, her eyes and body gaining some sudden amount of strength for her to move so much with so little pain.

“When your body is done healing itself, you can continue cultivating again,” Ciemnosc said. Looking at her wrist and those veins that, unbeknownst to her, were already cordially moving around as if Power Energy was the one moving these veins as they had done before when she used to cultivate. Ciemnosc raised his head and, meeting her eyes, causing her to lower her head from his darkest pools, he added with a calm tone.

“You might have not noticed, but you will when you restart on your cultivation path. Listen to your brother and remember what he has told you. No real damage has been done to you, nothing that wouldn’t be healed after you advanced in your new path of cultivation.”

“Though you have lost every bit of Power Energy from before, you can now start again with your tougher body already experienced self in cultivation. Before, you might’ve taken about a decade to reach the Spirit Gathering realm, and another to go through it, especially because of the age at which you began cultivating. But now, for crossing through to the Conflagrate realm, you might need 20 years instead.”

“This isn’t… a bad thing, completely.” Ciemnosc lowered his chin a little, slowly letting go of her hand which she kept in the air with her mouth ajar and her eyes fully opened looking between her wrist and Ciemnosc’s face. “Before, you would’ve been… tripping on your own steps without even a gust of wind hitting you. But now, you would be walking, even if longer than before, a steady and… powerful path that the previous you wouldn’t have compared to.”

Looking like a cultist recruiting an innocent soul, Ciemnosc pressed his lips together, not wanting to show an ‘it’s gonna be okay’ smile… he just wasn’t that type of person. Yet, the young woman looked at Ciemnosc as if he was her savior, her body trembled slightly as she moved her lips to try saying ‘thank you’ several times.

“Take this pill, mn. It will help your body become used to the pain you are going through right now. It may continue to be painful until you fully heal, and you will know exactly when you can once again cultivate. But once you start and do not follow the same steps as before at the very least, you’ll also know the differences within you.” Ciemnosc placed a pill on the palm that was still facing the ceiling before turning around to once again stand behind the podium.

“...” There were no claps as the younger brother and big sister pair returned to their seat while Kevin left her more of his seat so that she could comfortably rest and listen to the teacher. It was then that Kevin spoke once again before Ciemnosc could point at another student.

“Teacher, sorry for having passed the knowledge you’ve given to someone else without even giving you permission.”

Ciemnosc looked up at the boy with indifferent eyes, he did so for a few seconds before slowly saying flatly. “I don’t care at all. If it was for me, more would be listening to these classes at the same time. It’s just that there aren’t many opportunities yet, nor enough students sent here for that to happen. I believe that in the future, however, that may very well be the case.”

“...” Kevin said nothing but nodded, his big sister looked at Ciemnosc with her eyes and difficulty, there was thankfulness in them as she lowered her head to her younger brother’s shoulder to rest her tired body.

Nodding back at the pair, emotionlessly, Ciemnosc turned to face another young man who looked somewhat restless and was part of those that didn’t attend his class the first time. “You?”

“Oh, yeah yeah,” the youth had his shins against the next seat in front of him and his hand behind his head. When he heard Ciemnosc call him out, he accommodated himself a little but continued with his feet high up someone else’s seat. “I asked many this, but they don’t seem to know about it, teacher.”

Ciemnosc crossed his arms slowly and evidently, without hiding his actions, before looking straight at the youth. The youth continued, going up a hitch every now and then just as he began to speak like before, “They all talk about this ‘connection’ and this or that, but as someone who hasn’t cultivated, how can I know about it? Wouldn’t it be better if you tell me? Because, really, I don’t think they even remember what it is about anymore.”

“That connection they feel is something unique for each, and there is no need for me to speak about it. There is some reason that the other teachers don’t speak about this directly to their students. Whatever the case, I don’t plan to change it, since this is my first time teaching too.” Ciemnosc responded, waiting for not even a second to do so after the youth spoke.

The youth nodded a few times, semi-slowly, but he still continued and even sat straight before speaking once more in the same way; though now appearing to be more irksome. “Well, you know my dad is a supervisor, right? So if I just ask him about it and he tells me, then I tell anybody else, wouldn’t that make your statement just now worthless?”

“...” Ciemnosc placed his hands on top of the podium, leaned over and looked directly at the youth without any change in expression. His lips slowly opened, and as they did, Ciemnosc suddenly stood with a straight back before saying in a detached tone. “I’m just your teacher. I am to teach. I am no instructor, lecturer nor are any of you any sort of disciple or pupil to me.”

“All I am to do here, and in the future, is to teach the initial ways of cultivation. There are some things admissible, and some things that are challenging against the academy’s code and its unspoken rules. Since I only teach, and none of you are my people, then I can only speak of things and, at most, advise you in one way or another. If you were to follow such advice or words, I would be compromised to resolve the doubts and troubles that following such things led to.”

“But, other than that; whether someone else or something else outside of what I have transmitted makes the students I teach go through beneficial or malicious results… has nothing to do with me,” Ciemnosc concluded. But before the youth could express even an emotion of being wronged, Ciemnosc added with a frostiness that led to the entire room to feel somewhat… ice-cold.

“One other thing,” Ciemnosc’s voice became quite darker as well, he continued. “Whether or not there is a problem or a fundamental reason for it. I will accept no fights, ‘bullying’, or harassment done to any of the students I teach. That includes dealing with those very same students doing those things. Now, I am no pushover, in case anyone here has forgotten where they have heard my name… I will act if anyone ever dares to ignore that rule.”

There was a thing that different, violently, the ordinary people from cultivators in the regard of teaching en masse and taking care of the diversity of things could happen within a ‘class’. Besides being a teacher, which was already of a high status enough through the entire academy, Ciemnosc was also the Genius of the Rocaloi Academy, and that meant impossible levels of respect no headmaster had ever achieved before.

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If he wanted to even kill a student for disobeying him directly or so adamantly, whether or not he was teaching that student, who could frown at that? If anything, Ciemnosc would even target those who did. After all, he is already in the realm that grants him battle prowess enough to deal with anything in the world.

“B- what?! My father is a su-” The youth immediately reacted, especially ‘thanks’ to some booers in the crowd of students that didn’t want that youth to feel smug about ‘going against the law’ or something. Yet, Ciemnosc simply changed the look he had towards the youth, and it was… enough to terrify him to death.

“!!...” The youth started seeing black; all over. The room was already poorly lit to contrast the podium of this incredible main classroom, but the youth began to feel as if he was in the center of a change; a change that focused on him and that was alienating him from… everything and everyone else. It was so slow but he was so hopeless at the same time.

“Wowoowaowoawh! Ok- OKAY, YES! Y- ye- s, yes teacher, I understand.” The youth, from the outside, simply looked as if his eyes were deadly stuck to looking into their teacher’s eyes, and he even started convulsing, and some even noticed that his eyes were becoming more and more… filled with… a blackness that devoured even light itself.

“Good,” Ciemnosc responded after seeing the state that his new trick had on someone. It didn’t matter that the youth didn’t cultivate before. Because for all Ciemnosc knew, the thing that is ‘that something’ within him was so unique that he could tell the others, ordinary beings or not, had the exact same kind and level of ‘that something’ unlike him.

“Now, I will resume talking about the realms of cultivation. Today, the Link Consolidation realm and the Phrenic realm. Does anyone have anything to add before I begin?” Ciemnosc tilted his head to the right, and not just a little, whereas everyone silently denied a response. Their brains were all thinking the same: if only one was brave enough to break the silence and demand for the knowledge already! If only the teacher wasn’t trying to act ‘polite’; to which, if Ciemnosc knew of how their brains were working, would feel… vastly strange to say the least.

“The third realm of cultivation of the ‘first step’ is the Link Consolidation realm. It’s in this realm that it is more than obvious that the cultivation path of anyone is focused and centered on their ‘Links’.” Ciemnosc began, and his tone went back to sounding indifferent, cold, and flat. Hearing the change in tone, everyone knew it was learning time and quieted the fuck down instantly to light down even the sound of their nostrils’ breathing.

“In this realm, one’s lifespan increases to 390 years, and where one can finally attain their Spirit Sense, to a maximum of 1 meter long.” Ciemnosc began, his students shut up, and his lips continued to move. “To breakthrough into this realm, one has to be taught the Psychogenic and Dantian, which are in one’s glabella and one’s lower abdomen respectively.”

“The Psychogenic is the part of your mind that is yourself and encompasses all that you need, known as the utmost necessary, but not everything needed for cultivation. That is where the Dantian comes in. This Dantian is the major ‘storage’ of Power Energy that you will have in the future and from thereon. It is also what’s left for the Psychogenic to truly be all that is needed for cultivation. However, it is only by linking them together that you will breakthrough into this realm.”

“Solidifying your Power Energy sounds complex, but it is only the consumption of your Power Energy to the Psychogenic and the Dantian, creating a chain, rope, or vine that adjoins both of them.”

“Little by little, you can choose to feed both of them or first one and then the other. You can even do 2 days of feeding one and 3 or 6 of feeding the other. It doesn’t matter. They only grow so much, and their limits are right where the Psychogenic’s link and the Dantian’s link become closer to only a little bit more needed for them to merge. It is simple to build up those links, but merging them together is what takes the most trouble.”

“You may only proceed to these steps once you’ve reached your limit at the Spiritual Condensation realm, in which you will be in constant hard work to form those links. Once the links need just that little push, all is needed is to use that ‘connection’ and all of the Power Energy to merge them in one go.”

“Repeated failures are not problematic for the future cultivation path,” Ciemnosc said, making a pause out of nowhere and letting his students realize that before continuing. “However, if one is not powerful enough of a will, then their future cultivation path will be met with all that you can expect an ordinary person to live their lives filled with insecurities.”

“Teacher, teacher,” little loli girl Sha raised her hand and spoke with her eyes closed tightly shut. Ciemnosc didn’t continue and looked at the little one before nudging her to go on. A young woman had to pat the loli’s head for her to notice before the loli then smiled and asked concernedly. “Teacher, you keep speaking in comparison to ordinary people’s lives. Why is that? Is there something that we don’t know? A secret?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Cultivation is…” Ciemnosc exclaimed with an empty, flat but somehow characteristic ‘oh’ before elaborating, but then dramatically pausing as he looked at the ceiling before lowering his head and finishing his words. “Just like ordinary people’s lives, not just people, but also animals and insects. Even just water flowing through either bodies of water or air itself. A leaf or branch falling from a tree and becoming nutrients for either another tree or another living being. Cultivating is simple life, but against reality and common sense; at the same time.”

“Teacher! Isn’t that hearsay…?” A youngish boy’s voice sounded, exclaiming and worryingly asking, but also suspicious since everyone who read a bit of the academy’s books has gone through such readings right at the very beginning of each book. The boy sounded really concerned and loud. “Aren’t you worried you’ll have to deal with the academy’s punishment by speaking of this?!”

“Hm,” Ciemnosc half-snorted with his nostrils before actually grinning, his lips causing everyone in the classroom to feel like life was being born right in front of them; all so strangely. Ciemnosc just, simply, and merely said without any care. “I am ‘docile’ to the little rules of the academy, but that is out of me being self-educated. Here, or ‘there’; nobody can tell me what to - and what not to - do.”

“... … … …” The students fell utterly silent. They looked at their teacher fixedly and with their eyes glued to his face, but more specifically, to his lifeless eyes of pure darkness. Without noticing, everyone could only feel their bodies and minds thundering, either in heartbeats or in unprecedented excitement while they very directly set their eyes on the same person as a whole.

“... When you successfully breakthrough into the Link Consolidation realm, you will be able to see the materialization of a hidden truth to be revealed in the future… perhaps.” Ciemnosc continued slightly after, his words making the students hear him out once more. “This hidden ‘thin’ is actually that ‘connection’ you felt before, and not that long after breaking through, you will be interacting with it once more.”

“The way to reach the peak of the Link Consolidation realm is as simple as the previous realm. You only need enough Power Energy to cross through the stages and, subsequently, into the Phrenic realm that I am about to talk about next.”

“Any questions?” Ciemnosc asked the classroom once he got here, in case he didn’t clear up their individual, important doubts. Someone from the higher seats spoke, his voice reaching everywhere at the 9th stage of the Spiritual Ligament realm. “Since when is it recommended to use Power Energy to cover our bodies and enhance our strength?!”

“Any realm,” Ciemnosc crossed his arms and flatly said. He continued with an uncaring facial expression and flat tone in his cold voice, “If a Spiritual Ligament realm cultivator is facing death against a powerful Phrenic realm cultivator in the middle of a battlefield, and that Phrenic realm cultivator is heavily injured, he won’t be able to penetrate through the enemy’s skin with their own hands. Only by enhancing one’s body with their Power Energy would they not only be able to penetrate a Spiritual Condensation realm cultivator’s naturally toughened body, but they could also even fully penetrate through the other side of their bodies.”

“What if the Phrenic realm cultivator has some Power Energy to defend himself?” The young man in the higher seats added with a question. Ciemnosc took no more than 2 seconds to answer, staring at the young man in silence. “Then you run with the Power Energy in your body focused on your legs and upper torso. Anatomy isn’t just a thing of ordinary living beings. Array formation isn’t more than drawing and painting. It could even be related to math.”

“The cultivators at the Spiritual Ligament realm and Spiritual Condensation realm are the most fragile in terms of the quantity of Power Energy they can store. Some have naturally superior reserves, and others have a larger ‘storage’, but their use of it is too feeble and majorly misused. Only those who adapted incredibly well to their first baby steps at cultivation can properly last more than just a couple of minutes at best when enhancing their bodies.”

Ciemnosc took a little break, though it was more about giving the students he was teaching a moment to process. Just over 15 minutes later, he raised his head from meditation as the students enjoyed the time given to them by their teacher to process.

“... The Phrenic realm is the beginning of the cultivation path’s showing what the might of cultivators could show. But, in my personal opinion,” Ciemnosc glared in a random direction of students before resuming his talking. “It is only a diminutive ‘flash’ into what the real might of cultivators will be in the future when cultivated like a real cultivator and not just someone who blindly searches for victory and strength.”

“As I was saying, the Phrenic realm can be broken through by simply storing enough Power Energy at the peak of the Link Consolidation realm 10th stage. It is by far the simplest breakthrough in all of the 7 realms of cultivation along with the breakthrough into the Spirit Gathering realm, which I will be talking about in 2 days.” Ciemnosc continued and continued. And the students continued to listen and began filling their notebooks with notes.

…