Chapter 73 – Bamboo for-rest
Adam had just finished another session of cultivation – he would spend five hours or so at a time cultivating and had now accumulated the equivalent of one-month cultivation in the outside world.
He took some more of the residue left from the ancient pill fragments that had been refined by Libby and sat back, waiting to fill the usual tingling feeling that took about 20 minutes to kick in before going back for another round of cultivation.
In theory, there should be no reason why he couldn’t stay in the PD and do everything there, but in reality, for some anomalous reason had started to get a real build-up of pressure behind his temples if he didn’t come out every now and then after practicing.
Every time he came out, he felt the urge to go back to Binyon or at least the mountain region to check on the children but pinned the urge down and shrugged it off. He could do nothing for them if they were under attack; he was still too weak.
He felt bad about having destroyed the old master of the order, not because he didn’t deserve it; the old guy had tried to kill him repeatedly, but he might have had some answers. Right now, Adam still felt he had none and felt so far down the ladder of power as to be zero.
The books were great and all, but treading this path was no different from those sects from the godless path that Adam could have joined up with, in fact, that Sam was now a member of if his last information was still up to date – she might well be further on the path than him even, which was not a bad thing per se, he just needed something more.
As far as he was aware, the system Elios was on a whole other level from the godless sects, and unless there was a secret deal between the two, they were no threat whatsoever – meaning he also would be no threat remaining on this path.
With this thought in mind, he went back to cultivating to try and at least break through to the Earthly Yuan stage of cultivation. Then, at least, he might be able to find out what would result from breaking through to the first seal of symbol mastery.
***
Mi Quo was not exactly bored inside his grand house inside his PD. I mean, he was glad not to be at risk of death every minute of the day or being destroyed by some unknown dark energies. But he was an ungrateful soul and had got bored of cultivating.
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Bored, that is, until he left his PD to check on the others and found from Thawain that he had only been in his PD for a week, and he had already broken through to stages of his cultivation. He was shocked and thought the guy was messing with him.
He mentally retracted all the things he had thought about Adam and not because he was afraid of any repercussions. He thought the whole – do as I say or die routine was just BS, not that Adam wouldn’t, but he didn’t believe he was under 24/7 surveillance – Adam wasn’t even in Binyon right now, according to Thawain.
Maybe he should go and do some experimentation – Adam had, after all, left some high-quality specimens in the forest, and if it was only a week or so, they might still be useful. So he headed off with a new spring in his step to finding the faction members’ corpses.
***
Adam had broken through to the Early stage of Earthly Yuan, and he had to say he was actually happy about it – he guessed maybe he’d been spoiled before, having superhuman senses already, and had not been particularly impressed with the heightened sensory awakening of the 9th layer of the tempered body. But this was all new.
He now had his own spiritual place, or was it a section of the spiritual sea? Adam didn’t know, but it was like having his own PD inside the other PD or outside.
It made him feel much calmer; it just felt more natural – he didn’t even need Libby’s guidance in here now and could feel his flow of Qi through his meridians. It was weird and wonderful at the same time.
His tempered body 9th Layer skill seemed to have carried over to the spiritual realm – him now being able to see in great detail inside his own body structures. He wasn’t sure whether it was working through his energy senses or was separate, but he could see the Qi in his body in a myriad of colors, trickling through his body and descending into his dantian.
The spiritual space had a very tranquil vibe to it as well, it was a miniature bamboo forest, and as Adam had always liked the outdoors, it felt far more calming – maybe because it came straight from his own subconscious as opposed to Huba’s reimaginings used to create spaces previously.
Anyway, he felt he could hang out here forever. Could this accelerate his progress further? He wasn’t sure what exactly the purpose of the space was. He had tried walking and then running around the space, but it just seemed to be endless, or as he found it illusionary, as when he stopped, everything looked exactly the same as when he started – although it was a bamboo forest, so no change there either.
***
Libby was perplexed; Adam had disappeared off the radar again. Last time it seemed that he’d had some kind of separation caused by a powerful entity. But now she wasn’t sure; it seemed it might possibly be like space magic, as different realms seemed to exist in parallel, as with PDs. It was possible to have almost infinite layers of realms in one physical coordinate.
This was obviously worrying as it meant Adam could be kidnapped and taken anywhere, but then they would be taken there too, wouldn’t they?
Echo and Libby tried to see if there was anything happening in Adam’s spiritual sea that might explain this event. Unfortunately, as they had made entering Adam’s soul completely off-limits they were stuck.