So that's how it is!

He closed the green book, looked down at it, and ran his finger over the cover. The spine and cover seemed to be some kind of waxy material with paper attached inside. The whole thing was written out clearly by a neat hand, and this looked to be the original book rather than a reproduction.

When he first started reading the notes left behind by the cultivator who had experienced essence deviation, he struggled to understand it. This required some more skulking about to nab the other books that explained cultivation, and he termed those as 'Cultivation for dummies' as they went into a lot of tedious detail.

With these, he compiled the notes and was astonished at what he had found. He wasn't sure how useful it would all be but felt the book's author, whose name was never mentioned, must have been a genius or a crazy person.

He opened the book again and flicked through a few pages, finding the diagram that had earlier captivated him.

Such an ingenious way of looking at cultivation.

The 'Cultivation for Dummies' books did an okay job of explaining, but they didn't quite do it with the same ease this book did, and it wasn't even trying to explain, as that wasn't the point of the notes.

The diagram was of a triangle with a dot in its centre. Straight lines emerged from that centre point, running into the triangle's three corners.

The point in the centre represented the core, and the three corners of the triangle each represented one of the core parts of cultivation—willpower, body and soul.

Willpower was in the bottom left, body on top with soul in the bottom right corner. The critical point was that these three pillars of cultivation were also connected to the core in the centre and each other, as this was important.

This diagram explained the theory behind cultivation concisely in a way that was easy to explain.

Willpower in the bottom left was the first cornerstone of cultivation. Without willpower, you couldn't form your core or cultivate. Once a core was created, you would move up to the top corner, to the body.

You would then use your willpower to affect the core and use its essence to enhance and infuse your body, making it stronger. Once your body was stronger, it would also have a bleed-over effect that slightly enhanced the soul, the final cornerstone.

With a strong body, you can work on the most dangerous part of cultivation: strengthening your soul. This part is hazardous; you could only upgrade your soul to a new level with enough willpower and body strength. To try it without was impossible and would always result in injury at the least and death at the worst.

This triangle completed what was known as a cycle, with the core being an integral part of making any corner stronger.

You would use willpower to pull in essence, convert it and store it within your core. You would then use willpower to push that essence out to your body until it resonated with the soul.

This soul resonation indicated it was ready to expand a little, leading to the next step: using willpower and your core to push essence to your soul aperture.

Once your soul had grown slightly, this had a slight bleed-over into increasing your willpower, which could also be trained through other methods. Once a cycle was complete, your entire being would move up a notch, allowing you to grow the size of your core a minuscule amount. Then, the process started all over again. This was a cycle.

It was a process of minor increments as you would do countless cycles and work in that order to grow stronger. That was cultivation at the most basic.

You didn't always have to complete an entire cycle as you could stop the process at any of the three corner points, but stopping midway on the lines would lead to backlash. That's why people prefer to cultivate in solitude away from distractions.

When a person was close to breaking through, the cycles would be more challenging to complete in one sitting, and it might take a whole core of essence just to do one corner. That was how you knew when you were ready to break through.

He had also learned about a person's cultivation tiers as they got more powerful, but he didn't get into that too much for now.

The part that interested him was the mention of the root of essence. When you make a breakthrough, a person will end up in a unique trance-like state that will send their consciousness somewhere.

It apparently didn't present itself the same to everyone, with some accounts saying it looked like a massive tree and others that mentioned it being a vast open sky filled with many clouds and various other descriptions.

What seemed to be the same was that if a person had gained a particular understanding of specific laws, they could use that to seek benefits in that place.

It was the same as how a fire user could understand water laws and have their fire take on similar properties. That place would allow these special alterations, and you only had a short chance to achieve it every time you advanced between major cultivation realms.

Not everyone would get lucky even if they had the required insight. Time in that place was finite. A stronger soul would apparently allow for more time in that place.

That wasn't all he had learnt. The book was considered dangerous because the author had proposed something heretical if the other cultivation books were anything to go by.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Instead of a person working through a cycle in the clockwise order, willpower, body and soul, the author proposed doing it backwards: Willpower, soul and body.

This change seemed extremely dangerous as the other books mentioned that in no uncertain terms should messing with the order be attempted.

The author seemed to think this would be a benefit for a few reasons. The main one is that a person's soul power would be far superior doing it this way, at the expense of the body.

That problem wasn't as challenging to overcome as pills and medicines to increase body cultivation were far more abundant than ones for the soul. This combination would give a person all the benefits of increasing a person's soul power without suffering many downsides. If done right, anyway.

He flipped through the book to the end and read through the final chapters again. It was an account of their failures.

The author had not managed to go far down this path before something went wrong. They had been using powerful healing medicines and body cultivation resources but could not stave off the accumulating damage done to their body.

Using essence to strengthen the soul was doable, but it put a massive strain on the body, so it got done the other way around. The damage would build and build, becoming so severe it would lead to a person ending up as a cripple or dead.

He flipped through more pages, arriving at a section on breaking down essence skills and transforming them into others. The book's author seemed interested in doing things backwards as a process, as they used a similar approach to breaking down essence skills.

The attempts were only on basic skills with limited success, but a rough process existed. It just needed to be fleshed out more.

Wait, that's not right.

He quickly leafed through the pages again, reading over some parts as a sense of foreboding travelled down his spine. At first, it was hard to notice with the way it was written, but it should have been apparent had he paid more attention.

The book wasn't the notes of a cultivator's experiments on himself. They were the notes of experiments they had performed on others. This was the first time he had seen the dark side of cultivation, but he shouldn't have been so surprised. Humans back on Earth did similar shitty things.

He wasn't some righteous do-gooder who wanted to find the book's owner and slay him in the name of justice, but if he ever came across something like this, heads would probably roll if he had the power.

Closing the book, he thought for a while about the contents. Using the information contained within would mean he was benefitting at the expense of others, but he also needed it.

Once I'm strong enough, I will ask around about this book and deal with whoever did it.

That should be payment enough to those whose suffering I profited from.

I don't want to feel like I owe a debt to anyone.

He wouldn't run around asking questions now, as the author was obviously powerful, which would go against rule number one. It could wait until he had made preparations and the strength to back it up.

"Little Than, you're awake." His mother said as she walked into the room, stealing him from his musings.

"Why do you have that?" She asked with some concern as she walked over and snatched the book.

"I like the pictures in there. Can you teach me to read on the way home?" He lied and changed the subject.

She opened it and flicked through, noticing the extensive coloured annotated diagrams spread throughout before closing it.

"Sure, you can read the others, just not this one yet." She replied, putting it on a nearby sideboard.

He could tell she planned to hide it and hoped he forgot. Fortunately, he had already taken the information he needed from it over the night.

It was dawn, and the city came alive as they ate breakfast and prepared to leave. It wasn't long before their caravan formed at the stables, and they rolled through the city gates.

He couldn't help but glance behind as they left, wanting to take in the city's magnificence again. It would probably become a common sight, but he hoped he would never run out of amazing things to see in this world.

As they travelled, he gave more thought to the dark book's contents and the reverse cycle depicted in it. There might be something there he could use, but it would require some testing and for him to get his hands on a cultivation manual.

Part of coming to the city was to purchase him one if possible, as he had overheard his parents talking before they had left Mysthaven. He wasn't sure if they had managed to procure him one, and he hesitated to ask before he finally decided to wait until they were home.

"Do you want to learn how to ride?" Marcus asked, riding beside the wagon he sat in with his mother.

"Can I?" He asked.

He hadn't expected to be learning to ride today, and it was something he had overlooked when thinking about his future growth. Realising that he would have the chance to correct that, he dismissed all thought of cultivation as Marcus picked him up and put him on the horse.

"Here like this, see," Marcus said as he began to show him how to manoeuvre the horse.

He couldn't do everything due to his short legs, so his father did those parts. It wasn't long before they were moving around at a good clip as he trotted the horse this way and that.

"Can I get a wolf mount like the city guards?" He asked his father as they rode up the hill out of the flatlands and into the forest as some mounted troops shot past.

"You want one, huh? What do wolves eat?" Marcus asked as he pulled on a rein, correcting the horse's movement.

"Meat?" He replied, a little confused.

"Exactly, and we live on a farm surrounded by livestock. It would be like dropping a Nightling in the middle of our barn. It would eat everything." He replied as he tousled his hair.

"Don't knock a thunderhoof mount like Nox here. It was our legion mount of choice when we served. We never met an enemy formation they wouldn't charge at. She's just a bundle of muscles and bad attitude." Marcus said as he reached over and patted the horse that flicked its head in response.

"And smarter than they look."

"Why do I never see her around the farm?" He asked.

"She might be a horse, but she was bred for war. She would only be cooped up on the farm. She and the others just roam in the mountains around the village and return when called back." Marcus replied as they fell in at the front of the convoy.

"Isn't that dangerous for them with all the monsters out at night?"

"The Nightlings get drawn to settlements, but once you're up in the mountains, you might only encounter the occasional one here and there. Plus, I have seen Nox here pop one of those bugs like it was stomping on a berry, and she's with a group." Marcus said with a hint of mirth in his tone as they continued to trot home.

"How many are there?"

"Well, all the legionnaires brought their mount here with them, so a few hundred."

He couldn't help but imagine a few hundred of these massive pissed-off war horses roaming the mountains, stomping anything that got in their way to death.

"Why didn't the kingdom take them back when you left?"

"They are very loyal and temperamental, so unless you train them from a young age, they won't follow your commands, and no one wants to head into war on a mount that could throw you off at any moment. That's why you see others riding different ones like those wolves, as they're easier to train and control." Marcus explained as the father and son duo rode along.

"How do they all survive up there? Won't they just run out of things to eat or places to move around?"

"The mountains are not all sharp angles and cliff faces. There are a lot flat areas up there that go on for miles." Marcus answered, making him think of the steppes back on Earth. Perhaps there was something like that up there. He couldn't remember the mountains well from when he arrived, so it was possible.

The journey to the first rest point was uneventful and a little boring, but they arrived before nightfall and set up in good time.