“How do you feel?” Zerle asked.
“Strange… I can’t quite describe it. It is a bit like trying to explain what color looks like to a blind man, it is something you would need to feel for yourself to understand. The only thing I know for sure is that I can no longer feel my body like I could with body revelation. My senses and control have become much more blurry, though I still have better control than most,” Eon responded as he sat up from his lying position, the restraints on his body instantly vanished with the completion of the ritual.
Sophia nodded lightly: “What you said about being unable to explain it makes sense. If I am right, you just acquired what cultivators call ‘experience’. Experience is a subjective perception of reality, it is something that can only be gained through oneself. Experience is used to form, learn, and improve techniques related to the experience, and the overwhelming majority of cultivators use it for such. It is also used to speed up cultivation. Cultivators often go out into the world seeking experience in order to strengthen themselves, though this is a much more dangerous route than simply cultivating quietly. Cultivators can help pass on their experience to their others as well, though this is a messy and troublesome path, and usually requires great effort on both cultivators’ behalf. Grandpa has accumulated much experience over his life and shared some of it with me, which is why I have already reached mid-stage body tempering cultivation despite only cultivating for a little over 2 years.”
“Indeed, insight is quite important.” Zerle added, but then he lamented, “Though because a cultivator can gain strength through experience, knowledge as a whole is left ignored by the overwhelming majority. They consider it wasting time to learn something rather than get stronger or create or improve a technique for their descendants. This leaves me as a rather oddity among cultivators for focusing on research and knowledge rather than experience. I think it is a shame that cultivators invest so little in true knowledge outside of some specific fields.”
“Yes Grandpa, everyone knows you think so much of knowledge. But in the end, knowledge is much less useful, experience will always remain the focus of cultivators, and for good reason. Knowledge isn’t and never will be useful for the typical cultivator, though it might be useful for this weird mortal you picked up. Without meridians, it is difficult to say what his future will hold.” Sophia added, some annoyance evident in her voice.
“Well… it doesn’t matter. We are getting ahead of ourselves. Eon, firstly, I wanted to tell you that the ritual seemed to be largely successful, but you should probably go wash off the demon blood and other materials and put on some clothes. After all, we have a young lady here, it would be rude to keep being indecent longer than necessary.” Zerle added, chuckling.
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“Ah… you’re right. Excuse me.” Eon remembered that he was still naked, and flushed up immediately. He ran to Zerle’s bedroom and grabbed his clothes. He also took a bath, there was a complicated set of gears and pipes that released water when used, some sort of advanced machinery. Eon didn’t understand it, but with everything going on as of late he couldn’t be bothered to ask Zerle how it works. Cleaning up, Eon walked back out into Zerle’s front room. Sophia was gone and Zerle was reading a dusty book while sitting under a windowsill.
“Ah good, you’re finally ready,” Zerle said as he closed the book, leaving some small clouds in the air. “I was just going through some records to make sure I didn’t forget to mention anything. To start, what was that interference during the ritual? Sophia didn’t meet the qualifications to notice it, but there was definitely another ‘presence’ during the ritual, guiding our energies to most effectively use them, it was a big part of the success of the ritual.”
“I mentioned it before when we talked about the past. It is my ‘system’, and it gave me the option to assist with the ritual, which I accepted. Is there anything you can tell me about it now that you have seen it?” Eon replied.
Zerle stroked his white beard for a moment before continuing to speak, “I am afraid that I have to dash another one of your hopes. That ‘system’, is quite weak. While it was quite useful with the ritual, it was severely lacking in energy. This is merely conjecture, but I am guessing that the system derived most of its power from the tutorial itself, and once you exited the tutorial it has grown weaker and weaker. It probably can only help you once or twice more like that before collapsing. Sorry, I knew you held some hope that it could become your… what did you call it? ‘Golden finger’? But that seems unlikely.”
Eon shook his head and said in a deep voice, “Don’t worry about it. I have gotten used to disappointments regarding my future, this is just one more thing on the pile. No, this is actually quite good that I might be able to get a few more uses for it. I am just glad the ritual didn’t kill or cripple me.”
“Mmmm. I can’t say it is a great way to look at it, but at least you aren’t too disappointed. Alright, let’s see how effective your new art is. First, activate your qi perception.”
Eon activated his qi perception, and a vibrant array of colors entered his vision. He took another look around using qi perception. Before, his qi perception was quite blurry, and he would only be able to see flashes of light, predominantly gold, looking like he was drowning in a pool of liquid gold. Now, the scenery had calmed down and he could get a better look at the world around him. The air was full of small long clouds gently moving along the air. They were almost completely transparent and colored gold, it reminded him of flying through the clouds in an airplane when he traveled. The clouds would coalesce and dissipate. He found it to be quite beautiful and serene. Occasionally, clouds of colors other than gold were formulated, but they were unstable and would quickly collapse. Unlike before, Eon could also much more clearly see the red inside of his body. His body was full of red fog, moving along in strings that mirrored his blood vessels. It reminded Eon of those 3d models of humans one would see in a textbook, with each layer having different structures of fog. Just using this, a person could gain a general understanding of their current health and state based on the circulation, coloration, and amount of fog, which was quite useful since Eon had lost bodily revelation.