Jing almost vomited with sheer shock, ' No, No,' He repeated inside his mind, trying to push the images away. In the end, Jing killed the sister in a single attack and burned her brother alive.
In an attempt to compose his state of mind, and rid himself of such sick and twisted memories, he began going through a breathing exercise that he used to do whenever he was having a panic attack. Fortunately, after a few minutes of sitting on the wooden porch, his mind moved to new unrelated thoughts.
His attention was quickly captured by the scene ahead, a desolate underground space where nothing existed other than some insectoid monsters who were busy fighting and consuming one another under Jing's shocked gaze.
Witnessing this scene, he couldn't help but gulp. Beside the house where he was, there was a single shabby wooden cottage, and that was it. In this whole underground space, there were only two shabby wooden houses.
To the left, at the very edge of the space was the same giant tunnel that he was used to by then, but unlike the previous time, when he turned to look to the right, there was only a solid dirt wall.
'It seems like this place is the end?' He thought with a difficult expression, unaware of how to proceed from there.
If he moved forward he would encounter those beasts whose cries could be heard from where he was, and there was nothing to his right. To the left was what he guessed Peak Master Li Yan's place, and beyond it were the territories of the other peak masters.
Naturally, he wouldn't go back to the room he had just left as the previous confrontation was still very vivid in his mind. Reaching that conclusion, he just stood on the wooden porch before the door to collect his thoughts, and once Shen Yun went to sleep he would go back.
As he stood there with a complicated expression in an underground world watching otherwordly beasts fight to the death a surreal feeling suddenly hit him like a tidal wave. This could be considered the very first time where he had some alone time to truly gather his thoughts, and thus it was at that moment that he suddenly comprehended the depth of what he was going through.
Transported to another world to forcefully participate in a game against 1000 other competitors where only one would remain standing. To make matters even more complicated a designated cameraman would be following his journey forward capturing absolutely everything about his life.
To say he was mortified by every single detail about everything that had happened thus far would be putting it mildly, but a wide grin couldn't help but creep up his face.
Just the fact that he was standing there with his legs working, and arms brimming with strength that could hold a cup of juice filled him with endless hope.
"Aukhman," He suddenly whispered, afraid someone might hear him talking to himself.
Directly before his eyes, an unfathomable energy moved that suddenly converged creating the demon's form with that staff with a golden pearl at the top in his hand. "What is it?" Asked he, a faint smile tugging at his lips.
Jing had an endless amount of questions that he wanted to ask the demon, and so he began with the very most important one. In a whisper, he asked, "Won't I be able to have any sense of privacy?"
The demonic creature merely waved his magical staff at that, and Jing could feel a peculiar connection between the two of them. "You can comfortably talk through here," Aukhman said. "As for privacy, you won't have much. With things like your bowel movements, I wouldn't bother because no one wants to see that. But I will still capture everything that I deem important."
Seeing the human's dejected expression, he continued, "You have to change how to view this whole subject of privacy, it doesn't have to be an issue," He stressed. "Just live your life, keep it interesting, and we'll both win."
'Easy for you to say,' Jing scoffed in his mind. 'Hidden from everyone's eyes and nobody can touch you.' He then kept glancing at the demon, scrutinizing his expressions. He was trying to see if he could also read his mind, and if that was true then this whole The Chosen One would have proved to be too much for him.
Fortunately, probe as he might, he didn't see anything peculiar. And so, using the mental bridge Aukhman had established he continued asking one question after the next.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
One of the most important ones was, "So," Jing said, he was already sitting cross-legged at the corner of the porch. "How will these people be able to watch us? Something like phones and the internet?"
"No," The demon objected.
Just as he was about to explain something, Jing interjected, "So, you know what phones and the internet are?"
"I studied your whole life," Aukhman explained. "It's paramount to have an understanding of your character in order to build a series around them. As for how they will watch, all I can say about that is you need to raise your access level to understand that."
Hearing that Jing quietened down, appearing deep in thoughts. He asked the demon one question after the next, and he didn't stop until he was satisfied and of course, because he grew tired.
After a while, he opened the leaderboard once again and finally clicked on the small button to customize his avatar.
After tinkering around with that magical process that was exceedingly simple, all he had to do was imagine what he wanted to put, he created his own avatar.
He didn't want to give things too much thought, so he just used a character in the last movie he had ever seen before his surgery, Zootopia. He visualized the character Nick Wilde, the fox with a green Hawaiian shirt, and a blue and gold striped tie, and he gave him a straw hat. The creature was widely smiling with a puff of smoke out of his nostrils and a cigarette in hand. As for the name, he just went with "Kenneth."
After he was done, he stood up with a satisfied smile on his face. Aukhman had already disappeared, and so Jing approached the door and pushed his ears against it. Not hearing anything, he gently pushed it open and entered inside.
Fortunately, two beds were close to one another. In a beeline, he made way for the empty one and sat on top of it. He was dying to learn more about this whole cultivation affair.
In an attempt to follow his memories to the fullest extent to avoid any issues, he sat down cross-legged and closed his eyes. There was something very different about the mind and thoughts of a cultivator, they seemed more real and tangible.
Jing willed his thoughts to move and the blackness of his closed eyelids as the canvas, he began to paint. Yes, paint! Using his thoughts as a medium, he began creating a poor shoddy symbol that stuck to his consciousness.
Suddenly, he felt a sudden itch on his scalp, and his hand reflexively moved for the scratch. The moment that happened, the whole symbol crumbled away and became as elusive as past thoughts.
With a resolute expression, he stilled himself and began once again. This time, he resisted the urge to scratch random itches, and he vowed to slaughter the nine generations of a fly that found his nose particularly interesting once he was done.
Once the symbol finally took shape, it lighted up! It became somewhat lifelike and pulsed with a strange energy. He was soon to find that it pulsed with a gravitational pull that tempted the aloof strands of Qi that played around in the atmosphere.
Cultivating as a Body Tempering and a Qi Condensation cultivator were unimaginably different from one another. As a Qi Condensation, Qi is already something that is very familiar to you, and the existence of the swirling nodes, which he learned are called meridians make the process even easier. However, as a Body Tempering whose body was devoid of any Qi as the sea lacks air, he had to use a medium, and in this case Body Tempering Symbols.
The very first step a mortal should take into becoming a cultivator is the solidification of their thoughts as energized tools for cultivation. Although it sounded complex, which it was, the way to go about that was infinitely simple. A mortal had to eat a spiritual fruit called the Phoenix Essence Plum, this magical fruit had the ability to transform the mind of a mortal into a cultivator's.
Once one was able to control an energized form of their thoughts, the next step was to draw a Body Tempering symbol on their consciousness. The symbols came in Body Tempering manuals which offered nine symbols, each one for every stage of Body Tempering. The reason there were nine the Qi's strength would gradually strengthen as one's body becomes more and more purified, strong, and tempered. If a newly awakened cultivator were to directly use a ninth stage of Body Tempering without enough preparation severe consequences would follow.
Xie Jing whose body was already at the Qi Condensation one time, directly used the ninth stage Body Tempering symbol even though he was still at the eighth stage.
Whenever a strand of Qi would enter his body through his forehead, he would feel a very cool and refreshing feeling. However, he knew that his work wasn't over. The Qi would pass through the symbol and become entirely different from its usual natural state in the outside world, it would feel more like him in a way. True enough, he became able to control it as easily as he was able to flail his arms around.
He willed that strand of personal Qi to move through his body unobstructed, and wherever it passed through he would feel an intense itch, as if his very cells were changing places.
The Qi was able to pass through skin, bones, inner organs, and everything in between. In fact, he even tried making it roam around his teeth, but the itch was very intense there and he was barely able to bear with it.
After a few seconds, the Qi began to get smaller and smaller with every body part it made contact with until finally nothing remained of it. But by then his trusty symbol had already coaxed another Qi to enter to its doom, and he continued what he was doing.
Jing knew that he was gradually strengthening his body, but what he didn't know was what were the criteria to be considered a 9th Stage Body Tempering. However, those questions would be left for another time because as he was gently playing with Qi, and as refreshing as it was, his mind began to slowly loosen its hold before he drifted off to sleep.