Aaron woke the next day much more relaxed and comfortable than he had expected. He was slowly getting used to sleeping on the ground, hell even on rock. The sleeping roll was barely thick enough to mask the hard, rocky and uneven surface, but his body did not care.
He had woken without any issues, no kinks in his neck, no cold, no sore throat, nothing. He felt like he had just woken up from a spa day and tonight there had been no nightmares either.
Aaron yawned and stretched, blinking into the dim twilight of the morning. Not actually seeing a sun was a surreal feeling to him. The sky lit up in the right colors, shifted from a dark blue to purple and then brighter until the new day had fully arrived. But there was no direction of the sun, the sky did have no gradient, no difference between where the sun rose or fell. That really put a damper on his wilderness training, since he could not guess any directions from the position of the sun.
With slow deliberate movements he began stretching and loosening his body. The stretches Mei had shown him were still painful, but not as much as they had been the previous times. With that done he meditated for his 3 hours and then went through all 50 sets of the Rejuvenating fist kata. It felt good. Like the morning routine had been made specifically for him. The stretches loosened his body, the cultivation sharpened his mind and got rid of any stray thoughts and the Rejuvenating Fist gave him a workout.
When he was finally done with the routine and his whole body felt worked out and relaxed at the same time, he sat down at the fire, thinking of different ways to cook the meat he had. Maybe a skewer with some meat chunks? He wrinkled his nose and noticed a pungent smell overpowering even the scent of ash and the remnants of seared meat. Aaron took a hesitant sniff under his arms and cursed slightly. Yeah the smell was definitively coming from him.
It wasn't exactly a surprise. He had not taken a bath or a shower since he had come to this world and when he took a closer look his skin was darkened with dirt, sweat and leftovers of dried blood.
Disgusted with himself he went down the little plateau he had made camp on and took a very cold bath. He took off his clothes and washed them as well. He even found a piece of soap in the survival pack and gave everything he wore and that was not metal a thorough washing. It was tedious and he very much missed a washing machine, a shower or even a bathtub. Bathing in a tiny running stream that was only a few inches deep was not his prefered method of getting clean.
He did not mind the cold though, although he still had some very bad memories of walking through a Blizzard after one of his missions in the rocky mountains. he had almost frozen to death that time and had gotten some light frost burn. But now he could barely feel the cold. Well, he felt the cold, but it did not hurt or bother him much. He could tell how cold it was but his body adapted to the temperature quickly. So quickly in fact that Aaron could not understand how that was possible. How thoroughly had that bead of energy of the great master changed him?
Was he even human anymore? Like if someone took his DNA and ran tests, what would they find?
How fundamentally had becoming a cultivator changed him?
If Aaron had to guess. A lot. He was super human in a lot of ways now. His memory was clear and sharp and felt at least improved, if not almost photographic. His control over his body was improved by leaps and bounds as well. If he wanted to he could have easily done a pirouette. He could move with grace and precision that he had never had in his old life and had an almost instinctual understanding of how to move through the Rejuvenating Fist kata. All the little things added up, the resilience of his body, the strength, the endurance, all of them were improved by a lot.
In short, he was not entirely human anymore. That much was clear. And Aaron did not mind it one bit.
Being Human was entirely overrated in his mind, if he could be like this. This was better, felt better and his entire new existence had a very comfortable new goal now. To become stronger.
In his old life there was very little measure of how successful and powerful you were. Money was the usual standard, the more money you had, the more successful. Or maybe political influence was a better measurement for power since they were interchangeable, money bought political power and with political power it was easy to make money.
To Aaron that kind of measurement of worth, of a life, had always been useless. To him it had been all about the thrill of the hunt, about recreating the sensation of his first kill. But he had never gotten there. He had found other ways to measure his own worth, his own progress instead. He had started with money and when he had millions he had moved on to in his mind more interesting ways to measure his worth. He had increased the difficulty of his hits until he went out of his way to only take the most dangerous hits and then spending months solving the puzzle of it all. How to get to someone without being caught or making them vanish without a trace. That had been his life's work. Had been how he had proven himself he was good at what he had done.
But all of the vagaries of worth were gone in this world, with becoming a cultivator. He could literally feel his growth, could measure it, could sense it inside of his dantian. With every bit of Qi he assimilated, he got stronger and closer to the next level he had been promised existed. The Fiend-god art was like an engine that improved his physique slowly with every breath. With every inhale of mana-rich air, with every bite of food infused with the weak energy, his body turned it all into Qi and used it to become stronger, more resilient, more super human.
The Rejuvenating Fist trained his body as well, worked it and improved the muscles he would need to fight in melee. Just like a boxer only trains some muscles and does not strive to improve everything, the kata improved the muscles that were important to punch. The wind steps last but not least kept him limber, kept him agile with the stretches and the Wind Steps themselves were his best tool to escape and close a gap in combat. Eventually he had been promised that the Wind Steps would cease to use Qi and already he could feel that the technique required less Qi to activate and upkeep than when he had first done activated it in the Cultivators prison.
All of this created a virtuous cycle of his physique improving and his cultivation growing. It would eventually be a never ending expansion, a progression he found instantly addictive. All he had to do was keep training, keep up the routine, keep cultivating and he would wake up every day a tiny bit stronger than the last.
His gains were already tangible, he was stronger than he had been just two days ago and that alone was an incredible statement to him.
But it was not all good news. So far the Wind Steps basically ate all of his cultivation progress, if he had to use the technique and as such slowed down his progress by a lot. And there was the hunger. The gnawing sensation that he was so familiar with by now it felt like an old companion more so than something new.
Aaron was always hungry now and he ate so much it was almost impossible to believe. He could not help himself and cooked and ate the entire rest of the deer after his bath and was once more satiated for a while. He had eaten almost 100kg of meat in two days. Quite frankly if he ate any more it would become almost unsustainable. It was a real problem and he had no easy solution for it. The best thing would be to buy food of course. But that was not an option for now, or maybe ever.
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Maybe there was a chance to sneak into this Town of Beginnings, but he already knew they had skills to identify that he was indeed not a vessel. The only way would probably be to play the mage. But he had no spell to show them, no robes and he looked very much like a warrior.
No, for now any food he would get would have to come from what he hunted or foraged. In the middle of the winter there was really only hunting left and so Aaron left behind most of his gear once more and grabbed his bow.
If he had to hunt every second day, that would seriously cut into any time he had to do anything. So he combined his hunting efforts with a bit of exploration. He needed a better grasp on the surrounding territory, if he wanted to be safe. He had not forgotten that he was still being hunted and even though he had not seen any people going after him since his little ambush, he had no doubt they would eventually come for him.
If it came to another fight he wanted to be ready, wanted to ambush his foes again in terrain that was advantageous to him. Because of his movement technique he had a slightly different take on what good terrain was for him.
Canyons and thick copses of trees were his friend, while open field was terrible. Elevated positions were only so much of an advantage. If the enemy could climb it quickly, it was barely one at all frankly.
No, the terrain that was otherwise impossible to climb or at least not quickly was his best friend. But this would also mean some quite liberal use of the movement technique, slowing down his progression even further.
But Aaron did not care. If he had learned anything from his past life, then it was the simple fact that preparation and contingency plans were worth more than anything else. So often something unexpected had happened during his hits that most people would have had to improvise. Aaron had tried not to improvise at all, but have another plan ready to go. This was no different. The more he knew about good spots to go and ambush people there while they looked for him, the better. And if he could find himself some dinner while he was at it, all the better.
The slightly mountainous and hilly expanse close to the wall was a perfect place, a labyrinth of canyons and sheer rock cliffs. Aaron jumped up and had a look up top, but most plateaus were impossible to climb or improbably hard to get up at least. Still there were a few animals here. Some birds of prey nesting in the high places, some rodents and he even spotted a goat that was so fast on its feet, he did not even try to hunt it.
After spending a few hours searching the terrain closest to the wall and marking spots with charcoal in a way only he would understand, he finally descended into the valley to find some game.
But luck was not on his side today and he found no herd, only tracks that he followed through the forest for hours.
The game trail led him away from the river deeper into the icy jungle, following a long winded path winding its way through. It was getting darker already when he finally spotted this herd’s resting spot. From the position of the wall he had traveled left, so if the wall was north, westwards through the forest.
Aaron made himself no illusions. His skill with the bow was still not up to par, he had to keep training with it, but that was a problem for tomorrow. Now he needed to make a kill.
So he activated his wind steps and launched himself up a nearby tree. His feet feeling silk as he dove and swung in between trees with no friction, barely any gravity at all really until he was close enough to get a sure shot.
One of the does looked up and made a sound of alarm before Aaron could really react and the herd jumped up to vanish and disperse. Aaron jumped from the perch on a thick branch and soared through the air almost weightless. He aimed his bow during the fall, his breath even before he held it and released the knocked arrow from his bow. The deer he targeted was close, too close to miss and he hit it easily, piercing its throat and making it huff and jump. It staggered along for a few steps before collapsing a few meters further into the forest. But before Aaron landed it got back up and scrambled away, clearly hurt and leaving behind a trail of blood.
With quick steps he followed the wounded animal, another arrow knocked. But it was not necessary, after less than a minute he found the collapsed deer and ended its suffering with a quick and easy cut.
Satisfied that he had gotten more food, he shouldered his catch and made his way in the dwindling light towards his camp. The forest grew dark quickly after the last light had vanished and left Aaron in a world full of shadows and deep darkness sprinkled with brighter spots from the snow. It was a surreal world of black and white only illuminated by the faint soft light coming from above that was probably there to recreate moonlight or starlight.
Aaron had no problem at all to see and find his way in the deepening darkness. He followed the path he had taken back until he could hear the river and then turned wallside towards the hills.
It was darkest night when he finally arrived at his camp and got to prepare the deer, bleed it out and this time he made sure the deer was hung high enough for no animals to reach it. With a sigh he sat down at his camp fire, which he started after a short hesitation. He checked quickly if the light was visible from up close or further away and only once you were close you could spot the light of the fire and in the darkness any smoke was invisible.
Perfect.
With grumbling stomach he dug into a few of the dried rations he had left and did his stretches and the 50 sets of the fist kata. The routine felt less tranquil than it had in the morning, more like it had an edge to it now, because he was tired and kind of waiting for something terrible to happen. It had been remarkably quiet today, no ever since he had escaped from his pursuers and he did not like it.
He had no real idea of his enemy's capabilities and had no idea how he would go about finding out what they were in the short term. Maybe they were planning something he did not expect, maybe they would just sent a horde of people after him in big enough groups to be unrealistic for him to ambush. He simply did not know and that kind of uncertainty was giving him some serious anxiety.
A feeling that was also new to him. The clenching of his stomach that had nothing to do with his hunger, the uncomfortable prickling in his neck. He did not like the feeling and it was not something he had ever felt in his old life. He had never felt unsure about anything and if something had been like this situation, like this challenge to survive, he would have relished it.
Aaron shook off his thoughts and sat down to cultivate. But this time he wanted to try absorbing some of the shards he had stolen. The great master had made it sound like beast cores and manastones were the easiest way to acquire power quickly after all and nothing would soothe his anxiety more than a bit of progression and power.
He fished a few shards out of his coin pouch and sighed before he drew one of the daggers from his belt. With a grunt he cut open the palm of his hand. He knew he would heal fast, within minutes for such a shallow cut, which was still amazing to him and so he hurried up and pushed one of the shards into the open, bloody cut.
It hurt, the strange, pointy object burned and he hissed slightly before he closed his eyes and tried to focus on the spot in his palm. Which turned out to be exceptionally easy. The pain made sure of his attention and he could feel how the shard’s stored mana was absorbed into his blood. How there was a wash of mana that flooded his blood, flowing through him from his hand like a quick, hot stream.
Aaron tried his best to tame the stream, to pull the Qi that the mana was turned into quickly towards his dantian and to his surprise it was quite effective. The Qi within his blood was suddenly at such a high concentration that the pull of his body to absorb the Qi was almost non existent.
He pulled a stream of qi into his dantian and quickly fueled it into the Fiend-God arts cycling pattern, flooding his inner pathways, his Qi veins, with the energy. Halfway through the first cycle with the small deluge of Qi, he felt the pointy shard give in his palm and when he opened his eyes he could literally see how the shard was absorbed and melted away into his palm like sugar into water.
Annoyed the source of the quick energy was gone so quickly he pushed another shard into his palm and continued his cultivation. The pain was always in the back of his head, but the concentration required to lead his Qi through the cycling technique came easily to him tonight.
One shard after another vanished and was absorbed until he had burned through 5 of the things. At the last shard he had already been able to feel a bit of resistance, as if the shard did not want to melt as easily anymore and when he studied his hand he noticed that his palm had healed right after the shard had been absorbed.
It was a wasteful and resource intensive method of cultivating, but it was so much more efficient than just sitting there, absorbing the ambient mana. It was all in all more Qi than he had accumulated in 3 sessions of 3 hour meditations together. Ecstatic he grinned to himself and wondered how potent a manastone would be and how much it would improve him...
But that would be a task to find out tomorrow. For tonight he made sure the fire would burn down evenly and not send out sparks, before he slipped into his tent and fell asleep.