Spencer giggled with happiness upon the revelation. The people walking around gave him weird looks as they passed by. The people who recognized him as the newbie talent informed others about it.

“It’s Spencer, scouted by Lord Lysander.”

“He probably got zapped by Lord Lysander’s lightning. Look at how he is laughing.”

“It’s gone, another member of our sect sacrificed to madness due to pressure of cultivation.”

“People from Earth have such weak mental fortitude. Give them some pressure and they cave in, that poor lad might not even have started his cultivation.”

Spencer didn’t pay attention to anything he was hearing. If he as an orphan heard and considered everything people had to say about him, he would have long gone insane.

Once, when he went onto a stage to give a speech, his friend had given him awesome advice for nervousness.

Imagine everyone in the audience naked.

It worked like a charm, there wasn’t even an ounce of nervousness which crept up to him when he gave his speech that day. From that day onwards, he looked for a similar version to apply to his daily life. There was indeed one. Imagine people as dogs barking when they talked about you.

But he thought. Weren’t dogs loud? Wouldn’t that be disturbing? So he imagined them as rats squeaking.

After passing by the group of squeaking rats, Spencer headed towards the Martial hall. He didn’t intend to return to the cave to refine just one meridian. The mission of Grand Elder Lyra was about to start tomorrow, so he could look for other ways to earn money after perusing through the Martial hall.

The Martial hall was located a higher level than other public buildings, so Spencer had to spend quite a bit of energy walking.

God! Aren’t there any public transports in the sect? I bet it would’ve been an immediate flop of a sect if it wasn’t so strong. I should open up a transport service in the sect when I get stronger.

If he started earning some decent money, then there was always a chance that someone might approach him to sell them the business.

How did no one ever think of it though?

Spencer’s idle and meaningless thoughts were shoved to some random dark corner of his mind as he witnessed the absolute behemoth of a building. Even the Administration hall and Announcement hall were mere dregs if compared to the Martial hall.

Just based on the front view he was facing, Spencer judged it was even larger than the largest football field. Contrary to the normal crowd of other halls, there was a massive influx and outflux of disciples in the entrance of the hall.

There were also multiple queues simply to enter the hall. Spencer joined one of them, taking an educated guess that the shortest one where very few people were lining behind was for VIPs. He had no wish to embarrass himself.

While the queue took its sweet time to continue moving forward, Spencer looked around at the surroundings. There existed a lot of glass in the surroundings, giving the Martial hall a more modern look than the other halls he had been to.

Looking at himself through one of the glass, Spencer ran his right hand through his hair and thought to himself, feeling extremely vexed and helpless.

Damn, I hope my extreme handsomeness doesn't distract people from my heaven defying talent.

With a slightly lonesome look, he looked around. Eager to find a company at the peak but found no one.

A pair of young women giggled nearby as they happened to witness his antics.

It didn't take long, roughly ten minutes before he was allowed into the hall. There was nothing he had to do, just walk through the door while the guard checked something on the array beside them.

He would’ve asked them how it worked had it not been clear that they were simply guards hired to do the job. The person who made the array wouldn't be working as a guard.

When he entered inside, instead of a huge high ceiling, it was simply a standard height ceiling. It disappointed him somewhat but he chucked that thought and headed towards a receptionist.

There were way more receptionists than there were queues outside, so he didn't need to wait that long before he came face to face with one.

“Cultivation arts for Qi gathering stage.”

She didn't even look at him. Her eyes were on the screen before her while she answered.

“1st floor.”

He left as soon as he heard her. Since it was on the 1st floor itself he didn't need to take the stairs. Behind the row of receptionists was a wall, bypassing which he entered the section where he thought the cultivation arts would be.

He wasn’t exactly correct. The remaining area of the Martial hall 1st floor was divided 1:2, with the shorter area for cultivation arts, filled with buck loads of shelves as far as his sight could see. The larger area was occupied by floating stadiums, with no floor dividing them. The stadiums increased in size and decreased in numbers as one tilted their head more, with only a single stadium at the top.

They really like to fight everywhere huh. Or is it for testing cultivation arts they learn here?

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Spencer ignored the stadiums and headed towards the shelves of books. Thankfully, all of them were efficiently segregated, allowing him to find the section he was looking for. For an accurate suggestion, he asked for assistance from the librarian and finally held the book which contained what he had come here looking for.

It was a book which taught the technique of Windshadow step.

Cultivation arts in this world worked in unique ways. The first step was visualization. You need to be able to visualize the effect of your cultivation art before even performing it.

The second step was understanding. If your cultivation art contained other elements, like poison, fire, ice and so on, you need to have a thorough understanding of them. Insufficient understanding would only undermine the power of cultivation art. This step could be skipped if you were using your plain qi to perform the cultivation art.

Lastly, circulation. Although far smaller than the circuits of cultivation scripture, the cultivation arts possessed similar circuits. Due to their extremely small size, the process is usually done in a few moments allowing for quick deployment of the cultivation arts. Deviation from the course during activation would lead to small injuries.

Spencer went through the Windshadow step in extreme detail. It was one of the best known methods in terms of speed, often used for escaping as it left the least amount of tracks.

He only had a single thought all this while when he was searching for the technique which suited his criteria.

What kind of talent, or genius, was the best one? One who was alive.

It wouldn’t matter jackshit otherwise. He had to live for the sake of his girlfriend, he had his priorities straight.

After submitting his ID, he waited for the librarian to register his information. Once she was done, he thanked her and left the Martial hall with the book in tow.

There was no need to read the book in that noisy environment when he could read it in the comfort of his cave.

The next few hours, he spent visualizing the technique in his head. The Windshadow technique was explained and drawn step by step down to the last angle of the foot placement, making it easy for Spencer to imagine it. It was always easier to visualize with more information.

Finally, the imagination in his mind turned a light shade of golden as it shimmered along the edges of outlines of the moving images.

It wasn't as accurate as Spencer had thought, inferring from the shade of golden but it was still a start nonetheless.

When he felt his stomach protest, Spencer searched for a food pill in his pocket.

Oh no, I ate the only one I had already.

But on a side note, he had already used the coupon, and it was effective for 24 hours. He wasn't sure if he wanted to buy food pills to dissolve his hunger today.

Side note to myself: Use coupons only when you plan to eat out the entire day.

It was approximately 40 minutes later that he returned to the cave.

Goddamn, walking took me like half the time. This is absolutely unacceptable, I dearly hope there are some food delivery or transport services which I’ve simply not heard of yet. Else, I am going to start living on food pills.

Spencer began his second round of practicing.

Imagining cultivation arts was easy, but it wasn’t like you had to stick to it. After you’ve learnt the thing, the cultivation art won’t not work if you use your right foot instead of left like it was instructed. Visualizing was only till that extent, to learn it. When using it in battle, you just need to circulate the qi in the correct route, and you can use your cultivation art however you wish.

After about an hour more, Spencer was finally done visualizing the instructed image to the point of standard golden hue. He heaved a sigh and proceeded on to the next stage, there was no time to waste here.

Due to the pain which seared his mind every time he refined a meridian through the system, he had an acute understanding of the location of meridians. Granted, the cultivation arts didn’t always use the 120 meridians, sometimes they involved even smaller meridians.

These meridians weren’t refined because they were too small, over time as the cultivator circulated his qi more and more through the route of cultivation scripture, minute amounts would go to refine them.

It took him 2 hours to accurately locate the route of the Windshadow step. It glowed with a golden hue as soon as he was done.

Finally, Spencer heaved a sigh as he laid back on the cold marble floor. There was only one last step left, practicing the actual thing.

But it would be difficult here in his small room, for one, the windshadow step was a speed oriented escape technique, he would be smashing himself face first into the wall if he tried executing here. And second, he was worried if what smashed into the wall first wasn’t his face.

With a tired sigh, he once again left the cave and locked it behind him.

I really need to upgrade my residence, I can do practically nothing there.

After another long grueling walk filled with curses, Spencer arrived at the training center. It wasn’t a building like the others but an open area. It was similar to the other in the aspect that it had rows and rows of receptionists as well.

There were two kinds of training areas, private and public. You could also choose if you wanted to book for yourself alone or more members.

While standing in the queue, the young man behind him initiated a conversation. “Aren’t you the new talent scouted by Lord Lysander?”

Spencer was quick to turn around and reply. “Yes, I am Spencer. You are?”

“Drith. I am here to practice my defensive technique, can I be of some help in your training? You can choose to use it on me, this way I can also practice my thing. I can give you some pointers along the way.”

Spencer gave it a moment of thought and agreed.

The sect wouldn’t allow people to kill others right under their nose right? At least not in the training center I hope. I can tap out of the training center if the dude happens to be malicious.

When the time came, it was Drith who insisted on paying, and Spencer was only happy to let him. It was suspicious that he paid for a private area, but Spencer didn’t comment on it. In his opinion, the public area should be alright since there wasn't really anything worth hiding.

They were given one common and 2 individual tokens which directed them to a particular area. Spencer noticed that people seemed to be training under thin films which had a shape of a dome. Some of them were transparent, while some weren't.

When they reached their area, Drith installed the common token on a marked spot, teaching Spencer how to do it in the process. The latter watched with amazement as an opaque white dome roughly the size of a tennis court enveloped them from ground up.

This is what it means to have a private area huh.

Drith stood up from his spot, and began instructing Spencer who looked over at him.

“Rule no.1 newbie. Know the people here in the sect. That Kevin which contacted you has the backing of the vice president of the Martial Council. It is the reason his protection squad is feared. Now that you’ve crossed them, you’ll have tails on you.

“You might not have realized it, but if you ended up choosing a public area then they would have had all the information on your combat prowess. It would have made it easier for them to assign one of their homeless members to challenge you according to your prowess. Be cautious.”