Xing Yi found out that internal cultivation was very simple.

Breathing in and out in a slow and steady rhythm, his chest heaved and fell. He imagined that as he breathed in, a wave of water rose up along the back of his spine until it reached and paused at the top of his skull.

He would briefly pause before he let the water break and fall along the front of his spine. He intensely focused on himself, quietly ignoring the sound of the wind and birds in the distance. Soon, he felt as if the water inside him was real. As if he could feel it.

It was utter silence in his tiny world. He could see or hear nothing. It was nothing but his breath and the imaginary water inside of him. With prior practice under his belt from his carriage journey, he didn’t find his thoughts wandering and he stayed at his centre.

He repeated this process again and again, mirroring a constantly receding and approaching tide of the sea. After what felt like eternity, a voice came from nearby.

“Time’s up!” A cute, young voice shouted.

Xing Yi opened his eyes after his six-hour meditation session and stayed completely still as his eyes adjusted to the world. The influx of light and sensation brought beauty to all that came within sight. His mind had a difficult time identifying his environment as everything seemed to be just a mesh of beautiful colours. It was slightly blurry too.

It took a minute for the colours to meld together and for his vision to return to normal.

He stood up and noticed a cute girl swinging on the edge of a chair.

This was Min Ya Jing. She was also twelve years old-the same age as Xing Yi.

She had been the cute, but also strange girl he had met after his first class with Li Yuwan.

After that, she began randomly striking up conversations and hanging out with him. When they were eating food, when he was in class, when he was reading, and-like now -when he was meditating.

“How can you meditate for six hours? That’s so long,” Ya Jing commented, her hand holding up her head as she looked at Xing Yi.

“It’s not really that impressive,” Xing Yi awkwardly laughed.

“No. It is,” Ya Jing insisted.

“No, it’s really not,” Xing Yi rebuked as he walked past where she sat and into the house.

Xing Yi lived in the same house as Ya Jing’s family. Not because he chose to.

The Servant Hall Master refused to let him live by himself as that would mean he would have to do chores for himself. And he said that was unacceptable as their role as the Servant Hall. So he had him live in with a servant family. However, Ya Jing then volunteered on behalf of her parents to take him in.

With that, his lodgings were settled. As for his food, he ate with Ya Jing’s family.

Xing Yi still couldn’t believe the amount of food at the family’s disposal.

They looked like ordinary people, no different than ones you would find in a farming village. But they dined like kings day and night. It wasn’t just because the ingredients were rare and expensive, but because Ya Jing’s mother was on another level. It went to show how wealthy the Bloody Path Sect really was. Even their servants ate like this.

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Xing Yi ate much, which in the long run, hopefully add size to his small and stout frame.

Retreating to his room and escaping Ya Jing, he sat on the floor and began reading a book that wasn’t of the two books he borrowed. It was in fact a book that belonged to Ya Jing’s family. It was a large almanac that recorded a long list of birds and their characteristics.

He wasn’t reading it because he was particularly interested in them, he was only reading it so he could get better at reading. He couldn’t recognise over ninety-five percent of the characters, but of that five percent, he was able to fish out key words.

He continued reading and as he went along, he noticed a few important characters that appeared throughout. He wrote down their appearance and the words they were combined with in a scroll beside him. His handwriting skills were crude and once he lifted his hand up from the paper, several messy and janky lines that represented the characters he had read now appeared.

Xing Yi was disappointed in his own abilities and didn’t like seeing his own handwriting, but Li Yuwan had encouraged him to withstand it and keep writing. He would’ve still continued but this helped ease his displeasure with himself.

He read for three entire hours before he switched from reading to writing. He pulled out another two scrolls from a pile that had formed at the edge of his desk and rolled them out onto the desk.

With ink in hand, he looked at the characters on the other scroll before re-writing them out in the other. He continued this process for a whole hour, practicing different characters and basic stroke patterns before he heard a voice from outside.

“Dinner!” Ya Jing cheered.

He looked to the window at his right and noticed that the sun was beginning to set and long shadows were now being drawn across the land and himself.

“I’m coming!” Xing Yi replied as he packed up his stuff.

He exited his room, went down the hallways and sat at a large table in a very spacious dining room. Laid before him was an array of food that tickled his nose. Delicacies that would never have appeared in his village were now in front of him.

He gave no apologies to Ya Jing’s parents as he proceeded to devour plate after plate, his body having never tasted such food in its entirety life up until a couple weeks ago.

Soon, his belly was full and bulging out like a pregnant lady. With that he became lethargic and a desire to fall asleep. Before sitting up to leave, he laid his eyes on Ya Jing’s parents. They were incredibly kind and generous people who had given such food to eat.

Her mother was a saint in his eyes.

He was grateful as he enjoyed the atmosphere for just a little longer.

Eventually, he sat up and left to his room.

His room was very luxurious and adorned with a couple of paintings, had expensive incense lit at a table in the middle of the room and an open window with a beautiful view into the valley. It wasn’t too extravagant, but it was homely and quiet. He really liked it here.

He jumped onto the small, slightly elevated bed and snuck under the blanket. He laid their motionlessly until he fell asleep.

In the morning, he was awoken by the morning sun’s light shining down upon him.

He ate breakfast with Ya Jing’s family. He attended Li Yuwan’s two-hour class.

And when he finished with that, he killed some time by going for a walk outside and into the valley. He went through the transportation pagoda and watched a few fights between some of the other disciples. He went unnoticed as he observed from the edge, every other person completely disinterested in him as they already formed their own groups. Sometimes he would stay home and garner himself some extra reading time. It depended on his mood.

He meditated for six hours. Practiced reading for three hours. He wrote for another hour. He had dinner with Ya Jing’s family. Then he fell asleep once more.

Again and again, he repeated this daily routine.

He meditated, read and wrote.

He grew more and more focused in his meditation as he attempted to cleanse his first meridian. He was able to read more and more characters and words every single day. His writing improved, growing neater and uniform. Books were beginning to make sense. He could pick sentences and words out of even the complex books he was reading.

Three months passed…

In that time, he had now achieved a rudimentary level of fluency. He could now read basic books while knowing nearly all the words. And his writing had now become elegant and refined. Like that of an intelligent scholar.

And with his newfound ability to read, he could now read both books he had received from the sect library. All by himself.

He read the external cultivation guidebook and quickly followed it up by reading the blue book, The Insights and Thoughts of Master Lao Qiguang.

However, upon reaching a certain section, his heart dropped.