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Travels along the Astral Road
Before the mission I

Before the mission I

Right now Wu Guang obviously had mortal, untrained senses. Albeit the senses were closely related to one's consciousness and so if he activated his Saint-level one, he would easily show comparable prowess. Still, they were not a natural part of the body, and neither could he know what will happen in the future when the consciousness was merged.

He did expect at least some improvement in the area as well, but for now, he could only train by himself. Especially as he could not advance to the 5th level without first reaching the 1st level in all of the 7 senses. The 5th level was the one responsible for the consciousness and so Wu Guang decided to stop thinking about what-ifs and concentrate on working towards it. After all, all his guesses would be confirmed after a breakthrough.

As for the sense he decided to train first, he felt that sight would be ideal.

His decision was logical as he would have a bow-technique training in several days and if he wanted to start advancing the path of the bow, he would require the sense of sight to do so.

The individual techniques were not named but overall all of them appeared in his mind under the name of 'Sensing the Infinite'. The same for the rest of the basic senses the one for sight was a simple mantra and exercises routine which should be done while infusing the appropriate amount of qi into the respective organs or body parts.

The first thing to do before starting the path of training the senses was to simply infuse qi into the respective organ or body part for the first time and slowly start circulating it to reach them - basically including it or them into the circulation system. As he decided to start with sight, Wu Guang did so with his eyes.

This actually could have been done even before the 4th level but as it would not give any benefit and even worse could not be controlled so finely without the increase in control that every level gave, Wu Guang had waited to do so until now.

As such it did not take more than a few minutes and after suffering from stinging and burning, Wu Guang finalized this preparatory stage.

Judging from his memories and the brief description of the technique reaching the 1st level should be extremely simple and would not take more than a few hours, albeit expecting anything more than a half or so increase to one's vision range and a closing-in effect that could be reached by infusing qi would be a mistake.

***

As expected it took Wu Guang three hours to fully advance his sight sense to the first level.

The results were as expected; after concentrating he managed to see a faraway mountain that at least from the information he had was seemingly owned by the martial palace.

Using qi to zoom also turned an expected result as now he managed to see the residence walls as if he was standing near them, which he was not because he did move at all to confirm the effect and so was located at least 25 feet from the nearest wall.

In truth, such effect was nothing amazing but for an archer or to use archery techniques as Wu Guang intended, this was indeed an enormous advantage.

Dinner time was near and so Wu Guang decided to finish his training and move towards the main hall which doubled as their dining room.

In a few moments, he heard someone knocking at the entrance and went towards the door intending to receive the visit, which unsurprisingly was composed of both his new team members.

Yuan Taotu seemingly would not return and so Wu Guang was forced to keep them company alone while they ate. Thankfully no topics outside some discussion of beasts were discussed and so Wu Guang enjoyed this dinner. During this talk, it was found out that Wei had a lot of experience to share about different beasts and their respective behavior, so truth to be told, Wu Guang who in his memories had only some basic information about the weakest of the spirit beasts was pretty interested and asked a lot. This time Kuang Jing was not so talkative and the reason was actually pretty easy as when asked about beasts he admitted to have not fought any of them except for the ones required during the entrance tests.

Such an admission roused Wu Guang's interest in the matter of the latter's fighting experience, he decided to ask directly. The answer he received was that all of it was thanks to his household instructors. This did not diminish Wu Guang's initial appraisal of Kuang Jing's skills at all. It did confirm that the latter was part of a pretty rich house. After all, which if not a rich house could maintain dedicated instructors? But skill could not be bought with money, so indeed, Kuang Jing had a bright future. At least as a cultivator of this plane.

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Kuang Jing did not share anything personal, so Wu Guang as normal decided to not pry and wait for the former to share later if he wanted to do so. As for Wei, he did not participate in the conversation much. Except for talking about beasts, which was the only theme he touched at all.

Another theme that they started but did not finish and so decided to leave for the next gathering was about their respective weapons and paths, but as they would meet every day over this preparatory period, it was normal to leave out such a large matter for now in place of cramming it into the small time they had on this day.

With dinner finished and the main talk of the day coming to an end, Wu Guang decided that he should send his guests out and with their agreement, it was done.

Yuan Taotu had not appeared over the dinner and so Wu Guang decided to sleep the night after bathing.

The next morning some of the left-over food that was meant to serve as breakfast was gone and so Wu Guang concluded that Yuan Taotu did swing over, but surprisingly left right away.

This was a bit strange, but as he considered his previous guess. That the latter trained in some kind of technique he did not want to show. Wu Guang dismissed the matter and decided to concentrate on his own agenda.

Returning to himself, this day Wu Guang had two of the sparring lessons he had registered in. And to not be late, he left the residence and started moving towards the martial area. This area was located in between the outer and inner circles and was shared for both of them.

Until now Wu Guang had not visited the area and so as he neared it he examined it while noting the different locations and buildings. And indeed, there were a lot of things to note.

First of all, albeit called the martial area it wasn't the expected open or closed training zone. In truth, it was more akin to a small town or sect of its own. With open arenas, dojos, storehouses with training gear, a pair of tents marked as clinics, stalls, and even a pair of workshops owned by the mortal smiths that worked for the sect.

The spars Wu Guang had registered and paid for were the cheapest and most simple of the available ones.

In reality, there were a huge variety of spars between the notices. They could be even divided into different types and categories because the opponents, objectives, and rules varied. But as for the cheapest and simpler ones like Wu Guang's, they would be a simple hour or so in a designated location. During which no instructions would be given and he would rely on his skill with the respective weapon. Plus the opponent was not announced, so he could actually meet a disciple, elder, mortal instructor, or even an outsider.

In truth, Wu Guang had chosen the least popular option, after all, normal disciples would not want to spend an hour fighting someone above their skill without any gains. But for Wu Guang, the process was an enormous gain by itself. After all, he had relied on the unexpected ease of entering the state of understanding to skip over several levels of weapon training. So even if he felt the weapon almost on an expert level, he still had absolutely no experience in using it. Something he intended to resolve now.

For this, he registered for four of such spars for respectively four different weapons. On this day he had one for small saber during the first half of the day and one for sword during the second one.

Thankfully finding the place for his first spar was not hard. All of the dojos and training areas had a respective name, so even while submerged in thought, he arrived a bit early to the 'Swaying broad-leaf' dojo without incident.

The dojo itself was a simple wooden building with a single room and nobody was present around. So after noticing that the entrance door was open, Wu Guang simply walked towards the doorway.

Inside, the room was rectangular in shape and was pretty small. In truth, it was no more than twenty feet long by half of it in width.

As Wu Guang crossed the doorway he found out that there were two people already inside. And as they were engaged in some kind of discussion, he decided to wait for them to finish.

This actually took a few minutes to happen but he was early, so Wu Guang had no qualms about waiting and had spent this time observing the dojo and the pair inside.