With the training excursion already having been longer than anticipated, John opted to have the group return to Astrein upon the most direct route through the Green Sands. It wouldn’t be very comfortable for some of them, but movement along the main roads was expedient enough.
In the case of John specifically, he hadn’t been to the Green Sands except for brief periods. Based on his previous experiences, he always found himself surprised when a fire dominant area felt pleasant. The Phoenix Forest and Sunfields combined their fire element with other spiritual energy, so it was not such a dominating factor. The Green Sands, however, had practically nothing in the way of other spiritual energy, and it took the form of oppressive heat.
John had possessed a fire totem for some time, but he still found himself surprised by its effects sometimes. It didn’t automatically make the temperature bearable, but it did reduce the effects of heat, and with just a small active input he could absorb enough of the surrounding heat to bring it to a nice balance.
For John and many of the others, simply moving through the Green Sands was a valid form of training. Either those who had the fire element siphoning away the excess energy from other disciples, or those who had other elements learning to shield themselves appropriately. Obviously it wasn’t the best form of training they could find, but it was still useful.
They passed by Zolvolj and the Milanovic clan, though mostly because that was the largest route. The current trip couldn’t afford any more time consuming stops even along the route. If John thought they hadn’t gotten an adequate amount of training it would be one thing, but they had- and there were other disciples to get back to. John expected the Six Elements Crossroads to continue functioning without him, but his presence was still useful for the sake of training other disciples.
It was a shame that they hadn’t had the chance to slip through the Wuthering Steppes to then visit the Darklands. John thought it would have been valuable. And yes, it did have something to do with routing through the Stone Conglomerate at the tail end to visit the Tenebach clan.
But it was always good to visit Melanthina and Nik. The fact that he had a new grandchild there he’d only met a few times was clearly just a bonus. He wasn’t currently considering moving their journey half a week out of their way just because he wanted to see Ereli again. That would be crazy and selfish.
She was adorable, though. Just like all of his children and Nitza, his other grandchild from Tirto and Verusha. It was probably a good thing that John was a little bit distant from them, or he might become a grandpa that spoiled them. He certainly didn’t want that. A little bit now and then was totally fine though.
He could almost justify the visit. It could be valuable for the disciples to see a balanced interplay of light and darkness- from more than just Viriato, whose focus wasn’t really on cultivation. Nik and Melanthina had a good balance, of course, but the interesting case was Ereli herself. She was infused with spiritual energy just like John’s children had been, the light and darkness inherited from parents living harmoniously within her.
There were concerns about her future, of course. If the balance was disrupted at some point, it could be catastrophic. Just because it maintained itself without active control so far didn’t mean there wouldn’t be issues later. Once she began cultivation, it would be far riskier than others. But she had wonderful parents watching over her who could guide her, and that was all that could really be expected.
Speaking of Nik and Melanthina, they had advanced to the Consolidated Soul Phase after Ereli’s birth. They’d been holding back to try to minimize the chances of something like their child being infused… and maybe it helped. Or maybe they were doomed from the start. Certainly, it could be assumed that an infused child would be a cultivation genius… but with such genius came risk. John could barely remember the full extent of the trouble the triplets got up to as children because they had spiritual energy. They likely would have been handfuls to begin with, but that exacerbated the situation.
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Returning to Astrein reminded John why he’d chosen the location to begin with. Aside from its convenient location, the balance of elements was invigorating. The area had been untapped and effectively wasted for most of its history, but now cultivators of all sorts could benefit- even those of a single element. Though the Six Elements Crossroads didn’t specialize in training them, they wouldn’t reject them either. Training to separate spiritual energy with their peers was a valuable exercise in control.
Now that the Six Elements Crossroads had a bit of history behind it, they drew in disciples from other sects or even clans. But at the same time, some got their start in the Six Elements Crossroads and moved on to find sects that fit them better.
While at some point John would have been resistant to their disciples leaving, disciples who they spent time, effort, and resources on… ultimately he thought it healthy that there was mobility between sects. Especially since the goal was to have them all allied together as a greater whole. There had been thoughts to establish restrictions with regards to who could come and go. Certain disciples received more focus and attention, so in some regards it made sense to require either them or the sects who wished to recruit them to pay back some of those expenses. It was an idea posited by Viriato, who led the management of the sect’s finances.
Ultimately, however, they had decided they could balance out the financials and get ahead in a greater sort of loyalty by minimizing such restrictions. They didn’t let people forget the expenses involved in their learning, but they also didn’t make them directly pay. Having stronger cultivators who maintained positive feelings towards the sect and who carried those feelings with them to their new locations was its own sort of value.
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John’s body tempering plan for water was fairly simple, fitting in with his air element efforts. Not the heightening of his reflexes, but the first minor change he’d made- filtering the air in his lungs. That was useful, but incomplete on its own. After all, that was only one place toxins might enter the body, and it could only do so much.
Filtering his blood was the next step to add onto that. Obviously the body already did that on its own, but that was through purely mundane methods. It was good longer term as it gradually filtered things out, but wasn’t good against floods of venom or anything happening all at once.
Kidneys focused on directly filtering the blood, and the liver took part as well. But if John were to expand his thoughts to all of the body’s filtration, he could count at least the digestive system to a greater level. The intestines did some amount of filtering out toxins as they tried to absorb only valuable nutrients, though the efforts were not always sufficient. And even the skin had a role to play in filtering the body through sweat and other excretions. Many of the pieces involved in the process were traditionally looked down upon, but it was far better to filter out the traditionally gross bits than to keep them in the body.
For the most part, everything already worked. John’s task was to supplement an already effective system with some supernatural aid. Before he could do much of that, however, he needed to know how his body worked. There was a big difference between knowing superficially and actually observing the functions. On Earth, he would have had to watch videos of the body at a small scale to visualize what was happening, but here he could actually observe that directly with his spiritual energy.
It wasn’t simple to pick out all the intricacies of what happened on the cellular level- or the even smaller levels, as things went in and out of cells or were passed around by them. But with sufficient spiritual energy came a level of supernatural insight, speeding the process of understanding. In addition to what he’d already studied, he made rapid progress.
Screwing up his internal filters wouldn’t have such immediately visible catastrophic effects as breaking the transmission of signals throughout his body, but it could be just as perilous. However, he had much more experience for himself, and the guidance of others to aid him. Musa had been quite helpful in that regard, and knowledge of how things could fail was just as valuable as how to succeed. Stepping into a pitfall people had already experienced was simply wasteful, so he relished the ability to avoid even those that merely slowed progress with minimal harm.
The only way to know for certain if his efforts were succeeding was to intentionally ingest toxins. If done in small amounts, the body could naturally learn to fight against poisons, but not all toxins could be adapted to. Simple buildups of lead or other toxic metals weren’t generally intentional by man or beast, but the body didn’t always have a way to remove such things efficiently. And for those things it was meant to remove, John was aware that his changes could actually make the process less effective.
That was why he had to watch as small amounts entered his body to see how it would react, and if it wasn’t working as expected he could actively remove toxins. He’d done it before, and that was the primary way that cultivators handled poisons. But the more his body was prepared for, the less active effort he would have to take. Or looking at it another way, if toxins could disrupt his consciousness before he could properly begin removing them they could be very dangerous. If the body actively fought them more effectively, then his risk was lower.
As he began to closely observe his body on a lower level, John realized he would likely never understand everything that was happening. Though… perhaps he was underestimating his potential lifespan. Even with his biological age surpassing sixty years old, John was still young in this world. With his cultivation in the Consolidated Soul Phase he could expect to live to well over a century. Perhaps even two, once he was properly in the Ascending Soul Phase.
Age did catch up to cultivators… but John wondered what part of it actually got them. Obviously one of the more common causes of death was direct violence, but if cultivators aged more slowly, perhaps they could intentionally take control of the process. It was possible his current efforts could either reduce aging… or maybe he would be subtly making his body worse in unknown ways, reducing his lifespan.
John wasn’t particularly concerned about that at the moment, it was simply a consequence of considering the buildup of toxins. If the rate was slow enough that he could expect to die to something else, then he didn’t have to care about particular kinds of them. But the longer he lived, the more the little things began to matter. And that also included his own small mistakes.
Ultimately, he could only rely on his own intuition and understanding, along with the experience of others. And frankly, he imagined a little bit more or less lead or random radioactive elements would not be the important factors if he lived a long life.
Even ignoring a potential violent end, John imagined that his lifespan was probably affected by his greater cultivation failures. The first one that had spelled the end of Fortkran didn’t leave any obvious lingering damage, but it was impossible to completely discount it either. And nearly burning himself alive as he attempted to reach the Ascending Soul Phase, even if most of the damage had been contained within his dantian, was more likely to shorten his lifespan than a thousand smaller incidents.
Ultimately, John took a cautious approach with his bodily changes. He would have to consult with Ursel more about her efforts, as she certainly had a good amount of experience in the field of body tempering now. And in terms of total cultivation experience, his children weren’t as proportionally far behind him as they had once been. They were all in the Consolidated Soul Phase now, after all, which was vaguely between matched with him and a Phase behind, depending on which aspect of himself he counted.