The next morning Naath’s father pulled him back outside to finish explaining the ranks of cultivation. He sat him down once more on top of the boulder and then started to explain. “I think we left off before I told you what the fourth level was, right? Sigh I was hoping to just tell you over time but now that your mother has made up her mind there's nothing I can do. After all she is already an energy refining stage cultivator. Ah anyway, the fourth stage is conveniently the one that your mother is at. It is called energy refining, in this stage you advance by extracting the impurities from your energy type. This stage is a form of redemption for those who sloppily just gathered whatever energies and then refined one with far to many flaws.

However, being lazy and having an energy with so many flaws will make you suffer in the long run anyway. After all you can only purify your energy over 27 sessions, of course you can spend days or weeks on a single session. Still very few choose this path and simply advance haphazardly. Your mother is on the extreme end of the spectrum for a single session she took an entire year cleansing her energy. The result was what you saw at dinner, she can release her energy outward easily and its effects are… intense. The purer the energy the greater its extreme towards its element, a poor flame energy will result in a flame barely capable of being used for reading.

Whereas a pure flame energy can turn rocks to molten lava and even the heaviest of metals and rock are like ice before it. In truth a 100% pure energy is a mythical existence, there are almost always impurities in the energy. Take my earth energy for example, the epitome of earth energy is when one can condense gold. Due to this there will always be traces of the metal element in it. The fire element is fueled by other elements as well. While it is incredibly beneficial for it to have air energies mixed in, the wood energy traces can be detrimental. The ice element your mother cultivates is incredible, but even hers has traces of the water element inside of it. Only legendary geniuses of eras long since passed have achieved perfect elemental clarity.”

Hearing this, Naath sitting once more on his boulder listening to his father took note and decided that he would never slack off or be lazy. He would work as hard as he could to remake a legend and create a pure energy. A sparkle appeared in his eyes as he thought of himself standing at the top of a mountain with everyone around him in awe at his pure energy. He imagined himself with fire, with ice, with earth, with countless other elements. His imagination ran wild all while he continued listening to his fathers words.

“Anyway onto the next stage, I've prattled on havent I? The fifth stage is called pathway forging, you see the body stores energy inside of the dantian. How does it move through your body though? There are pathways in your body, well to be more accurate you will have to forge your own. In this stage you take your elemental energy and slowly extend it along a set pathway and route in your body for it to move along. Depending on the complexity of your pathways it limits or extends your potential. The purity of your energy determines how efficiently these pathways will be made and their width and strength. These pathways will allow you to use magical arts related to your own element and in general.

Take someone with a simple pathway that just goes in and out of every limb and their head for example. They will be able to execute only the most basic arts, they will be able to let the energy out of their bodies but it won't have any real patterns to follow. These patterns are what determine how a magical art works, without the right pathway options you will be forever unable to use a specific magical art. Knowing this, imagine you need a stream's worth of energy to activate a magical art but because your pathways were too thin or weak or did not allocate the energy fast enough the art failed. Say their meridians only managed to let out a trickle like a leaking bucket rather than a stream of energy. It simply wouldn't work. Not only this but trying when their pathways cannot handle it would damage said pathways.

An overly complex set of pathways however will have the opposite issue. Say you try to use a magical art and have the energy and pathways for it. The energy is fine and starts to flow through the pathways right? Well with too many paths to choose from and too many possible variables it becomes hard to manage and the art destabilises and does not form properly. In this case if the art just fails then that's great, however if you lack enough control and it forms a dangerous pathway or you get confused it can make the art explode or harm you. In some cases even death is a possibility, so be careful, most large families and sects in fact have secret pathway patterns that they will use.

These pathway charts along with the magical arts are considered as absolute treasures and are absolutely not given to outsiders. Our family does in fact have one but it has been two generations since anyone has made it to this stage so we have not taken it out in all of this time. In this stage you will advance by circulating your energy around your chosen pathways and refining them 27 times in total. This reinforces them and makes them permanent. You can choose to stop halfway and start all over, however this will harm your body greatly and your cultivation may stagnate completely when this happens. The library has several basic pathway diagrams that anyone can use.

They are not worth anything to use and build pathways with. They will however allow you to study and learn the basics from them. This is a permanent choice so choose very, very carefully.”

Naath was still listening intently imagining countless lines running across his body, hundreds of possible patterns. They seemingly came from his overactive imagination and hope and desire to cultivate, but deep in some sealed memories these patterns came endlessly for various possibilities. If Naath’s father could know the countless patterns running through his son's mind he would jump from fright. Most people took a decade to formulate the idea for a single set of meridians. Naath was imagining a new set every few moments as his father spoke.

“Now I'll tell you about the sixth stage and we will stop there today. I will tell you the rest tomorrow but you should think long and hard about what element you want to work on first. The sixth stage is called energy assimilation, at this stage you will cycle energy through your newly formed pathways and slowly use them to allow your entire body to adjust to your energy type. This is when choosing more than one element truly becomes an issue. You will have to adjust your body to multiple types of energy and slowly fuse it with your body without undoing the other energies.

That's why cultivators can never use water and fire energy at the same time in their body. No matter how hard they try one will simply cancel out the other in its entirety. This stage of cultivation is an odd one as well, one can essentially move on and breakthrough to the next stage whenever they so choose. It is simply a matter of personal preference about how much they want to integrate their bodies with their chosen energy. Now then Naath, it is time for your daily physical training and your lessons. Remember your mother expects perfect scores in everything including physical grades. I know you are only seven, but a good cultivator never ignores his body, it is their foundation.

Strengthen it as much as you possibly can before you start to cultivate, the better shape your body is in the easier this path will become. There are of course limits to what the mortal human body can achieve on its own, however don't stop until you find your limit, where you want to stop. Don't bulk up too much or it will harm you instead, find a good middle ground of strength, speed, flexibility, and endurance.”

After saying all of this his father took him down off of the boulder again and went to smash it when he had a sudden idea. He looked at Naath again saying “son, I want your goal to be able to move this boulder from one side of this yard to the other before you begin cultivating.”

Naath nodded his head firmly and embedded that goal deep into his mind and then headed towards the family educational room, it was the room where the tutors had taught his brothers and would teach Naath as well. He dreaded the classes today but didn't dare to let his attention slip. His first class was on history, after that was basic mathematics, moving on from there was his cooking classes. He then wrapped up most days with martial arts training. By the end of the classes he was always exhausted, not just mentally but physically as well. The martial arts class would always change in accordance with Naath’s own limits every time. If he could lift 80 pounds he was given a 75 pound weight to lift at least 10 times. His classes always ended around an hour before dinner though which was a plus.

When his mother saw how exhausted he was from classes today she smiled lightly, nodding in approval. This meant he was taking his classes seriously and that he was working towards keeping his word. She kept an eye on him all through dinner and noticed that he ate much more than usual. He had probably been told by both his cooking instructor, as well as his martial trainer that he needed to eat more. Immediately after dinner Naath went to his bedroom and promptly passed out until the next morning. During his sleep some odd information that seemed like memories came to him, information about a great void, and special energies that can be drawn from it.

He woke up the next morning and his three colored birthmark on his forehead was more apparent today. Not only that but now there was a little dot in the middle of the three larger circles on his head. He shrugged it off but the information never seemed to leave his mind. He could still focus on his classes, however now he was always thinking about this curious ‘true void energy’ and how to implement it into his future cultivation. His father was busy today and thus had no time to explain the final three stages of cultivation until the next morning.

Naath made his way back into the yard that morning, his head still swirling from some of the memories he had no idea of where they came from. Even with these memories clouding his mind though he still listened attentively when his father began to speak of the last three stages of cultivation. He was sitting on the boulder once again and just waiting for his father to finish up a few more parts of the yard work. He watched in awe as his father casually moved massive amounts of soil and rocks through the yard. When he was done he came over to his son and began to explain the rest of the stages.

“Okay Naath, we’re on the last three stages of cultivation. I hope you have memorised everything else already. These next three are a bit different than the first six we have gone over so far so pay close attention. The seventh stage is called energy expansion, in this stage you will reinforce not only your pathways but also your dantian as well. To progress through the levels on this stage you have to compress the energy in your entire body. In doing so the energy will become purer as well and will support and reinforce your dantian itself. It will expand it out in extreme cases doubling or even tripling its size. Some people even have mutations in their cultivation and their dantian splits giving them multiple dantian’s.

The same is true with the pathways, however even when this happens all of the pathways and dantians remain interconnected. This is both incredibly helpful to the cultivator and incredibly detrimental to them at the same time. They may now have double or triple the amount of energy storage capacity than an average cultivator and multiple elements potentially, however they also need to train two or three times as hard. It will take them two or three times more energy than any other cultivator to advance in the same stage. Also while the pathways will stay interconnected if more form it will be that much harder to control the energy through them.

It gives the cultivator the potential for greater capacity for martial skills, however it also means they have to work much harder to adjust to much more complex pathways. These cultivators also might be able to use multiple elements much easier, but they also have to use ones that are complementary only. If they are used to conflicting elements they can kill themselves on the spot when the energies interact with one another. However rare these mutations are though they are very worth mentioning as a real possibility especially for people with great signs at birth like yourself.

Now onto the next stage.”