Author’s note- Riddles, riddles. I used to like them, but now I am exhausted mentally. I don’t want to come up with another riddle again, and I certainly don’t want to solve yet another one. I’ll leave all that to the main character, while I flutter around scot free! Hope you still like riddles.

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Fire (part 2)

Dad smiled, and began to recount a story from ages back.

Dad- “The Swiftblade family’s roots extend back, back into the beginnings of the lightning empire. And the technique was developed and perfected right after Theren awakened not just the Electricity attributed cores, but the others as well. This technique is said to have been developed by the sword saint Aviran Swiftblade, who later on broke through the void.

In the story, Aviran was born from a normal family with advanced realm talent. But while he ascended to become prevalent in the perfect realm, his family was still tottering around the basic realm. As you know Daniel, those separated by realms are quite literally in a different world. Your reaction speed, movement, even the speed of talking makes you so much different than them that there is just no way to converse with them. Therefore, upon an inspiration that allowed him to reach perfection, he made the technique for the family. He inscribed the technique onto an incomparably hard tablet1 that contains the methods to perfection!

(1: A nokia!!!)

However, although this method should have made our family strong, it was actually the cause of our downfall. Jealous of our heritage, the sk-”

Dad paused, as if he was thinking about something.

Dad- “Well, when you are strong enough you will naturally know who destroyed our family. But that doesn’t have much to do with you, after all that was hundreds of years ago. Anyways, should our heritage ever be lost, the beginning stages were passed on both in memory and in writing. After those, they were all passed down in riddles. They were all said in order, and I will recount them exactly how they were written.

1- I lie deep within an ocean. But a peculiar ocean it is, for the water is green, yet there are no fishes within. And when the cold should freeze it over, it instead disappears.

2- I lie between my mother’s embrace, but yet I am also within a flame. And when you evoke her anger, I shall come from within.

3- I rest within an essential component for life, yet you cannot find me where there is light. But I also rest within a popular area, where thousands always disturb me.

4- I rest where only my friends can find me, yes, the ones who surf the blue and white ocean tide. Only through my intelligent friends shall you meet me once again, though you may see me without them.

These are the the four riddles that note the location of the remaining scripture. Of course, the first one corresponds to the basic realm, the second one corresponds to the intermediate realm, the third one corresponds to the advanced realm, and the 4th corresponds to the perfect realm.”

Now I was confused. We were going to talk about the cultivation technique, but why did he start speaking in riddles? Could it be I would have to look for each one just to cultivate to the basic realm?

Dad seemed to laugh at my confusion, but he didn’t move to admit he was joking. So I could only consider that he was telling the truth.

Me- “Dad… Did you cultivate with this method?”

He nodded his head, still grinning.

Me- “Then how did you reach the peak of the basic realm? Wait...”

Dad- “Do you know the answer to the first riddle?”

My eyes literally brightened up, a phenomenon I was not used to.

Me- “A forest! Dad, you found one in the forest? But the forest is huge! How did you find out?”

Without unnecessary suspense, dad grabbed a crystal blue, spherical pendant from his breast. It seemed to somewhat reflect the surroundings, and it had 4 small, clear and delicate wings that were almost like a butterfly’s. He handled it carefully, and with a gentle breath he let the pendant take flight.

As if it had life, the pendant magically fluttered in a circle around my dad, and then flew into the hallway. I followed after it, and so did dad. Eventually it rested on a part of the wall, and flew back to dad. It landed on his hand and he put it back in his breast.

Dad- “The tablet rests within the walls of this house now.”

Dad removed one of the stones making up the wall, but instead of collapsing, there was a secret hole containing an ancient tablet. It was made up of the same material as the pendant, but it was the same color as the secret compartment. If it was not emitting light, I would have not noticed it.

Dad- “The tablet will only respond to those with the pendant, otherwise it will only be hidden within the environment. Only those with our bloodline can use it, and that is limited to us two.”

He handed both the tablet over to me, and said quietly,

Dad- “Memorize it alone in your room; find me when you finish.”

*******************

About 20 minutes later, I could recite the content of the tablet without leaving out a single word. The cultivation technique was called, “Revolutions of the Universal Foundation,” and to put it simply, it involved 7 stages.

(Because these explanations are really lengthy and go deeply into mechanics of my story, I don’t feel that many would like to read it. But hey, for you go getters go ahead and read both! However for the others, I’ll notify you where the summary starts in bold.)

The first stage needed you to compress the aura sphere within your core, and rotate it as fast as you can. The faster the rotational speed, the faster the energy is drawn closer to you. When the natural energy drawn in fully takes your shape as it tries to get closer to your body, you have to rotate the core of the sphere in the opposite way, and send the outside aura flying outwards, leaving behind a rotational ‘seed’ that is spinning a bit faster than the previous. This ‘seed’ will draw the aura released back in, bringing in the natural energy with it. This is the natural energy gathering stage.

The second stage was to then incorporate the natural energy into the outer layer of the aura sphere, and spin the aura around using the momentum of the ‘seed’. The rotational speed will then slowly separate the natural energy into its counterparts, material energy and immaterial energy. The immaterial energy will move into your seed, and the material energy will spin around the edges of the aura sphere. This is the divide stage.

The third stage was to take the possession of the energy you gained, or conquer it. You use your aura as mini chains that attach to segments of natural energy. Then using your aura chains, you squeeze the natural energy to imprint it with your ‘signature’. Once the individual imprinting is done, you create openings from your seed to the edge of the aura sphere. Using these ‘tunnels’ you can send immaterial energy outwards to the edge of the sphere without disrupting the rotations of your aura. Next you recombine the energy and send it back through the tunnels to your seed. This combined energy will be reimprinted with your ‘signature’, making the energy thoroughly follow your command. This is the conquer stage.

The fourth stage was to reinforce your ‘tunnels’ with the imprinted natural energy by layering the natural energy between the aura of the tunnels. Let the rotations of your aura to further compress and consolidate these tunnels, until material and immaterial energy can be sent throughout the tunnels without the slightest ripple. Once this was completed, you needed to merge your 2 types of natural energy into one again at the edge, and wait until the unimprinted natural energy fully takes your shape. Then reverse the rotations of your seed to send your aura outside your body and the imprinted natural energy throughout your body. The imprinted energy will refine your body from the inside, and the unimprinted natural energy will refine most in the areas that your imprinted energy hit the least from the outside. This is the reinforcement stage.

After completing these stages, one would repeat the steps while omitting the constructing parts of aura that weren’t needed to be done again for the technique. The more times you could repeat the technique without messing up, the faster your power progressed. But there were 3 special stages that were used when the situation calls for it. Those were the fifth, sixth, and seventh stage respectively.

The fifth stage was a impurity removement technique. It was used when you adsorbed natural energy from somewhere other than the environment, namely dans and herbs. In those, there would always be traces of impurities. So to get rid of the impurities, you would first draw your natural energy into your aura sphere. Then you would rotate the energy as fast as you could to separate the energies, and therefore the impurities. Since impurities cannot be imprinted, you can then fuse the energy together without the impurities using the tunnels. Then take a trace of natural energy and bond it to the impurities. After that, one must draw the clean energy back into the seed, and then leave the impurities at the edge of the sphere. Lastly, you reverse the aura seed, blowing the energy to the extremities of your body. But this time you do not keep spinning the aura seed, but instead control your aura to make the energy exit through one of the seven orifices. Severe the connection to your aura, and leave the energy to dissipate in the world. Aura regenerates at a slow pace, so the loss of it will not be permanent. This is the refinement stage.

The sixth stage was a stage used to assist in breakthroughs. It works by spinning threads of aura and energy throughout the body, and circulating it and cultivating at the same time. The threads move from the head, to the arms and legs, in the center, and back to the core. This will slowly awaken the body's potential without hurting it. Then bind the aura to the energy in your body, and rush it back to your core while now using your aura according to steps 1-4. If done when the user has accumulated enough foundation, they will break through to the next level. This is the activation stage.

The seventh and last technique was one for raising battle potential. Unlike the other techniques, this one did not work using a complete sphere. Instead, it used the tunnels as anchors in the edge and sent the outer layer of the aura sphere outwards onto the edges of the core, while having material energy on one side, and immaterial on the other. Then one would form a natural energy line separating the core into two halfs. These edges would rotate in opposite directions, while the seed focuses on separating the two. When the user needed a power boost, one would temporarily retract the natural energy line causing the two to send out a pulse wave of energy throughout the user, boosting him/her by up to a full 50% for a moment. The boost percentage depends on the time the aura and energy takes to rotate at full speed again. This is the burst stage.

(Summary starts here!)

I laid down from my sitting position, and tried to summarize what I just learned

After establishing the foundations for the technique, the first stage gathers energy in your body. The second stage and third stage divides and conquers the energy you just gathered, and the fourth stage reinforces your body and special tunnels for energy within your aura. Then you would move directly from the fourth stage to the second stage, and continue the process faster and faster until you can’t maintain the technique.

Once one failed to perform one of the stages appropriately as the energy gathered faster and faster, the energy will stop rotation, and one must restart the process from the first stage to continue cultivation.

There were also 3 special techniques that were tailored to suit special needs. These were the refinement stage, the activation stage, and the burst stage.

The refinement stage was to be used directly after impure energy entered the body, and it forced that energy out at the cost of a bit of cultivation and aura. Both are recoverable by time.

The activation stage sent energy throughout your body to awaken and gather latent energy / foundation. This energy would then be sent to your core riding on the wave of extra energy entering your body. If the energy requirements are met, one would directly be able to raise their cultivation, but if they weren’t, ones foundation will be scattered. This scattered foundation will have to be reaccumulated, although the recovery speed would be much faster than accumulating it from scratch.

The burst stage sent out instantaneous waves of energy throughout your body, boosting your base power by a full 50% for a moment. Although this energy needed time to recover after a single burst, it did not harm foundations unlike most battle power raising techniques. Therefore it was probably one of the most practical techniques of the 3 special stages.

According to the tablet, any of the 3 special stages could be used in conjunction with each other, or they could be used with the foundational stages.

This was my father’s cultivation technique, Revolutions of the Universal Foundation.

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The Universe Catalog

Author’s note 2- Huh. I intended for this chapter to be a bit longer, and to showcase its name. But the info dumps took more space than expected (LOL). Expect a part 3.