Slowly and gradually, days turned into weeks and soon time passed as Scrifo trained under Hank.

Training under Hank could be said to be brutal at the least. Just as he had said, Hank did not show a shred of mercy at Scrifo just because he was a child.

Hank trained him in everything that he had knowledge about and the training schedule took most of Scrifo’s time from the day he started training. This tight schedule though might seem ill-conceived on Hank’s part, actually had a reason behind it. The intense and nonstop schedule did not give any free time for Scrifo to think about or experience the coldness that the villagers showed towards him. In a way, it was Hank just trying to shield Scrifo as much as possible, without being too overt about it.

From making Scrifo train his physic to the point where he would not even have energy to move his limbs, to giving him education about how to read and write, the schedule was extremely tight and holistic.

Hank trained Scrifo in everything about how to survive in the wild and about various medicinal herbs that could save his life there. He made him read about the various Spiritual Beasts that exist across the world, what they look like, how to identify them, their behaviour patterns, what to be cautious about when fighting them and their value in the cultivation world.

He taught him how to harvest the Spiritual Beasts correctly so as to not waste any valuable materials whether it be Spiritual Beast Cores, their organs or even their bones.

All these materials from the Spiritual Beast can be refined and used in innumerable occupations that exist in the Cultivation World. Spiritual Beast Core can be used to cultivate faster as they contain highly condensed spiritual energy, while their organs and body parts can be used to make various things like extremely durable Armors, Bow Strings and more.

Some of the Spiritual Beast’s meat can also be used as a nutritious supplement while some others can be used to make extremely lethal poison. Their bones can be refined into Weapons of all kinds and could even be used to make formations.

By the time Hank was done with him, he had hammered it in Scrifo’s head that a Spiritual Beast’s body is a treasure trove that should not be wasted, whether you use the material, sell them or auction them off at a high price.

All in all, Hank did his best to squeeze all the knowledge he had accumulated from his countless years of experience in the cultivation world and taught it to Scrifo in a small span of time. He taught Scrifo everything that he would need to survive in the cultivation world without him by his side.

At first, he was not going to teach so many things to Scrifo and was instead going to take it slow but when he started teaching Scrifo, he quickly knew that he had found an unpolished jade, as the speed at which Scrifo could remember stuff was monstrous.

When he discovered this, Hank thought that even if Scrifo could not learn to use everything that he teaches him, with the monstrous memory Scrifo has, he could at the least remember everything that Hank says.

This was the reason why he started making Scrifo read about all the theoretical knowledge regarding the Spiritual and Medicinal Herbs as well as Spiritual Beasts. He knew from experience that if this knowledge was used correctly, Scrifo would not have much problems at surviving in the cultivation world.

With the theoretical training ongoing, he made Scrifo train his body, making use of whatever trick he could, evil or otherwise. He made Scrifo do this training every day even before he started teaching him how to absorb and circulate spiritual energy.

After Scrifo’s body and stamina reached a level that Hank was satisfied with, he started teaching Scrifo about how to absorb and circulate spiritual energy inside his body.

The Body Tempering Level is a level that teaches a cultivator how to survive pain because the process of incorporating spiritual energy inside the flesh, muscle, energy channels, bones and the various internal organs is like, taking all these body parts and shredding them slowly and continuously while they are being pricked by countless needles of lightning and being burnt black.

After surviving through this level, no matter how many times the cultivator is sliced with a sword or pierced by a spear, he would still be able to keep on moving forward with just a wince on his face.

Soon, 2 years went by under Hank’s brutal training and Scrifo blazed through the Body Tempering Level and was now at the 4th Sublevel of Body Tempering Level. Scrifo had started his journey as a cultivator at a speed of progress that could be considered quite fast as Hank had not used any supplements like spiritual pills to help Scrifo in his training.

This rate of progress had made Hank extremely happy and satisfied. Sadly, this happiness would not last much longer.

-------------------

It was a rainy day today.

Hank was standing inside the cottage as he looked at the rain falling from the darkened sky. For him, these rainy days, were the gloomiest days of the year.

Drop by drop the raindrops fell from the sky but from his perspective all the drops of water turned into drops of blood. For him, the pools and puddles of water turned into blood pools of his people.

The smell of iron filled his nose as he remembered the faces and smile on their faces before they were suddenly attacked.

Drop by drop, blood seeped out from their wounded bodies. They ran for days as some had their arms cut off while the legs of some were missing. He recalled his comrade whose one leg had been cut off, shouting at him and the other comrades as he leaned on a tree with his back.

“Brothers! I’ll block them! Run! Get boss out of here quickly! Forgive me… you’ll have to continue without me!”

‘Ray…’

Hank remembered the man’s name who, between the shouts of his and his comrades did not even look back as he rushed in their opposite direction back from where the enemies were pursuing.

The number of enemies kept increasing. They could no longer keep themselves safe. All of their bodies were filled with scars and blood. Their eyes red from watching their comrades being hunted down and killed like this.

They kept rushing forward but because of the increasing number of enemies and trying to defend against them, they soon lost their sense of direction. Their luck was bad and they reached the steep cliff surrounding the Valley of Johanna.

There was no way that they would be able to rush back as there were just too many enemies. They had to jump off the cliff.

“JUMP!!!” Hank roared

Without a doubt or hesitation, his comrades jumped. His eyes filled with worry as he watched his comrades free falling by his side. He could not see a shred of unwillingness in his brothers’ eyes as their reddened eyes seriously gazed below, ready to take action as needed. He could see the enemies who had reached the cliff above, looking for them.

Realizing that their targets might have had jumped down into the deadly Valley of Johanna, they were enraged and started cursing, but did not have the guts and courage needed to jump down into the deadly valley that few could come out of alive.

Hank watched as the thick fog in the valley covered him and his comrades, rendering his vision white, taking them out of his sight.

Only one thing going on in his mind.

‘I hope everyone stays alive… everyone… please stay alive…’

“OLD MAN!!! OLD MAN!!!”

Scrifo’s panicked shouts sounded from outside the cottage.

“Old man! Old man! Something’s wrong with my body!”

As soon as Scrifo’s panic filled voice entered his ears, Hank snapped out from his painful memories and rushed outside towards the voice.

“ARGHHHH!!!!”

Scrifo’s scream full of agony filled his ears. Just listening to his screams, Hank became panicked as he could ascertain that Scrifo was going through something extremely torturous.

Hank increased his speed and just a couple of steps later he could see Scrifo who had fallen on the muddy road.

“Scrifo! I’m here! Don’t worry everything will be all right! Everything will be fine!”

Hank spoke in panic as he quickly picked Scrifo up and embraced him in his arms. Scrifo let out another scream as his breathing accelerated, his body turned left and right in agony.

Before Hank could pick Scrifo up and take him inside the cottage to check what was actually going on with him, he noticed that Scrifo’s body had turned sand like and had slowly started disintegrating.

Limb by limb, organ by organ, Scrifo’s body kept on disintegrating. Even his bones were not left intact as they too turned into sand like particles.

The sand like particles were so small that they started falling out from between Hank’s fingers. Hank was horrified but all he could do was watch and had neither understanding nor power to stop what was happening.

Hank’s eyes had turned red as tears streamed down his face, camouflaged by the heavy rain. His face was filled with a wretched expression as he tried to think of something that he can do. Anything that he can do.

‘What is going on?! What is happening to his body?!’

Gears turning in his head but all was worthless as he watched the sand like remains of Scrifo’s body slowly moving upwards as they defied gravity and start to swirl around each other. Illusionary Flowers started blooming around them at rapid speed as the world seemed to have a purplish black hue.

The Illusionary Flowers seemed to be emitting wisps of a peculiar type of energy at rapid speed which was slowly being sucked up by the sand particles turning them black. The sand like particles now looking like a black tornado, started emitting an otherworldly aura that seem to look down on everything and everyone.

The particles started converging. One by one, the black particles seemed to be consolidating. Within seconds, the particles had regained a structure that anyone could recognize. It had consolidated into a completely Black Heart.

*THUMP! THUMP!*

The low and deep sound of the heart beating, filled the area. Purple rune patterns started slowly creeping and covering the whole heart, exuding brilliance and majesty as the patterns moved and spread around the heart.

The heart started absorbing the peculiar energy from the illusionary flowers like a thirsty man who had found an oasis in a barren desert, making it look like there was a shield of that peculiar energy on the heart.

The sand like particles which had not consolidated into the heart, were still twirling around like a black tornado, but by the time the heart had consolidated and started thumping, they had separated into smaller black tornados that started taking their forms and consolidating too.

One of the tornadoes consolidated itself into a pitch-black skeletal structure that seemed unbreakable, while the others started transforming into the fleshy body and energy channels with similar purple runes lines all over them, just like the heart.

Eyeballs started emerging in the Skull. The eye’s iris that had been a piercing greenish grey before, now had a purple rune pattern on it. His teeth also had these same purple runes covering all over them.

Soon all the remaining organs systems like the circulatory, respiratory, digestive, excretory, nervous, endocrine, immune, and reproductive systems were created and consolidated with purple rune patterns all over them, absorbing the peculiar energy crazily.

Then the Fleshy Body consisting of the integumentary and muscular system covered the entire internal structure of the body.

The whole body was shrouded in thick black fog of sand like particles and the peculiar energy emitted out by the illusionary flower.

This continued on for some time before all the black particles had been consolidated and the energy from the illusionary flower had been completely absorbed. Soon, a human like Head, Upper Limbs, Lower Limbs, Genitalia, Ears, Eyes covered by the fleshy body could be distinguished as the black foggy barrier that had been around Scrifo’s body disappeared.

The purple rune patterns that were visible all over Scrifo’s body slowly dimmed and soon could no longer be seen as his body went back to the way it was before; A normal body with pitch-black left hand.

The purplish black hue that had tinted the area around Scrifo dissipated and everything went back to normal. The phenomenon that had been keeping Scrifo’s body up in the sky broke as Scrifo’s body came crashing down in a freefall.

Seeing Scrifo’s tiny body freefalling from the sky, Hank’s heart that had already been in a state of shock by everything that was happening, jumped. He quickly rushed below Scrifo to catch him before he fell to the ground.

When Scrifo fell into his arms Hank felt as if he had caught a huge boulder weighing a tonne in mass and almost fell down along with Scrifo because he was not quite ready for Scrifo’s little body weighing so much.

He quickly laid Scrifo down on the wet, muddy ground below and he started checking him for injuries. After giving a quick glance, he determined that there were no external injuries so he quickly passed his spiritual energy into Scrifo’s body to check for internal injuries but found no internal injuries.

‘There seems to be nothing wrong with his body… But why has his mass increased so much… What is going on with him?’

Hank thought as he picked Scrifo up again and rushed towards the cottage, nervous about Scrifo’s eerie situation.