Red immediately sat down to focus on the energy entering his body. Although the situation took him by surprise, he didn’t panic. It wasn’t the first time he dealt with rampant forces inside of his body.

This Spiritual Energy, however, was unlike anything he had ever seen.

It was strong, far thicker than the Spiritual Energy Red was used to cultivating with. Yet his veins seemed more than capable of bearing this brunt. The true challenge for the boy was controlling the energy.

Every time he tried to exert the little bit of control he had over his own veins to direct the energy, it slipped away from him, diving into another part of his body. It was like trying to direct a stubborn animal to its pen - it did the exact opposite of everything you ordered it to do.

Red frowned.

‘Since when is cultivation supposed to be like this?’

The boy struggled again and again, to no avail. Five minutes passed before the energy dissipated from his veins, with Red being unable to use even a thread of it to open his acupoints.

He felt mentally exhausted, but still tried to ponder upon what he experienced.

‘The manual said nothing about this.’

Red started to have some doubts. With the technique he learnt from Viran, there was no need to exert fine control over the Spiritual Energy. In fact, the threads of energy would naturally travel towards the boy’s unopened veins, and all he needed to do was give it a push.

This energy from the ‘rain dance’ was quite the opposite. It ran rampant inside his body, not stopping at one place for more than a moment. It was impossible to use it to cultivate under these circumstances, and yet Red didn’t see how he was supposed to control it when he didn’t even have his Spiritual Sea open.

‘I have to be missing something.’

He doubted the spirit would give him a faulty technique. Yet, no matter how many times he read the explanation for the technique in the manual, he found no explanation of any sort.

‘I suppose this is something I will have to figure out on my own.’

Red had a few ideas already, but he didn’t dare try them in his current state. This being the case, he put the manual aside for now. There was no reason to rush it.

Then the boy promptly pulled out another manual. A Primer on Arcane Scripture.

“Arcane scripture is the true language of the world.”

This was the first phrase Red came across when he opened the book. Unlike the cultivation manual, the explanation in these texts came across more like a diary, and the boy could feel the writer’s feelings and personalities come through these words.

The manual then explained what Arcane Scripture was.

“Arcane Scripture consists of all symbols that once taken shape, may evoke a reaction in the world around it.”

The deliberate choice of words left Red curious. The boy had been led to believe that Arcane Scripture could only be represented through drawings and etchings, but this sentence seemed to hint otherwise. No explanation seemed to be forthcoming, though, so he continued reading.

“Arcane Scripture is used in four different areas: formation-building, talisman-drawing, rune-carving, and in the execution and creation of spells. This means that by mastering the basics of Arcane Scripture, one would also achieve initial proficiency in any of those areas. This makes it by far the most useful trade skill in the cultivation world and can earn an individual a large amount of riches to help their journey.’

Red frowned. Why did the manual put such emphasis on earning money in the explanation? Did his master predict that his disciple would be poor? Not that the boy was complaining. He would need a large amount of resources if he planned to build that formation and heal his wounded acupoint.

The boy was also curious about the spells the manual mentioned. He was not aware that Arcane Scripture was also tied to such an integral part of combat for stronger cultivators. If that was the case, did it mean Hector also had some mastery over Arcane Scripture?

‘That doesn’t make sense.’

If that was the case, why would the elder throw the responsibility of studying Arcane Scripture to Goulth? Red felt compelled to find the answer, but the book didn’t seem to broach this question just yet, and the boy had no intentions of skipping the explanations.

“Humans first found out about Arcane Scripture by observing certain natural phenomena in the very dawn of cultivation. The shapes of a storm, the veins of a leaf, the arc of a lightning - the arcane symbols can be found all over the world. Yet, no one truly knows how the practice itself originated and who was responsible for coming up with the idea of utilizing these symbols for another purpose. Over tens of thousands of years, humans have developed the Arcane Scripture to serve many purposes, and they even manage to create symbols not previously found in nature, which expanded the practice to new horizons.”

The explanation sounded familiar to Red. He recalled what Eiwin had told him about Spiritual Energy - how humans were able to create previously unseen types of energy based on abstract concepts such as swordsmanship, order, virtue, and many others. It seemed this concept extended beyond just pure energy, though.

Red continued to read the manual. It didn’t delve deep into these interesting matters, only establishing a basic understanding of them before diving straight into the practice itself.

It explained the materials Red needed for the Arcane Scripture - that being a fine-point pen and paper - at least for the basics. More complex arcane symbols would require much more expensive material, but right now, this wasn’t the boy’s concern. The manual said that his first goal should be to familiarize himself with the fundamental arcane symbols and how to draw them.

Said fundamental symbols consisted of 496 complex drawings that Red had to master before even beginning his study proper. The manual explained the use of every symbol. Some of them represented basic elements - such as fire and water - while others represented concepts and connections - such as expand, retract, retain. Many of those basic symbols also had variations depending on their use, which meant that it was more than simply 496 drawings the boy had to memorize.

Red immediately understood how daunting the task ahead of him was. It was no wonder this was such a difficult practice. He felt his head hurting just by looking at one of these symbols, and now he was supposed to draw and memorize almost 500 of them.

How long would that take?

The boy was not discouraged, though. He was not afraid of hard work; he was afraid of having no path forward at all.

Red closed the book and made up his mind.

‘I will need to ask Master Goulth for help tomorrow. He must have proper paper and pens for this.’

The boy was not too worried about revealing his intentions of learning Arcane Scripture to the blacksmith. The giant had always kept a secret for him. What worried the boy was how Goulth would react when he learned Red intended to focus on something else than blacksmithing.

Would the man be happy that he could share some of his burden with Red? Or would he be angry at the boy for splitting his attention to some other practice?

Red didn’t know, but he had to find out one way or the other.

After addressing his two most immediate concerns, the boy looked down at his arm. He pulled back his sleeve, revealing the silver bracelet wrapped around his wrist. The treasure stood out on Red’s arm, and the only reason no one had asked him about it was because his sleeve was covering it.

Yet, how long could he keep it hidden? The chances of someone spotting it during his day-to-day life in the sect were too high for the boy to risk it. Red didn’t think they would push him about the bracelet’s function if he wasn’t willing to talk about it, but the boy would rather not arouse any suspicion in the first place.

So he took it off his wrist and tried to put it around his ankle. Red was expecting it to be a tight fit, but to his surprise, the bracelet seemed to change sizes on its own and strapped around his legs perfectly. The boy then pulled both his trousers and his socks over it, so in that manner it would be better hidden than in his wrist.

It was still a risk that others would find out about it, but this was the best Red could do.

An hour had passed since the boy had entered his room, and yet with his curiosity sated, there were still so many things he needed to address urgently before sleeping.

He sat down cross-legged on his bed and used the meditation technique Eiwin taught him. His expanded awareness came to him even more easily now that he was out of danger, and Red was able to inspect his own body.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary compared to last time, which made him relieved. He had felt nothing weird in his transformed eye either, which meant that the demonification hadn’t gone past the surface level.

Red then focused on the mist covering every corner of his body. The strands didn’t stir like they did the last time once they came into contact with his awareness, though, which left the boy confused. He tried it again a few times, but the mist remained silent.

Red was suspicious about this behavior. Yet, there was nothing he could do against the being inhabiting his body right now other than observe it and be careful.

The boy let the expanded awareness dissipate, focusing back on his surroundings. More specifically, he focused on his enhanced crimson sense.

Back in the trial, Red didn’t have the time to inspect it thoroughly. Now, however, he could examine its new limits in the comfort of his room.

Like he had thought before, the range of detection of his crimson sense had doubled to around two hundred meters. All things considered, this wasn’t that large of an increase effectively in a plain environment, but in the town and forest with countless buildings and trees behind which he and his stalkers could hide? It was invaluable.

Then, there was also the matter of precision. Red felt he could discern the fluctuations of others better, even in a crowd. Not to mention, when he inspected his sect members earlier, he felt like he could feel more details about their fluctuations. He didn’t know what they meant, but his experience in the trial had offered him a lot of insight into how his power worked.

First, he was almost confident that what his crimson sense detected had to do with blood. This was supported by the fact the body could not feel any non-living beings with his crimson sense, such as the hawk spirit and the statues, and also because of his other “demonic” powers having to do with blood too. It was just conjecture at this point, but Red felt as if he wasn’t too far off mark.

There were, however, some problems with that theory. If what he felt was blood or related to blood, why couldn’t he feel this blood once it left an individual’s body? He couldn’t feel the fluctuations of puddles of blood, or any dissected flesh, for that matter. This left him confused.

And yet there was an even more puzzling matter for the boy.

‘Why can’t I feel my own fluctuation?’