The trip to the capital would be a long one. It would take a normal person a few weeks of travel to reach there, and while Red could do it in less time, he wasn’t eager to arrive that early either.

‘I need to understand my powers better.’

The youth heard a lot about the capital from Rimold, who travelled there from time to time. In that place, Lesser Ring Realm cultivators numbered in the dozens, and there were even Greater Ring Realm cultivators. As for people in the Spirit Core Realm, there were only a few of those in the city, and these were the ones who not only ruled that place, but the entire kingdom.

It was the center of economy and culture of the country, but it was also a dangerous and foreign environment, and Red didn’t dare to rush into it head first. Thankfully, after a couple more days of wandering through the forest, the youth was yet to see any signs of pursuit, and he deemed it safe enough to take a break.

He found an isolated clearing near a few hills, ready to settle down and cultivate. At that point, Aurelia’s image manifested by his side.

“Have you chosen yet?” she asked, with her arms crossed.

Red shook his head. “No.”

She grunted. “What are you even waiting for at this point?”

“I thought you said this was something that couldn’t be rushed.”

The woman frowned but didn’t say anything. It was obvious that the thing that bothered her wasn’t that Red was taking his time with it, but that he refused to ask for her help or opinion. Aurelia was perhaps also too proud to offer it without prompt, so she could only display her displeasure through ugly expressions and roundabout questions.

Red took out his manual, laying it across his lap as he sat on the ground.

“Are you ready to choose?” Aurelia asked.

He shook his head again. “I need to understand the circulation technique first.”

She massaged her temples. “Of course… You haven’t even done that yet.”

Red ignored her and flipped the book to one of its initial pages.

‘Storm’s Blessing First Level - Gathering Storm.’

The youth read further down, his eyes examining the words his master wrote with his own hand.

‘The storm is one of the purest displays of the destructive force of nature. It sweeps and washes away all in its path with a force comparable only to a cultivator’s strongest spells. Yet this force, for all of its unmatched power, has never been the basis or focus of any cultivation art before my time, and not without good reason. Fusion of elements in cultivation often relies on harmony and balance, while the storm is, by nature, an extreme and chaotic manifestation. Long did I walk and scour the continent for any insight of those who tried to walk this path before me, but the only thing I found was failure from their efforts, often catastrophic in nature. Those who lived to tell the tale tried to dissuade me from this path. They told me that it went against the natural principles of cultivation, that the storm was not a force to be tamed. With this technique, my disciple, I will teach you how I did just that.’

Red felt his blood boiling just by reading this passage. He had this manual for a long time, but never did he linger on reading about spells and thing that were yet outside of his reach. Now, he truly took the time to digest the writings of his master.

Aurelia snorted, looking over his shoulder. “Lofty words for a cultivator.”

Red frowned but chose to ignore her.

He read further on, getting to the specifics of the circulation technique. The basis for this cultivation was the fusion of three elements: water, wind, and lightning. Preferably, before cultivating it was best to ensure that you had enough aptitude and talent in all three of those, but practically speaking, such a situation was uncommon for most cultivators at this level.

Most cultivators, instead, had talent in one or two elements, and Red was no exception. Over some trial and error during his trip, he gauged his talents in the three elements required to cultivate this technique with Aurelia’s help, and his results were as such:

High compatibility and talent with Wind.

Average compatibility and talent with Water.

Terrible compatibility and talent with Lightning.

It wasn’t possible to get an extremely precise judgement on elemental compatibility just through spells, but it was a close enough assessment. This meant that for the three elements necessary for the technique, only Wind and perhaps Water were passable, while his talent with Lightning was terrible news.

There were ways provided in this book to raise elemental compatibility artificially, but these were beyond Red right now. This meant that he wouldn’t be able to practice the complete technique from the get go, but his master had thankfully thought that far ahead.

‘Gathering Storm - Wind Chapter.’

The more roundabout way of practicing the technique was to use a circulation variant focused on the element one was good at and, later on, introduce the other elements into your foundation. This meant that you would still be able to advance in realms with talent in only one element, even if they wouldn’t be able to display the true might of the Storm’s Blessing.

Of course, leaving the fusion of elements for later in your cultivation would make the task much harder, but it wasn’t like Red had a choice.

‘So these are the paths I need to follow.’

The youth had to admit that this circulation technique seemed complex, even in this simplified form. He needed to circulate the energy past hundreds of acupoints in a very specific order, and his master wasn’t too keen on giving any advice in his writing. Red wasn’t too familiar with other techniques, but he certainly didn’t think they were this hard.

‘Well, I can only try my best.’

He set the book aside and close his eyes. Energy was drawn into this vein, this time much slower than when he tried it at the convergence of leylines. Red had more time to spare now, though, so he didn’t rush. Almost ten minutes later, when he felt he had gathered enough energy, he started to circulate it through the path he memorized.

He was unsurprised to learn the task was just as hard as he was expecting.

The difficulty, as he found, wasn’t in drawing the energy through the right veins and acupoints. The paths were many and complex, sure, but it was still something Red could memorize. His true challenge was in drawing them the right way.

When Spiritual Energy was being circulated in preparation to be absorbed into the Spiritual Sea, it was in constant flux, a state of transformation. Every acupoint and vein it went through changed it a bit, and timing was of the utmost importance in this. Move it too quickly to the next acupoint, and it would not have enough time to change to its ideal state, while if you move it too slowly, it would return to a form it was in before entering your body.

Red could have gone ahead and tried to absorb this less than ideal circulated energy, but he knew that for foundational purposes, he couldn’t take any less than perfection. So he kept practicing.

An hour went by.

Then two hours.

Then, when Red came to again, it was already the middle of the night, and he didn’t feel any closer to success.

‘This is hard.’

The youth opened his eyes and took a deep breath. Even with his talent with Wind, it seemed like this circulation technique wasn’t something you could learn in just one day. In fact, he didn’t know if this was something he could master in even a week.

Red was starting to understand why cultivation was such a practice in patience. This revelation, however, didn’t make him very happy.

He looked over at Aurelia. The woman was still there, playing with a lock of her long black hair and staring at Red with a gloating expression on her face.

She smirked. “Not so easy, huh?”

The youth frowned. “Can you help me?”

He wasn’t afraid of struggling against a task like this, but he couldn’t spend more weeks in the forest trying to master this circulation technique. As safe as he was for now, who knew when that would change? What if he stumbled upon an imperial in these parts?

No, he needed to get to a place outside of their reach, and the capital, while still dangerous in its own right, was the only settlement in the kingdom that fit the criteria. For that, though, he still needed to know the bare minimum of how to fight with his new powers.

Aurelia’s whole expression seemed to light up when she heard this, as if relishing in the feeling.

A second later, though, she put on a disinterested look and shrugged. “… If you insist.”

…

Over the next couple of days, the woman helped him master the circulation technique. Suffice it to say, having an experienced cultivator guiding you was night and day in difference from practicing on your own.

Even if Aurelia was unfamiliar with the circulation technique, she could still tell the areas where the youth failed and drive on what he should do to correct it. With her assistance, it didn’t take long for him to succeed in circulating the perfect stream of energy.

‘This feels like cheating.’

There was a part of Red that didn’t feel good with himself after asking her for help, but at this moment, survival was more important than principles. In the future, once he was more familiar with the inner workings of cultivation, he wouldn’t need to rely on her assistance as much.

Currently, he was sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed in a different clearing than from a few days before. He didn’t dare stay too long in one place, after all.

A powerful stream of cyan-colored Spiritual Energy circled his veins, and the youth drew it towards his Spiritual Sea. The surge entered into the organ with no resistance and once inside, Red moved it towards the center of that space.

The cyan energy followed his will, settling into a minute, rotating mist vortex inside of his Spiritual Sea. The youth almost thought it would dissipate at any moment, but that didn’t happen. It stayed there, a stable structure that started to draw in all the other useless energy in his Sea, slowly converting it into the same cyan mist.

The first bit of energy at his disposal to use.

‘So this is what I will build on in the future?’

Cultivation wasn’t just a matter of absorbing energy into your body. One needed to structure it inside their Spiritual Sea and build it into a stable arrangement to establish a foundation they could rely on and advance through the realms with. What form said foundation took depended a lot on the technique, and the Storm’s Blessing, for instance, relied on forming a vortex with the energy.

The only thing in common between all of these techniques, though, was that at the Lesser Ring Realm, this energy would always be in a mist form inside the Spiritual Sea.

Aurelia sighed with exaggeration. “You finally did it. I thought you would be stuck there forever!”

Red frowned, but ignored her remark, still examining his body.

“So, now that you have the least bit of energy in your Spiritual Sea, have you decided what Spiritual Art you are going to practice?”

The youth opened his eyes and nodded. “I have.”

She smiled. “Good, then tell me what it is. I want to hear what stupid decision you have made this time.”

Instead of telling her, Red picked up the manual and flipped it to a certain page. Then he turned it around and showed it to her.

Aurelia immediately frowned. “… Gale Breath?”

She looked back at him as if asking for confirmation.

Red nodded. “That one.”

There was a pause before the woman looked at him in bewilderment.

“… You can’t be serious.”