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“Place your hand on the orb and channel your qi into it.”

This time, not only did I know what to do, but the action came much easier. Qi flowed from my dantian and into the orb. A dull brown stone appeared in its center.

“Earth affinity. Middle of nine-star,” the elderly man said. His voice sounded only slightly kinder than in the past. Honestly, I didn’t know what a ‘good’ result would be in this test.

“What can you tell us about the blessing you have received?”

“The healing and slight strengthening of my body,” I said. Playing the mysterious angle didn’t work at all, better to try to appear straight-forward.

“Hmm, works with the earth affinity. Very well, give him the Earth Heart Mantra and return him.” This wasn’t much different than the past, but the faint hint of praise gave me hope.

As before, I picked up the scroll and returned to my tiny house. At this point, I didn’t really need the scroll anymore. I already knew what it said. Practicing it this time, however, was different. As I followed the instructions, I could feel a significant difference.

The Earth Heart Mantra had you move the qi inside your body in a specific way. The first step was to move it towards your right upper arm and effectively create a whirlpool. The goal of this was to pull qi from outside the body and trap it within the muscles. At the same time, you had to create what was basically a filter, allowing only earth qi into the body. The higher the purity of earth qi, the more effective it would be.

In the past, this was extremely difficult for me. Concentrating my qi into one part of my body was difficult. Creating a whirlpool to pull in qi was nearly impossible. Creating any kind of effective filter was completely beyond my comprehension.

This time, however, it all seemed to just work. Moving the qi and creating the whirlpool was as simple as breathing. I was able to quickly reach the point where my body would pull qi from the air. The moment I did so, though, I immediately stopped. Pulling in qi at random would do more harm than good. I needed to filter it first.

Actually…

From what I could tell, it seemed like the qi I pulled in was already at least fifty percent earth-attributed. My affinity with earth was helping me here. It was still bad to gather qi at random, but maybe not a dealbreaker? Still, I should try to do it correctly.

I worked to form the pattern from the scroll. My attempt looked… close? As I pulled qi through it, the pattern quickly collapsed. So, not so easy. Still, it was just a matter of practice.

“Is this worth the effort though?” I suddenly asked myself. What was the point of working so hard to purify it and only pull in earth-attributed qi? As I had learned from the scroll, it was supposed to make the qi more powerful. If a chaotic mess of qi was pulled in when cultivating, it would interfere with the earth qi, negating most of its benefits. The purer the qi, the more effective it would be. Extremely high qi purity could result in qi that was several times as effective as low-purity qi. This was why a strong, pure foundation was important.

However, I continued to consider. Did that matter right now? What was my current goal? To become the strongest person in the world or to just advance one step forward, gaining experience and credits along the way.

The scroll said that if one’s qi purity was too low, they would be stuck as a Martial Disciple forever, but it also seemed to suggest that one could become a Peak Disciple no matter how pure their qi was.

So, I could become a Peak Disciple, learn everything I could from the experience, die, and collect the credits for a high cultivation. Then, the next time around start with an even higher affinity. I would live a series of lives that slowly built upon one another.

Was I okay with this strategy? It meant I would be purposefully sending myself to my death. This wasn’t suicide, and while the death was premeditated, it shouldn’t run afoul of the System’s restrictions. Still…

“I think it’s what I have to do,” I told myself. “As long as I have time in between, I will be fine.”

I thought about the viability of the plan. The qi filter was something I would need to learn, even if purity wasn’t something I concerned myself with at the moment. It seemed like a waste not to practice it for the future.

So, yes, practice it, maybe an hour a day, but the focus needs to be on simply grabbing as much qi as possible and advancing as far as possible. That seems like the way to gain the most from each reset.

I walked to the Martial Arts Training Yard with determination. I was still only a Martial Disciple 1, but I could feel the qi in my right arm surging. It was nearing a breakthrough. In only a few more days I would finally see what it meant to be a Martial Disciple 2. Hopefully, I would get them.

“Now, time for a little demonstration,” the instructor said with a murderous air about him, “do we have any volunteers?”

I, like everyone else, remained silent. I wasn’t about to risk putting myself forward.

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“Hmpf, not a single person brave enough to even demonstrate what they know,” the man said in a disgusted tone. “Fine. You! Step forward and show me something.”

The bastard was pointing right at… someone else?

Huh… it worked. Not being seen as completely worthless by the clan had at least one benefit it seemed.

The unfortunate victim of this lesson was rather… unfortunate. Thankfully, it wasn’t me this time. I just stood there with a crowd of sixteen-year-olds and watched as one of our number was beaten to death in front of us. This place was just… wrong.

“This is your lesson for today. In this training, slacking for even a moment means death!” He gave all of us a meaningful look. “Now, pair up and fight. I want to see if any of you have any possibility of being worthy of my clan in the future.”

Slowly the crowd started to move as people began to pair off. My neighbor and I just nodded at each other and moved into position to begin sparring. At that moment, a roar ripped through the yard.

“What the hell are you doing! What was that!? I told you to fight, not play around! Looks like you didn’t understand my little demonstration earlier.”

The instructor charged over to a pair that was on the other side of the yard. As soon as he arrived, he kicked out and broke one guy’s arm. Then, he reached out, grabbed the other guy’s arm, and broke it in half.

“If you aren’t using those to fight, you don’t need them anymore,” he said with disdain. “Now, everyone, get back to fighting. And do it like you mean it!”

This was not training. This was abuse. This wasn’t about teaching us to become fighters. It was about suppressing and breaking us. Was he trying to turn us into soldiers? Impossible. There was no way this could build an effective fighting force.

Still, I knew better than to openly question anything at this point. I was stuck in this place. I had to learn how to survive. Survival came before trying to understand and/or change the socio-political landscape.

I focused my mind and was relentless. I did everything I could to beat my sparring partner into a bloody pulp. None of us had any special cultivation power. It was all about base martial prowess. As I said before, I was no master fighter, but I could take out a street tough. The child I was forced to fight didn’t have a chance.

Even though I had a clear advantage, I kept my attention on everything around me to a paranoid degree. I knew that bastard was just waiting for an excuse to take me down, so I wouldn’t give him one. At least, I wouldn’t let him say I was too ‘relaxed.’

This ‘training’ lasted for two grueling hours. Finally, it was over.

“Congratulations, you survived day one. I will be back in a week. If you have not improved, you will be retired from future sessions. Consider this week my gift. Cultivate and train hard, children. Your three months have just begun.”

The following days, I pushed myself hard. I didn’t worry about practicing fighting. In my mind, I had enough of a lead on these kids that I wasn’t worried about them getting in an extra month of practice. No, I focused on cultivating my qi with the Earth Heart Mantra which would strengthen my body and lock in a few extra future credits.

Just two days after our little training session I made my first breakthrough. The qi in my right upper arm muscles became so dense that I was unable to continue.

The next step was to find the acupoint in my arm. According to the scroll, it was supposed to be on the outside of the arm near where the arm muscles and shoulder muscles make a natural divot. I was supposed to be able to find this point by moving the qi around slowly and finding a place where it kind of became sticky.

This took me several days on its own. It was easy to get fed up with the process. Basically, I was slowly groping around in the dark trying to feel something when I had no idea what I should be feeling. It wasn’t until the third day that I succeeded.

After that, the process was brutally simple. Concentrate my qi into a sharp point and stab from the inside of my arm, through the acupoint, and outside my body. This seemed like something only the reckless would try without proper guidance and supervision, but I didn’t have that luxury, and I didn’t really care if I messed it up. I just needed to learn from it and do better the next time.

As I stabbed, I could feel qi pour out of me. Nearly everything I had worked for so long to gather vanished in a few heartbeats. There were no visible signs I had done anything to my arm, but it felt like I was left with a gaping spiritual wound through which the dregs of my remaining qi began to trickle out.

Finally, with what little energy I had remaining, I reconstructed the qi whirlpool in my arm, pulling energy in instead of letting it flow out. I should mention here, again, that I was supposed to create an effective filter so that only earth qi was pulled in, but I didn’t bother. That was something I would deal with in the future.

Qi poured in at several times its previous rate. It had taken me days to fill my arm with qi before. Now, it took only a few hours. In what felt like no time, I was back to my peak, with one arm brimming with qi.

Before, I had to consciously hold the qi whirlpool in place and focus on cultivation. After breaking through, this became like an autonomous bodily function. The qi in my right arm would constantly replenish itself whenever it ran low.

I had reached Martial Disciple 2.

There was no time to sit around. I needed to start on the left arm.

By the time our week of training was over, I had made what I thought was considerable progress on reaching Martial Disciple 3. It was a bit harder to pull in energy to my left arm than it had been when working on my right arm. It felt like there was almost a form of magnetic repulsion at work. But each day, the qi was becoming denser. It was only a matter of time.

As we arrived at the training yard, the instructor looked at me in surprise. An honest-to-gods smile appeared on his face. It seemed like he was actually happy, not just derisively happy, when he saw me. Since I was the only one that seemed to generate this reaction, I could guess that I was the only one to make a breakthrough this week. I felt kind of proud of myself.

“Alright, pair off and fight!”

This time, he actually gave a few pointers on how to fight better. Shocking.

A couple of kids did end up getting brutally beaten by him, but no one died. I didn’t know if I was adapting or just developing Stockholm’s syndrome, but things did seem to be looking up.

“Stop! Circle around!” he finally shouted after a few hours.

“Some of you are actually progressing nicely, so I have good news for you. In two weeks, it will be the end of your first month of training. At that time, there will be a small competition.

“You may have noticed that several people you started with are not here at the moment. During their evaluation, they were graded as having exceptional potential, so they have been receiving specialized training. At the end of the month, you will be free to challenge them for their position. If you can defeat one of them, you will get their spot and all the resources that come with it. Train hard.”

As we were dismissed, everyone began to walk back to their home, but as I was turning away, I was stopped by our instructor.

“Keep up with your current efforts,” he said encouragingly. “I look forward to seeing you challenge for a spot at the end of the month.”

I smiled and bowed to him.

It was a rough start, but maybe everything was beginning to work itself out.