OP— 21

Title: Cultivation/Grind

After being schooled by Forest, Mana was the first to return to the apartment. With their masters having different methods of teaching and training, the trio would have different times of arrival. Still, true to his word, Mana did not touch his gaming console and went straight to his bedroom and lied down on his bed.

Suddenly sitting up, Mana shuffled through his nightstand and finally took out a large piece of paper. Unlike Jade Slips which are meant for storing information, the Jade Sheets come in a variety of sizes. The greater the size the better the use but Mana felt that he could easily accomplish his goals using the A-3 sized Jade Sheets.

The use of Jade Sheets is simple. It allows a cultivator to realize the true meaning and intent of a rune.

Taking a pen, an ordinary one, Mana wrote a single rune on its surface. Of course, he didn't fill the entire sheet with the rune and only used one-tenth of the sheet. The inscribed rune had seven strokes of penmanship and belonged to the rank 1 category.

'Although master and I went through a lot of runes in the last 2 hours, I was taught most of them by Granny. The only ones I don't fully grasp are the newly discovered and innovated runes that were added to the list last year.

The advantage of being in a top-tier sect is already prevalent. With deep connections, the sect can easily teach disciples new forms of runes. Every rune is different and has its own merits and demerits. The use of runes over an Origin depends completely on the cultivator.'

The current rune was a newly innovated rank 1 rune Gasho, meaning Black Tribe. Mana had already grasped similar runes meaning Green Tribe, Red Tribe, and others. Their use in battle was quite limited but for Orthodox Cultivators and Origin Cultivators who aspire to go down the path of the scholarly professions such as formation creation or even poetry, these kinds of Runes are a must-have form of knowledge.

Taking a deep breath, Mana took out a vial of blood from inside the drawer. Any prepared cultivator would have such vials of their own blood to gain insight into the runes and not continuously bite their wrists or fingers for blood on the spot.

Dripping a drop of blood from the vial right over the region of sheet marked by the rune, Mana waited until the Jade Sheet began to glow soft red while the only piece of writing started to have its blue ink turn deep red.

Soon, a crimson red holograph of the rune formed atop the Jade Sheet and finally flew towards the source of blood.

Mana.

The image of the rune entered Mana's mind and he was forced to close his eyes. Once he closed his eyes, the darkness around him seemed to be lifted off by flashing images. These images meant nothing to Mana currently. The images turned too quickly and were blurry for the most part but recalling the description of the rune, Mana began to imagine that he was actually present in a tribe full of dark wolves.

As if resonating with Mana's imagination, the images started to turn slower and he began to observe the howling of the wolves and 'whatnot'. The tribal runes… were one of the most beneficial runes to increase the chances of impregnation, after all. So great was their effect that the tribal runes of greater ranks could even determine the gender of the child but such runes were kept as a secret. Only rank 1 runes are spread so far and wide, after all.

"Hmm," Opening his eyes, Mana refrained from yawning… but who has ever denied the tasks of nature? After a long yawn, Mana began analyzing his progress based on his experience.

The runes are a language in the most basic sense but they hold power within themselves. With intent and grasp of the meaning of the rune, even if a Cultivator may not carve it in one's origin, they can certainly bring changes to their surrounding based on the rank of the rune. It was the same way they could make the air scented as practiced in their first lesson of the sect. However, the effects also depend on a Cultivator's nature, experience, and the form of understanding over the rune which, for the most time, is never the same.

"Even now, I can only grasp 10% of a rank 1 rune at once… A single Jade Sheet can suffice me for each rune but as my need to learn greater runes increases, the number of Jade Sheets required will grow astronomical."

Depressed, Mana performed the same task. The one-tenth region marked with the previous rune had already lost its luster and he wrote the same rune on another portion. The drop of his blood ignited a reaction from the second portion this time.

And just like that, Mana began to cultivate seriously. He had nothing to do after all.

---

"Asshole!"

It was already 10 pm and Mana still refused to come out. Seeing the tag— Comprehending Runes, Masturbating, too. Do not disturb— Rogue and Dharma did not have the courage to fling open the door.

"Sir, my payment please."

Standing at the entrance of the apartment was an extremely peeved delivery man.

Flinching, Dharma and Rogue looked towards each other and sighed simultaneously.

"We'll just order another great breakfast tomorrow…" Dharma spoke in comfort as the two went ahead and paid for their dinner. They still did not know if Mana ate something after returning but right now, they didn't even care.

The next few days were passed as such. Mana, Rogue, and Dharma would use the sect bus to return back to the sect every morning with Mana and Dharma having to go through an entire Jade Slip every morning which were being consequently passed out by Vincent every morning.

By now, including the jade slip acting as an encyclopedia of runes, Dharma and Mana had absorbed a total of 9 jade slips worth of battle journals, each richer than the last one but all of them still within the realm and capabilities of rank 1-3 Origin Cultivation.

After their morning discussions, during the recess, the duo's contact with Hina and Mina had grown a little lower. Although Mana did keep a good relationship with the twins, particularly Hina, Dharma never tried to take the initiative, making his intentions clear and though unsatisfied, Mina kept mum about the matter.

Later, aside from their seniors fine-tuning the exercises and even sometimes training the junior disciples in a few martial moves, the greatest benefits were brought by daily spars and Professor, no, Grandmaster Klyde's bits of advice. He would always point out the faults of each Disciple but if that was the only case then it wouldn't have mattered.

However, Klyde also accurately described the areas the said Disciple needed to work on and how to improve over the aforementioned deficits.

The greatest flaw in Mana that Klyde pointed out was his lack of caution and extreme interest in 'fun.'

Klyde seemed to have realized that Mana's caution had slowly waned after the apparent lack of attention Mana gave to painful injuries during his spar with Rogue. Although Mana only worked with two skills, he always tried to find ways to beat Rogue while incurring disastrous injuries.

Of course, bets were made and lost. Some bets were fulfilled and some unfulfilled ones were soon forgotten.

To make Mana more cautious, Klyde had started giving the young disciple small dosages of 'sense raiser', a form of hallucination drug that affected a Cultivator's sense of element but in extremely short dosages, it would make a cultivator feel more intense feedback from one's nervous system.

Although Mana has a long way to regain his sense of caution, he still never shouted in pain but managed to keep his quiet.

When curiously asked by Lilia about the situation, all she received was a chilling reply that made her feel a little sad despite her nature— It just feels like training during my childhood… sparring just got more fun, hehe.

Finally, to conclude the day, as usual, in the healing ward where Mana usually rested after every spar, Forest made sure to help him understand the true essence of rarer rank 1 runes while finding seeds of vegetation feys so that Mana can capitalize on his second rune— Seed.