Books

'Yup, name checks out' Edrick did not like to waste time, so the second he received all authorisations like he wished, he headed to scour the libraries of the sect, of which there were quite a few, each supervised by a different librarian that seemed to be addicted to not sleeping as not a single one of them looked well-rested.

Some of these libraries were of no use to Anoteros as they were meant for the outer and inner disciples and were limited in what they had to offer, he had gotten the right to go in and out at any hour of the day or night to the more complete libraries, the ones where core disciples and sect elders would sometime hang out, which explained why they were so empty.

The elders were already past their prime and had probably already read everything they wanted to know, and as for the core disciples, Edrick didn't know how many of them there were, but naturally, they weren't numerous so running into them randomly was unlikely, especially since these greater libraries were large, overtly so in fact, even he with his two meters and fifteen centimeters in height looked small in this place.

He took in a strong whiff of this place.

'Aah, the smell of aged paper…' libraries ranked amongst his favourite public spaces as it was awfully easy to stalk people in them, all the while finding nice books to read by the fireplace.

Right now, he was by himself as his wives were focused on making the residence into a comfortable home and had gone to Oie to shop around, so Edrick also took time to look for stuff that he deemed would suit them.

Gang had ran the tests on them, and as it turns out, only Fanqia had something a bit special about her, as expected of one supposed to be part of the protagonist's story, she had a bloodline, its name and capabilities were yet to be discovered however, but the elder had said that it seemed to be tilting toward being something geared toward support.

Keeping the advice of the old man in mind, he first sought the basics of cultivation, which was learning how to control one's inner energies, before going ahead and moving it around in particular manners, it was best to know that.

Learning how to move one's energies was also the first step toward actually making them in to the stronger version of themselves, the majority of people's would have their inner energies be stagnant until they learn to make it move and control it, in a similar fashion to moving a limb that had stayed still for a long while would slowly make it grow out of numbness, one's energies would be allowed to grow into what they are supposed to be like via movement.

Gang had explained that there were a whole bunch of 'aspects' about energy but hadn't gone into details because that stuff was mostly important to those who practiced spell casting outside the bounds of cultivation, the so-called mages.

Since he did not want to rely solely on someone's word, Anoteros took some time to read some books about everything Gang had told him as well, only then did he do as was instructed and attempted to stir the energies within him around.

He didn't try to isolate one type in particular, just checking if he could even get a hold of it and surprisingly, they all began moving according to his will relatively quickly, the book had a few advices as to how establish a natural flow all over the body, but even an idiot should know that there was already a natural flow throughout the body, which was blood.

Although invisible magic force and blood were entirely different things, it seemed to be working remarkably well, but Edrick supposed that not everyone, even if aware that blood vessels were spread out through the body, would have as keen of a knowledge of them as he did.

Having taken apart quite a few people, he had seen them up close and even played a few times at making a puzzle out of human bodies, so his ease at pinpointing them down and getting energy to follow them was not representative of how simple this actually all was.

Since his energies were already rather pure, it was all flowing smoothly and soon enough, it seemed to follow the path he had laid out naturally.

'Magical shenanigan is oddly simple…' he thought, continuing to read through the books he had gathered.

Before actually starting any of the actual cultivation stuff, he needed to decide how he would go about it, because since most techniques were rather light in energy restriction, it was common for a beginner to decide a particular energy to cultivate with, as like with everything else, focusing on a single one would typically yield better results, if one likened all of the sorts of energies to liquids, then some had the consistency of water, some of vinegar and some of tar, moving all at once slowed them all down and since the pace of movement was often crucial in a cultivation technique, that was no good.

The most commonly used, ironically, wasn't chi, ki or qi, which were all classified as different, but mana, as it was abundant everywhere, including within people's bodies and also because it was the most malleable, you could make it go slow, fast, twist in every manner and the likes with relative ease even for beginners.

It was so common that Gang had even claimed that unless a cultivation technique was specifically meant for another type of energy, mana would always work.

'The circulation of energy during cultivation aims to nourish…' he read '...Then wouldn't it be better overall to move them all at once?'

It sounded logical in his mind, one was better fed when they ate a little bit of everything instead of a single type of food, which was why he himself preferred to prepare meat and vegetables in the same container so that they mixed together.

Moreover, it seemed like if one interacted only with a single sort of energy, that they would only be receptive to this one in particular, at least, more receptive than to the rest, meaning that if one cultivated with mana and someone lobbed a chi arrow at their face, that they were likely to not even notice until there was a hole in them.

'How many parameters are there?' every time he opened a different book that was supposedly on the same subject as those before, he learned something new that had been omitted previously, like the field of science before rapid-communication was put in place, the field of cultivation and probably other way of powers was a mess in which one could basically say whatever they wanted and be left unchecked as long as it wasn't exceptionally egregious.

Each of the people who had written these books had clearly different opinions and areas they had explored more than others, but since they didn't speak with one another, information was spread around, most people would only read a single book on the basics and not bother with another.

'Mmh… I guess I'll be reading and asking around for a while…' this all felt like traversing a swamp whilst crawling, but Edrick found such an exercise rather satisfying to struggle against.

Though it made his man-aconda crave some action afterwards, spotting the sleep-deprived librarian with her messy hair and glasses, he shrugged and thought that it was worth a shot.