Chapter 22: Breaking through!
As the manual said, cultivation was all about energy. For the past one month, Lance had been meditating from 8 in the night to 8 in the morning.
Darius had told him that all of the mountainous area was specially made for training. Special technology gathered energy from the sun and released it into the atmosphere here after making it easier to absorb for all. This was one of the boons of IE.
In ancient times, people were required to go to places on earth almost untouched by man to absorb energy like this. Now, through the united hard work of generations of engineers and personnel, this haven was made possible.
All Lance needed to do was sit down and imagine himself absorbing energy through his pores. He had to first relax his mind, throwing all errant thoughts out. This itself took 2 days to achieve. Next, he had to imagine that his body was a sponge which was submerged in the water that was energy. He almost had to hypnotize himself that all he needed to do was breathe in, and energy would flow into him.
Strangely, this part went forward smoothly enough. From the 3rd day, he had been absorbing energy nonstop from dusk till dawn. Each morning when he ended his meditation, he felt refreshed, as if he had had a full nights sleep in the most comfortable way possible. Even the time spent meditating didn't feel laborious, as it almost as if he had been in a trance throughout the session, albeit being mildly aware of his surroundings.
The one month had passed in a flash, and Lance had patiently followed the instructions on the manual.
He was instructed to direct the energy that he absorbed through his pores into his dantian, or the area around 3 inches below his belly button. Visualization was key, and Lance had always been good at stuff that concerned creativity and imagination.
So, each day, Lance visualized the energy as streams of water which entered through the numerous pores in his body before entering his dantian. Then, as the streams of water entered into a round space at the dantian, he visualized them coalescing into a 10-foot square slab of shiny energy.
The goal was to build a house, or a storage place to store energy for usage. Lance decided to take this literally, as many others did, and aimed to build the ground slab of the house.
Whatever structure one imagined, the end result was the same: a two-dimensional structure of energy present in the dantian signaled one becoming a stage one initiate.
As each day passed, the slab of energy had been becoming more and more solid. What had started out as a sheet of dotted particles was slowly turning into a solid sheet.
The dantian was the part of the body that had the special ability to store energy safely and stably without causing any harm. Although energy passing through the cells of the body in tiny amounts benefited the initiates, if it accumulated or if too much was absorbed at once and happened to be stored in a location other than the dantian at this stage, it would cause damage to the tissue around it resulting in mutilation through explosion due to instability.
Thus, the rooms of each initiate was specialized to their level.
Seeing the slab almost becoming completely solid, Lance got excited but calmed himself as this was the most crucial moment. At the moment the slab became solid, he had to stop absorbing energy to let the slab stabilize.
All of a sudden, he heard a "CLINK" sound. The slab, which had been murky with particles swirling inside it, suddenly radiated a blinding flash as he visualized it. It shone a sparkling silver as the light slowly retreated into the slab.
Lance immediately stopped absorbing. He had always imagined his dantian as an empty space, and now in this empty space was a square, shining block of pure power.
He shook as he felt a force of repulsion throughout his body. A stinky, black material oozed out of his pores as Lance got a hacking cough which made him spit out black blood. He had read about this in the manual. Energy constructs had their own gravitational fields which ejected some impurities out of the body when first formed.
Lance stood up, feeling as if his whole body was now a well-oiled machine. Each and every moment required lesser energy than before, and he felt as strong and healthy as an ox.
"WOOHOOOO!", he screamed, jumping up and punching the air in jubilation.
Lance, beginning stage-1 initiate. The title that he had been looking forward to for so long was finally his.
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