Chapter 2: A New Life Means New Things to Learn
In a simply decorated room, a cute little girl about 11 or 12 years old with long, glossy blonde hair and an old emaciated man were watching Mayton's execution from something like a mirror with a viscous surface. The girl wore an elegant and simple, pure white robe while the old man wore black, tattered clothes. If Mayton saw the two of them he would immediately recognize them.
The man was clearly the one who caused him to be executed unjustly. The so-called demon. As for the girl, shockingly, she looked exactly like the goddess except she lacked the mature charm and the mysterious aura of the goddess. She was like the childness of the goddess.
'' Yeqin what is so special about that you wanted me to watch this? Isn't he just one of the many mortals who got executed?''
the little girl asked.
''Miss Leyzhen, of course, there is something special about this man. I saw him just as he was getting executed and felt that he has something foreign about him. Something not touched by Master.''
the old man said in an unfeeling tone.
''Do you mean he is the key we have been looking for all this time? Can I finally learn what happened to my parents?''
The little girl clearly got excited after hearing him and hurriedly asked to confirm her suspicions without taking her eyes from the device showing Mayton's execution scene which started to play again.
But she was too excited to wait for Yeqin's answer so she continued;
'' You did track his soul, right? Where is he now? I must personally go there for an investigation.''
After hearing her, Yeqin's eyes flashed for an instant before returning to his normal unemotional look. If Leyzhen saw Yeqin's eyes she would definitely get suspicious. Unfortunately for her, Yeqin stood a few steps behind Leyzhen just like a proper servant should thus making it impossible for Leyzhen to see him.
'' Miss, I found that he reincarnated at a world in lower realms. You do know these places are infested with devils and demons. It's too dangerou-''
''Did I ask for your permission to go? Just tell me the location.'' Leyzhen cut his sentence and said impatiently.
She has been waiting for this moment for a long time. It has been so many years. She was alone with Yeqin ever since she can remember. Her father, the man called master by Yeqin, left her a message. In the message, there was a clue about how to find out the fate of her parents.
Mayton was exactly what that clue pointed at.
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Mayton sighed as he looked at children running around in front of him. He was feeling depressed. Today his mom told him to take his baby sister with him and go out to play for a while. He was absolutely prohibited from returning to home until sunset. Mayton, someone who remembers his past life, a total of 27 years, can't possibly be happy to be forced to play with some little kids.
'' Six years old children should play with other children, not stay at home all day.''
Mayton's mom declared with a tone indicating the matter was closed to any further discussion.
Thankfully none of the children were interested in playing with Mayton. When Mayton was about 4 years old and got forced out of home by his mother for the first time, other children of the village tried to play with him for a while. It didn't take too long for the children to realize that Mayton was a weirdo and a complete loner though.
When a child tried to be nice to him he patted the child's head or pinched the child's cheeks. When a child tried to bully Mayton he still did the same things which simply infuriated the children. When no one bothered him, he just ignored the children. After a while, everyone learned to let him be except for his little sister Angeza.
Angeza had long black hair and big shining eyes. Coupled with her playful demeanor, she was a really cute 4 years old girl. She was extremely naughty and never let Mayton relax even for a little while. Thankfully Angeza tended to sleep a lot during the day and she was also asleep right now.
'' Hey kiddo since you are clearly not interested in playing with others why don't you chat with this old man for a while? '' an old but majestic voice said.
Mayton's eyes immediately brightened. This voice belonged to Old Mert, the leader of hunters from Mayton's grandpa's generation. Old Mert looked like an old male lion with numerous battle scars all over his body and his mane like yellowish white beard. All of the villagers respected him as their elder, not only because of his age but also because of his wisdom.
While Old Mert may not be counted as some wanderer, he was the only person in the village who saw more than one city. This caused him to learn about things the other villagers couldn't even dream about. He was respected for his strength too.
Even though he was older than 100 years, he was still stronger than all the other villagers by quite a bit. The reason for his long lifespan and strength was simple. Old Mert was a demonic cultivator. The only one in all of the villages in the vicinity.
Yes, humans can become demons by the way of demonic cultivation in this world. Actually, Mayton strongly suspected that it was also the case in his previous world but for some reason, the church was hostile to demonic cultivators and made sure there wasn't anyone aware of demonic cultivation.
Mayton and Old Mert often chatted these past 2 years whenever Mayton got forced out of his home. They chatted about all kinds of things. Their topic of conversation ranged from how the city folk behaved in a particular situation, to what to do when you were forced to spend the night out of the village in the wilderness.
Since Mayton's village was in a desolate area far away from civilization, hunting and gathering were the villagers' main way of life. Thus it was vital for villagers to have at least some degree of proficiency in those areas. Keeping that in mind, Mayton tried to learn as much as possible about those topics. But there was a topic which fascinated Mayton the most. Demonic cultivation.
'' Grandpa Mert you know I am intelligent and obedient, I will definitely cultivate just the way you say. I definitely won't make a mistake. ''
Mayton begged once more without any expectations.
This sickening, childish way of speaking came out of Mayton's mouth quite naturally. He learned his lesson about how to talk to his 'elders' when villagers thought he was possessed and should be purified when he was 3 years old.
Talks of purification always reminded Mayton his previous life's last few weeks and made him shudder. So he adapted to being a toddler pretty quickly with that harrowing experience still fresh in his mind.
Mayton was begging to Old Mert for him to teach the demonic cultivation method he used, ever since Mayton learned the existence of cultivation. But Old Mert refused to teach him each and every time he brought it up.
According to Old Mert, it was too early for Mayton to start cultivation because the slightest mistake would have severe consequences. Six years olds were not the most careful bunch after all.
'' Okay you little brat. You really are the most intelligent child I have ever seen in my over 100 years of life. Today I'll tell you more about cultivation in general. if you remember it all I'll help you start your cultivation. '' old Mert said in his usual majestic voice.
Mayton startled. Then hurriedly assured; '' I'll definitely remember it all Grandpa Mert. Please, may Grandpa Mert teach me.''
'' Cut it out you sly brat, since when are you so courteous with me? Okay, I won't be long winded and start to teach you, listen well…..''
Mayton and Old Mert talked until way after sunset. Finally, Mayton's mom came with his sister Angeza in tow and scolded Mayton for not looking after his sister and being late for dinner.
Mayton really was too absorbed in his conversation with Old Mert. He didn't even know when Angeza returned home. This marked the end of his conversation with Old Mert.
While returning home with his sister and mom, Mayton was thinking about what he heard just now from Old Mert and didn't even hear his moms scolding as he apologized for being late for dinner absentmindedly.
Mayton learned from Old Mert that, energy is omnipresent in the universe and people can absorb this energy called Qi. There were all kinds of absorbable qi present in the universe like elemental qis of fire, wood, metal etc. or other strange and rare qis like void qi.
Every soul unconsciously absorbed the qi present around them and slowly purified it, resulting in the creation of the pure qi. Pure qi lacked any affinity and therefore was the purest, most basic kind of energy.
Of course, unconscious absorption of qi didn't result in any kind of obvious increase in strength. First of all, it was too slow a process to make a difference. Also as long as you didn't know how to utilize the qi you absorbed, it had limited uses. Therefore you needed to seek out places rich in qi and actively absorb it using an appropriate cultivation technique then utilize it using battle techniques.
Demonic cultivators absorbed the qi of heaven and earth directly without doing anything to purify it. That way everyone could become a demonic cultivator as long as they had a cultivation technique and the necessary talent.
But because of the impurities in the qi present in the world, demonic cultivators who absorbed it directly will mutate little by little depending on the kind of qi they used, while their personalities will get more and more extreme.
For example, if someone and used frost qi for cultivation, in time his or her body will become closer to that of frost elementals while his or her personality will become colder.
Divine cultivation was a way for pure qi cultivation. Various churches and sects in this world practiced divine cultivation. The problem with divine cultivation is that there isn't much pure qi existing naturally in the universe.
Thus divine cultivators needed to seek out this extremely rare pure qi in the universe or use other means to access it. With time, divine cultivators found a way to access boundless amounts of pure qi. Taking it from mortals who don't practice cultivation.
Even though the qi absorbed by normal people was too little for themselves, divine cultivators found ways to extract it from people and then absorb it for their own use. Unconsciously absorbed qi may be too little in quantity despite its purity but what if you use the lifetime of absorption of 500 people? Not enough? Then what about a million people? It would be a terrifying amount of pure qi.
Many sects and cults in this world made use of exactly this extracted pure qi to increase the cultivations' of their members. Orthodox sects and cults extracted it from willing people, offering protection or small boons such as slightly increased longevity in return.
But there were, of course, many evil sects and cults which absorbed the qi of normal people and gave them nothing in return. Those sects were denounced as unorthodox and generally were hunted down by orthodox sects and cults.
The advantage of pure qi was its versatility in battle and it's lack of adverse effects. It was versatile because pure qi could be used for any kind of battle technique while for example fire qi can't be used for ice based techniques.
Then there were devils. Devils consumed souls to cultivate. Consuming souls ensured that devil cultivation methods were the fastest ones because souls had enormous amounts of qi in them. After consuming the soul, they then proceeded to convert the absorbed soul to devil qi and reinforce their cultivation with it. But this kind of cultivation had severe consequences.
It changed their personalities drastically and made them unstable because bits and pieces of the consumed souls remained within them forever. Because of that, there were lots of devils who lost themselves in cultivation and turned into mindless savages whose only reason for existence were to consume more and more souls.
As for Old Mert's cultivation technique, it was a poor quality demonic cultivation technique which used beast qi to strengthen the body. Old Mert himself used specifically beasts with lion bloodline which gave him his majestic presence. But also made him short-tempered and aggressive. Mayton asked the reason for using only one kind of beast qi and Old Mert answered matter of factly;
'' What, do you want me to be some kind of monster with extreme emotional instabilities? How can someone handle being like a rabbit and a wolf at the same time? It would make you nearly as crazy as those damned devils. Not to mention it is extremely hard to prevent different kinds of qi clashing inside one's body. That's why it is dangerous for ignorant brats like you to cultivate.''
Unfortunately, Mayton didn't get to start his cultivation until a few a days later when Old Mert was free again but today's lesson could still be counted as his first step into the world of cultivation.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
GreasyBeer
GreasyBeer I can hear some of you saying ''Hey, I found a plot hole!'' . Please be patient. There aren't any plot holes in the story. Not yet at least.
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